The same system, our author observes, prevails in England, with regard to the making and management of canals, She making and of canals, as of roads; that is to say, it is left in the hands of private associations; the British government not only permits individuals to to execute these great works by such companies; it eagerly goes before the zeal and the means of the national industry, and affords it and affords it the aid of public credit. In France, a totally different course is pursued there the government undertakes every thing and finishes nothing. What is begun under one reign, is abandoned in the next; that which one minister attempts to to execute, his successor leaves to moulder into ruins. M. Dupin thinks, however, that they are about to commence a new system, and em, and to b break those thousand chains of the Consulate and the Empire, which, far more than under any other government, before or since the revolution, fettered the people of France.

Depuis 1800, époque à laquelle tous les pouvoirs ont été concentrés dans Paris, les administrations départementales et municipales, n'ont pas conservé le droit de prendre la moindre décision essentielle. Nonseulement pour des ouvrages neufs, d'une médiocre valeur et d'une importance toute locale, mais pour les plus légères réparations, il faut rédiger des projets, calculer des devis, les adresser au ministère, attendre' une approbation tardive, chercher un entrepreneur; traiter; et faire ensuite approuver l'adjudication ou la soumission. Que résulte-t-il de' ces délais nombreux et prolongés? Les dégradations augmentent, les frais indispensables croissent de plus en plus, jusqu'à dépasser les moyens de subvenir aux dépenses. Alors arrivent, la chute des ponts et des écluses, l'interruption totale de la navigation et du commerce, la diminution revenu des canaux; alors, enfin, ce peu de revenu qu'on touche encore ne sert plus qu'à couvrir incomplètement des frais qu'il eût été facile d'éviter. On obvierait à ces inconvéniens, en concédant à des associations particulières, la construction, l'entretien et la propriété des canaux : ce qu'on commencé à faire.vol. i. p. 81.

2

M. Dupin takes a comparative view of what he calls the canalized portions of the two countries, and arrives at this conclusion that, in England, the portion canalized exceeds one half of the whole territory; whilst in France it does not equal one-fifth. That in the part canalized' over the same extent of country, the opening of canals, is four times less in France than in England; so that, he observes, in comparing the whole of France with the whole of England, we have not even, in proportion to the extent of the two countries, the twentieth part of the canals possessed by our Lour rival. And he adds, what is still more humiliating for la grande nation, in England, with a sky less serene, a climate less warm, a soil less fertile, the earth nourishes, at a mean rate, 8,107 inhar bitants on a square myriamètres whilst, on an equal extent of surface, France only supports 5,680."

a's

A

ST

hed

es, the

We

752 qt,ei tødt ***A considerable portion of M. Dupin's v work is occupied by dea tailed accounts of the canals which communicate with the four great basins of the Humber, the Mersey, and the Severn, and with each other, and the different manufacturing districts of England; all of must pass over, and take a cursory glance at his description of our bridges, which is particularly defective. Those of Westminster and Blackfriars are dispatched in half a page; and half of this is taken up with an idle story which he tells us has been seriously stated by travellers, namely, that the balustrade of the former was made nearly inaccessible, with a vi of preventing the English (who are liable to a malady which drives them to suicide) from throwing themselves into the River. M. Dupin should have said-' stated by one traveller, and he a Frenchman, who, in addition to what our author has taken from him, assures his countrymen, that the people of London are so addicted to self-murder, that all the avenues leading to the Thames are blocked up, to prevent as much as possible this fatal result of the national malady nay, that he was told by a friend, that the banks of the river, and particularly near the bridges, were lined with skulls,' (sculls.) That a sensible man, like M. Dupin, should condescend to repeat so idle a story, which is even beneath the dignity of Joe Miller, we confess, surprizes us. He is too industrious in collecting information, and too observant of what passes in the world, not to know that the number of suicides in Paris, with half the population, exceeds that of London, as five to three; and that five times as many unfortunate wretches, at the very lowest calculation, throw themselves into the Seine, the popular mode of self-destruction, as into the Thames.

1

The bridge of Waterloo, for the tenth time, is stated to have been stolen from the bridge of Neuilly, though the curves of the arches are wholly different; but the balustrades and the roadways are both horizontal, and all the arches are of the same size: and these are points of resemblance quite sufficient to constitute a similarity amounting to a plagiary in the eyes of a Frenchman. But then Mr. Rennie has made a grievous mistake in placing a bridge of this kind where it never ought to have been; that is to say, where the continuation of the road oad on each side is not perfectly level with the road over the bridge: another fault (not indeed of the bridge) is, that its height overpowers the beautiful façade of Somerset House. Full credit, however, is given by M. Dupin to the manner in which the bridge is constructed, who always speaks of Mr. Rennie with respect and admiration.

To the solidity and probable permanency of Waterloo bridge, M. Dupin bears strong testimony in observing that in the revo lutions which empires experience, men will one day inquire, where

once stood the New Phenicia, the Western Tyre, which covered the sea with its ships?' The Strand bridge,' says he,' will remain to reply to generations the most remote

'Here stood a wealthy, industrious, and powerful city. The traveller, at sight of it, will suppose that a great prince had been desirous, by many years of labour, to shed a lustre on the end of his reign, and to consecrate the glory of his actions by this imposing structure. But if tradition should inform him, that six years were sufficient for the commencement and termination of this work; if he should learn, that a simple company of merchants built this mass, worthy of the Sesostrises and the Cæsars, he will admire still more that nation where undertakings of this nature can be the fruit of the efforts of a few tradesmen and capitalists. Then, if lastly he shall have reflected on the causes of the prosperity of empires, he will acknowledge that such a people must have possessed wise laws, powerful institutions, and liberty prudently secured to them: they are imprinted in the grandeur and utility of the monuments erected by simple citizens.'—vol. i. p. 259.*

ART. V.-Memoir descriptive of the Resources, Inhabitants, and Hydrography of Sicily and its Islands, interspersed with Antiquarian and other Notices. By Captain W. H. Smyth, R.N. London. 1824. 4to. pp. 370.

CAPTAIN Smyth is an experienced navy-officer who has for

many years, we believe, been employed by the Admiralty to survey various parts of the Mediterranean coasts, of which the charts were hitherto defective. The circumstances, however, under which his book is brought out will be best told in his own words :

'The lords commissioners of the Admiralty having determined in their laudable zeal for promoting nautical science, to present to the public an atlas containing my survey of Sicily and the adjacent islands, I obtained permission from their lordships to publish the following memoir containing the substance of those remarks which my long residence in those parts, and the station I filled, enabled me to make; and, as an encouragement, their lordships, with a marked liberality and condescen

* We copy this with peculiar pleasure, on account of the consolation which, we

trust, it will afford to Mrs. Barbauld. That venerable Sybil (see No. XIV. of this Journal) took up her parable against England in 1811, and prophesied that her last hour was come; that her baseless wealth was dissolved in air;' that the golden tide of commerce had deserted her shore,' and that she would soon

be only known

By the gray ruin, and the mouldering stone.'

Some ingenuous American, fired by fancy, will then,' she vaticinates, make a pilgrimage from the Blue Mountains to this country,' (provided he can find it,) in the hope of tracing out the ancient bounds of its capital, by the assistance of a few scattered hamlets.' Mrs. Barbauld will now discover that this high-souled youth from the Ontario' will not need, as she tremblingly anticipates, to hazard his neck, in climbing some broken stair to ascertain the spot on which London once stood,' since the Strand Bridge will favour his guesses, and abridge his archeological labours in a surprizing manner.

sion, have been pleased to subscribe for 100 copies. In executing this task I have rather aimed at giving general information, than a mere set of sailing directions, because the charts being constructed trigonometrically and the various dangers distinctly pointed out, an inspection of them will be less liable to misconception than yerbose instructions.'-Introduction.. Leaving, therefore, the nautical observations to the attention of those whose business it will be to ascertain experimentally their truth and accuracy, we shall consider the Memoir' as an essay, on Sicily addressed principally to the general reader, and eme, bracing the usual topics of a volume of Sicilian travels. It does. not, indeed, provide us with so many credible stories of children, wearing three heads, or of women littering thirty babies at a birth as the learned Fazzello-nor is it interlarded with critical emendations of Greek texts, and operose corrections of Cluverius, like D'Orville-nor is it so sprightly and picturesque as Brydone though not so dull as Swinburne-neither does it display the mature scholarship, nor impart to the reader the classical ardour of Hughes; yet as a practically useful work, it may take precedence of them all, on the principle, that he who wore a civic crown ranked above those who were otherwise his betters-and even as a literary work it has a certain value of its own, arising from the scientific observations it contains, calculated to correct the exaggerations of poets and poetical travellers, whose assertions will often find much difficulty in maintaining their ground against this modern Archytas, this—

Maris et terræ numeroque carentis arenæ

Mensorem.

And though Captain Smyth may think this very limited commendation of a book which evidently aspires to a character for scholarship, yet we cannot help considering that those parts of it which are most learned are least praiseworthy. We care little about Archias and Ducetius or whether Deucalion and Pyrrha "did or did not found Catania: all such matters, together with anecdotes about Typhoeus or his Cyclops, we are content to leave to Lempriere and the minute mythologists of our grammar schools,

Still, however, if Captain Smyth enters upon these topics more frequently and with an air of more authority than necessary, he errs with great names: If we consider Jupiter's politics,' says Shuckford with the utmost gravity, we must allow him to have been a man of as great natural wisdom and sagacity as perhaps any age ever produced.'* And afraid (as well he might be) that this is not sufficiently specific, he next tells us, that Jupiter had a genius for business as well as for speculation, and knew how both to project what was proper to be agreed upon and to give Connection of Sacred and Profane History, v. ii. p. 86,

his schemes a full effect among the people ; and in order hereto be married the lady who had the province of iforming the reason ings of the Cretans, and this was undoubtedly a wise step,' &cl We could have dispensed with sundry passages in the Memoir of Sicily' a little too much after this fashion, and would willingly have received in exchange for such solemn trifling, those coinci dences between the manners and customs of ancient and modern times which our author's long comiection with Sicily might have enabled him to remark, a country wearing throughout a singular air of antiquity, whilst the treatment of such a subject would have called forth classical learning of a far more attractive kind than that which relates to half-fabulous : heroes, or wholly fabulous demi-gods.

It is true, that Captain Smyth has touched upon this topic; but in most of his remarks he has already been anticipated; and in those which are new we have generally to regret a want of distinctness and detail. The Rogation ceremony corresponds in many respects with the rites of Terminus; for while the former consisted of prayers for a blessing on the fruits of the earth, the purpose of the latter was to fix beyond dispute the boundaries of their land that so they might enjoy without contention, in the fruits of the opening spring, the reward of the labour they had bestowed on the earth.' Yet we are not furnished with a single fact that enables us to trace the resemblance for ourselves. So again, The grand jubilee is but another name for the Secular Games, while the Martinalia is a palpable substitute for the Lesser Dionysia, by which St. Martin has succeeded to the devo+ tion heretofore lavished on the jolly Bacchus.' It may be so; but we naturally ask,

Quibus indiciis, quo teste, probavit ?— › We should have been glad to hear more particulars of the follow ing curious fact, that the festival instituted on occasion of the surrender of Nicias to Gylippus has been preserved through all changes of fortune, government, and religion, and is still celebrated (though now in honour of a saint) at Syracuse, in May, when two olive trees are borne in triumph into the city, and during the fortnight they are allowed to remain there, debtors can roami about, free from molestation.p. 179. :

The Sicilians still, it seems, by amulets, carefully protect themselves and their herds from persons possessing the evil eye never marry in the ill-omenede month of May-cast nuts and almonds on the happy pair at the bridal feast-strew flour or ashes at the threshold of their friend or foe, on New Year's eve think it lucky to have a palpitation in the right eye-- are fearful of spilling salt-and, like the Romans, do not respect the profession