thrown a glory round the office from which other men derive their highest honour. It is creditable to any man, who has filled up the sphere of ordinary ambition, and survived the period of ordinary exertions, to be still alive to the interests of his country and of society, and to be prompt in interposing with the counsels of age, at a moment when wise counsels are imperiously called for.

ARMATA is not a Utopia, nor a New Atlantis, nor a Brobdignag-it is no imaginary country in which either seriously or jocularly wise laws and institutions are recommended, or absurd habits satirised, but it is England without any change or substitution whatever, save in the letters of her name, as she was in the year of our Lord 1816, complaining of her paupers, her taxes, and her expensive establishments. That such minute realities are not well adapted to an exhibition of phantasmagoria figures in a work of fanciful fiction, our readers will we think readily agree; however we cannot reproach our author with having blended his fiction very closely with his reasonings. All that appertains to the tale is comprised in a few words. The narrator after informing us that he sailed from New York, on the 6th of Sept. 1814, proceeds

"On the 16th of March, after full day had risen upon us, we found ourselves as it were overtaken by a second night. The sea was convulsed into whirlpools all around us, by the obstruction of innumerable rocks, and we were soon afterwards hurried on by a current, in no way resembling any which navigators have recorded. We felt its influence under the shadow of a dark cloud, between two tremendous precipices overhanging and seemingly almost closing up the entrance which received us. Its impetuosity was three times greater, at the least, than even the Rapids above the American Niagara, so that nothing but its almost incredible smoothness could have prevented our ship, though of five hundred tons burthen, from being swept by it under water, as our velocity could not be less, at the lowest computation, than twenty-five or rather thirty miles an hour. The stream appeared evidently to owe its rapidity to compression, though not wholly to the compression of land, its boundary on one side, if boundary it ought to be called, appearing rather like Chaos and Old Night; and what was most striking and extraordinary, we could see from the deck, not above two ships' length from us, another current running with equal force in the opposite direction, but separated from our's by pointed rocks, which appeared all along above the surface, with breakers dashing over them. Neither of the channels, as far as my eye could estimate their extent, were above fifty yards wide, nor at a greater distance from each other, and they were so even in their directions, that we went forward like an arrow from a bow, without the smallest deviation towards the

rocks on one side, or the dreary obscurity on the other. In this manner we were carried on, without the smallest traceable variation, till the 18th of June, a period of three months and two days, in which time, if my above-stated calculation of our progress be any thing like correct, and I am sure I do not over-rate it, we must have gone straight onward above seventy thousand miles, a space nearly three times the circumference of the earth.” (p. 5-—7.)

After some astronomical observations, the traveller finds himself in a great sea: here the ship is wrecked, and he alone saved. He finds himself among a new race of people, but one man addresses him in English. This stranger had been carried into this new world in a similar manner, when a child. Our traveller's first enquiries concerningthe country are answered by a reference to a journal written by the stranger's father, which contains his solution of the mysterious passage.

"When I consider the unexampled rapidity of the current, with its dismal chaotic boundary, and that we were involved in it for almost three months, emerging at once into a sea where the heavens above presented new stars, and those of our own in different magnitudes and positions than any they could be seen in from either of our hemispheres, I am convinced, beyond a doubt, that I am no longer upon the earth, but on what I might best describe as a twin brother with it, bound together by this extraordinary channel, as a kind of umbilical chord, in the capacious womb of nature, but which, instead of being separated in the birth, became a new and permanent substance in her mysterious course." (p. 26-27.)

The reader now expects some account of this country, its external form, people, &c. Perhaps we may hereafter have some of these details, but our author is very philosophical, and his new friend Morven not less so; for, without even changing the traveller's linen, as far we hear, or offering to relieve any hunger or thirst, save that of knowledge, the stranger proceeds to eulogise their common asylum.

This eulogy is followed, however, by a sad drawback: a catalogue of sufferings and dangers. After a brief reference to the origin of the feudal institutions, to the early history of Armata and the revolution, Morven dwells at more length on the history of the war with America. We proceed to describe the country as he knew it.

"This highly favoured island now sat without a rival on this proud promontory in the centre of all the waters of this earth, with her mighty wings outspread to such a distance, that with your li

mited ideas of its numerous nations, it is impossible you should comprehend. She was balanced upon her imperial throne by the equally vast and seemingly boundless continents on either side, bending alike beneath her sceptre, and pouring into her lap all that varieties of climate or the various characters of mankind could produce, whilst the interjacent ocean was bespangled with islands, which seem to be posted by nature as the watch towers of her dominion, and the havens of her fleets. Her fortune was equal to her virtues, and, in the justice of God, might be the fruit of it; since as the globe had expanded under her discoveries, she had touched it throughout as with a magic wand; the wilderness becoming the abodes of civilized man, adding new millions to her sovereignty, compared with which she was herself only like the seed falling upon the soil, the parent of the forest that enriches and adorns it.— She felt no wants, because she was the mother of plenty; and the free gifts of her sons at a distance, returned to them tenfold in the round of a fructifying commerce, made her look but to little support from her children at home.-To drop all metaphor, she was an untaxed country." (p. 46-47.)

Bating the bathos of the last sentence, this must be allowed to be a beautiful picture. But now unhappily succeeded the war with America, we beg pardon, we mean Hesperia. This era in the history of Armata, we are told, (6 may perhaps be considered as almost the first in which her representative constitution exhibited any proof of dangerous imperfection." In a certain sense this is true. In the history of our earlier sovereigns, the object of their government was to reign over the parliament, that is, by prerogative, now it is, to govern by the parliament, that is, by influence. Hume was the first public writer who distinctly stated how completely the system of influence, proved the victory which the people had gained over the court. But we believe that the consequences legitimately deducible from this idea, have not yet been formed.

Our author here discusses the subject of parliamentary reform, and pursues in his fable the course which his political friends are now taking in parliament." The first step towards public reformation of every description is a firm combination against rash and violent men." And he declares that he would consent to the continuance of the worst evils, rather than mix himself "with ignorance thrusting itself before the wisdom which should direct it ". The practical good sense of these declarations is, however, nixed up with some general observations so shallow and superficial, that we are compelled to look for the directing wisdom elsewhere.

"A few individuals might seek to extend their own powers at the expeuse of the liberties of the people, but the people themselves could surely have no interest in usurping a greater authority than was consistent with the equilibrium of a constitution which for centuries had been the just object of their national pride, and the admiration of a world it has enlightened.

What can that man have thought or observed of society who reasons as if he took for granted that the usurpations of the people would be limited by their interests? We recollect Mr. Paine's demonstration in his celebrated work "Were monarchy abolished there would be no wars; for kings gain and the people suffer by war; and as all men act from their interests, therefore," &c. Q. E. D.

After this discussion, the interlocutors, each of whom, however, seems to represent the noble author, proceed to a rapid review of the war with Capetia.

The historical, or rather conjectional question origina ting out of the refusal of the English government to treat with the French ministry, and interfere before the murder of the king had rendered war inevitable, is again treated with the author's usual facility, and in the spirit of the whigs of 1792.

It would have been impossible for the writer to dismiss such a subject without a reference to the object of his political idolatry, Mr. Fox. He is thus pourtrayed.

My confidence in this opinion is the more unshaken, from the recollection that I held it at the very time, in common with a man whom to have known as I did, would have repaid all the toils and perils you have undergone. I look upon you, indeed, as a benighted traveller, to have been cast upon our shores after this great light was set. Never was a being gifted with an understanding so perfect, nor aided by a perception which suffered nothing to escape" from its dominion. He was never known to omit any thing which in the slightest degree could affect the matter to be considered, nor to confound things at all distinguishable, however apparently the same; and his conclusions were always so luminous and convincing, that you might as firmly depend upon them as when substances in nature lie before you in the palpable forms assigned to them from the foundation of the world. Such were his qualifications for the office of a statesman; and his profound knowledge always under the guidance of the sublime simplicity of his heart, softening without unnerving the giant strength of his intellect, gave a character to his eloquence which I shall not attempt to describe, knowing nothing by which it may be compared." (p. 86-88.)

With due subordination, and according to the rank they

held in his affections, Mr. Pitt and also Mr. Burke are severally noticed. Will posterity thus appreciate these men, or reverse the order? The High Treason trials of 1794 are alluded to briefly, and with reason: they form a memorable æra in the history of English jurisprudence, and will fix Lord Erskine's name in the lasting annals of his country's history.

The more recent events are scarcely adverted to, but the actual condition of the country after the peace is stated with a clearness and feeling creditable to the writer's understanding and heart. We cannot, indeed, say that there is much of novelty in these statements, nor much of promise in the suggestions for improvement.

The oppressive effects of the national debt and of taxation, with a particular notice of the legacy duty, and an exaggerated representation of its injustice; the most alarming calamity of the times, the spread of pauperism; the corn laws; tithes; the fisheries: having in one person or character related the evils, he in the other proposes remedies. For the greater part, they are suggestions to bell the cat. It is gravely impressed on us as a duty to FEED the people, and find employment for them!!! and in order to produce the food, to improve agriculture to the utmost. We expected some notice here of Mr. Malthus's speculations. They are passed over. We are glad to find that the noble author retains those notions of distributive justice which his professional life must have impressed on him, and does not concur with some of his political friends in advising the having recourse to a national bankruptcy to save the country from ruin. He urges the duty of imposing equal taxation, and adverts to the unequal pressure of the poor laws on occupiers only; but we perceive that he does not notice the unequal duty on inheritances, personal property being liable to the ten per cent. duty on wills and intestacies, from which real property is exempt.

Among the expedients for relieving the distresses of the times, we observe but one which is enforced in detail, and this is the repeal of the duty on salt, and the more extensive use of that mineral as manure. Whether this substance can be procured in sufficient quantities, and at a sufficiently low rate to answer such a purpose on a large scale, we leave to prefessional agriculturists to determine.

"You have salt, you say, in endless abundance, but your necessity turns it into money, even to forty times its value, instead of