endowed, will prevent or even diminish the number of street-beggars. The public and private charities of London alone have been estimated to amount from £900,000 to 1,000,000 annually. Spain swarms with beggars clothed in rags, though the principal cities and towns abound in hospitals for the indiscriminate reception of all sorts of persons. The charitable institutions of Naples and Rome can only be exceeded by those of London: into the former all are received, and, if we may believe Baretti, every one, who will submit to become an object of charity, is considered as poor enough to deserve it—and yet in Italy, it has been said that every tenth person is a beggar.

Societies for the suppression of beggars, for the relief of occasional distress, and for the encouragement of industry among the poor, have been eminently successful in Edinburgh, in Bath, Bristol, Oxford, and several other large towns of England; and if in London each parish would form a society of the same kind, the evil would soon be very much diminished, though perhaps not wholly removed. The Rev. Henry Budd thinks that little can be expected until beggars are deprived of the pretext for begging, and that this can only be done by a large penitentiary system, and four or five establishments in different parts of the town, where every person knocking at the door might have admission;' and he adds, the great mass of misery which floats on this metropolis, I am fearful, can never be removed unless there is such a penitentiary system as that to which I have alluded.' These penitentiary houses are not meant to be, like the parish workhouses, mere nurseries for idleness; but, like the great Hospicio, or general workhouse at Cadiz, they would be supplied with spinning-wheels, carding-engines, looms, stocking-frames, for the women; and working benches with tools for carpenters, joiners, turners, tailors, shoe-makers, &c. into which all the distressed poor, whether parochial or not, ought to be admitted; where work would be found for those who are able to work, and food for all. No inquiries nor scrutiny into their previous history should be demanded; but, as Baretti says of similar institutions in Italy, the gates of such places, like the gates of heaven, should be opened wide to the distressed man, to the helpless babe or orphan, to the repenting prostitute, to every creature that knocks.' And though it is not to be expected that each house would earn sufficient for its entire maintenance, yet it is no trifling consideration, as a matter of parochial economy, if institutions of this kind should be found to diminish by one half, or even one third, that unequal and oppressive tax now levied for the support of the poor.

VOL. XIV. NO. XXVII.

ART.

ART. VII. Tracts relative to the Island of St. Helena; written during a Residence of five Years. By Major-General Alexander Beatson, late Governor, &c. 4to. London. 1816. pp. 330. THE island of St. Helena had long been considered as a na

tural curiosity, and we had some books, and a great number of drawings and engravings which conveyed to Europe a very adequate notion of this extraordinary spot of ground; which, of all existing islands, certainly most deserves the fanciful description of 'a gem set in the ring of the sea.'* The selection of this place as the residence of Buonaparte has revived and increased the public curiosity on this subject; and, as usually happens, we have been, for the last six months, epidemically over-run with accounts, plans, and views of St. Helena, most of which are borrowed and deteriorated from former publications. The work now before us is, however, of a different character. It contains little else than statistical, meteorological and agricultural observations on the island, and plans for its better administration and cultivation, made by General Beatson during his government. The Tracts of which the volume is composed were published from time to time in St. Helena, for the purpose of stimulating and directing the efforts of public industry; and if Buonaparte had never communicated any share of the interest which he inspires, to St. Helena, we suppose that General Beatson might nevertheless have collected these essays into one volume; but it would have been, we presume, a volume of more modest dimensions and more moderate price.---Buonaparte seems to infect every thing he approaches with an unnatural pomp and inflation, and his residence at St. Helena has, we have no doubt, swelled out General Beatson's book, from its natural size and price of a six shilling octavo, to an ostentatious two guinea quarto, wire-wove, hot pressed, and adorned with engravings.

*The following curious allusion to St. Helena is to be found in Sir Paul Rycaut's translation of the Spanish Critic, 1681.

Within the chrystaline center of the hemisphere lies enamelled a small isle, or pearl of the sea, or esmerald of the land; to which the august empress gave it her own name, that it might be queen of all other isles, and crown of the ocean. This isle of St. Helena, (for so it is called,) in the passage from one world to the other, yields refreshment to the grand cargason of Europe, and hath always been a free port, preserved by Divine Providence between those immense gulfs to afford entertainment for the eastern catholic fleet.'

It is a singular coincidence that this author, describing a person shipwrecked on this island, should instance such a circumstance as one of the modes of terminating an illus

trious political or warlike existence. The land,' he says, 'seemed too narrow a theater to act the tragedies of death, until man found a passage to his destiny through both elements. Perils do both fear and respect great persons whom death itself is sometimes ambitious to spare; thus the serpents spared Alcides, the tempests Cæsar, the sword Alexander the Great, and the bullets had no commission for Charles the Fifth.' A future translation will find it very germain to the matter' to add, that the guillotine spared Buonaparte, destined, we hope, to end his days in this very island.

The

The only portion of this gaudy volume, which is of any interest or value to Europeans, is the introductory chapter, in which, as a foundation for the practical details which ensue, General Beatson endeavours to shew that the island is capable of great improvement, and, if wisely improved, of affording a rich and inexhaustible depôt of fresh provisions and vegetables to the trade of the southern and eastern world. Hitherto its supplies have been scanty; and, as the demand was precarious, there was occasionally much disappointment, and always great extortion. The common opinion has been that the island is rocky and unproductive, mostly devoid of soil, scantily supplied with water, subject to severe and unusual droughts, and infested with vermin; and that, under those disadvantages, a better cultivation was impracticable. General Beatson undertakes to prove, that all these assertions are greatly exaggerated, whenever they are not wholly unfounded.

He finds the island pre-eminently fruitful in corn and every species of fruit and vegetable ;-abundantly supplied with fine springs and currents of water, which have long flowed idly into the sea, but which might be applied (as they have already been, in some instances, with signal success) to the purposes of irrigation. With regard to the supposed droughts, he proves, by the rain-gage, that the fall of rain at St. Helena is somewhat more than in London; nor does the rain come down at once in tropical torrents, because, except in very dry seasons, there is rain in every month in the year; and, on an average, the number of days on which rain falls, is 135. In the year 1810, for example, there were 141 days on which rain fell, of which the number in each month was as follows:

Jan. 11 Apr. 10
Feb. 6 May 17
Mar. 17

July 10
Aug. 13

Oct. 17

Nov. 10

June 10 Sept. 8 Dec. 12 Of the climate in general he, like all former writers, speaks in the most favourable terms. It is a happy medium between dull equability and violent vicissitude--the average temperature is, at the Plantation House, from 61 to 73 deg. of Farenheit; at James Town, on the sea shore, it is about 5° higher; and at Longwood, 2000 feet above the sea, about 5° lower than at the Plantation House. On the alleged plague of rats, General Beatson's ex-perience is equally satisfactory;-by a little ordinary care, he cleared his farms and gardens of vermin more completely than he could probably have done in England.

The greatest want, however, under which the island labours is that of fuel. Coals have been actually sent from Newcastle to St. Helena, for the consumption of the island; and, under existing circumstances, we apprehend that this singular trade must be carried to a greater extent than heretofore. Fortunately the climate does

not require a great expense of fuel; and General Beatson asserts, that, in a very few years, with ordinary care, the island might be made to produce wood for its own consumption of fuel, and for all the other purposes of life.

We cannot follow General Beatson into the useful but dull details of the agricultural processes which he proposes, nor the various calculations with which he supports his doctrine : to our readers, they would be uninteresting, and in a great part unintelligible, though to the practical St. Helena farmer, they must have been very useful and necessary, as our readers will judge when we acquaint them that, though it is three hundred and thirteen years since the island was discovered, General Beatson has the honour of being its Triptolemus, and of first introducing the plough; and that, of two thousand acres fit for the purpose in the island, only eighty-eight are under cultivation.-p. Ixiii.

We shall now present to our readers a slight sketch of the appearance of the island; such as it is exhibited in the General's introductory chapter.

St. Helena is a mass of rock, 103 miles long, 62 broad, and 28 in circumference; it is distant from Ascension Island, the nearest land, 600 miles,--from Africa, 1200 miles,-and from South America, 1800. It has every appearance of being the creation of a submarine volcano, or, what is more probable, the summit of a great submarine mountain, which formerly was a volcano. The coast is, on all sides, fenced by stupendous and almost perpendicular cliffs, rising to the height of from five hundred to more than twelve hundred feet above the sea. The principal inlets by which the island can be approached, are James Town, Rupert's Bay, Lemon Valley, on the N. W. side, and Sandy Bay on the S. E. All these landing-places are regularly and strongly fortified; but besides these principal places, there are also several ravines where persons may, though with difficulty, laud; but most of these are also protected by batteries, or are so easily defended by rolling stones from the heights, that no body of men, attempting to gain the interior by any of these ravines, could, as General Beatson thinks, have the smallest prospect of success, (p. Ixxxii.); and he states his opinion, that two or three men stationed on the heights above the entrance of any one of these ravines, would render it utterly impossible for any number of troops, however great, to approach them; and this opinion is, he states, founded on repeated experiments made at Goat Pound Ridge, which is over the landing-place of Young's Valley. The account of these experiments appears to us to savour a little of exaggeration; our readers shall judge

A single stone, which weighed about eighty pounds, being set off from

from the top of this ridge, very soon acquired a rotatory motion, and at first rebounded greatly on the declining surface. As the velocity of the stone was accelerated, the force with which it rebounded and struck the loose and brittle rocks of course increased, and at each rebound, numerous stones and fragments of rock were detached; these following in continued succession, and spreading to the right and left, operated precisely as the first stone; so that by the time it had reached the bottom of the hill, myriads were in its train, which covered a space of at least one hundred yards, and flew with such prodigious force across the ravine that many of the larger stones ascended to the height of sixty or eighty feet upon the opposite hill. Such was the astonishing effect produced by this single stone, that it seemed to me that if a whole battalion had been drawn up in the ravine, not a man could have escaped alive.'— p. lxxxiii.

When, to these means of defence, even though they may be a little exaggerated, it is added that no vessel can approach in any direction without being descried at the distance of sixty miles, and her appearance instantaneously communicated over the whole island, we are not surprized that General Beatson declares it to be, with ordinary care, and a moderate garrison, absolutely impregnable.

A more interesting question than the possibility of invasion, is, at this moment, the possibility of evasion,--a question to which General Beatson does not allude, unless by the inference which may be drawn, that if the former is so difficult, the latter can be hardly less so; but this inference we are inclined to deny. With at least a dozen places where embarkation is possible, and with a general state of fine weather, we do not doubt that any one or two individuals, having the command of a certain degree of naval assistance from without, may (not reckoning on any treachery within) escape from St. Helena, unless they are watched personally all day, and closely imprisoned all night.

The custody of Buonaparte, which Europe has confided to us, is a very ticklish point, and, do as we may, we shall hardly escape censure; if he be not actually confined, he may, and probably will, escape if he be confined, we shall have all the Oppositions in Europe crying shame.

We shall never cease to think, and we therefore honestly avow the opinion, that the conduct pursued by the allied governments, with regard to Buonaparte, was weak, indiscreet, unjust, and unjustifiable.---He should have been brought to the block; his life should have been the forfeit of his rebellion against the king of France, and his treason against all the nations of Europe. He who caused them should have expiated by his own death, the murders of Provence, La Vendée and Waterloo. We talk not of his former crimes--they were screened by the treaty of Fontainebleau ;