itures of a public nature, the means for the farther prosecution of the objects of the expedition were accordingly withheld.' The state of our national finances! Some great calamity, perhaps, has befallen us. We have had the armies of all Europe quartered upon us, like France; we have had an overwhelming taxation, like England; we have been swept with the besom of civil and foreign war, like Spain; we have been incorporated into foreign empires, like Holland; cut up into confederations, like Germany; our substantial population has been sacrificed, perhaps, as in all the old countries, to the great abuses of government or the perilous convulsions of the times. Is it this, which has brought on the state of our finances? Detestable parsimony! The only country but one in the world, that has not been reduced to an avowed or virtual bankruptcy; the country, which has grown and is growing in wealth and prosperity beyond any other and beyond all other nations, too poor to pay a few gentlemen and soldiers for exploring its mighty rivers, and taking possession of the empires, which Providence has called it to govern! One half of the wages of the members of Congress for the hours they have sagely devoted, from time to time, to the nauseous projects and petitions of Colonel Symmes and his moon-stricken disciples, would have enabled this party of gallant officers intelligent and scientific travellers, to enlarge the known boundaries of all the kingdoms of nature. Poor, indeed, we are in spirit, if not in finance, if we will not afford to pay the expense of making an inventory of the glorious inheritance we are called to possess. England, staggering and sinking under her burdens, can fit out her noble expeditions to the Niger and to the Pole. France has her intrepid naturalists in the farthest regions of Ethiopia. Botanists and mineralogists take their departure from Vienna, to go and traverse Brazil. Prussia sends her men of learning to copy manuscripts and study antiquities at Verona and at Rome. Russia, with her Krusensterns, and Kotzebues, and Lisianskis, is actually elbowing us out of the mouths of the Columbia. And even Mohammed Ali Pasha, the Turkish viceroy, the bey of Egypt, has his envoys at Marseilles, at Leghorn, and at Frankfort, to send him home the latest improvements. While these very prosperous, very flourishing countries, of whose aggregate national debt, the principal of ours would not pay six months' interest,

can do all this, we cannot find a small party of discovery in powder and ball enough to hunt withal, or blankets and strouding enough to trade with the Indians. If, indeed, this is the sense of the people, and of their representatives, let them be honest and act the poverty they allege and feel. Honest poverty is no shame in the single man or the state. If we are poor, let us put off these proud airs; truckle to the British, court the Russians, beg pardon of the Spaniards, and shake hands with the pirates. Let the president at Washington move into comfortable lodgings in the seven buildings, and his white palace be leased out as a hotel. Put Congress back into the brick tenement, from which it lately escaped, and convert the capitol into a cotton factory, that its halls may at length resound with no unprofitable hum. Get the British East India company to charter our extravagant frigates and seventy-fours; and see, in the last resort, if the emperor of Russia cannot be prevailed on to farm the valley of the Missouri at the halves. This would be manly, consistent, radical work; and when we had come down to this, we might have the face to talk of the low state of our national finances. But do not let us teach the people unnecessarily to grovel. Do not let us take the country at contract, to be administered by those, who will stoop to administer it most meanly. It is not grateful to Providence to be so covetous. Whoever believes that the sins of nations may sometimes be visited upon them, may well fear that this miserly policy, on the part of a people so highly favored, may draw down upon us a touch of real national poverty; an overwhelming national debt, an all devouring taxation, a dispensation of assignats, and a public bankruptcy. Who knows that a just retribution may not conjure up to plague us some Mississippi company; some South Sea scheme; some judicial old tenor at an unheard of discount; some new emission, a thousand for one; may not let loose a base coin upon our community, shake public credit, poison faith between man and man, turn certificates of stock into rags, and render it good husbandry-as it was twelve years ago in the Dutch cities-to pull down brick houses, for the sake of saving the tax? When any or all of these events have taken place, we may talk of our national poverty. Till then, it would be more reasonable, and quite as decent, to return thanks for the public prosperity.

ART. XVIII.-The trve travels, adventvres, and observations of captaine Iohn Smith, in Europe, Asia, Africke, and America: beginning about the yeere 1593, and continued to this present 1629.

The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Iles, with the names of the adventurers, planters, and governours from their first beginning, an. 1584. to this present 1626. with the proceedings of those severall colonies and the accidents that befell them in all their iourneyes and discoveries. Also the maps and descriptions of all those countryes, their commodities, people, government, customes, and religion yet knowne. Divided into sixe bookes. By captaine Iohn Smith, sometimes governour in those countryes and admirall of New England. From the London edition of 1629. 2 vols. 8vo, pp. 526. Richmond, 1819.

In the fourth volume of the original series of this journal, a notice was given of the second portion of the work, now united as above. The edition now before us is an exact reprint, with the exception of the marginal index, of the folio editions of 1627-29. The life of Captain Smith he states in the dedication to have been prepared at the request of sir Robert Cotton, who had found by the perusal of his Virginia history, that Smith had 'likewise undergone divers other as hard hazards in the other parts of the world.' Another motive for writing the memoirs of his life we should have little expected, that 'envie had taxed him to have writ too much and done too little.' It is probable, this alludes to the disappointment, which was felt by the Virginia company at home, at the small returns derived at first from the colony, and the consequent unpopularity of Smith. All the commendatory poems, too, which, to the number of twenty-one, are prefixed to the life and the history, allude to the neglect and wrongs of the heroic adventurer. To satisfy the curiosity of his friends, and the malice of his enemies, therefore, this short memoir was written. One other incentive to this course is also contained in this sentence in the dedication. To speake only of my selfe were intolerable ingratitude; because, having had so many co-partners with me; I cannot make a monument for my self, and leave them unburied in the fields, whose lives begot me the title of a Soldier ;-a noble sentiment, finely expressed.

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These memoirs of Captain Smith are entirely without dates. He was born at Willoughby in Lincolnshire about 1579, and was left an orphan at thirteen years old, with, as he describes it, 'competent means.' His curious disposition, however, even before his father's death, had led him to attempt to raise the necessary funds for an escapade beyond sea, from the disposal of his books and satchell,' whence he declares he 'little regarded' his patrimony. His guardians, at his father's death, bound him apprentice to a rich merchant of Lynn, but 'because hee would not presently send him to Sea, he never saw his master in eight yeeres after. At last he found meanes' to attach himself to a son of lord Willoughby, who was going to France, to join his brother, placed there for his education. He received from his guardians, as an outfit on this occasion, an advance of ten shillings, from the rents' of his own estate.' The young noblemen, however, found his 'services needless;' and perhaps their foreign tutors discovered them to be worse, so that within a month or six weeks, they sent him back to London, providing him for his expenses, a little more liberally it is to be hoped, than his friends at home. To return to the worthy Mr Thomas Sendall, however, was the least thought of his determination, being now freely at libertie, in Paris.'* Accordingly he remained here, till the supply of the lords Willoughby was exhausted, when he appears to have entered the French service. Peace being concluded in France, he transferred himself, in the true spirit of the European cavalier of those days, to the service of the States General. After three or four years spent in the Low Countries, he departed for Scotland, having been furnished at Paris, by one master David Hume, with letters for his Scottish friends, in lieu of 'some use made of Smith's purse' by that gentleman. After much kinde usage amongst those honest Scots,' unattended, however, with the advance of the proper pecuniary facilities for success at Court, he returned to his native place, where within a short time being glutted with too much company, wherein he took small delight, he retired himselfe into a little wooddie pasture, a good way from any towne, invironed with many hundred Acres of other woods: Here by a faire brook he built a Pavillion of

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*The inclination of young men of Smith's age and character, to remain at Paris, is hardly to be wondered at, when the philosophic Julian describes it as 'dear Paris,' * φίλη Αυτήτια.

boughes, where only in his cloaths he lay. His studie was Machiavills Art of warre, and Marcus Aurelius; his exercise a good horse, with a lance and Ring; his food was thought to be more of venison than any thing else.' How long our young hero remained in this chivalric seclusion, reading Machiavelli and eating venison, he does not inform us. A certain Italian gentleman had sufficient attraction by his Languages and good discourse, and exercise of riding,' to draw him from the studies of the forest to the gay sports of the capital. As we observed above, he does not give the particular eras of his various changes of situation with much exactness, and we are unable to say how long he rode at Tattersall. We are only told, that 'long these pleasures could not content him, but hee returned againe to the Low-Countreyes.'

How long Captain Smith remained in the Low Countries does not appear. He became, however, sooner or later, desirous to see more of the world,' and to 'trie his fortune against the Turkes,' and expresses his regret at having practised his valor upon his christian brethren when there was so full employment for its exercise against the infidel. His first outset was rather unfortunate; four French gallants, who had promised him letters of credence to the duke Mercury, in the emperor Rodolph's service, having robbed him of all his money and baggage but a single Carolus. After wandering through France, in great want, even to suffering, occasionally varied by a little kindness from the martial courtesy of the age, whose 'pleasant pleasures' he yet thought ill suited his poor estate; and after having the satisfaction of wounding one of his false friends, he embarked at Marseilles for Italy. The ship, from stress of weather, was forced back to Toulon, and after another attempt to get to sea, was frustrated, our adventurer, who seems to have been undergoing a strict discipline for the future Virginia colonist, was thrown overboard to procure fair weather. Smith, in this juncture, had the good fortune to reach a little desert island opposite Nice. From this situation he was removed by a ship trading to Alexandria, with which he was well contented to trie the rest of his fortune.' On their return from Egypt, they met, off Corfu, a Venetian argosy, richly laden, which they took after a desperate fight of two hours. This success quite restored Smith's fortune for the time, and he disembarked with five hundred sequins, and a little box