it seems, like greater intriguers, was duped by his agents, and tricked out of his paper exchequer by a set of French swindlers.

Mr. Morfitt passes over with a jest the most detestable traffic of the place.

"You will smile when I inform you that guns, aye, and good-looking ones too, are made here at 7s. 6d. each. These, though formidable in appearance, have two small defects; the first is, that not being bored, except about an inch or two from the muzzle, they cannot be supposed to shoot very true; and the second is, that not being proved they cannot shoot at all. I beg pardon; they certainly undergo some sort of proof, but not by powder, (for that would be too rough usage,) but by water, which, if they are capable of holding, without permitting to ooze through their pores, they are sufficiently qualified to discharge their duty; which is not to shed the blood of man or beast, but to decorate the habitation of some negro chieftain. Yet these instruments, though harmless and innocent, (except to the luck less wight who should load and fire them,) would be considered as guilty by the friends of humanity, as they are indisputably employed in the nefarious African traffic, and bartered for human flesh and blood."

‹ Harmless and innocent-except to the person who should fire them! Does this gentleman suppose that the negroes purchase fire-arms only to decorate their habitations? The government should interfere, and interdict this nefarious manufactory.

An improvement in gun-locks is noticed, which deserves the attention of government. The flint presents every time a different angle to the hammer, and thereby, instead of wearinmooth, hacks, itself, and never misses fire. The jaws of the cocker are made to slide on and off; the gun can thus instantly be rendered useless if necessary, in case of an apprehended mutiny, or a surrender; and sportsmen may carry, it loaded without danger. Much curious matter is contained in this part of the work, but it is ill arranged.

The second volume contains three plays, of which the less that is said the better. Of the first, which is in ridicule of equa

lity, Mr. Pratt says, that, in 1794, 'he sent the manuscript to several booksellers, of all the different hues that the political cameleon could assume. They were fearful to vndertake, in a printed attack, the loyal side of the question, particularly at a crisis when an invasion was hourly apprehended. One of the trade did not feel himself bold.' This libel upon the booksellers is easily explained; they did not choose to publish a good-for-nothing piece. A reference to the publications of the year would prove the futility of the accusation, if any proof were needed The booksellers were intimidated; but it was by the government, not the French. The third volume is full of verses by sundry gentlemen and ladies, friends of Mr. Pratt, with sundry copies of verses' by Mr. Pratt himself. Peace be to the race of bad writers! In one respect is the system of commerce like the system of nature, that the vilest things are of use in both. Many and many are the persons who derive as much benefit from the itch of writing in others, as the proprietors of the Caledonian ointment derive from an itch of another kind: from the collecter of rags, and the printer's devil, up to his majesty's exchequer, and the foreign powers, who do us the favour to accept subsidies therefrom, how many trades and callings are supported by bad writers! How would Mr. Fry's types, Mr. What man's paper, Mr. Balmer's presses, Mr. Stothard's pencil, and Mr. Heath's graver, be employed, if it were not for thes literary gentlemen who favour the work with their poems? Were it not for bad authors, the Annual Review would shrink from its present partly proportions, and Falstaff-size, to the skeleton-like lankness of Master Slender. Peace be to them! we will not accelerate their destiny. Why should we throw stones at a drows ing dog, or send out catamarans against foundering fishing-smacks?

Worthless writers have been compared to the dead who die in the Lord; for they die, and their works do follow them. This cannot, however, be applied to Mr. Pratt's poetical auxiliaries, for their works do go before them.

is it not possible to render light reading subjective to solid instruction? Voltaire

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and Wieland have composed abundance of light reading, which is often subservient to information, but they often inculcate what is amiss. Addison's light reading is pure in its tendency, though at times feeble, insignificant, and not instructive enough: it is ladies' ware. There is so much to learn now-a-days that even our amusers must teach, or we must be taught by those who do not amuse. We should gladly see the business of the pedant performed by the gentleman; but we cannot prefer the vague prettyisms of the mere gentleman to the substantial tuition of the mere pedant. Dr. Johnson was a more valuable companion than lord Chesterfield.

Among all these essays, biographies, stories, and epistles, we are at a loss to indicate any which will spare the reader the trouble of recurring to the author's sources: there is not enough to satisfy of any one thing; the leisure is idled away which is spent on such perusal. However the author makes no pretensions; it were cruel to break the butterfly on a wheel. Let us glance over his topics with here and there an animadversion.

Of the Fine Arts. Their merit or value is here placed, in their being followed by humanity, delicacy, and the social virtues. We doubt the fact. The age of Hadrian among the ancients, and the age of Leo X. among the moderns, produced the best remaining specimens of art. Neither humanity, delicacy, nor the social virtues, distinguished the courts, which bespoke these master-pieces. To be a judge of merit in art, as in writing, is in accomplishment; to excel in art, or in writing, a still greater: but there is no necessary connection between talent and virtue, between taste and humanity, between art and delicacy: Nero was a connoisseur; Leo X. inflicted the torture; David is a painter.

Of Poetry.The main argument proluced for liking it is that Virgil's Georgics gave a fashion to agriculture. Is its highest destination to teach the vulgar

irts?

Of Painting.In a quotation from Maon we hear of Correggio's chastity of hue. Why quote such trash? What is chastity f hue? Chastity is not a mean between wo extremes, as some other virtues are, ut a total abstinence from prohibited sage. Certain painters of antiquity emloyed only four patent colours; but Coreggio knows nothing of any such restraint. n no imaginable sense can a metaphor

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from chastity be rationally applied to his colouring, which is vivid, various, natural, and oscillates much more than that of Titian between the extremes of illumination and obscurity.

Of Sculpture. In the dark ages, says this author, sculpture found an asylum even in the tombs of the dead. Where has it ever found so habitual, so expedient, so appropriate an asylum? The instances of Demetrius and of the great Pitt are narrated, as if the writer wished to prove sculpture useless to human celebrity.

Of Music. That music is most useful of which the rhythm is most marked, which assists the half-skilled to dance, to march, to row, in time and in concert. Music is also well employed in public worship, to detain the attention on those moral hymns whose sentiments ought to be engraven on the memory; and in what may be called the worship of the country, to render audible and intelligible to vast crowds, the Rule-Britannia of patriotism, or the God-save-the-king of royalism. Music too is a source of much private and personal domestic delight. It affects both as a sensual pleasure directly, and by association indirectly: the greatest effects of music seem to depend on the latter principle. The air which revives a recollection of the tones of Mara; the march which fills the imagination with moving pictures of military parade and pageantry; the chorus which was first heard exquisitely executed among the splendid crowds so pompously arranged beneath the bigh Gothic arches of the Abbey; these are the pieces of music which become favourite. The lover carès for those tunes which his mistress was practising when he wooed; the winebibber for those songs which accompanied and consecrated the feast, when the cellar of hospitality was rifled of its tawniest hoard of wine.

There is perhaps a danger in nationalizing, and in carrying to much refinement, the taste for music. Adam Smith observes that cowards excel in the sense of hearing. From Vienna to Naples, singing enchants, and cannon terrifies. Shakspeare makes his fribble Lorenzo a panegyrist of music; but his Portia is so dull of ear, she think, the nightingale no better a musician than the wren. Orphous was killed by women; Themistocles could not fiddle; Nero was a great musician: Polybius relates of two contiguous nations in Arcadia, that the ove which cultivated music was voluptuous,

mild, and effeminate; and the other, which neglected music, was active, harsh, and courageous. Women care more for music than men. The cultivation of music must, by the nature of the attention it requires, gradually perfect and quicken the hearing; the organs of sense descend to children with traces of the improved sensibility acquired by parents: it is not unlikely that some tendency to startle and to be alarmed should, as Adam Smith thinks, accompany or follow musical

ness.

Music is liable to another charge. The love of song is, in some degree, a cure for genius. By causing the mind to dwell agreeably on one idea for the longest possible time, it gradually retards the process of thinking. Now it is in rapidity of combination that genius consists. There are persons to whom the slow enunciation of thought which takes place in song ought to be recommended; to all those, for instance, whose powers of intellectual combination are too rapid for their organs of speech, who hesitate or who stammer. It is strange that Desault, who is for curing every thing by music, who is for singing away pulmonary consumption as well as hypochondriasis, and the bites of venomous reptiles as well as the languors of lethargy, should never have classed singing among the remedies for defects of

utterance.

Of Dancing. This is a finer art than music, and ought to rank above it. The spectacle of a ballet is more gratifying than the sweetest concert: one gladly turns from graceful sounds to graceful movements, from Banti to Parisot. Grassini charms most by the very pantomime she borrows of the dancer.

Then the national effects of Dancing.— It gives health, activity, vigour, to the body, ease and vivacity to the manners. The dancing nations are graceful at home, and warlike abroad. Their youths are plastic, their women cheerful, their old men do not petrify.

Of Cards.-Is it not known that the Portuguese brought them from Hindos tan--that they were at first an almanac of the fifty-two weeks-were there consulted superstitiously by the nativity-casters about lucky days—and were at length converted into instruments for really influencing the fortunes of men?

To these dissertations, which are partly borrowed from French books of little worth, succeed biographical notices, characters, anecdotes, stories, and epistles.

To have attained his end is high praise to the most aspiring writer: let it then content this compiler of light reading that he has listened to the counsel of Boileau.

"Voulez-vous du public mériter les amours? Sans cesse en écrivant variez vos discours."

circulation of these once eminently po pular, and still celebrated papers, and to render useful a selection from works fermerly possessed entire by almost every reading person. Among others, the following remark particularly pleased us by its justness and originality:

"It is also to be considered, that the more efficacious these pieces have been, and no doubt they have had considerable effect is refining the taste and correcting the manners of society, the sooner will they be thrown by as antiquated or useless. Thus, the very success of a book may hasten the period of its being forgotten; and the completion of an author's purpose may turn out to be the ruin of his fame. Addison was himself aware of this cause of a diminution of popularity, and says, in one of his essays, that those papers which attack the follies of the day wil, in process of time, become like old plate; the weight will remain, but the fashion will be lost."

An account is subjoined of the time