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the law of nature;" but, what he seems to consider of much higher importance, that "neutral powers had at length agreed to guaranty the rights of God!" p. 175. Lest all this should be insufficient to subdue Washington's fears, the archangel adds: that "the fleet of pitying Louis, wrapt in celestial clouds," had eluded the English, and was now entering the harbour. Washington has scarcely expressed his thanks for this intelligence, ere the French generals appear all heroes-all burning with the genuine love of freedom. The spectacle overcomes the American chief, and he bursts into an involuntary song of praise:

"Our gratitude

To mighty Louis passeth utterance: Next to our nature and to nature's God, We owe to him our freedom.” p. 176.

Mr. Northmore corroborates, in a note, this statement of the benefits bestowed by mighty Louis on the Americans, as well as their deep sense of them. This is perfectly right. We only lament that he did not exemplify it, by stating, from the papers before him, that festivals were instituted through the United States for the annual celebration of their benefactor's murder; and that Joel Barlow, the laureat of America, was called upon for a song of triumph over his bleeding trunk, which was not only sung with extraordinary rapture there, but in every part of Europe, where two or three Americans could be got together.

Book VIII. brings us to the opening of the poem! "Seraphick Splendour," whom we now find to be the Archangel Liberty, "halts over Yorktown," and amuses Washington with the relation of a scurvy trick which he has just put upon the English reenforcements." He has lured them," he says, "to Eustathius," and put out their eyes, so that they cannot discern friends from foes. p. 193. On the other hand, he clears Washington's sight, and.ena

bles him to distinguish the infernal host, which is just arrived from hell. Finding, as it should seem, that the general was not very conversant with the faces of the leaders, the archangel condescends to point them out to him with great minuteness.Among the rest, he shows him Satan "wrapt in thick darkness," and concealed behind his shield, of which "the boss was a vast and solid rock." p. 196. Of this shield we are favoured with an elaborate description; and certainly Bedlam never produced any thing so wild and incoherent. It is madness, stark staring madness, without a glimpse of intervening reason, and evinces the writer to be, not like the lunatick of Shakspeare, "of imagination all compact,” but of some earthy, atrabilious matter, jumbled into effervescence by the concussion of moody passions.

Book IX. opens with the battle of Yorktown. Cornwallis is terrified by the appearance of a balance "in the sable sky," in which the justice of Britain is weighed, and found wanting:

"back aghast

The hero shrank"

is to witness the total extirpation of and soon after, the day breaks which slavery from the United States:

"the dawn

'Gan to dispel from off the tainted earth, Foul slavery's latest vapours!"

Mr. N. is the most accurate of historians as well as of poets. We have not the American census of this year before us; but if we recollect rightly, there cannot be above two millions of slaves now smarting under the lash there; nor, as we verily think, have more than three millions of them been imported and sold in those pure regions, since the glorious defeat of Cornwallis established for ever the reign of freedom there on the natural rights of man. So consistent is the language of our author, and so correct are his feelings!

We must not pass over a circum

stance in this book, indeed, the only one worth noticing, if we except the scandalous conduct of Satan, in witnessing the defeat of his allies without an effort in their favour. We allude to the singular happiness of Mr. N. in being enabled to embellish his poetry by a simile drawn from his own estate! Homer and Virgil, his great prototypes, have left us in doubt whether they possessed any property or not; they talk, indeed, of their muses and their lyres; but of their "seats," mercy on us! unless on mount Parnassus, indeed. But hear Mr. N.

"As when the rapid Exe, by melted snows And northern torrents swoln, sweeps o'er the plains,

Nor herds, nor fields, nor hedge, nor bridge, nor town,

Can stop its furious course, while Exon's walls

And Cleve's green summits echo back the roar."-p. 216.

"Cleves," he subjoins, and we humbly thank him for the information," has long been the seat of the Northmores. It is situated on a commanding eminence" (grammercy, monsieur)" opposite to the ancient city of Exeter, the capital of the west of England."

Cingite:

-baccare frontem

for, if this does not excite envy, we know not what will.

Book X. Satan apologizes for his inactivity, and summons Moloch and the infernal spirits to arms. Nothing can exceed their rage, but their determined resolution. They give a horrid shout, which shakes all creation to its centre, and rush forward. "And now the earth had gone, against the will of heaven, to eternal wreck," had not Washington seen their approach, and called, in great haste, for the archangel Liberty, whom Satan, just before, terms " puny seraph." But what can one do against millions? Leave that to Mr. N. The seraph, puny as he is, flies

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Call you this backing your friends? Satan, however, Beelzebub, Moloch, and a few other chiefs, whose eyes Mr. N. thinks were stronger, remain behind, and enter into a consultation, the result of which O most lame and impotent conclusion ! is, to lay aside the arms which they had brought with such parade from hell," put off their heavenly forms,” and, in the shapes of their " fellow men," mix with the English and assist them with their advice:

"And may success, and better fate prevail."-p. 230.

How Beelzebub and Moloch dispose of themselves, does not appear; but Satan, finding a dead body on the field of battle, enters it, and repairs to Cornwallis, whom he advises to run away. The general is easily persuaded, and the preparations for flight are in some forwardness, when the whole plan is disconcerted by Michael; who, having discovered his old antagonist in the disguise of a dead man, instantly raises a storm, which prevents the embarkation of the troops. Satan, who is justly nettled at this contretemps, takes his revenge on the following day, by furnishing death with "a musket ball" to shoot col. Laurens, whose death is tenderly lamented by Washington and his army, and who, Mr. N. assures us in a note, was killed, “not in this battle, but, in a petty squabble somewhere else, about a twelvemonth after!" p. 236.

Things now hasten to a conclusion. Cornwallis, who can neither fight nor fly, is kindly advised by

the archangel Liberty to humble himself before Washington and ask for mercy. Upon which "he pours a flood of penitential tears;" and his friend Satan, who has now lost all hope, takes leave of him and earth forever, and returns to hell; leaving his splendid car to enrich the nomenclature of the chymists, when it shall fortunately be discovered behind the Apalachian mountains. Beelzebub, Moloch, and the rest, follow their chief; so that Mammon, who was then in England with his "two coffers," is now the only demon at large; but Mr. N. thinks that his stay among us will be short, and that the reign of universal peace and virtue will then commence. Meanwhile Michael shuts the gates of hell upon the fugitives: Cornwallis begs mercy of Washington, which is instantly granted, and Mr. N. patriotically exclaiming:

"But cease my soul, thus harassing thyself

To sing of Britons vanquish'd," concludes with a prayer to the archangel Liberty.

Such is Washington, as far as we have been able to decypher the story. As a composition it is utterly contemptible, devoid alike of consistency, spirit, poetry, grammar, and sense. The author is evidently some gloomy, discontented fanatick, who having sedulously collected all the factious and all the frantick trash which was published during the heat of the American war, and added to it whatever the restless

spirit of more recent malevolence could supply, has for twenty years been sullenly brooding over the noxious mass; and now, that every one wishes to forget the transactions of that lamented period, comes forward with a heated brain, and a perverted mind, for the unworthy purpose of reviving hatred, exasperating animosity, and tearing open the wounds which the lenient hand of time had well nigh closed. Let us not, however, be misunderstood;

-"The attempt, and not the deed, Confounds us.".

Mr. Northmore will assuredly effect nothing of this; nor should we have wasted a word on his most miserable doggrel, had not the spirit, in which it was produced, called for exposure and reprobation. We can pity honest folly, and smile, indulgently, at well-meant absurdity. But, when we find, as here, malevolence striving, in despite of natural imbecility, to fling its venom over all that we have been accustomed to revere, and to calumniate the sense, the spirit, and the honour of our country, under the hypocritical pretence of mewling about freedom, we hold it a sacred part of our duty to reject the offender's plea of stupidity, however gross and palpable, and, as the only punishment in our power, to suspend him, for an instant, over the gulf of oblivion, a mark for the finger of scorn and ridicule, before we suffer him to drop and be lostfor ever,

FROM THE QUARTERLY REVIEW.

American Annals; or, a Chronological History of America, from its Discovery, in 1492, to 1806. By Abiel Holmes, D. D. Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Member of the Massachussetts Historical Society, and Minister of the First Church in Cambridge, 2 vols. 8vo. Cambridge [in America.]

NOT many years ago, an American published an essay advising his countrymen to change their name, or rather to assume one, because, in

fact, they have none which properly and peculiarly belongs to them. He proposed Fredon for the country, from which there would be the re

gular derivatives, Frede and Fredish. For the poets, there was Fredonia, a word, it was thought, not less sonorous than Britannia; and its adjective Fredonian, to which the English would have nothing comparable. There is something whimsical in the fancy of changing the name of a nation; yet many inconveniences in literature arise from the anomaly of calling a part of the American continent by the appellation of the whole. There is an instance in this work of Dr. Holmes: as Fredish annals (if we may be allowed to accommodate ourselves from the essayist's nomenclature) it displays great industry and research, and is exceedingly valuable; but if it be considered, according to the full import of its title, as American Annals, it is meagre and miserably imperfect. Few of the Spanish writers have been consulted, those few only in translation, and Herrera, the most important of all, in a very mutilated one. The author's collection of French authorities is equally incomplete; and of the many important works which the ex-Jesuits have bequeathed to the world, as the legacy of their illustrious order, not one appears in his catalogue. Whoever has attempted to form an historical collection, relating to any particular country, will have learnt how difficult a task it is, and what a length of time, and persevering search it requires. But of all collections, there none so difficult as that of American history; because its materials are in so many languages, most of them are very rare, and the old books of one country are seldom to be obtained in another. In America the difficulty must be insuperable. Dr. Holmes will do well, therefore, in a subsequent edition, to restrict his subject to the history of the United States, beginning with the first voyage of Cabot. Whoever writes concerning the new world begins with Columbus now, just as two centuries ago every body that

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wrote, concerning the old one, be gan with Adam, or at least with Noah. It is time to have done with this: the History of Columbus is as well known to all who read history, as that of Noah himself. Books are now too numerous, paper too dear, and time too valuable to allow of these unnecessary repetitions.

Raleigh was the first person who attempted to form a settlement on what is now the United States. The second, and successful attempt, was projected by Hakluyt, a man to whose political foresight, and literary zeal, Europe and America are equally indebted. Sound political wisdom established the colony. The next, in order of time, owes its origin to a yet higher principle. The Puritans who had fled into Holland to avoid intolerance at home, carried with them English hearts. They could not bear to think that their little community should be absorbed and lost in a foreign nation. They had forsaken their birth place and their family graves, but they loved their country and their mother tongue, and, rather than their children should become subjects of another state, and speak another language, they exposed themselves to all the hardships and dangers of colonizing in a savage land. No people on earth may so justly pride themselves upon their ancestors as the New Englanders.

"Their humorous ignorance," says the captain Smith, who is so conspicuous in Virginian history, "caused them, for more than a year, to endure a wonderful deal of misery with an infinite patience." Within the first three months, half their number was swept off by the mortality to which new colonists are always subject. The dead were buried in the bank, at a little distance from the rock on which they landed; and their graves were levelled and sown, lest the Indians should discover the loss which they had sustained, and attack the weak and wretched survivers. The rock was covered

over about 70 years ago, in the erection of a wharf. An old man was then living, almost in his hundredth year, who remembered the first settlers, and he wept when he heard that this rock, which should have been preserved with religious vèneration, as the spot on which their fathers first set foot, had been thus carelessly put out of sight. His tears, says Dr. Holmes, perhaps saved it from oblivion. Having said thus much of this relick, it is remarkable that he has not given the remainder of its history. At the commencement of the revolution it was determined to bring it again to light. The sand with which it had been covered to the depth of twenty feet was cleared away, and as the rock in being laid bare was split into two parts, that circumstance was regarded as ominous of a separation between the colonies and the mother country. The larger half was left in its natural site, the other removed with great labour to the market place of the town of Plymouth; and though no inscription has yet been placed upon them, both are pointed out to all strangers with the reverence which they deserve.

While these truly patriotick men were struggling with their first difficulties, the Virginians were making a rapid progress. Some curious methods were adopted to forward the growth of this colony. Upon the motion of sir Edwin Sandys, treasurer of the company in London, ninety girls, young and uncorrupt, "were shipped off in one consignment, by the grace of God and in good condition," and in the year following a cargo of sixty men, all "handsome, and well recommended for their virtuous education." How these women were bought in England does not appear; they were, however, literally sold in Virginia for the benefit of the company, which had never speculated in so marketable a commodity. The price of a wife was at first a hundred pounds of tobacco; but rose

by degrees to a hundred and fifty, tobacco being worth three shillings a pound. The system of transporting criminals began at the same time. Transportation should be the punishment of state offences, and of no other. A man is not disqualified by his anti-patriotick feelings towards one country from being a valuable member of society elsewhere; change of climate is specifick for treason and sedition; but habits of profligacy render the moral criminal a bad subject any where. All that can be said in favour of the system is, that it is better to use men in this way than to waste them at the gallows; but it is the most expensive and least efficacious method of colonization.

During that unhappy war for which we have cause to feel shame, but they perhaps will have most reason to feel sorrow, a grenadier said of the Americans: "The Adam and Eve of this young nation came out of Newgate." The wit of the saying would have tempted many a man to the falsehood; but the soldier was probably ignorant enough to believe that his sarcasm was fairly applicable to the whole people. There are, however, few states whose origin is on the whole so respectable, none whose history is sullied with so few crimes. As for the usurpation of territory from the natives, he must be a feeble moralist who regards that as an evil: the same principle upon which that usurpation is condemned. would lead to the nonsensical opinion of the Brahmans, that agriculture is an unrighteous employment, because worms must sometimes be cut by the ploughshare and the spade. It is the order of nature that beasts should give place to man, and among men the savage to the civilized; and no where has this order been carried into effect with so little violence as in North America. Sir Thomas More admits it to be a justifiable cause of war even in Utopia, if a people who have terri

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