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the writer can judge, the public abhorrence has arisen from the anomalous manner in which it has been inflicted, and an opinion that passion rather than cool reason too often awards it. Nothing can be more evident than that on the principle of the existing military code, with a few practical and little expensive details to carry it further into execution, there can be no sphere of human life more capable of happiness than that of a soldier." -p. 19. The author demonstrates his assertions by very satisfactory proofs and deductions; his pamphlet is well deserving of the attention of the Commission of Military Inquiry, for which we understand his Majesty has recently issued his warrant.

Italian and English Dictionary, by F. C. Meadows, M.A.-This is a very comprehensive and generally accurate little volume. The dictionary is preceded by a concise and well-arranged grammar, in which general rules are clearly laid down, but the author does not notice the exceptions, which are often as numerous as instances of the rule itself; as in the case of the plural terminations of nouns. It strikes us this defect might be obviated in the next edition, without increasing the bulk of the volume, (which would be the case were all the exceptions noticed in the introductory grammar,) by subjoining in the first part of the Dictionary the plural termination to those nouns which are exceptions to the rules before given in the Grammar. For instance, we read, nouns ending in a are feminine, and form their plural in e: the scholar looks in the Dictionary for the Pope, he finds Papa; the Pope, then, is an old woman; (monarchs, dukes, and professional men are in the same predicament;) and for the Popes, if he follows his rule, he will write le Pape; instead of i Papi. Or even should he be too good a Catholic to doubt the sex of the Roman bishop, he will still be at a loss; for he is not told, as is usual in grammars, that all names of men are masculine, &c. Again, we are told nouns ending in o are masculine, (mano is an exception,) and form their plural in i, Dio makes Dei and uomo, uomini. Anello, castello, filo, and many others have two plural terminations; others, as frutto, gesto, labbro, three; these peculiarities should be noted in this manner :-Frutto 8. m. ti, te, ta, pl. fruit. Some marks should also be placed against obsolete words; the authority for many of them is given, which is good. We do not think the author has correctly given the plural termination of nouns in io, which is a great nicety in the Italian language, and he has

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adopted the colloquial o instead of the more elegant final a in the first person of the imperfect tense. Opening the Dictionary at hazard, we find Silenus inserted as an Italian word, which it certainly is not; Sileno being their cognomen for the foster-father of Bacchus. We are not aware that there are many Misses Silena in this country, but should there be any, we should certainly advise them to indict Mr. Meadows for a libel: here it is. Silena, s. f. a snubbed-nosed girl.' But let us not be misunderstood. We hope these remarks will be received as we give them, in perfect good humour, and we cordially recommend this little volume to all those who like to find a great deal of information in a small compass; as it contains, besides the Italian language as now spoken, a large number of antiquated words, contractions, and poetical licenses, the want of which, in most Dictionaries, renders the study of the old Poets generally so difficult.

Memorials of a Departed Friend.—A cultivated understanding, an elegant and refined taste, an affectionate and amiable disposition, and above all, a deep sense of religion, with a never-failing watchfulness over her own mind-such are the qualities which are shown in this interesting little volume, and with which we are acquainted from the pen of the writer herself. It is a pleasing memento of departed innocence and worth.

Ten plain Sermons, by the Rev. F. W. Fowle, Rector of Allington.-Plain, forcible, and sometimes eloquent, these sermons are worthy of the extensive patronage which they have received. The last, the Assize Sermon preached before Mr. Justice Taunton, and published at his and the Bishop's desire, rises to considerable excellence. The subject, the abuse of Liberty, was discreetly chosen, and treated with judgment and propriety; we think it might be printed in a cheap and separate form, for the use of the lower orders,

Who bawl for freedom in their senseless

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its mouth 159 miles broad; it receives in its course nearly 200 other rivers, many not inferior to the Danube ! We believe that the proper meaning of the word Ghauts is not mountains, as the author uses it, but the passes through them.

The Sunday School Reward-book. Selections from the new Version of the Psalms, &c.-A selection judiciously made, with an extract from Bishop Horne's beautiful and elegant Commentary.

Plain Sermons preached at Hampton, Middlesex, by Rev. H. F. Sidebottom, A.M.-These discourses, we are told, were received with much attention by the congregation. They are plain, perspicuous, sensible, and agreeable to Scripture-dwelling on the great leading doctrines of Christianity, enforcing them with earnestness, and explaining them with clearness and precision.

Memoirs of a Serjeant late in the 49th Regiment, and an Account of his Conversion, &c.-The use of such works as these, if use they have, is to fill up the details of authentic history; they form materials for the future Chronicler of the war in Spain; and even the observations of a common soldier may give an account of some particular manoeuvre or skirmish, the truth and accuracy of which may be of importance.

that he is somewhat comforted in the reflection that paralysis and poetry are united. Homer, he says, and Milton, were blind! Dante was a blear-eyed beggar man!! Tasso, mad; Pope, ricketty; Akenside, a cripple; Thomson, morbidly fattish; Shakspeare, stupid! Scott and Byron, lame; Cowper and Collins, mad; Coleridge had mannering fits of dreary daftness; and having thus recounted his lazar-book of diseases, the author considers his own complaint as affording an apology for venturing into the Limbo of fools. How he would have written while in health, we cannot say, but the following stanza seems to us a little morbid : Dim thro' the silence of that pageant hall, In widow weeds he saw a lady glide, And bending raise the gorgeous sable pall That served a shapen church-yard clod to hide ;

And with the ire of an insulted bride, Deep in the dead she plunged a gleaming knife, And wildly ran, with frantic accents cried, "Now I am free-I am no more a wife !"

Sketches of the Beginning and the End, in the Life of Gherardo de Lucca.

This tale of wonders,
And fatal blunders,
Of high-born beauties,
(We kiss their shoe-ties,)

With chisel'd hands, and scornful lips,
And eyes that sun and moon eclipse,

Sonnets, meditative and devotional, by And knights as straight and stiff as

Thomas Albin.

SONNET SIXTY-FIRST.

I tell a tale-wilt listen while I tell?

A little girl was playing with her toys, Some trifling thing, which o'er her held

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skewers,

Are bad subjects for Reviewers.

Literary Fables, from the Spanish of Yriarte, by Richard Andrews. 1835.The original tales of Yriarte are neatly devised, and skilfully and pleasantly executed; more simple than Fontaine, and more concise than Gay. The translation by Mr. Andrews, is very good. We will give a specimen from p. 75.

THE TWO THRUSHES.
A sage old thrush was once discipling
His son-in-law, a hair-brained stripling,
In the purveying art; he knew,
He said, where vines in plenty grew,
Whose fruit delicious, if he 'd come,
He might devour ad libitum.

'Ha! fruit! and is it good, I pray,
My honoured sir? do show the way.'
'Come then, my son,' the old one cried,
I to the spot will be your guide.
You can't imagine what a treat,
Such fruit it is-so plump and sweet.'
He said, and gliding through the air,
They reached the vine, and halted there.

Soon as the grapes the youngster spied,
Is this the fruit you praise?' he cried;
'Why, an old bird, sir, as you are,
Should judge, I think, more wisely far,
Than to admire, or hold as good,
Such half-grown-small-and worthless

food;

Come see a fruit which long I've known,
In yonder garden, and you'll own,
That not without some cause, I sneer,
At your poor dwarfish berries here."
'Well,' said the other, 'lead the way,
But I'll my head and feathers lay,
Before I see it, 't will be found

Not worth those skins upon the ground! They reached the spot the youth had named,

And he triumphantly exclaimed,
'Show me the fruit to equal mine,
A size so great, a shape so fine-
Now, now your silly taste confess,'
It was-a pumpkin-nothing less!
Now that a thrush should take this fancy,
Without much marvelling, I can see,
But it is truly monstrous, when
Men, who are held as learned men,
All books, whate'er they be, despise,
Unless of largest bulk and size;
A book is great, if good at all,
If bad-it cannot be too small.

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The Belgic Revolution, in 1830, by Charles White, Esq. 2 vols. 1835.-These volumes are written by a person of knowledge, acuteness, and observation, and form the very best account of that revolution, which, rising in the pit of the theatre, in a single night tore the crown of Belgium from the temples of the monarch. The causes of the discontent, its progress, and its movements; the delay, and difficulties, and errors of the king and his advisers, are clearly explained. The Allied Congress, in uniting two kingdoms so discordant, differing in language, religion, habits, interests, first laid the stone of future evil; secondly, William, by his preference of the Dutch in all situations, civil and military, increased it; thirdly, by delay, and obstinate inflexibility, he lost the chance of recovery; and, lastly, the total incompetence of Prince Frederic to fill the important office of commander of the invading and chastising army, in a most delicate and difficult crisis, sealed at once the fate of the sovereign, rendered re-union hopeless, and placed the revolted Belgians under a new and, we hope, a happier dynasty. Mr. White's book is highly interesting and instructive; it is the work of one who was present during the eventful period, from the breaking out of the revolution, to the

final settlement under Prince Leopold; who was acquainted with the principal persons, civil and military, both in Holland and Belgium,* who were concerned in the progress of the great events described; who was privy to the principal negociations; and who has formed a cool, deliberate, and statesman-like view of the whole.

New England and her Institutions, by one of her Sons. The most interesting chapter in this work, is that which gives us an account of Slavery in America. It appears that there are in America two millions of slaves and three hundred thousand free blacks; and their numbers are increasing at the rate of sixty thousand annually; a fearful number, which has long naturally excited attention and inspired alarm. The Americans have a colony at Liberia in Africa, where free blacks have been sent; but it absorbs only one drop in a shower, and the colony itself appears to be in an unprosperous situation. The account of the insurrection of the negroes in August 1831 in Virginia, is most terrific; and presents a more frightful picture of misery, consternation, and horror on the one side, and brutal and bloody ignorance and frantic cruelty on the other, than we ever remember. Alas! what is to prevent a second eruption of this fearful volcano, and desolation in all its terrors a hundred times as great?

Facts and Fictions, or Gleanings of a Tourist, by the author of Rostang. We must always withhold our approbation from tales like these; they are dangerous by the false lights, the artificial and exaggerated colouring which they throw over the events of life, and by the violent manner in which they act on the imagination. Events like those here described seldom occur; when they do, they should as speedily as possible be buried in oblivion. The history of guilty desires, unrestrained wills, misplaced affections, rash and headstrong resolves, and catastrophes ending in desolation and death, was borne for some time reluctantly in the poetry of Byron, but will be rejected, when offered again in the prose of his less illustrious successors.

* How came Mr. White to make so unscholar-like a blunder, as to assert that Scaliger was born in Holland? Why the marble statues of the great La Scalas, at Verona, shook upon their lordly pedestals? Is the blood of Julius come to this?

Sober Views of the Millenium, by the Rev. T. Jones, of Creaton, Northamptonshire. Of the extreme sobriety and moderation of Mr. Jones's views of a great event, supposed to be mysteriously predicted in Scripture, no doubt can be entertained; and we are most willing to separate the opinions of a very sensible man and pious Christian from the wild ravings of fanaticism and the rash hypotheses of overheated imaginations and weak judgments. Mr. Jones's reflec

tions towards the conclusion of his book are worthy of all praise.

cannot

cession of subjects so similar to each other, viz. the destruction of the great heathen cities of the ancient world, by the predicted judgments of God; thus Babylon, Nineveh, Tyre, &c. have all separate narratives; and the causes and sequences being nearly the same in all, the reflections and opinions cannot be much diversified. The introductions and notes also are too long; and, though well written, are rather out of place in a book of poetry. For the particular faults which we wish to be removed, they consist chiefly in some trifling defects of taste in the versification. The author has a

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many words; and others are misplaced. As,

And on the gentle evening's calmness, OH!

Full many a minstrel's harp's enrap

turing strain

Pour'd forth its low wild notes of pathos on the plain.

Again this botch of an exclamation oc

Penruddock, a Tale by the author of strange and affected pronunciation of Waltzburgh. 3 vols. We commend this novel either for the propriety of the fiction, the probability of the incidents, the elegance of the sentiments, or the truth of the characters. The object of the author seems to have been, to make his tale exceedingly mysterious. Indeed, a cloud of mystery hangs over the whole narrative from beginning to end; from the introduction of the hero as a gipsy in the first part, to the attempt to carry him off by an Italian swindler in a night-anchored bark on the day of his nuptials, in the last. All the females too are as mysterious as the gentlemen, with the exception of the two ladies' maids, who behave like sensible women, and are by far the most interesting of the whole.

One of the ladies walks into a gentleman's bedroom at dead of night, with a lamp and dagger, and sits quietly on the fauteuil, and talks to the astonished inmate in violation of all decorum; then blows out the candle and disappears-this, too, from a lady past forty! Another is going to be married to a very amiable young man, but changes her mind, after everything is signed and sealed; and the bridegroom, with well-bred nonchalance, agrees to the alteration, though she was the chosen of his heart, and he was devotedly attached to her. Such persons as these, are, therefore, beyond our criticism; and we again say, that the ladies' maids are the only rational part of the menage.

Songs of the Prophecies, by S. M. Milton. This is a very pleasing and instructive volume. The descriptive passages in the poems are, many of them, of great beauty; possessing much delicacy of expression, with an elegant selection of images, and a flowing, harmonious verse; there is, in fact, a truly poetic vein throughout. For the defects, the first and greatest consists in the suc

curs

No tree, nor shrub, nor flower blowing
there,
[low,

A sombre, sullen waste! from far be-
The dark funereal waters leave the bare
And rocky mountain-sides, or deep,
[flow, &c.
Full many a fathom down, their currents
Once more,

deep oh!

the ark

Yet burst them bravely, fearlessly, and oh!
How clear and how sublime shines forth
[adventurous bark.
Of truth. Oh! give the sails to your
And,

For oh! the ivy climbs the temple's pride.
We do not like the concetto,
Wasted in beauty, beautiful in waste.
Nor such lines as

And what they did of good, go ye and do
likewise.

Crush'd beneath which, the mountains deem'd stedfast.

As of the fire of his ancestors shone.

But these are only as mosses and lichens on the trunk of the poetic tree, which may easily be removed; in the meanwhile, its sap and vigour seem to prognosticate future crops of rich and mellow fruit. The moral parts of the poem are not equal to the descriptive; and there are proofs scattered up and down, of immaturity of taste; but while there is little to blame, there is much to commend; and if we do not extract any passages, it is only to induce our readers to read the whole.

FINE ARTS.

ETCHINGS BY REMBRANDT.

The late Mr. Pole Carew's fine Cabinet of Rembrandt's Etchings was lately dispersed by auction, and a preface to the catalogue informs us that this collection was surpassed only by that of the Duke of Buckingham, the sale of which we recorded last year. If the latter proved more abundant in rare and unique specimens of the master, Mr. Carew's at least possessed its due share of gems of no ordinary interest, as the following prices of some of them will amply testify:

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Rembrandt's most celebrated work, • Christ healing the Sick,' known among collectors as The Hundred Guilder, produced 1637. 16s. bought by Sir Ab. Hume. The Portrait of Tolling, the Dutch Advocate, 2204., purchased for M. Six, of Amsterdam, whose ancestor is commemorated by one of Rembrandt's finest portraits. The Little Polish Figure,' a diminutive gem of an inch and a quarter high, 537. 11s. was bought for the King of Holland. The Rat-killer,' 597. 17s. by Molteno & Graves. The rare portrait of Renier Ansloo, 747. 11s. by Mr. Harding. 'A Girl reading,' 151. Mr. Woodburn. Lutma, the Goldsmith,' 31 10s. by M. Claussin, of Paris. Asselyn the Painter, with the easel,' 391. 18s. A Portrait of Rembrandt drawing, 317. 10s.; another portrait of him, 581. 16s. The finest specimens of this collection were either carried off by foreign agents, or found their way into private collections at home, whilst the officer of the print department of our national establishment sat a quiescent spectator of the sale, without funds at his disposal to dispute the possession. It is to be hoped the results of this sale may not be lost upon the Committee of the House of Commons who are now investigating the affairs of the British Museum, and that greater funds will ere long be placed at the disposal of the Trustees.

Four Views of Belvoir Castle, Leicestershire, the seat of his Grace the Duke of Rutland. These are from original drawings by Joseph Rhodes, Esq. of Leeds. They consist of two exterior views, the more distant one taken from the lake, and the near view from the woods below the castle on the north-west. Plate 3. represents the Grand Hall and Staircase; and plate 4. the interior of the Chapel, with the altar-piece by Murillo. The plates are of large quarto size, well executed in lithography, by the masterly hand of P. Gauci.

Leonardo da Vinci.-A picture by Leonardo da Vinci has been lately discovered at the palace of Fontainebleau, which had long been given up as lost. The subject is Leda, and it is spoken of by the contemporaries of Leonardo in the highest terms of praise.

en

To

HEATH'S Gallery of British Engravings. 8vo. & 4to. Parts I. II.-The rapacious cupidity of foreign publishers, which has long pirated with impunity the copyright of English authors, has lately directed its attack upon the works of our gravers, whose acknowledged superiority in the execution of small plates has made their works an article of profitable speculation in the continental markets. accomplish their purpose still more effectively, the said publishers have even proceeded to engage English artists to make the copies. In order to encounter, on equal terms, this unjust and illiberal competition, the proprietor of the Keepsake, the Book of Beauty, the Picturesque Annual, and Turner's Annual Tour, has determined to offer to the public, both of England and the Continent, impressions from the original plates, at a less price than his competitors can sell their stolen and inferior copies. His plan is to give three engravings in each shilling part, together with descriptions. They will usually consist of one portrait or fancy head, an historical subject, and a landscape. The wonderful durability of engravings on steel prevents any perceptible difference between the earliest and the latest impressions.

The Napoleon Gallery; or, Illustrations of the Life and Times of the Emperor of France. 12mo. Part I. -This is an English edition of a series of French etchings, said to be taken from all the most celebrated pictures, &c. produced in France during the last forty years." It is to be completed in sixteen monthly parts, each containing six plates. They are effectively executed in outline, slightly shaded; and will certainly form a very interesting series when chronologically arranged, or as illustrations to the various Lives of Napoleon, for which their size well_adapts them. In one instance "The Retreat from Moscow," the letter-press does not at all answer to the story of the picture.

British Atlas, by J. and C. WALKER. Longman.-This work is to comprise separate maps of every county in England, and the three Ridings of Yorkshire.

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