his leisure to acquire it, are objects of inferior concern. He has travelled, and that is enough.

M. de Humboldt belongs to a higher order of travellers, to whom the public have of late been very little accustomed. We must place him beside a Nieubuhr, a Pallas, a Bruce, a Chardin, a Barrow, and a Volney; and his works will probably be long consulted as authorities respecting the countries which he describes. He seems to be a stranger to few departments of learning or science; and his fortune enabled him to provide himself with every thing which could most advance his pursuits, and to make that appearance among persons of rank and authority necessary to remove the obstacles in the way of a traveller in every country, but most of all in a country under an arbitrary government.

The work of which a translation is here offered to the public was submitted to a very severe trial: the sketch of it was freely communicated to the natives of New Spain, and underwent the examination of the Spanish government. It may be doubted, however, whether the accuracy and fulness of information which such a measure has a tendency to procure might not be counterbalanced by seemingly unavoidable disadvantages. We never talk of our friends so candidly before their faces as behind their backs. In the former case we may say nothing but the truth, but we are seldom disposed to say the whole truth. He must be a very honest traveller indeed who communicates all the remarks which occur to him, to the people among whom he is travelling. Even Dr. Johnson, with all his bluntness, would have hesitated to read his Tour to the Hebrides to his Scotch landlords.

There is one disadvantage indeed almost inseparable from the mode in which M. de Humboldt appears to have

been treated in the new world.

He received so much at

tention both from public men and private individuals during his stay in Mexico, that he could hardly avoid displaying some portion of gratitude in return. We accord

ingly find him exceedingly prone to give favourable accounts of all the individuals of that country whom he has occasion to mention. He is profuse in his compliments to their learning, science, and their other good qualities, and nothing ever appears to shade the picture. We may easily conceive, therefore, that he must have seen both in individuals and institutions much more that met with his disapprobation than he has chosen to communicate.

M. de Humboldt has brought forward a great mass of information regarding New Spain, a country of which we before knew very little indeed. Let the specious paragraphs of our celebrated countryman Robertson be attentively weighed, and we shall be astonished to find how little specific information they sometimes really contain. The present work, however, furnishes us with precise data on a very great variety of important subjects. Yet it is to be regretted that the author could not throw occasionally more rapidity into his descriptions, and give somewhat more condensation to his materials. He is sometimes rather apt to indulge in repetition, and to swell his accounts with circumstances by no means essential to be told, but which have a necessary tendency to fatigue the attention of the reader. This failing is not peculiar to M. de Humboldt, but is common to him with too many authors, and particularly those of his own country, Germany. Indeed the faculty of selecting the more important and leading features of an object is, perhaps, the rarest and most valuable which any writer can possess. It is this which commu

nicates such a charm to the history of Hume, and arrests so strongly our attention in the travels of Volney.

But whatever may be the sentiments of the translator on this subject, it is not for him to endeavour to alter his original to what he conceives a model of perfection. The public naturally wish to have his information in his own manner, and as nearly in his own terms as possible. It were well if even this was tolerably done; but the rapidity with which translations like the present must necessarily be executed, will not admit of that flow and correctness of style which the leisure of the closet might produce. When we sit down to the translation of an established classic, we may patiently endeavour to transfuse the beauties and graces of the original into our own language; but the translation of a work like this, impatiently expected by the public, must lay claim to a very inferior degree of merit.

A few notes have been occasionally thrown in by the translator, which he has not the vanity to suppose of any great importance; but as they do not in general occupy much room, and as they served to amuse him in the course of the work, he hopes if they do not meet with the reader's approbation, they will, at least, meet with his indulgence. In one of them, in vol. i. he observes that he has completely misunderstood the author, a circumstance certainly not the more justifiable, because it is by no means unusual with commentators.

The translator has been at some pains in ascertaining the value of the different foreign measures, weights, and moneys, used by the author, and converting them into those of our own country. The omission of this is but too frequent in translations, though it is essential to any work which aims at being generally understood. These con

versions, however, appear only in the notes, the original having undergone no alteration.

The orthography of the names has been preserved in the translation with few exceptions. The Spanish names of persons and places have never been touched, but in a few names of Indian nations, such as Azteques, Tolteques, &c. the ques has been converted into cs, the corresponding termination in our own language. Clavigero uses the same freedom in the Italian, writing these words Aztecchi, Toltecchi, &c. This liberty is perhaps justifiable, though it might not be advisable to go all the length recommended by Volney, in whose work on North America we can with difficulty recognise the names most familiar to us. Who, for instance, could find out Washington in Ouachinnetone? The various sounds given to the same letters by the different European nations occasion a good deal of perplexity. The same name assumes quite a distinct appearance in the works of a French and an English traveller. Another source of perplexity peculiar to the Spaniards and Germans is the indiscriminate use of certain letters. The Spaniard, for example, confounds the b and the v; the c and the z; the j, the g, and the x; and they write the same word sometimes with one of these letters, and sometimes with another. It is necessary to give this caution to the reader, who, were he to meet with Xuan de Grixalba in one place, and Juan de Grijalva in another, might not at first perceive the identity. M. Pinkerton, who seems to plume himself not a little on his orthography, observes, that the Spanish, French, and Italian writers, write Motezuma; the English alone Montezuma; and he of course must follow the Spanish, French, and Italian writers. Why the English are bound to follow the orthography of these nations it is not so easy to conceive, any more than

that they should follow the English, the proper orthography being neither Motezuma nor Montezuma, but Moteuczoma. M.de Humboldt sometimes inserts the n and sometimes leaves it out.

A considerable part of the Essay on New Spain has not yet arrived in this country; but, when it does arrive, no time will be lost in communicating it to the public, if the portion now presented shall meet with a favourable reception. The most important of the maps and drawings in the part which we have received appear in the present publication, but on a more economical scale. Of the maps and physical sections it is sufficient to say, that they have been executed under the care of Mr. Lowry, whose well known taste and skill so justly entitle him to the public confidence. It would have been foolish to attempt to imitate the magnificence of the original; but it will be found that nothing of essential importance has been omitted. The publishers wished to spare no necessary expense in the present publication; but they were averse from increasing the price of a book intended for general circulation by an ostentatious and injudicious splendour.