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increase in the agricultural and money value of the inland fenny districts has been, or is likely to be, effected.

In brief, the Dutch have had the great outlet for the rains and melting snows of half a continent to confine, an angry ocean to battle with, and lands to pump out and keep dry, which lie beneath the lowest level of the surrounding waters. The candid fen-land engineer will confess that these circumstances must have given a character and interest to the foreign struggle, to which, in the difficulties of our home improvers, there has been happily nothing to correspond.

The form or shape which our successive home improvements have assumed, indicate at once the physical character of the country, and the progress of mechanical skill in all that relates to fen-land drainage. They prove also the direct bearing which advancement in one line of art has upon other branches. present we can only advert to the general character of these improvements.

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The beds of the rivers had been raised by gradual deposits. Like the Rhine, the Po, and the Mississippi, they ran on the top of long hills or ridges, raised by their own waters, and, after heavy rains, the extensive pastures on their banks were liable to be flooded. High and strong dykes were therefore raised to shut them in; and, as early as William the Conqueror, it is recorded that the river Welland, along the Deeping fen, was thus inclosed by a 'mighty bank.'

The low fen-land was frequently more or less under water, and the outlets were stopped. The remedy was to cut new channels from these lands, either into the open Wash, or into the lower part of the river courses. The earliest of such modern cuts-' Morton's 'leam'-was made in 1478, by Morton, Bishop of Ely, afterwards so celebrated, as the chosen counsellor of Henry the Seventh, and patron of Sir Thomas More. In 1630, Francis Earl of Bedford, the father of this great drainage, made the old Bedford river and several other important river canals. His son, the first Duke, in the time of the Commonwealth, in conjunction with the celebrated Sir Cornelius Vermuyden, whose operations in the valley of the Don are the most striking chapter in the History of the Isle of Axholme, constructed many additional drains for the accomplishment of this great object. The Bedford Level Corporation' was formed soon afterwards, in the time of Charles the Second; the conservation of the former works was intrusted to them; and many new ones are attributed to their subsequent exertions.

But the drainage was still incomplete; the mouths of the rivers choked up more and more; and the water in the canals, which had been cut to these rivers at various points, was not low enough

to dry the land. Fen after fen, therefore, was inclosed, after the manner of the Dutch polders; ring canals were dug; windmills were erected; and the water by their means lifted into the beds of the rivers. This was found to be so effectual, that the mills were multiplied, until there were upwards of five hundred on the Bedford level alone!

The winds, however, were fickle and unsteady. With his crops ready for the sickle, the farmer sometimes experienced 'sudden and complete ruin. An unexpected fall of rain deluged 'his land, while his mills-his only hope-stood with their sails 'unmoved by a breath of wind. The fruits of the labour and industry of the past year perished on the ground.' But Watt now brought the unsleeping steam-engine to his aid: And the windmill gradually gave way to it. There are now none on the north or south divisions of the great level; though about a hundred and fifty still remain on the middle division, and a hundred more on other parts of the fenny country. These engines secure not only an efficient drainage, but they secure it at the time and season when it is most required.

Unfortunately the outfalls of the rivers were meanwhile neglected. They were allowed to be choked up to such a degree, that great floods were from time to time inevitable. Those from the Nen, especially, towards the end of the last century, were very injurious to the whole length of the north level. At length Mr Rennie and other eminent engineers were consulted: and so efficacious have been the works executed upon the Nen, that not only has the land been laid dry, but both windmills and steam-engines can now be dispensed with-while the whole drainage is accomplished by the natural descent of the water to the sea, at an annual expense of from four to five shillings an acre.' Various improvements have also been made upon the outfalls of the Witham, the Welland, and the Ouse: and when the objects of the bill of 1844, relating to this latter river, are fully carried out, it is expected that artificial drainage will become unnecessary;—that the 170 windmills and the seven steam-engines of the middle level will disappear; that the last of the lakes, Whittlesea Mere, will be obliterated from the map,' * and the whole district rendered dry by the natural descent of the waters to the lower sea. Could the Boston sluice be also removed, the fens on the Witham would likewise obtain a natural drainage, and of the

Whittlesea Mere covers 1570 acres. It is no modern creation; for we find it granted in 664 by Wolphere, King of Mercia, to his new monastery of Medehampstead (now Peterborough), destroyed by the Danes in 870.

fifty steam-engines and two hundred and fifty windmills now at work in these counties, scarcely one would, after a few years, be seen.

This progress of engineering improvement is very interesting. River mouths had got filled up, and their waters dammed back; huge dykes are therefore drawn along their channels, to prevent the streams from overflowing. But the low lands through which they ran were full of water, and had no outlet; canals are therefore cut to the lower parts of the rivers, to afford this water an escape. Again, the mouths of these rivers became choked up still further, or the fall given to them has not proved sufficient, or they have been dammed back by sluices for the purposes of navigation, so that the drainage is, or gradually becomes incomplete upon this, the windmill is set to work, and the water is scooped up from the ditches, to a level high enough to allow it to pass off by more elevated canals, or by the channels of the rivers themselves. At the next step steam displaces wind; by doing its work more effectually and more cheaply, while it is, at the same time, more under command. Then appears the the pump in place of the scoop-wheel and the screw. And last of all, after these numerous transitions, cuts are made from the fens direct to the sea, or (what is equivalent to this), the mouths of the rivers are cleared out, and canals carried directly into them. Thus dykes suddenly become useless, and wind and steam are alike dismissed.* We confess that we look with great delight at a result such as this; and there is something of romance to us in the perusal of the difficulties, through which successive generations have fought their way to arrive at it. That Vermuyden possessed the idea which is the key to all this, is clear, by the way in which, through cutting the Dutch river, he intended to drain the valley of the Don. But levels were not accurately taken; funds failed; individual interests interfered; the details of the operations were often mismanaged; the action of the silt-depositing tidal waters was not understood; great operations could not be comprehended by the masses, and parties could not agree to combine their means and strength. These and other obstacles prevented the general idea by which the

The reader will form a clearer idea of the nature of this last improvement when we state, that in some districts, as at Waldersey, in Marshland, the water is at present pumped up from ten to twenty feet into the river, although the land from which it is raised is many feet above the level of the sea, and would have a natural drainage were the outfall of the river improved. Instead of lifting it over the dam of high land that now confines the water, a passage should be cut for it to run through.

most recent improvements have been regulated, from being sooner taken up as the guiding clue by fen-engineers. Accordingly, what happens in almost all cases of large results, has happened in this. The game has been long protracted; it has been often badly played; but the winning move, which we now see might have been made sooner, is made at last.

It is clear, that, when the whole of our fen and marsh lands shall thus be drained by natural outfalls, all similarity between the Bedford level and the Dutch drainage will cease; and pumping and poldering will be seen in no other country of Europe but in that of the Netherlands. The projected Victoria level, for which an act has recently been obtained, and which is to consist of a hundred and fifty thousand acres, to be dyked in from the Wash, is, as regards extent, a much greater work than the drainage of the Haerlem sea. But, as regards the real character of the undertaking, it is much less so. The Victoria level, after being embanked, will be warped up to the level of high water, and will thus have a natural drainage ever after. Seventy-three thousand acres of it are already land at the receding of the tide.' But the Haerlem lake has to be first pumped dry; and then it must be kept dry by permanent engines at a perpetual expense. When cultivated and peopled, it will always continue liable to sudden destruction, as often as one of those secular periods shall arrive, in which the same concurring circumstances shall again bear the Northern Ocean over barriers it has so frequently been known to climb before.

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In many things our English level drainage has the superiority over that of the Netherlands; and in many more, we surpass them in our level farming. We regret, indeed, that our space now prevents us from doing ampler justice to our eastern counties in both respects. But the intellectual interest, both actual and future, which attaches to the water-fights, in which our more amphibious neighbours must always be engaged on the other side of the German Ocean, is vastly greater than we can ever expect or fear on this.

A single word more to our Netherland readers. You are replacing your windmills and scoop-wheels by our English steamengines and pumps. Are there no parts of your country in which you can also imitate our improvements in the outfalls of streams and canals? Can none of your lower mosses be elevated and fertilised by the process of inland warping, which is so wonderfully enriching our moors around the Isle of Axholme, through the medium of the muddy waters of the Trent?

ART. VII.-Florentine History, from the Earliest Records to the Accession of Ferdinand the Third, Grand-Duke of Tuscany. By HENRY EDWARD NAPIER, Captain in the Royal Navy. 6 vols. London: 1846-7.

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HERE is a vigour and vivacity, an earnestness of purpose and an independence of opinion, in these volumes, which attract us strongly towards them, notwithstanding their prolixity, their digressions, their defective arrangement, and grievous punctuation. It is agreeable to meet with a history which is neither a compilation nor an abridgement; and with an historian who reflects, in his rough and racy style, the picturesque simplicity of his originals. It is evident in every page of his work, that Captain Napier loves Florence as if he were 'native there, and to the ' manner born;' and that he writes not to make a book, but, like Bunyan, because a thought was in his heart.'

In seeking to draw attention to Italy, or whatever appertains to Italy, there is little hazard of an author's miscarrying through any want of interest in the subject. From Addison to Eustace, from Eustace to the latest Publishers' Circular,' Italy, as the theme of the tourist alone, fills no mean space in literary statistics. In other compartments of the same vineyard the labourers may be reckoned by scores, 'and exhibit almost every degree of merit or defect. Nor is this attractiveness of the subject owing merely to the fertility of Italian annals in such incidents and characters, as both history and fancy equally delight in. The chronicles of Ghent, Nuremberg, and Antwerp, abound equally with those of Venice, Genoa, and Florence in materials for truth and fiction. Dino Campagni and the Malespini are not more graphic and entertaining than our own Holinshed and Hall. Froissart and de Comines surpass Villani and Ammirato in the importance of what they have seen and what they have to tell. The Hartz and the Rhine are more prolific than the Apennines and the Arno, in legends that rouse and stir the fell of hair,' and in traditions that in

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struct the historian and inspire the poet. But Italy early got ahead, took the lead, and keeps it. The prejudices of our education co-operate with our first associations of civilised life, and with the hereditary impressions of poetry and romance. form and impress are reflected from a thousand mirrors upon our imaginative literature. Her seal and signature are set upon many of our forms of worship, and upon most of our schools of art. They are legible in our codes of law and our ledgers, in

VOL. LXXXVI. NO. CLXXIV.

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