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men, whose way lies by a meeting house, are sometimes dismounted, and, in literal obedience to the precept of the parable, compelled to go in. In Massachussetts every kind of amusement on Sunday is prohibited by a law enacted so late as 1794: even the act of walking for pleasure is included in the prohibition. Quakerism has never appealed to positive law; but even this system, excellent as it is in other respects, has hitherto tended to keep the people ignorant and unimproved. "If a quaker," says Paine, "had been consulted at the creation, what a drabcoloured world it would have been!" There is scarcely any medium in America between over-godliness and a brutal irreligion. In many parts of the southern states baptism and the burial service are dispensed with. The ceremony of marriage is performed by a justice of the peace, and pigs are suffered to root in the churchyard and sleep in the church! From superstition to infidelity is an easy transition, and it is as easy from infidelity to superstition. Ame rica has its age of reason, and it has also its Dunkers and its Shakers. The all-friend, Jemima Wilkinson, and her prophet Elijah, will have a chapter in the next history of heresies, with our Joanna Southcoate, and her four and twenty elders. Methodism is even more obstreperous there than it is with us. Our fanaticks, though their name is legion, have not yet ventured to hold camp-meetings. These meetings, as the name implies, are held in the open field, and continue, day and night, sometimes for a fortnight. Thousands flock to them from far and near, and bring with them, as the official advertisement recommends, provisions, and tents, or blankets; "all friendly ministers and praying people are invited to attend said meeting." The friendly ministers work away, and as soon as the lungs of one fail, another relieves him. "When signs of conversion

begin to be manifest," says Mr. Janson," several preachers crowd round the object, exhorting a continuance of the efforts of the spirit, and displaying, in the most frightful images, the horrours which attend such as do not come unto them. The signs of regeneration are displayed in the most extravagant symptoms. I have seen women jumping, striking, and kicking, like raving maniacks, while the surrounding believers could not keep them in postures of decency. This continues till the convert is entirely exhausted; but they consider the greater the resistance the more the faith, and thus they are admitted into what they term the society."

The state of law in America is as deplorable as that of religion, and far more extraordinary. The people appear in the courts of justice with their hats on at the bar; they talk, they make a noise, they smoke, and they cry out against the sentence if it does not happen to please them. This last piece of conduct, says the duc de Liancourt, is universal; and there are, perhaps, some petty instances of injustice in the courts, which make it to be not without its use. We have lately seen a state cri minal tried there some half a dozen times for the same offence; and the trials have been such that it is impossible to discover whether he was guilty or not. In the natural order of things, official rank would be most respected in countries where there is no hereditary rank; but in America, nothing seems to be respected.There the government is better than the people: in every part of Europe (except France, where both are equally bad) the people are better than their governments. A century will decide which situation is most favourable, or rather, perhaps, which is least inimical to general improvement. The want of decorum, among the Americans, is not imputable to their republican government; for it has not been found in other republicks. It has proceeded from the ef

fects of the revolutionary war; from their premature independence; and from that passion for gambling which infects all orders of men, clergy as well as laity, and the legislators as well as the people. A captain drives the stage-wagon, and it puts up at the house of a colonel. Rank, therefore, becomes ridiculous. When the country became independent, it had no race of educated men to fill those situations which used to be respected; and they ceased to be so when the persons who filled them were no longer respectable. This evil might soon be remedied. A generation is sufficient to educate judges and magistrates. The spirit of gambling has produced more lasting injury. It is not confined to their speculations in law, by which so many emigrants have been duped and ruined; it extends to their commercial dealings, and the American merchants have a worse character than those of any other nation.

This is an unfavourable picture, yet surely not an unfair one, nor has

it been drawn by an unfriendly hand. Let but the American government abstain from war, and direct its main attention to the education of the people, and the encouragement of arts and knowledge, and, in a very few generations, their country may vie with Europe. Above all, let not that anti-Anglican spirit be cherished, for which there no longer exists a cause. With whatever indignation they may think of the past, they ought to remember that it was from England they imbibed those principles for which they fought, and by which they triumphed. There is a sacred bond between us, of blood and of language, which no circumstances can break. Our literature must always continue to be theirs, and though their laws are no longer the same as ours, we have the same bible, and we address our common Father in the same prayer. Nations are too ready to admit that they have natural enemies; why should they be less willing to believe that they have natural friends?

FROM THE EUROPEAN MAGAZINE. Another Guess at JUNIUS, and a Dialogue. Pamphlet. WE have, formerly, been much delighted with a game rendered classical to us, because we have learned that Swift, even when a little advanced in life, used to play at it. This game, which is well known, is called: "What's my thought like ?" At this game, we conceive, many who have thought upon the author of the letters of Junius, have, in the eourse of the last thirty or forty years, been playing; and, among the rest, the writer of this pamphlet, who, although the last, is certainly not the least of those hunters of a shadow, who have entertained the publick with conjectures "baseless as the fabrick of a vision," and, with respect to some of them, extravagant as the fantastick images of a dream.

It is a propension of mind, common to men of learning and talents (of which we have, indeed, seen many instances) when an object appears to any one irresistibly striking, to place it in the strongest light of fancy; to wonder at its imaginary expansion; and, at length, to deck it with all the hypothetical garments which can possibly be collected, and prostrate himself to worship the idol which his ingenuity had created.

This we take to be, metaphorically, the case with regard to the present conjectures respecting the writer of the letters of JUNIUS. But we are of the Horatian opinion:

Nil agit exemplum litem quod lite resolvit.
We are, in the preface, told of many

persons who, most unquestionably, were none of them the authors of those celebrated letters. But we do, most exceedingly, doubt the stability of that conjecture which, in the centre part of the work, we find so often urged, and so finely decked with hypothetical argument, that the late earl of Chatham was. Respecting our total disbelief of his lordship having the least knowledge of, or concern with the letters of Junius, except as a publick production, we could offer many reasons; but as these might be, perhaps, considered as more specious than solid, and would besides, lead to a controversy which it would be foolish to enter into, and shabby to shrink from, we shall wave them.

The late William Woodfall, we had once great reason to believe, knew the real author. If he did, the secret descended to the grave with him. His letter, published in the European Magazine, for August, 1799, is properly introduced into the work we are now considering. It is curious; but, with respect to the principal object of inquiry, not, in the smallest degree, elucidatory.

The "Dialogue of the Dead," betwixt "the first earl of Chatham and William Pitt," appended to this disquisition, is ingenious; but we can hardly think it in every point characteristical.

FROM THE MONTHLY REVIEW.

THE JUBILEE; or John Bull in his Dotage. A grand national Pantomime; as it was to have been acted, by His Majesty's Subjects, on the 25th of October, 1809. 8vo. 28.

IT is impossible to read, with gravity, this ludicrous mélange, this dramatick chaos. And John Bull is not so much in his dotage, but that he will be able to relish the broad farce of this whimsical piece. The laugh is widely extended. Our political characters, and political blunderers, are exhibited in a farcical kind of magick lantern; and the very parties caricatured must smile at their own figures on the wall.. Our good monarch is represented in the character of king Lear, looking up to the skies, and saying:

"Here am I, ye gods! a poor old man, More sinned against than sinning!Oh! how sharper than a serpent's tooth It is to have a stupid ministry."

Colonel W-d-e, habited as a Piedmontese show-man, introduces his galantie show:

"Now you shall see Johnny Bull turned into a milch cow, with an udder as big as the cupola of St. Peter's!-Now the Prussian suck, bygar! Now the Austrian suck! Now the Neapolitan suck! Now the Sar dinian suck! Now the Portuguese suck! Now the Russian suck! Now the Swede suck! And now, parbleu, they suck her dry, while her own Calves are looking on, in wonder-All as natural as the life! A brave galantie show

A very pretty fancy, tout nouveau !"

The author would, perhaps, say of the morality of this age, as Juvenal said of his days:

Quando uberior vitiorum copia!

SPIRIT OF THE MAGAZINES.

FROM THE EUROPEAN MAGAZINE.

MEMOIRS OF THE LATE MISS ELIZABETH SMITH.

THE "Fragments in Prose and Verse"* of this extraordinarily ingenious and most excellent young lady, have been lately published in two volumes; of which one is nearly filled with "some account of her life and character, by H. M. Bowdler." The remainder of the first volume is occupied by an appendix, consisting of letters, also illustrative of the life and mind of Miss Smith. Of these the chief are from her mother to the Rev. Dr. Randolph, and to Mrs. H. Bowdler; and from them we proceed to extract the leading particulars, for the gratification of our readers.

Miss Smith was born at Burnhall, in the county of Durham, in December, 1776.

At a very early age she discovered that love of reading, and that close application to whatever she engaged in, which marked her character through life. She was accustomed, when only three years old, to leave an elder brother and younger sister to play and amuse themselves, while she eagerly seized on such books as a nursery library commonly affords, and made herself mistress of their contents. At four years of age she read extremely well. What in others is usually the effect of education and habit, seemed born with her. From a very babe the utmost regularity was observable in all her actions. What ever she did was well done, and with an apparent reflection far beyond her years.

"In the beginning of 1782," says Mrs. Smith, "we removed into a dis

tant country, at the earnest entreaty of a blind relation; and in the following year, my attendance on him becoming so necessary as daily to engage several hours, at his request I was induced to take a young lady, whom he wished to serve in consequence of her family having experienced some severe misfortunes. This lady was then scarcely sixteen; and I expected merely to have found a companion for my children during my absence; but her abilities exceeded her years, and she became their governess during our stay in Suffolk, which was about eighteen months. On the death of my relation in 1784, we returned to Burnhall, and remained there till June in the following year, when we removed to Piercefield. In the course of the preceding winter Elizabeth had made an uncommon progress in musick. From the time of our quitting Suffolk, till the spring of 1786, my children had no instruction except from myself; but their former governess then returned to me, and continued in the family three years longer. By her the children were instructed in French, and in the little Italian which she herself then understood. I mention these particulars to prove how very little instruction in languages my daughter received, and that the knowledge she afterwards acquired of them was the effect of her own, unassisted study.

"It frequently happens that circumstances apparently trifling determine our character, and, sometimes, even our fate in life. I always thought

* See Select Reviews, Vol. II. p. 106.

that Elizabeth was first induced to apply herself to the study of the learned languages, by accidentally hearing that the late Mrs. Bowdler acquired some knowledge of Hebrew and Greek, purposely to read the holy scriptures in the original languages. In the summer of 1789, this most excellent woman, with her youngest daughter, spent a month at Piercefield, and I have reason to hail it as one of the happiest months of my life. From the above mentioned visit I date the turn of study which Elizabeth ever after pursued, and which, I firmly believe, the amiable conduct of our guests first led her to delight in.

"At the age of thirteen, Elizabeth became a sort of governess to her younger sisters; for I then parted with the only one I ever had, and from that time the progress she made in acquiring languages, both ancient and modern, was most rapid. This degree of information, so unusual in a woman, occasioned no confusion in her well regulated mind. She was a living library; but locked up except to a chosen few. Her talents were like bales unopened to the sun;' and, from a want of communication, were not as beneficial to others as they might have been; for her dread of being called a learned lady caused such an excess of modest reserve as, perhaps, formed the greatest defect in her character.

"When a reverse of fortune drove us from Piercefield, my daughter had just entered her seventeenth year, an age at which she might have been supposed to have lamented deeply many consequent privations. Of the firmness of her mind on that occasion, no one can judge better than yourself; for you had an opportunity to observe it, when immediately after the blow was struck, you offered, from motives of generous friendship, to undertake a charge which no pecuniary considerations could induce you to accept

a few months before. I do not recollect a single instance of a murmur having escaped her, or the least expression of regret at what she had lost. On the contrary, she always appeared contented; and particularly after our fixing at Coniston, it seemed as if the place and mode of life were such as she preferred, and in which she was most happy.

"I pass over in silence a time in which we had no home of our own, and when, from the deranged state of our affairs, we were indebted for one to the kindness and generosity of a friend;* nor do I speak of the time spent in Ireland, when following the regiment with my husband, because the want of a settled abode interrupted those studies in which mỳ daughter most delighted. Books are not light of carriage, and the blow which deprived us of Piercefield, deprived us of a library also. But though this period of her life afforded little opportunity for improvement in science, the qualities of her heart never appeared in a more amiable light. Through all the inconveniences which attended our situation while living in barracks, the firm ness and cheerful resignation of her mind at the age of nineteen, made me blush for the tear which too frequently trembled in my eye, at the recollection of all the comforts we had lost.

"In October 1800, we left Ireland, and determined on seeking out some retired situation in England; in the hope that by strict economy, and with the blessing of cheerful, contented minds, we might yet find something like comfort; which the frequent change of quarters with four children, and the then insecure state of Ireland, made it impossible to feel, notwithstanding the kind and generous attention we invariably received from the hospitable inhabitants of that country. We passed the winter in a cottage on the banks

Mrs. Morgan, now Mrs. George Smith.

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