stantly subjected them to ridicule even among their friends, and worse than ridicule among others. Yet from the morbid sensibility I have stated, on the one hand, or a very erroneous idea of politeness on the other, no person dares to draw their attention to the defect, or to point out a remedy.

Let me, reader, draw you a portrait. It is, if I err not, a likeness of a large portion of mankind-probably of you, and full as probably of myself who undertake to write a lecture on the subject. Behold that person, sumptuously attired, proceeding to a ball-room, to display himself to the best advantage. Unfortunately there is upon his arm a piece of ordure, equally offensive to the eye and to the olfactory nerves of those whom he encounters. It is so conspicuously placed, that it cannot escape the attention of the most cursory examiner. A friend perhaps advances, takes off his hat, bows, and is about to advise him to remove the filth. Instead of returning him thanks for his kindness, he flies into a passion-repels his friend-and perhaps repays him with as much undeserved insult, as if, instead of wishing the removal of the offensive matter, he had actually thrown it upon his arm.

This is, you will doubtless say, ridiculous-truly ridiculous. Yet it is man's every day habit. Few of us can boast an exemption. The blemishes which we are all afflicted with, are the ordure and not on our clothes, but on our characters and conduct, of infinitely more importance. Yet we frighten away every person who would kindly help us to remove the odious incumbrance. What folly! what madness!

Some of the most envenomed animosities that I have ever known, have arisen from friendly advices, obtruded on persons whose follies were a town talk, and known to all the world but themselves. Idem, p. 256.

A DREARY WILDERNESS.-Hearne, who was employed nearly forty years ago to travel in search of a water communication between the English settlements at Baffin's Bay, and the Pacific Ocean, travelled from the sixth of November, 1770, till the twenty-second of January, 1771, seventy-seven days, and several hundred miles, without meeting a human being! During his journey, he was several times obliged to fast two days and two nights-twice upwards of three days-and once nearly seven days, during which he and his companions tasted nothing but a

few cranberries, scraps of old leather, burned bones, and water. When the Indians, he says, are in this extremity, they sacrifice such parts of their leather dress as they can best spare.—Ibid.

"A SAILOR'S LIFE'S A LIFE OF Wo."-In a parish in Norway, on the sea coast, for forty years there did not die above ten grown men. The rest, mostly fishermen and pilots, were drowned.-Ibid.

COGENT AND BENEVOLENT REASONS OF STATE.-The civilized parts of the world sometimes believe that in the crooked paths of state policy they have no rivals among the savages. This is a most egregious error. I offer a case in full proof. Captain Vancouver, in his voyage round the world, states that the king of Otaheite, meditating the conquest of the neighbouring islands, informed him, that it was highly necessary for the comfort and happiness of the people at large, that over the whole group of islands there should be but one sovereign. How humane, how benevolent! Could Louis XIV., before he ravaged the Palatinate, Catharine II., before the capture of Ismail, or Frederick, previous to the seizure of Silesia, have devised a more unanswerable justification of their conduct!—Idem, p. 257.

CUMBERLAND'S MEMOIRS.-Few biographical works possess so much attraction, and afford so great a degree of entertainment, as the Memoirs of Cumberland, lately published by himself, at the advanced age of seventy-two. These Memoirs furnish an extensive range of the history of literature and literary men, during the very long period they embrace. The anecdotes of the author's ancestors are not among the least valuable parts of the work. The writer exhibits himself without disguise. There is hardly a page that does not bear strong testimony of his benevolence and goodness, as well as of his talents. His laudable design of making the drama subservient to the noble purpose of banishing gross national prejudices, which it had formerly to successfully fostered, would alone have entitled him to a monument of national gratitude. The Irish, the Scotch, the Welch, and the Jews, are all under high obligations

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to him, for placing them, in his dramatic works, in a respectable point of light. His Major O'Flaherty, his Colin M'Leod, his Dr. Druid, and his Sheva, while they bear strong characteristic marks of nationality, are endued with those excellent qualities of the heart, and that purity of intention, which command for man the plaudit of his fellow mortals "from pole to pole." By other writers, individuals of those nations are rarely introduced among the dramatis personæ, but to excite or extend prejudice, and to tickle the exuberant vanity of a proud and arrogant audience, by the very flattering comparison. From this folly, to call it by no harsher name, Shakspeare himself could not claim an exemption. In his Merchant of Venice, he absolutely falsified history, to pander to the miserable prejudices which existed against the ill-fated Jews, so often, for centuries before his time, the victims of the most abominable persecution. Need I, after adducing Shylock, waste words upon the Archy Mac Sarcasms, the Brulgrudderies, the Teague O'Regans, the Darbies, the Shenkins, and all those caricatures of human nature, which so many scribblers have exhibited for the purpose of rendering the imaginary defects of one nation food for the vanity of another?

I have heard Cumberland charged with egotism. Those who prefer this charge against him say, that "I, the hero of each little tale," applies to his memoirs with great propriety. This is too fastidious. They attempt to decry an individual work for what forms the very essence of this species of composition. Can a man write his own life, without being, to a certain degree, an egotist? Surely not. And whatever egotism Cumberland displays, in his memoirs, is absolutely inseparable from every similar production.

In this interesting work there are some curious political arcana completely developed, which throw considerable light on the honour and honesty of the cabinets of the rulers of the globe.-Idem, Dec. 1809, p. 528.

DUNCAN M'INTOSH.-There is no subject that yields to a benevolent mind a more sublime gratification than the contempla. tion of a man employed in the divine act of rescuing his fellow mortals from impending destruction, without the smallest shadow of suspicion of his being actuated by any sinister or selfish motives. This is unquestionably the highest grade of human

perfection. Alas, that it so rarely occurs! History is little more than one continued detail of the atrocities of ferocious monsters, who have deluged the earth with human blood, with as little concern as the tiger displays in the destruction of the unoffending lamb. Those of an opposite description

Apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto.

The greater the rarity of this goodness, the more highly esti mable it is when it appears. With what admiration and applause, then, must we not regard the noble minded Duncan M'Intosh, who has excited these remarks, and who has had the enviable lot of effecting the salvation from impending butchery, in St. Domingo, of above fifteen hundred men, women and children, a number probably greater than were ever rescued from destruction by any private individual before:

This illustrious exploit is attended with a circumstance, which enhances the gratification it affords. The hero is of a nation whose character is not duly appreciated in general, and who are too frequently made the subject of unjust and disgraceful sarcasm by the ignorant and illiberal of other nations. Of all the national prejudices I am acquainted with, I know none more completely unfounded. I am convinced, from long observation, that the tout ensemble of the character of the Scotch will bear an advantageous comparison with that of any other nation in Christendon.-Ibid.

THE MOнOCKS.-Ye gods and goddesses! what a precipitous fall from feasting upon the godlike acts of M'Intosh, to write about the miscreants with whose designation I have headed this paragraph! It is like sinking from

"The heights of th' empyreal heaven,”

at one single plunge, into the darkest abysses of

"Pluto's dire abodes."

Some readers may not know who or what these Mohocks were. To them it may be proper to state, that, about the beginning of the last century, a host of ruffians in London, some of them of the most respectable families, associated under this title, and used to sally out into the streets after dark, cutting, maiming, and disfiguring every man they met with, and expos ing the women in the most scandalous and indecent manner.

And all this barbarity was perpetrated, good heavens! for mere amusement! What! cut a man's nose or ears off for amusement! Can it be possible? exclaims the reader. It is unfortunately not only possible, but absolutely and awfully certain. They were, at length, but with considerable difficulty, extirpated by the police.

How infinite the diversity of man! On one side you see a M'Intosh, approaching to the nature of the Divinity; while on the other you discover a Mohock, bearing the unerring stamp of all the horrible features of the infernal fiends.-Idem, p. 529.

JUGGLERS. Some of the tricks performed by jugglers are so very extraordinary as to baffle every attempt to solve the arcana of the performers. Tennent, in his Indian Recreations, informs us, that he saw a small child with its limbs doubled up, which was suspended in the air in a tent. He and other persons, with drawn swords, cut the air above, below, and on every side, suspecting it might be suspended in that position by twine or cords rendered invisible by art. Their attempts to cut the child down were in vain. It remained suspended in the air.

He likewise recounts another feat. A juggler, amidst a very large concourse of people, assembled to behold his performances, brought a child into an open field. He had two large baskets, under one of which he placed the child, and the other he laid down empty at a considerable distance. After pronouncing various incantations, and making many strange gestures, he raised the baskets, and it appeared that the child had changed his position, and was under the basket which had been empty. Tennent and others made a strict examination, and ascertained that there was no subterraneous communication by which the child might have been conveyed from one basket to the other.

How shall we account for these and many similar things? Shall we ascribe them to the skill or address of the performers? They utterly transcend the ordinary physical powers of man. Shall we, then, admit necromancy? If we do in one case, where shall we fix its limits? I cannot reply.-Ibid.

SYNONYMOUS WORDS.-I have been very much diverted lately with a recent work, published, and for sale in London, by