of man; whilst the second record commences with the creation of Adam, and then briefly states the fact of a subsequent animal creation-he would probably have avoided many of the errors into which he has now fallen, and would have been enabled to show, far more successfully than he now has done, that the geological discoveries of the present day, instead of impeaching the truth of the Mosaic cosmogony, add to it the most unexpected and unanswerable confirmations, and prove that it could only have been derived from Divine revelation.

Notwithstanding the defects of Mr. Turner's work-defects which we think it necessary to notice, because we fear that they may prove injurious to the cause he desires to advocate we can assure our readers that they will find in it an ample fund of instruction and amusement. He has been indefatigable in his researches into the history of all that relates both to the vegetable and animal kingdom; and we know not where else we could direct the young student to so rich a fund of valuable information on these important and interesting subjects. Wherever Mr. Turner is employed in collecting from the stores of other inquirers, there are few persons who will not reap benefit from his well-directed labours. It is only when he ventures alone into the field of conjecture that we feel it unsafe to entrust ourselves to his guidance. His style also is diffuse and declamatory; and his moral reflections, however excellent in their intention, are, in general, so trite and feeble, that they are more apt to excite a smile, than to produce conviction in fastidious readers. We know nothing which his manner of writing, in this respect, so nearly resembles as the elaborate and unmeaning triads and quaternions which adorn the discourses of that accomplished baronet Sir Robert Hazlewood, in the romance of Guy Mannering. But we will enable our readers to judge for themselves, by setting before them some of his remarks on the female creation.

"One of the most beautiful, most interesting, and most benevolent ideas of the Divine Mind, in his creation of the terrestrial economy, was the conception and formation of the female sex. No other production has contributed so much to the improvement and to the happiness of human nature. It was the divinest of our Great Author's works on our earth, for it was one of the wisest as well as the loveliest of his philanthropic inventions. When He declared, as the reason of this particular creation, It is not good that the man should be alone,' he pronounced a truth which every age, and clime, and nation have verified. The poet's dramatic explanation,

We had been brutes without you,'

is not a Parnassian hyperbole-it is the simple and everlasting truth; not, perhaps, so much to the credit of our sex as our self-love would de

sire; but it is an applicable comment upon our Creator's recorded observation. If man had been alone upon earth, geography and history unite to assure us, that his populations, if such could then in any other mode have originated, would have been little else than the populations of fierce and savage, violent and battling brutes. In this state the uncivilized tribes of the earth are found to be, even with the society of women, where these are undervalued, oppressed, degraded, or despised; that is, where they are deprived of that influence which they were created to diffuse and possess, and, by its magical enchantment, to humanize and meliorate. Respect and love of their wives and females may be deemed the great civilizing and advancing principle which has, with some others--but very probably more efficaciously than any-contributed to the unceasing progression of the Saxon, Gothic and German nations, who conquered Europe from the Romans, and spread over it the populations and kingdoms which now adorn it with a superiority to their ancient predecessors which has never retrograded.

"If mankind had been perpetuated without their milder companions -from the pebbles thrown by Deucalion and Pyrrha, or from the teeth sown by Cadmus in the earth—a stony and iron [qu. bony] race would have been its perpetual inhabitants. There is something in the active spirit, and powers, and strength of the manly portion of our common species, which loves difficulties, enterprise, exertion, competition, contests, labours, struggles, argument, battle, and personal display-which hastens to seize its wished objects with precipitation and violence-to fight instantly to obtain them-to strike down all resistance, and to overwhelm all opponents. These qualities and propensities would animate self-love and selfishness into continual strife, conflict, civil discord and battle, if no softer and kind companions were about such fierce and angry beings, to occupy some portion of their thoughts and attentions-to create and cherish milder and sweeter feelings-and to provide for them the more soothing happiness of a quiet home and a domestic life, where tenderness, sympathy, good humour, smiles, gentleness, benignity and affection would diffuse pleasures more grateful than those of irritation and contest, and awaken the sensibilities that most favour intellectual and moral cultivation, and which gradually lead us to its attractive and nobler gratifications."-pp. 511–513.

This quotation will give our readers a sufficient specimen of Mr. Turner's style of writing and of moralizing. Some persons may think the sentiments a little mawkish; others, still more fastidious, will call it abominable twaddle; whilst some, on the other hand, will be delighted to find a gentleman of Mr. Turner's age possessed of such exquisite sensitivity.* It were to be wished, however, that he had endeavoured to express his sentiments with more simplicity, for we seriously believe, that out of the whole range of English literature, it would be difficult to select a passage of equal length, so elaborately feeble and so in

A word of Mr. Turner's own coining,

sufferably affected. Mr. Turner has acquired some reputation as a historical writer, and by the extent of his researches has very deservedly earned it; but a style like this is enough to overbalance all his other merits; and though it may possibly find its admirers in the half-literary coteries of the present day, we fear it will effectually prevent him from occupying a permanent place amongst those who have bathed their lips in "the pure well of English undefiled."

ART. IV. Fragments of Voyages and Travels.

Second Series.

By Captain Basil Hall, R.N. F.R.S. 3 vols. Whittaker. 1832. IT is quite unnecessary that we should here repeat the general character of Captain Basil Hall's manner and execution, which we have so recently attempted to pourtray. He is by this time an established acquaintance of our readers; and in the volumes which we now present to them, they will find little change in quality from those by which he formerly introduced himself. They must bear in mind, however, for it would be most unjust if they were to forget, that the charm of novelty has passed away; and yet more, that in this, his Second Series, the writer has advanced many steps in the progress of life; that he is no longer an inmate of the cock-pit; that the fervour of extreme youth is sobered; and that the tone of his work therefore is, necessarily, somewhat more staid than that which characterized the descriptions of the ardent and inexperienced Middy. There are passages also in these volumes which are almost exclusively professional; and which, in consequence, however highly useful to those by whom they will be best understood and appreciated, may not, perhaps, be equally attractive to others whose principal search in books is for amusement.

We start with Mr. Hall as Second Lieutenant of the Endymion, on shore in the North of Ireland. He has been permitted to land with one caution from his Captain,-not to fall in love; and although he is so far free from coxcombry as not to blazon his petites amourettes, it is pretty clear that the advice was by no means superfluous. Another friend dismissed him with a precept which he was far more likely to practise to take especial care if he did dispose of his heart to the Trish ladies, never to fall in love with less than two of them at once. He was introduced to a delightful party," among the young and old of which he became completely domesticated; he shared in their "rides, walks, picnic dinners, dances, music-parties and suppers," and as he was at that season in not more than his twenty-second year, for the sake of the maritime knowledge which we are looking forward to

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acquire, it is some relief to our eagerness to find him once again safe on board.

Mr. Hall does not escape, however, without encountering some touches of Irish Hospitality. His third chapter, "Tricks upon Travellers," in which he describes how an experienced Amphitryon not only lulled to rest the suspicions of his at first cautious symposiasts, but in the end so far triumphed over them, as himself to lead the way to the drawing-room, while they would willingly have lingered over another-perhaps not a parting-long cork, is a highly finished specimen of dramatic painting; and the well-bred adroitness and dexterity of his refined host is well contrasted with the more direct Bacchanalianism of Club Law which follows:

"Before I set out for Port Rush, the head-quarters of Fiorin cultivation, a merry friend of mine, hearing me ask some questions about corncrops, hay-crops, and such matters, begged to know if I should not like to be introduced to the Farmers' Society of their good city; for there,' said he, 'you will meet with all the best-informed agriculturists of the country. Of course I gladly accepted his offer, and that of his companionship to the Society's dinner on that very day. As we walked to the house, which I think lay about a mile or so beyond the limits of the town, I taxed my memory for all the queries which had been put to me on the subject of farming, resolving to apply these at the most fitting moments, and rejoicing over the famous opportunity I now had of reaping a grand harvest of information, at a small cost of trouble.

"On we trudged to a pretty little country inn, which we reached just as the dinner was rattling on the table. The party consisted of a dozen persons, or there may have been a dozen and a half-as pleasant men, in their way, as could be met with. Before the repast was over, I chanced to ask my treacherous friend, next whom I was placed, some questions on the subject of turnip husbandry. He heard me out, and laughed exceedingly; but instead of answering, called out to the chairman of the meeting,

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I beg to inform you, sir, that the gentleman on my right wishes to know whether we in the north of Ireland pull up our turnips, or let them remain in the ground, as in East Lothian, for the sheep to eat? Now, sir, I take this to be an agricultural question--don't you?'

"Certainly it is,' replied the president.

"Undoubtedly agricultural!' cried out the rest of the company; upon which, turning to the waiter, the chairman said, in a chuckling and delighted tone,

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"Boy! take the glass to Mr. Hall-the strange gentleman there." Accordingly, a glass, not very much above the ordinary size, was handed to me, and straightway filled with whisky-toddy. This I was required by the president to drink off instantly.

"On what compulsion? and wherefore?' I asked, laughing, with the glass at my lips.

"Oh!' exclaimed he, on no compulsion at all, my dear sir; for this, you must know, is Liberty Hall. Do exactly as you please, only

conforming to the laws of the Association; that is to say,' continued the president, grinning, you will of course see the obvious propriety of complying with the fixed rules of the Farmers' Society, one of the strictest of which very properly is, that no one present shall allude to the subject of agriculture, much less discourse upon it, as you have done, or ask any questions?'

"There was a national comicality about this queer rule which was of course quite unanswerable; so I paid the penalty and drank off the punch, without further delay; for it was admirable in its ingredients, and, what is almost as important, admirably concocted.

"I had no sooner emptied the glass, than I was ordered to fill and swallow another bumper, as a fine for having used the left hand instead of the right; and when I remonstrated against the injustice of fining a man for breaking laws of which he had never before heard the existence, the president said, with mock gravity,

"Do you really suppose, sir, that such an excuse as not knowing the existence of a law against hog-stealing would help you in a court of justice, if you were to run off with a pig?"

"The reasoning was again unanswerable, so down went the drink.

"Good whisky-punch, well made, is certainly, of all the tipples ever invented by mortal man, the most insinuating and the most loving, because, more than any other, it disposes the tippler to be pleased with himself. It brightens his hopes, assuages his sorrows, crumbles down his difficulties, softens the hostility of his enemies, and, in fact, inclines him, for the time being, to think generously of all mankind, at the tiptop of which it naturally and good-naturedly places his own dear self, with a glass in one hand and a mug in the other, without a wish ungratified, and as unsuspicious of evil as if not a single drop of gall, or a sprig of wormwood, existed on the face of the earth!

"My merry agricultural friends, who knew all the depths and shallows of the most delightful of all navigations, that of a punch-bowl, were well aware that if they could, by any means, get the unwary stranger to pass a certain point of moderation, no additional impulse on their part would be required to bring about the grand consummation they aimed at, and which they were all the more bent upon, from seeing me a little on my guard.

"It need scarcely be told that I failed, and that they succeeded in making me enter their trap. I have, indeed, only a very confused recollection of the whole scene; but I do remember seeing the hands of the clock dancing a jig about the hour of twelve, and have some faint remembrance of being made to drink at least three times to the glorious and immortal memory of King William III., merely because I could not find articulation or memory enough to repeat, without tripping, an immense long tail to this royal and loyal Orange toast."-vol. i. pp. 78 -82.

An appointment as Lieutenant under Sir James Hood, at that time Commander-in-Chief on the East Indian Station, summoned Mr. Hall to an entirely new world; and the first puff of an