They have advanced at so quick a pace, That now they stand at fault, move right or left, We say, God send her Majesty a good deliverance, not only from all her enemies, but from all such friends as this angry writer of blank verse. LAW. Art. 28. A Speech delivered in the Court of Common Pleas, Dublin, May 22. 1820. By Holwell Walshe, Esq. (of the Irish Bar.) For the Plaintiff in an Action of Criminal Conversation, brought by Sir John Milley Doyle, K. C.B. versus George Peter Browne, Esq. With some interesting Letters of Lady Doyle's. Damages 5000l. Together with the excellent Charge to the Jury, by Lord Norbury. And a detailed Account of the ludicrous Examination of some of the Witnesses. 8vo. pp. 39. Williams. 1820, We have become habituated to look with suspicion on speeches made on such occasions as that which is designated in this titlepage. It is in these cases that the first buds of eloquence generally burst forth but it is too frequently proved that the plants are forced, and that they cease to flourish when taken out of the hotbed of such a subject. Mr. Walshe, however, the new candidate for fame, displays more taste than some of his predecessors; and, though he seems willing to follow in the steps of Mr. Phillips, (whose name he lauds,) yet his style (to use one of Mr. P.'s expressions) is more pretensionless and less florid, and therefore less objectionable. To enable the reader to consider whether it deserves the rather extravagant terms of approbation used by the learned Judge who presided at the trial, we shall make an extract which will shew the speaker's powers, without entering into the merits of the cause. • Gentlemen, I was asking you, if you believed, that a young girl, so enamoured of her husband, of nice feelings, high pride, and delicate taste, could have been easily destroyed?- or rather, if the beginning of her decline from native rectitude must not have been unconscious, and imperceptible? You do not suppose, that, her honour fell planet-struck, at the first approaches of the adulterer! Do you believe, that while her virtue was in full health and bloom, it died a sudden death that it passed from light to darkness, like nature "in a hurricane eclipse of the sun;" - or, like persons sometimes killed by lightning drop out of life, into corruption? Seducers never kill by lightning-poison is their manly weapon-poison disguised, and slow, but deadly. Sudden seductions are as great a contradiction in nature, as they are in there are more steps than one, from innocence to infamy and all analogy should teach us this: if the bounties of a benign Providence have their stated march, from infancy to perfection the fruits of the earth the myriads that people this living scene around us the intellect of that being, man, who, in himself, terms links - links divinity to matter! if God has made time the nurse, that is to fondle all his blessings to maturity-if good must be progressive, evil cannot be instantaneous - is it not profane to say, that innocence can suddenly become guilt? That while all good is gradual, vice shall spring like an armed goddess from the head of the thunderer, new made and ripe and ready for the works of mischief! No, gentlemen, on the contrary; of all her works, the seduction of innocence is perhaps the most adverse, arduous, and toilsome; no battle, but a siege -a system to sap and mine the principles, not to say, of morality and religion, but of that instinct of sexual shame, almost invincible in every well-educated female deceit and treachery are essential to the work - the seducer is long leading her by the flowery margin, before he lets her see the precipice from which he is about to precipitate her like the prophet of Korasshan, he never lifts the veil that shrouds the hideous reality, until he is certain of his victim, and then she falls never to rise more!' She has fallen, of whose innocence and love this husband thought as proudly as ever boy did in the noon of his pure passion! and recollect, that woman, unvitiated by the poison of seduction, is constancy personified as a wife — she is the charity that "believeth no evil," that "hopeth and endureth all things;" look, with what meek tenacity she clings to the fluctuating, falling fortunes of some sullen, desponding, and ungenerous ingrate a husband, unworthy her exalted love, or your commiseration and yet, how often have we seen her, with angelic tendency, wipe from the brow of impatient suffering, the selfish agony that moistened there- smooth the pillow, his moody waywardness, alone, had made so rugged-kiss away the dews of that unmanly sorrow that debased him with an arm of love, sustain the feeble giant, and nurse and soothe, and hush his childish peevishness to temporary peace!' -- The trial lasted two days; and the Judge, (Lord Norbury,) in charging the jury, spoke of Mr. Walshe's oration as a burst of eloquence, from the overwhelming influence' of which he (the Judge) had not yet recovered. MISCELLANEOUS. Art. 29. A Word for the King, and a Word to the Queen; being a dispassionate Examination into the Causes of their Majesties' Separation, with a Suggestion for amicable Settlement without resorting to the painful Expedient of a Public Discussion. 8vo. 28. Williams. 1820. In conformity with its title-page, this pamphlet is exculpatory of one party and monitory to the other. Still it professes to be dispassionate,' and does preserve that appearance with respect to language: but it is evidently not a fair statement; since the writer assumes the knowlege of particulars on one side and argues on them accordingly, while he is ignorant of the allegations that probably may be made per contra, or chuses to conceal them. He speaks indeed of mutual faults, by the gentle name of peccadillos; deprecates the assumption on the part of a king to repudiate his queen, according to the detestable practice of Henry Henry VIII.; and laudably regrets the example offered to the nation in the conflicts of a divided throne:" but too much appears to us to be taken for granted, and not sufficient allowance made for what, it is admitted, might be deemed impeccable mistakes in the country of her Majesty's birth and education.' At p. 27. a degrading statement is set forth respecting an Italian whose name has lately been so much mentioned, with all the air and authority of matter of fact, but the reader has no information concerning its validity. It is not for us, however, to enter into the merits of the case; and the pamphlet itself, though well written, will excite the less interest because it was composed before the Queen's return to this country, and the consequent change of affairs renders nugatory the author's proposition for an adjustment of differences. We have said that the pamphlet is generally well written: but how are we to understand or to characterize the following sentence? All that we propose is to show that the reciprocity of blame and of suffering is not all on one side. Surely the waters of the limpid Liffey itself will not make this language clear. Art. 30. The Historical Lines of Dr. Grey's Technical Memory, with various Additions, chiefly as they apply to Modern History. Arranged for general Use. 12mo. pp. 34. Boosey. 1820. For the adept in the Memoria Technica of Dr. Grey, we think that this compilation is too full, and for the novice it is too meagre without Dr. Grey's work, the latter could not proceed a step, and with it he would not require the assistance of this pamphlet. It contains, however, two or three new tables, with corresponding lines, which are open to the same objections that attach, as we think, to the whole system; viz. that there is as much difficulty in learning these "nonsense verses" as in committing to memory the dates themselves. That the metre should assist the recollection seems to be rendered the less probable, because scarcely a foot is without a palpable false quantity. To justify our observation, and to amuse our military and naval readers, we insert the lines that record their exploits : Cresifan, Hastans, Poictus, Aginfal, Culpos, et Boynsonz, La Hoguesne, Ushponf, Camperpoup, Niloinei, Gibpeid, It may be necessary to give a key to this mysterious dialect, by stating that the first two lines record the battles of Cressy, Hastings, Poictiers, Agincourt, Culloden, the Boyne, Blenheim, Leipzic, Alexandria, Salamanca, and Waterloo; and that the last refer to the actions off La Hogue, Ushant, Camperdown, the Nile, Gibraltar, Martinico and the East Indies, Cape St. Vincent, Copenhagen, Trafalgar, and the reduction of the Isle of Bourbon, &c. ** In the last Review, p. 202. 1. 1., dele he;' and p. 203. 1.14 from bottom, insert was before published.' THE MONTHLY REVIEW, For AUGUST, 1820. ART. I. Mr. Dodwell's Classical and Topographical Tour through Greece. [Article concluded from p. 274.] . T HE impossibility of following this learned and ingenious traveller through the various scenes which he visited, and has so copiously described, must induce us, in our notice of his second volume, to confine ourselves principally to one portion of it, but neither an unimportant nor an uninteresting portion: viz. that which relates to the habits and manners of the modern Athenians, and the state of their country. It does not appear that the varieties of national character, which distinguished the states of Greece from each other in antient times, exist in any remarkable degree in the present day. The characteristic habits of nations, great or small, are the origin of polities peculiar to those who live under them; and these institutions in their turn preserve those distinctive manners from which they themselves proceeded: but the primary federal constitution of Greece had been broken down for so many ages before the Mohammedan invasion, that even at that period the manners of different districts were probably impressed on the population by local and accidental circumstances, rather than by any hereditary succession. We may presume that Athens was in the dearth of learning more learned than the towns of Lacorria, because it was richer and more abundant in the monuments of art; and that places advantageously situated for commercial intercourse had not fallen into that indifference for all the embellishments of human life, which had been the fate of their less fortunate neighbours. If this was the case before the irruption of the Turks, the subsequent state of the country must have contributed much more rapidly to efface all distinctions. Intellectual capacity and intellectual improvement form, by their gradations among mankind, the greatest differences that exist between them: but, as incidental circumstances excite such capacity and such improvement into more rapid action, and REV. AUG. 1820. Z con consequently create more sensible distinctions, so there are other causes which have an inevitable tendency to reduce them to one smooth and depressed level; and it is not easy to discover any one which operates more powerfully to this end, than unfeeling military oppression. When this power is lodged in the hands of a barbarous and ignorant master, the effect is necessarily the more rapid; when it has continued for ages, it is the more durable, and less likely to be retrieved. Such has been the unfortunate condition of Greece. Various customs remain among the people that may be traced to very high antiquity, and to the most polished ages of their history: but the habits which discriminated one state from another are more generally melted down into a common mass; and such peculiarities as do exist in different parts, even many of those which are derived from antiquity, owe either their existence or their preservation to local circumstances. Whether Athens be or be not the best school in which a traveller may study the character of the modern Greek, we are unable to decide: but it has, doubtless, many advantages in its favour. Less connected with the rest of Europe during the middle ages than the towns on the opposite side of the Greek peninsula, it may be presumed to have retained some little more of the Greek originality: while, on the other hand, as the residence of a Turkish government, it may be conceived to have felt the iron gripe of oppression more heavily than many of the retired and the sequestered parts of Greece. Mr. Dodwell's opinions on modern Greeks have been derived from no partial investigation of particular spots: his opportunities of observation were general: but it is at Athens that he registers them at the greatest length; and as he rarely, when there, speaks of Athenian customs as distinctive from those of other parts of Greece, we may fairly consider Athenian and Greek to be synonymous terms, both on this account and for the reasons to which we have ourselves before adverted. Rural life and city-life must, under every state of circumstances, produce considerable deviations from any one established picture of manners: but this is an universal case, and therefore not only apparent to every reader, but easily applied by him in assorting his own acquired notions of the people about whom he reads. As antient Greece varied remarkably, if we consider its extent, in the character of its population, so did it in that of its soil and climate. The soil of Attica is of a light calcareous and arid quality;' and we want little reference to antiquity to establish its similarity to itself in different ages of the |