Ye rooms, where poets nurs'd their golden dreams; And, in my native forests, close my breath!" Pp. 163---66. This writer feels strongly, thinks strongly, and fatirizes, sometimes, with confiderable acrimony. His censures may be termed illiberal, but they are generally juft. "This bugbear name of illiberality has frightened us till we are to confound all distinctions. The consequence is, that we are to fur. render our understandings, hood-winked, to these people as our masters. Literature, genius, elevated sentiments, liberal professions, are to be filent, and shrink into infignificance, before trade and wealth, Wealth is now the fole god of our idolatry; and trade is held in the highest reverence, because it brings us nearest to that selfish, infolent, immoral, corrupt, sensual, blood-stained, altar. Let but a fellow, who once wore a livery, come back from the East with his big purfe pouring over with gold, even though the stains of the blood through which he waded to it are visible to every eye, and the shrieks of dying thousands are yet ringing in every ear ;---let him throw open his splendid apartments in Grosvenor Square, or Portland Place, and half the titles and rank in the kingdom will be seen flocking to his assemblies. Express your wonder...people stare with contempt in your face, as much as to say, where have you lived? what foolish prejudices have you got into your head? The days of chivalry are over, Mr. Don Quixote!' "The days of chivalry are over! But some of the sentiments of chivalry shall not be over with me; because I believe them to be founded in virtue and confummate wisdom!" Pp. 271---273, VOL. I. If Mrs. Bracey is a living character, and known in the fashionable circles, (for we are convinced that such fiends exist,) it is a disgrace for any moral or focial being to visit the routes of malignant envy, foul aspersion, and affaffinating defamation. The catastrophe is melancholy, and these reflections are concluded with the following just observations : NO, VII, VOL, 11, M "Ye " Ye moralifts, mislead us not by the doctrine, that virtue always meets its reward, and vice its punishment in this world! It is to a future existence that we must look for a due retribution of our conduct! "Mrs. Bracey yet lives in the enjoyment of all worldly advantages; while beings such as Fitz-Albini and Miss St. Leger are deposited in their graves:--and the immenfe united fortunes of Dallington and Orlingham have fallen, by the course of inheritance, on Captain Fitz-Albini, of the Guards; who, without the talents or the virtues of his coufin, and already in poffeffion of a competence for the fphere in life for which his flender abilities fitted him, is now rolling in fuperfluous wealth, and honours which render his contemptible ambition the more confpicuous." Pp. 259, 260, VOL. II. The writer who extracts such a passage as the fubfequent from Burke (Reflections on French Revolution, Pp. 112, 113.) "The age of chivalry is gone-That of fophifters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. Never, never more, shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and fex, that proud fubmiffion, that dignified obedience, that fubordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in fervitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly fentiment and heroic enterprize, is gone! It is gone that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage, while it mitigated ferocity; which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself also loft half its evil, by lofing all its grossiness." Pp. 274, 275. -and declares it to be "one of the most beautiful of a work which, not only in eloquence but in wisdom, stands, perhaps, as high as mere human abilities ever produced,"was not likely to experience much justice or mercy from the Analytical, nor candour from the Monthly, Reviewers. The former blame the author for "bending neither to custom nor to fafhion;" we applaud him for not adopting absurd nor immoral customs, nor conforming to the hypocritical system of a Chesterfield, the fawning, cringing, smiling fripperies of a petit-maitre, the gefticulations, grins, and cant-words of ignorant fops, nor the grimaces of a monkey. A fuperior mind acts from the impulse of the foul: the "fuavity of manners and graceful conformity," recommended by these gentlemen, are best calculated for a perfon who acts a part, and wishes to conceal the sentiments of his heart, or disguise his real feelings. Such are " the fummer friend, the flattering foe." The Monthly Review states that " it reprefents lottiness of fentiment, and difinterestedness of character, as exclusively allotted to the high born." This is never afferted nor infinuated, as we believe. The high-born Captain Fitz-Albini is without without talents and virtues, and Dr. Carver possesses a dignified mind, and an amiable heart. The noble and affluent may, with greater probability, be distinguished by elevated ideas, than the low or the poor, because their education is in general more liberal, though, as the author observes, " to antiquity and luftre of defcent both understanding and virtue are often wanting." The Analytical Review states:-" Our author, upon the whole, evinces in his performance some powers of thinking, though he appears to have confidered objects through a partial or imperfect medium, and reflects them with little interest or imagination;" the Monthly" These volumes certainly merit perufal, and are evidently the productions of no common writer." In the last observation we fully concur, and we recommend Fitz-Albini not only as a novel, but as a work of classical, elegance, and pure morality; as a work calculated to warn the unexperienced against the malignant villainy of anonymous letter-writers, and to strengthen the mind against the fatal indulgence of refined sensibility. ART. IV. Boucher's View of the Causes and Confequences of the American Revolution. (Concluded from P. 678, VOL. 1.) THE anxiety of the Critical Reviewers to dispose of this work by the previous question, or (which is nearly the fame thing,) by representing it as containing " an unpleasing combination of politics and theology," might, perhaps, induce the public to fuspect that it is calculated to render essential service to that cause against which these critics have fet themselves in battle array: fuch an inference would, no doubt, be well founded, But, instead of relying on this presumptive kind of evidence, strong as it is, and still less on the general opinion which we expressed in our last number, we think it our duty to assist our readers in forming their own judgement of a work which we strenuously recommend to their perusal. In a very copious, well-reafoned, and instructive preface, Mr. Boucher justly observes, that " of the American revolt no history has yet been compiled by any writer of eminence;" and he feelingly laments that this deficiency was not fupplied from official " documents" by the noble Secretary of the American department, (Lord Sackville,) from whom he says "the world was long encouraged to look for fuch a detail of the event in question, as, in point of authority, must have been : M2 been unrivalled." Nor is it an unreasonable surmise of the author, that the late Earl of Guildford set his face againft fuch a publication, and that "an injunction of filence on all over whom he was supposed to have any influence, was an article expressly stipulated for in the conditions of that mysterious coalition, of which the true history is, perhaps, but little known."-" At some future period," the author continues, "a diligent collector of recondite hiftory, it is possible, may arife, and find materials for memoirs of the secret transactions of the administration of Lord North; and it may then be known why, and how America was loft, and what the motives were which induced fo wife and good a man as Lord North confefsedly was, to submit to bear all the blame of it." Whenever a history of the American rebellion shall be undertaken by a writer competent to the task, the present publication will be found of confiderable utility. It is, indeed, partly with that view that it is brought forward. This the author with great modesty avows: "To affift (as far as fo obfcure a person, and one of fuch humble pretences, can hope to assist,) future enquirers in this arduous investigation, this volume of fermons is now, with all due deference, fubmitted to the public. Merely as fermons, or even political treatises, in themselves, and unconnected with the circumstances under which they were written, being the productions of a private clergyman, who began to think feriously on such subjects only when he was called upon to write upon them, I am sensible their claim to the public is flender. Had they not, however, feemed to myself, and to fome kind friends, to whom they have been shown in MS. to contain some information which has not elsewhere been noticed, but which may help to elucidate a difficult but important period of our history, they would never have been drawn from that oblivion to which they had long been configned." Preface, Pp, 22, 23. The evidence of fuch a man as Mr. Boucher is precisely that kind of testimony which all dispassionate and unbiassed perfons, anxious only for the truth, would defire, to assist them in forming an adequate judgement upon the great question of the American revolt. The author was not only an eye-witness of the origin and progress of that event, but he poffeffed a knowledge both of English and American politics, and was, of course, acquainted with the predisposing and the operative causes of the contest between the mothercountry and her colonies; and firm, nay, strenuous as he is with regard to principles, he is evidently impartial and free from prejudice in respect of perfons; of which the dedication of his work to the General who headed the American forces, is a striking proof. We confess that, much as we admire the the recent conduct of Mr. Washington, we cannot forget that he has appeared in arms against his lawful Sovereign. Among the various kinds of information which may be derived from a perusal of these discourses, Mr. B. mentions the very important one, that "the revolt, however unexpected by, and unwelcome to, the great body of the people, was no more than had been planned and refolved on by their leaders many years before it took place." In proof of this assertion he refers his readers to an extract from a paper, intitled, the American Whig, No. 5, which, he observes, was a periodical paper, aimed at first chiefly against Epifcopacy, written altogether by dissenters, and published about nine years before the rebellion took place. The extract is as follows : "Courage, then, Americans! The finger of God points out a mighty empire to your fons. We need not be difcouraged. The angry cloud will soon be dispersed. The day dawns, in which this mighty empire is to be laid, by the establishment of a regular Ame rican constitution. All that has hitherto been done seems to be little, befides, the collection of materials for the construction of the glorious fabric. 'Tis time to put them together. The transfer of the European part of the family is fo vast, and our growth so swift, that, before seven years roll over our heads, the first stone must be laid. Peace or war, famine or plenty, poverty or affluence: in a word, no circumftance, whether profperous or adverse, can happen to our parent; nay, no conduct of hers, whether wife or imprudent ---no possible temper of hers, whether kind or cross-grained---will put a stop to this building. There is no contending with Omnipotence; and the predispofitions are so numerous and well-adapted to the rife of America, that our success is indubitable." To the above curious and important extract Mr. B. fubjoins the following just and pointed observations : "After this explicit avowal by one who was as deep in the councils of the party, as he was active in promoting their measures, are we ftill to be insulted with the incredulity of our patriots, who wish to perfuade us, that such purposes were but in the secret thoughts of fome of their leaders, and who, with fuch evidence staring them in the face, perfift to alledge, that America was driven and forced to revolt by the oppressive measures of some Ministers of the Crown of Great Britain!- Ill-fated Ministers! doomed to serve a country in which, when under your aufpices things go well, no praise accrues to you, whilft nothing can shelter you from the blame of every thing that is adverse. Let America revolt, it is the fault of Ministers: "Mr. Burke's Appeal to the New and the Old Whigs," p. 37. let |