they are subscribed in several instances by such names as Miss Edgeworth, Miss Baillie, and Hannah More. The Naval Correspondence embraces nearly the whole literary efforts of Sir John Sinclair. To promote the best interests of our marine, he made various suggestions, and addressed many inquiries to different officers in that service; and in all instances the writers appear to have treated Sir John with civility and kindness, thereby manifesting their sense of the innocent motives by which he was actuated. In introducing his Military Correspondence, Sir John tell us that he was the first to raise a Scotch Regiment of Fusileers, for the general defence of Great Britain, and with very justifiable pride he refers to numerous testimonials which the regimentreceived for its conduct, discipline, and its remarkably healthy condition. Letters from officers in all the military services of Christendom, we believe, are collected in this department, the very names of whose authors on many occasions, but particularly in those cases where the letters are dated from the Russian territory, would be sufficient almost to deter our readers from perusing them. Sir John appears to have been delighted with old Blucher, to whom he was introduced in London, and who had acquired so much civilization as to say to the Baronet, that he liked farming, and would send home a Scotch plough. When the battle of Waterloo was fought, Sir John Sinclair naturally concluded that a victory so worthy of renown should be celebrated by a competent historian. Accordingly, the baronet took the matter in hand himself: he solicited materials from all quarters, he patronised Baron Muffling, on whom he prevailed to dare the press; and at last, to ensure the authenticity of his immortal narrative, Sir John applied to Wellington himself for a few facts," on which posterity could rely." The answer of the Prince of Waterloo is strikingly characteristic. "I can give you no information that would be of any use to you. My mind was so completely occupied with the great events of the battle, that I could not pay any attention to its minor details. All that I can tell you is, that we met the enemy: that we fought a battle: and that we gained a victory." As we have already had occasion to observe, Sir John Sinclair was not a man to be diverted from his purpose by even the most unpromising disappointments. As he was not prepared for the task of giving to fame the story of the three days' contention, he was contented to limit himself to the history of one; and instead of the Battle of Waterloo entire, Sir John has only written the episode of the attack on Hougomont. These martial reminiscences shortly subside into the most tranquil discussions, and, indulging in some soothing thoughts on a peace establishment, the philanthropic baronet easily prepares us for the appearance of the clerical correspondence, the extent of which shews that Sir John was as influential amongst the children of Mercury as of Mars-tam Mercurio quam Marti. The subjects of those letters being in no instance theological, the reverend correspondents are in general charitable and decorous. The Bishop of Llandaff writes very amiably on agriculture and politics. Dr. Chapman, of Cambridge, acknowledges the present of a copy of an ancient edict against Bacchanals, without the breach of any commandment. Other letters follow from Dr. Tucker, on Sir John's tract on commercial freedom; from Dr. Price, on the national debt; from Dr. Kippis on a plan for retiring from Gibraltar (all works by Sir John Sinclair ;) then from individuals of the Scotch, American, and French clergy, one of the latter of whom presented him with an interesting biography of Robespierre. The following anecdote, as it exhibits the necessity of exercising caution in the business of life, deserves to be preserved. To see such men as Whitbread foremost in an attempt to inflict an undeserved penalty, after a hasty and an erroneous judgment, ought to be a lesson of permanent admonition to us all. A motion had been made in Parliament for an inquiry into the conduct of Captain Lake of the navy, who was accused of having left a seaman called Robert Jeffery, on a desert island in the West Indies, where it was said he had actually perished; and Captain Lake was therefore considered guilty of his murder. Mr. Archibald Lee, a gentleman attached to the American embassy, had requested me to procure him permission to hear the debates in the House, and we were sitting under the gallery together, when this motion was brought on. Mr. Lee expressed his astonishment that the time of the House should be taken up about such a business, since he had actually received a letter by the last packet from America, stating that Robert Jeffery was alive and safe at New York. I was much struck with so singular a circumstance thus accidentally communicated to me, and having every reason to confide in the truth of the information given me, I thought it right to mention it to the House, to prevent any measure being hastily taken on the supposition that Robert Jeffery was dead. It is astonishing the noise which this circumstance occasioned. The truth of my information was disputed in some of the anti-ministerial papers. I received anonymous letters reprobating me as the associate of murderers, and threatening me with vengeance; and Mr. Whitbread wrote to me to say, "I should be glad if you would take the trouble to inform me of the name of the gentleman upon whose authority you stated in the House of Commons that Jeffery was alive at New York: and how soon he is expected to return to England, as I have received information of a very different complexion; your immediate answer is requested." Captain Lake's friends also applied to me, requesting to be informed on what authority I had asserted a fact of so much importance to their relation." Sir John then goes on to give the particulars of other pressing applications made to him for the same purpose, and such was the degree of importunity by which he was assailed, that it is probable repented of his interference. Sir John Sinclair commemorates, with much pride and pleasure, the circumstance of his having been instrumental in rewarding the invention of the thrashing machine. It is a fact worthy the attention of the philosopher and politician, that in the very year in which the memory of the inventor of such an engine should have been held forth to public admiration, and credit taken by a living writer for having patronized him, the discovery should be treated as a nuisance of extensive mischief to the peasantry, and several machines be violently destroyed. The man's name was Andrew Meikle; and Sir J. Sinclair says, that he had the satisfaction of collecting for this individual, as a public testimony of admiration for his ingenuity, a sum of 1,5007. and of thus raising him and his family from that poverty which would otherwise have overwhelmed. them. A considerable portion of the work is occupied with remarks of a miscellaneous nature, on the various countries of Europe which Sir John Sinclair visited in the course of his very active life. These observations are chiefly of a political or statistical nature; and numerous and no doubt correct as they are, many of them are rendered wholly fruitless by the changes which the current year is making, and has made, on the aspect of European affairs. We never cease, however, all through the work, to entertain the fullest sense of Sir John Sinclair's benevolent nature. The industry and perseverance which he had devoted to the general good of mankind, would have secured a splendid fortune in any walk in life to one less disinterested than Sir John. Whether or not his success has been commensurate with his wishes and designs, the praise of meaning well and kindly to his fellow-creatures will follow the good old man to his grave. In contemplating examples of genuine benevolence such as that before us, we are always struck at the strange absence or imperfection of those necessary endowments, by which such benevolence could be most usefully and extensively carried into operation. Is this ever to be so? indeed a law of our nature that a man shall be incapable of being wise and good at the same time; that the very innocence which permits him to desire the happiness of his fellows, is inconsistent with the intellectual power by which such an object can be compassed? If Napoleon had had but the heart of Sir John Sinclair, united with the talents by which he was characterized, in what a world might we not now have been breathing! NOTICES. ART. XI.-Standard Novels—1. The Pilot. 12mo. pp. 420. 2. Caleb Williams. pp. 452. THIS is a good idea. Mr. Colburn, and Messrs. Colburn and Co., have L Is it undoubtedly published, in the course of a single or joint career, several novels which well deserve to be reprinted, and which, in a cheap form, would obtain a much wider VOL. II. NO. I. circulation than they have hitherto enjoyed. It was wise, therefore, to meet the spirit of the time, which, all-reforming as it is, most especially desires to bring down the price of books to a standard that will render them generally accessible to the middling and mechanical classes. The publishers have announced their intention of issuing a series of such reprints, as companions to the Waverley Novels. If they limit their enterprise to those works which, in the language of their prospectus, have been stamped by the "unerring voice of Fame!" they will soon come to a close. "Unerring voice of Fame!" We never before heard, that this celebrated distributor of laurels assumed to herself the attribute of infallibility. But even if that were the case, who is to be judge of the particular works which have been so fortunate, as to be favoured by her unerring admiration? Where are we to look for the evidence of it? Are we to find it in those pretty paragraphs which, somehow or other, find their way into certain newspapers, without the title of advertisement prefixed to them, but which the initiated, who are now indeed the public at large, easily detect at the first glance? Are these to be the proofs of your "unerring voice of fame?" or are we to collect them from the "New Monthly Magazine," whose independence in literary criticism is so unquestionable? Nous verrons. The first two numbers of the publication, containing the whole of the "Pilot," and "Caleb Williams," with handsome frontispieces, are now before us; and though the type and paper are not quite so good as we should wish, we must say that they form an auspicious beginning. We are certainly no admirers of the "Pilot," and we candidly confess that we have made many attempts to read it, but never could succeed. We know others who have been placed in a similar predicament. But still the "voice of fame" has lauded this work to the skies; and though we cannot admit that, in this instance at least, it has been “unerring," it has convinced many readers that the "Pilot" is a capital novel. "Caleb Williams" has our vote and best interest. There, indeed, we are hand in hand with the publishers, to whose undertaking we wish every success. ART. XII.-The Book of the Seasons; or, the Calendar of Nature. By William Howitt. 12mo., pp. 404. London: Colburn and Co. 1831. THERE are few subjects which we more desire to see well treated than that so well chosen by Mr. Howitt. He would seem, in every respect, peculiarly fitted to shine in it. He loves nature with an unfeigned enthusiasm; he has traced with a tender vigilance all her various features and changes; her clouds and sunshine; her serene hours, and her angry tempests. His poetiIcal tendencies have enabled him to detect, with a keen eye, the thousand stores of loveliness which she has hidden from the vulgar gaze, to catch the notes of the different songsters she has given to the woods and fields, to discover the many tufts of beauteous flowers which she has scattered, with a plentiful hand, along the hedges, and in the recesses of the mountains. To these excellent qualifications for a naturalist, Mr. Howitt adds a facility of diction, suitable to the subject, and in itself meritorious for its fluency and grace. Nevertheless, if we were asked whether this is the Book of the Seasons,' which we want, we should say that it is not. It is a little better, because more minute, than the calendar which is usually inserted in the Almanacks, but it does not at all excel that which will be found in the "Time's Telescope" for the present year. The most important business of the farmer, this month, is to feed and comfort his dependent animals. Towards the end of this month, (February,) we are gladdened with symptoms of approaching spring. Thrashing, tending cattle, early lambs, calves, &c., continue, as in the last month, to occupy the thoughts and hands of the husbandman. Manures, too, are carried to grass lands.' These, and pages of sentences such as these, together with tables setting forth the migrations of birds, form the staple of Mr. Howitt's work, and may be seen in any of the Calendars already published, as well as in his. The fault that pervades the volume, and renders it, in our opinion, a failure, is this, that the matter is not connected with the man. The great charm of old Walton's angling lucubrations, consists in their being identified with his own feelings and reveries. If a person tell us that the month of March is the time when inhabitants are in their gar dens, some clearing away rubbish, some turning up the light and fresh smelling soil amongst the tufts of snow-drops, and rows of bright yellow crocuses which every where abound,' he tells us no more than we already know, or may find in any book of gardening. But, if he say," you shall come with me into the garden; the old gardener has cleared away all the rubbish of the winter, and there you may now see him turning up the soil. What a wholesome fragrance springs from the newly exposed earth! Look at these snow-drops, how nun-like they cover with a white veil their modest and matchless charms! What a brilliancy do these crocuses impart to every bed they adorn! They are the heralds of the summer as well as of the spring!" With such a person as this, who, by expressing thoughts but faintly descriptive of his feelings, touches, nevertheless, the mystic chain of sympathy in our own breast, we should at once quit the desk, and go to see the objects which have kindled his admiration. But this man is not Mr. Howitt. He never impels us to move into the fields, or, if we go there, we do not think of him, for Nature always surpasses, in her power of enchantment, the laboured catalogue of her charms which he has recorded. It would be unjust not to add that he has written some pretty passages; and that the verses from his own pen, as well as from that of his amiable lady, interspersed through the volume, are marked with genuine feeling and taste. ART. XIII.-School and College Greek Classics. 1. Thucydides. 2. Herodotus. 3. Eschylus' Prometheus. 4. Euripides' Orestes. 8vo. All Booksellers. YOUNG students, in whose hands these new editions of the Greek classics shall be placed, before they have been troubled with any others, can hardly be made to understand the deep obligations which they owe to Mr. Valpy, who has thus so materially lightened and abridged the difficulties, that have long beset this department of liberal education. Besides that in general the best texts are adopted, they are printed in a clear and handsome type, and are accompanied by English notes, in which sometimes the |
