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It is not intended to depreciate the labours which these gentlemen voluntarily endured, or to speak with any thing like contumely of such intelligence as will be found in the Volume. But, if the really interesting part of the work were extracted from the rest, it would be comprehended in a small number of pages, and the publication itself only extends to about one hundred and forty.

Curiosity will ever be directed with an eager and an anxious eye to the Banks of the Nile; every step in Upper Egypt, more particularly, is in a manner sacred; and though so much has already been communicated illustrative of its antiquity and local distinctions, this curiosity is not at all abated.

The first chapter conveys the travellers as far as the first Cataract, to

which the passage up the Nile is not now attended with any very formidable difficulty, and with such guides and finger-posts as Norden, Bruce, Denon, and Hamilton, the trouble of finding out the objects more immediately deserving their attention, could not have been very great.

Having arrived at Dehr, the Derri of Norden, they obtained an interview with the Chief (the Cacheff), and entreated his permission to advance further up the country. They met with a most rude reception, and a positive refusal. The barbarian was softened in the usual manner, and permission granted to advance to Ibrim, the extreme limit of their excursion. Here they accordingly arrived, and this is the remotest point of Nubia hitherto reached.

The description is subjoined:

"In about five hours we arrived at Ibrim, situated on the East side of the Nile at the Southern extremity of a ridge of mountains, which for nearly two miles rise perpendicularly from the Nile, scarcely leaving space for the road which lies between them and the River. The town lay on the Eastern slope of the mountain; and the citadel, which was built on the summit, must have formerly been a strong position. Its height may be estimated at about 200 feet above the River that washes the foot of the rock on which it stood, and which is at this point about a quarter of a mile broad. We were, however, so far deceived by the extreme perpendicula rity of the precipice, that standing on

its edge we were induced to make several vain attempts to fling a stone across the Nile."

Ibrim, it appears, is also memorable as being the last spot where the Mamelukes made a stand against the Pacha (Pasha) of Egypt. They have Dow established themselves at Dongola, laid aside their old habits of magnificence, and commenced Agriculturists. They are also said to have some large trading-vessels on the Nile.

"We remained (says the Author) at Ibrim a few hours; and, giving up the idea of proceeding to the second or Great Cataract, which, we were told, was situated three degrees to the South, finally resolved to retrace our steps. We received no encouragement to penetrate into a country where money began to be of little use, and provisions very scarce."

Such are the reasons given for making no further attempts to proceed; but we are subsequently informed that Captain Light, of the Artillery, has since visited Ibrim, and that Mr. Bankes has succeeded in going still higher.

On the return of the party, they met with a most disagreeable, and what might have proved a fatal adventure. They procured some Arab guides, to assist them in examining the Mummy Pits at Thebes, of whom two were suffocated in the windings of the labyrinth. The Travellers were accused of killing them by magic; the matter, however, was finally compromised by the payment of a small sum of money.

A few interesting anecdotes, and but a few, are interspersed. One, at p. 28, is rather disgraceful to the agents of the British Government who were employed to purchase corn in Egypt for the use of the troops in the Peninsula. Another, p. 129, of a Scotchman, who having been taken prisoner, became a Mussulman, and in the progress of seven years had forgotten, or nearly forgotten, his receive his liberty. His name was own language, and had no desire to Donald Donald, and he came from Inverness. An Appendix is added, containing an Itinerary through Syria by Shekh Ibrahim, a person who is still travelling under the protection of the African Society.

32. ARMATA: a Fragment. 8vo;

pp. 210. Murray. [From THE TIMES Newspaper, Feb. 18.] THIS Publication having excited a considerable degree of public attention, we present to our Readers two

or three extracts. Rumour has as

signed it to the pen of a Noble and Learned Lord, whose reputation will go down to posterity adorned with whatever praise belongs, not only to the most eminent Advocate of his age and nation, but to one whose professional life was employed in protecting the liberties of his fellowsubjects: and who enforced, with manly and successful eloquence, a more constitutional spirit than had yet prevailed among our Courts of Justice, in the construction and administration of English Law.

On the book itself we shall make no comments: its plan is not altogether new. The Reader will detect, without much difficulty, the real meaning of those fictitious names of ultra-terrestrial islands and people which the Author has applied to old subjects familiar to all classes of Englishmen; and it will remain with each individual to adopt or reject, in what concerns his own country, the sentiments here promulgated with regard to the interests of Ärmata:

"This memorable æra✶ in the History of Armata may, perhaps, be considered as almost the first in which her Representative Constitution exhibited any proofs of dangerous imperfection. The Crown (as I have said) was rapidly acquiring the administration of a great revenue, and a sufficient guard had not been placed upon its influence in the public Councils, without which no forms of election, however free and extensive, can secure a wise and prudent administration; but the evil must manifestly be greater when the Popular Council, erected as the balance of a Monarchical State, does not emanate from the People, but in its greater part from the Crown which is to be balanced, and from a body of Nobles, powerful in rank and property, who are to be balanced

also; and who have besides a scale properly allotted to them, in which their great weight is judiciously deposited. It must be obvious to the meanest capacity, that if those very powers which are thus to be balanced can create or materially influence the antagonist power which is to control them, the Constitution must at all events be theoretically

*The American War.

imperfect. I have already informed you why, for a long period, this imperfection had not been felt; and the degree of its operation, when it began to operate, and as it now exists, ought to be correctly and temperately stated; because, without a reverence for Government,

whatever defects may be discovered in it, a Nation must be dissolved. The must be universally felt, and the disconconsequences of extreme misgovernment tents they produce are irresistible; but unfortunately they seldom arrive until the evil complained of is beyond redress. The Crown is sure in the dubious season to command the Popular Council; and through them popular opinion, until errors become palpable and destructive, when the most over- ruling influence must give way.”

As it appears there were Demagogues in Armata, the following are the opinions of the Author with regard to them :

"There is one principle so clear and so universal, that it must apply equally to all subjects, to the affairs of all countries, and even of all worlds. The first step towards public reformation, of every description, is a firm combination against rash and violent men. Very many of them (perhaps the bulk) are perfectly well-intentioned, but not, for they would support. Some of them, inall that, the less dangerous to the cause deed, one would think, were in our world set on to take the lead by those who op posed any changes, that wise men might retire altogether from the pursuit. For my own part, I would not only submit to the imperfections of such an admir able Constitution as you have described in Armata, but would consent to the continuance of the worst that can be imagined, rather than mix myself with ignorance, thrusting itself before the wisdom which should direct it, or with persons of desperate fortunes, whom no sound state of society could relieve; but such men, I think, could work no mischief, if Rank and Property stood honestly and manfully in their places."

national debt, and detailing some of After deploring the amount of the the numerous taxes paid by the Ar matian people, the Author proceeds

as follows:

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"The highest duty to Government only 20 years ago, either on Wills or on Inheritances, amounted to only 607. ; but Now (except when the property vests in nears relations or kindred), on the former it may amount to above two hundred times that sum, and on the latter to nearly three hundred, as the highest duty on the first may be fifteen thousand, and on the last above twenty thousand pounds, without taking into the account a proportion of the property transmitted, which in some cases amounts to a tenth. "This is the most grievous of all our burdens. The justest Government may have occasion to resort to a moderate duty on alienations and transmissions of all descriptions of property; but it ought to advance with the most cautious and even trembling steps. A mighty Nation in its public character should scorn to sit like a vulture over departing breath."

Upon the Poor-laws of Armata, the Author's opinions are just, eloquent, and striking.

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"As to the support of what is called the Poor, the amount of which I have already related, it has spread pauperism through all the middle classes of the community. In the earlier periods of Our history the burden of maintaining them was scarcely felt, our antient law confining it to the relief of the lame, the blind, and the impotent, and such others amongst them as were unable to work. Every principle of humanity demanded that support from those whom Providence had exempted from such severe infirmities; but every principle of sound policy opposed its further extension, and it was limited at first, in every district, to one-fortieth; which, speaking in your coin, would be only sixpence in the pound; but, by a strange departure from the principle of the original Law, it now often exceeds 40 times that amount, and in some places even the annual value of the property on which it professes to be a tax; to be entitled to relief it is no longer necessary that the applicant should bring himself within any of the descriptions of the antient law; neither blindness, nor lameness, nor impotence, nor even inability to work, are necessary qualifications for support, large houses every district being now built for the reception of almost any body who chooses to go into them, and, from a prostration of morals, it is no longer felt as a bumiliation or a reproach; even they who, from their own improvidence, have contracted marriage though they knew themselves to be utterly incapable of maintaining their children, have a claim

in

to cast them upon the publick as soon as they are born, and to live with them as inmates in those receptacles intended for the promotion of industry and the relief of want, but which, from the very nature of things, under the best management, become the abodes of vice and misery; where the aged, the diseased, the idle, and the profligate, the two first classes being every where out-numbered, are heaped upon one another, giving birth by their debaucheries to a new race of paupers, till they become a kind of putrid mass above ground, corrupted themselves, and corrupting all about them.'-To finish the picture of abuse: this enormous and still growing burden is almost exclusively cast upon the proprietors and occupiers of land, who ought least to be called upon to bear it, as neither their diseases nor their vices contribute in any kind of proportion to the aggregate of the poor. The simplismall contingent of either. The vicious city of a country life furnishes but a and the distempered are hourly vomited forth from the mines and manufactories, where contaminating multitudes and unwholesome labour produce every disgusting variety of decrepitude and crime; yet neither the proprietors of those establishments, nor the capitalists who roll along the streets of our cities in splendid carriages, pay any thing like their proportions to the support of the idle and the unhealthy they have produced. Almost the whole is cast upon the cultivators of the soil, who, except in the very houses I have described, supported by their property and labour, see nothing around them but innocence and

health."

We rather apprehend, from the following passage, with which we shall conclude our extracts, that the Author was not of the Court party, if such a thing as party existed in that very distant region.

"The true way of estimating the disastrous consequences of your present taxation is, to figure to yourself (if you can bear the reflection) the sensation it would at this moment produce, if some new and unexpected source of annual revenue were to start up, to the amount

of twenty millions of your money. Would it not, in your present condition, be like a resurrection from the dead? Yet in this one reign you have created a perpetual burden of nearly twice that sum. Could volumes so strikingly detail the effect of this worst of evils?

"The cause of your distress is therefore the clearest imaginable. Your Government collects in taxes so large a proportion of your property, that the

rest

rest is not sufficient to support your people; in such a case, it is a mistake to complain of the want of a circulating medium as an accidental and temporary cause of your difficulties, capable of being removed by politic contrivances. We bave a vulgar saying in England, that you can have no more of a cat than his skin; and if out of twenty shillings, not less than ten are consumed by Government and by collateral burdens, ten only can remain in real and substantial circulation: the scarcity of money may be lamented, and ingenious devices may be held out as remedies; but, without a radical system of improvement, rendering property more productive, and trade more prosperous, what danger can be greater than opportunities of borrowing, when there are no means of repaying what is borrowed? If land, from having sunk below its former rental, is mortgaged to more than half its value, would it be any thing like an advantage to the proprietor to find out even a fair lender, who would advance him money on the remaining part? since, without some means of improvement, his estate in the end must infallibly be sold.

"The same consequences apply equally to communities as to individuals; and there is therefore no safety for Armata, but, first, in the wisdom of her Government, and in the energies of her people, to raise the value of every species of property, by the almost infinite ways within their reach; and, secondly, by the immediate reduction of her expenditure, to square with her revenue, as far as can be made, consistent with the public safety

and the principles of national justice.

"A great orator in our antient world, when asked what was the first, and the second, and the third perfection of eloquence, still answered ACTION, not to exclude other perfections, but to mark its superior importance; so I, who am no orator at all, but a plain man, speaking plainly of the policy of an exhausted country, must say that your first, and your second, and your third duty, is RETRENCHMENT, meaning, as the rhetorician, not that it is your whole duty, but only that its pre-eminence may be felt."

33. The Law's relating to the Clergy, being a practical Guide to the Clerical Profession, in the legal and canonical Discharge of their various Duties. By the Rev. David Williams, A. M. late of Christ Church, Oxford. pp. 674. Sherwood and Co.

THE extraordinary and increased value of every species of property within the last 50 years, has naturally inspired every one with a higher interest in the security of his tenure,

and diffused a greater curiosity in the origin and successive revolutions which his title may have undergone. Whilst, therefore, civil rights of every kind have become more canvassed and defined, those which affect the realty, as it is termed, or landed estate of persons, have been peculiarly subjected to inquiry. With respect to the Clergy, titles which were founded in grants of remote antiquity, and been consecrated as it were by a devotional feeling of reverence to that order, have been in modern times challenged with rigour, and resisted in many instances with irreligious pertinacity. Time, which in most other cases fortifies the title to real property, has frequently, in reference to Ecclesiastical claims, been even subversive of justice, by the peculiar principles on which a modus is proRights, nounced to be good or bad. therefore, in their nature sufficiently positive and just, have often, for the sake of avoiding protracted and ex pensive litigation, been altogether compromised, from the want of a defined, and what is now considered a constitutional origin. The conse quences of this hostile feeling on the one part, and irresolution on the other, has been, as was natural, to excite a spirit of interested as well as curious research, into the origin of Ecclesiastical Titles, and to become powerful aid which is to be derived accurately acquainted with the more from chartered or legislative provisions. Many treatises have ac cordingly been written, and collec tions of cases made, to render the Ec clesiastical body better informed of their rights, and better prepared to resist incroachments. Inquiries of purely a technical nature or legal distinction are, perhaps, incompatible with Clerical duties; nor is it ne Lawyers, whilst our Courts are concessary that Clergymen should become stituted as they are, both with respect decisions are founded, and the spirit to the principles on which judicial of the Judges by whom they are pronounced. Besides, few books written by individuals in, perhaps, cloistered retirement, can convey the spirit or meaning of a Misi prius decision; still less follow up the authority of new cases or new distinctions, which are only to be found in the regular reports of cases decided in Banco. It seems therefore to follow, that a

treatise,

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treatise, with the name and addition of a Reverend prefixed, may pass more as a production of speculation and amusement, than practical utility. This is, however, by no means the case with the Work before us; it does not, we presume, aspire to any claim of original research or composition. It is simply a dictionary of authorities: a dictionary, in so far as it consists of every subject connected with Ecclesiastical matters, alphabetically arranged; and of authorities, as it is a compilation from every writer on Ecclesiastical rights, and every authority to be gleaned from conimon law decisions. As the former are well selected, and the latter brought down to a late period, it has considerable merit as a hook of reference and original authority; at the same time, the numerous selections from every writer on matters Ecclesiastical, discipline, customs, ceremonials, or antiquities, render it a manual of agreeable and useful reference. We ought, however, to warn our Readers of what we found in confirmation of the objection above made to books of this kind. The information in Mr. Williams's treatise, article Stamps, has been materially altered by the new Stamp Act, 55 Geo. II. c. 158; and since the publication of his Work several very important Tithe cases have been decided in the Courts of Westminster, which of course are not to be found in it; but these are no faults in the present Treatise, but are observations thrown out merely to warn general Readers, that on subjects where new cases and new shades of distinction continually arise, they are not wholly to depend on the dicta laid down in the earlier periods of our Jurisprudence.

34. Twelve Lectures, on the Prophecies relating to the Christian Church, and especially to the Apostacy of Papal Rome, preached in the Chapel of Lincoln's Inn, from the year 1811 to 1815; being the Ninth Portion of those founded by the Right Rev. William Warburton, Lord Bishop of Glouces ter. By Philip Allwood, B. D. Fellow of Magdalen College, Cambridge. In Two Volumes. 8vo. pp. 495, 516. Rivingtons.

THESE Lectures, which the Author characterizes as " an humble attempt to afford a further elucidation

of the Prophetic Writings of Scripture, and to evince more clearly the certainty and the infinite importance of Revealed Religion," are inscribed to the Earl of Mansfield, and the Right hon. Richard Ryder, Trustees for the Lecture.

filled the mind of every good man in "An event, that in the first instance the country with horror, and the remembrance of which still excites bis sincere and deep regret, has deprived me of a gratification I had once perhaps too eagerly anticipated-that of being permitted to inscribe the result of my labours to one*, who had rendered himself truly illustrious, by his piety, his patriotism, and his talents; and to whom, in conjunction with the other the Trustees for this Lecture, I have distinguished persons who are at present been indebted for the honour of my nomination to deliver the following Course. The only manner in which it has been at all in my power to discharge this part of my obligation is, by cherishing the memory of his virtues; and by the endeavour I have honestly exerted to prove, that I have not been unworthy of the confidence he had reposed in me."

the basis of the Disquisitions in this The principle which has formed Work is thus developed :

"So much has been satisfactorily who have written in elucidation of the urged by many of those eminent men ideas of Prophecy, and the general arProphecies, concerning true and false gument that is to be deduced from it, concerning its history, the authority of the various prophetical books of Scripture, and the canons of interpretation that are requisite for the complete analysis of them, that little probably rémains to be added upon these points. In the following Lectures, therefore, I have avoided, as far as possible, treading over again the same ground; and, soning, have attempted to demonstrate abstaining altogether from abstract reathe Divine Authenticity of these Sacred Writings, merely from the events, with which many of their most striking predictions can be fully proved to correspond. This appeared to be the most simple, and at the same time the most powerful mode of arguing, that could be adopted; for, if a fact which has excited the astonishment of mankind, or has been marked by any distinguishing and unprecedented peculiarity, which

*The late Right hon. Spencer Perceval, who was assassinated in the Lobby of the House of Commons, May 1, 1812.

has

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