striction Bills are ruinous, because they cannot then exhibit themselves; and they clamour for Democratical or Republican forms of Government, because under these, all political power is vested in characters like their own. As a part of the plan, every public distress is ascribed to misrule in the Executive Government, and the real cause is enveloped in smoke. Aloud they bawl,—

"Fœcundum concute pectus, Disjice compositam pacem, sere crimina belli."

The simple fact is, that nothing is more common, in trade, as in agriculture, than overstocking. It has become impracticable to find a market for as much goods as we can manufacture; and the poor, who pour in children, grand-children, and great grand-children, without limitation, into one track of employ, find, at last, that work becomes scarce. In time, the population is drawn off into other channels. Unfortunately, weavers, and others of similar avocations, have no physical powers for laborious callings; and we have no doubt, but the persons, who returned disappointed from America, were not capacitated for the profession of husbandry.

The remedies held out have been, cultivation of wastes; but to bring waste lands to a profitable return mostly costs more than to purchase land already in a state of productive bearing. Mining is also a very hazardous speculation; our capitalists know all this, and will not venture.

For our own parts, we believe that some centuries hence, Africa will be converted by England into another America or East Indies, and the Moors be driven into the interior, or be Christianized and amalgamated. England may thus cope with its Transatlantic Daughter in future glory; and also have ample vent for its growing population. The contiguity of the Barbary part of Africa wiil also be the means of preserving the independence of the Mother Island.

The pamphlet before us recommends the use of some ingenious simple tools, by which idle hands may be very advantageously employed. With respect to women and children we agree with the Author; but, as Russia takes our manufactures, and we do not grow corp enough for our

domestic consumption, we object to diverting our lands to the growth of Flax and Hemp. The Board of Agriculture has spoken favourably of the invention. The Notes annexed to the Pamphlet are interesting and valuable.

49. George the Third; his Court and Family; with Portraits. In 2 vols. 8vo.

THE perusal of this well-timed and agreeable work has afforded us real pleasure; for the record of the important national events of the long and varied reign of George the Third, will ever be considered as a task worthy of the historian, when prejudice and passion shall be in some measure extinct, and when truth alone shall be sought for and investigated.

The pen of the biographer, independent of the impulse of general curiosity, which calls it into action, must seek and arrange its materials upon the spur of the moment, whilst minor and more minute events are floating on the stream of living recollection, ere they pass into the ocean of forgetfulness.

It is to biography that history owes those accessaries which not only unite, but often illustrate the greater events which she finds imperfectly connected with the individuals who have been the most powerful, though not apparently the most active agent in their development.

It seems to have been the intention of the Author of the work now before us to avoid political discussion as much as possible, and to detail only those national events in which our late revered Sovereign was personally or rather individually engaged, and impartiality and candour seem to have guided him successfully throughout the narrative; though it must be confessed that there are points in the personal History of George the Third, on which impartiality would almost cease to be a virtue, or where silence would have implied a derilection of duty.

Such were the reflections arising from a careful perusal of this work; it now remains to convey a brief view of its contents.

The first volume is divided into four chapters, containing, Anecdotes of the Brunswick family-Line of family descent-Anecdotes of George

the Rev. C. C. Colton, A. M. late Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. Sto. pp. 268. Longman.

"THERE are three difficulties in authorship," says this Author, very pithily in his Preface;-to write any thing worth the publishing-to find honest men to publish it-and to get sensible men to read it. Literature has now become a game; in which the Booksellers are the Kings; the Critics the Knaves; the Publick the Pack; and the poor Author the mere Table, or thing played upon." This, we think, is very happily said, excepting, of course, the reflection cast upon ourselves in the critical capacity we are now assuming: we think Mr. Colton himself has written what is worth publishing, and what every sensible man will be very desirous to peruse; leaving therefore the question of honesty to be settled by the Kings of Literature-we will play a few stops upon the instrument with which the Author has presented us for our amusement and instruction.

When we first heard the title of the present work, and the name of the Author, we were prepared to expect something striking, original, and unique: the Essay with which the Author has presented to the publick on the talents of Lord Byron, and the tendencies of his Don Juan, was throughout fraught with sterling thought, excellent sentiment, a quick spirit of discernment, and a pungent sarcasm, conveyed in language clear and energetic, which serving the best interests of society in its condemnation of that extraordinary production, convinced us that the Author possessed every requisite for becoming a teacher in the school of moral philosophy, of that part at least which relates to the conduct of life, and to ethical disquisition. A great number and variety of reflections syllogistically framed, and in general expressed with much conciseness and singular felicity, form the contents of the volume. They comprise a vast variety of subjects, and are occasionally enlivened with historical facts and anecdotes admirably quoted to illustrate some peculiar proposition-the conclusions which are thus drawn from assumed principles have all the effect of a mathematical demonstration and it is no slight praise to the talents, and, we may say, the genius of Mr. Colton, that the mind

:

of the Reader assents to his sententious maxims as to unquestioned axioms, and that whilst the heart is improved, and the judgment strengthened by his system of moral instruction, the fancy is delighted by a thousand striking images and antithetical jeux de paroles that sparkle in the texture, like those beautiful fire-flies of the East along the track of a majestic and beneficent river.

Theophrastus, Seneca, Epictetus, Lord Bacon, Penn, and Rochefaucault, are great names, but we think the author of "Lacon" may safely be allowed to take high station amongst them. Without deciding upon the claims of the others, which indeed would lead us far beyond our prescribed mark, we infinitely prefer Mr. Colton's work to that of the Duke de Rochefaucault. The discoveries of the latter in the heart of man, and his knowledge of the motives of human action, were those of a Courtier, but not of a Philosopher. His moral reflections are fraught with all that Mr. Campbell elegantly calls "the cuckooism of sentiment:" he had but one key-note to the diversified harmonies of the soul, and that was, Self-love. He discovered that all the currents of thought which determined the charities of life flowed from one spring, and that was Self-love. The man of ambition, who eagerly sought after the gifts of royalty, and the man of philanthropy, who visited distant countries to confer blessings on his fellow-men, were proved with the same severity of assay, and their principle of action was found to be Self-love! Self-love, in short, was decided to be the governing impulse to all our many passions, the intellectual pivot upon which the feelings and the aims of immortal man were made to revolve: a slight insight into our own hearts will sufficiently convince us, that although this principle is a primary source of human pursuits, it is not the universal one. Mr. Colton has taken a more liberal and a more correct view of our nature, and though with all the keenness of the satirist, he does not fail to expose our faults, our follies, and our crimes, he gives to the generous virtues and fine sympathies of the heart the credit of a nobler motive.

We will now proceed to quote some of the Author's observations; and we

will do it indiscriminately, because to select is difficult where all is excellent.

"The first consideration with a knave is to help himself; and the second, how to do it with an appearance of helping you. Dionysius the tyrant stripped the statue of Jupiter Olympius of a robe of massy gold, and substituted a cloak of wool, saying, gold is too cold in winter, and too heavy in summer, it behoves us to take care of Jupiter.

" 8. In all societies it is adviseable to associate if possible with the highest; not that the highest are always the best, but because, if disgusted there, we can at any time descend;-but if we begin with the lowest, to ascend is impossible. In the grand theatre of human life, a box ticket takes us through the house!

"10.

Virtue without talent is a coat of mail without a sword, it may indeed defend the wearer, but will not enable him to protect his friend.

"21. Men will wrangle for religion;write for it;-fight for it;-die for it ;do any thing but-live for it!

"30. The wealthy and the noble, when they expend large sums in decorating their houses with the rare and costly efforts of genius, with busts from the chisel of a Canova, and with cartoons from the pencil of a Raphael, are to be commended if they do not stand still here; but go on to bestow some pains and cost that the master himself be not inferior to the mansion, and that the owner be not the only thing that is little, amidst every thing else that is great. The house may draw visitors, but it is the possessor alone that can retain them. We cross the Alps, and after a short interval we are glad to return; we go to see Italy-not the Italians.

"40. None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them ;such persons covet secrets as a spendthrift covets money, for the purpose of circulation.

"47. Of all passions jealousy is that which exacts the hardest service, and pays the bitterest wages. Its service is to watch the success of our enemy-its wages, to be sure of it.

"9%. The true motives of our actions, like the real pipes of an organ, are usually concealed. But the gilded and hollow pretext is pompously placed in the front for shew.

"106. Sensibility would be a good poetess if she had but one hand; with her right she opens the door to pleasure, but with her left to pain.

"128. He that will have no books but those which are scarce, evinces about as correct a taste in literature as he would do in friendship who would have no friends GENT. MAG. September, 1820.

but those whom all the rest of the world have sent to Coventry.

"150. Pride often miscalculates, and more often misconceives. The proud man places himself at a distance from other men; seen through that distance others appear little to him; but he forgets that this very distance causes him also to appear equally little to others.

"157. That writer who aspires to immortality, should imitate the sculptor if he would make the labours of the pen as durable as those of the chisel. Like the sculptor he should arrive at ultimate perfection, not by what he adds, but by what he takes away; otherwise all his energy may be hidden in the superabundant mass of his matter, as the finished form of an Apollo, in the unwrought solidity of the block. A friend called on Michael Angelo, who was finishing a statue; sometime afterwards he called again; the sculptor was still at his work; his friend looking at the figure exclaimed, you have been idle since I saw you last; by no means, replied the sculptor, I have retouched this part, and polished that, I have softened this feature, and brought out this muscle; I have given more expression to this lip, and more energy to this limb. Well, well, said his friend, but all these are trifles; it may be so, replied Angelo, but recollect that trifles make perfection, and that perfection is no trifle.

"179. The only kind office performed for us by our friends of which we never complain is our funeral; and the only thing which we are sure to want happens to be the only thing which we never purchase our coffin.

But

"198. All the poets are indebted more or less to those who have gone before them; even Homer's originality has been questioned, and Virgil owes almost as much to Theocritus in his pastorals as to Homer in his heroes; and if our countryman, Milton, has soared above both Homer and Virgil, it is because he has stolen some feathers from their wings. Shakespear stands alone. His want of erudition was a most happy and productive ignorance; it forced him back upon his own resources, which were exhaustless; if his literary qualifications made it impossible for him to borrow from the antients, he was more than repaid by the powers of his invention, which made borrowing unnecessary. In all the ebbings and flowings of his genius, in his storms no less than his calms, he is as completely separated from all other poets, as the Caspian from all other seas. But he abounds with so many axioms applicable to all the circumstances, situations, and varieties of life, that they are no longer the property