Mr. Brand has got together a goodly number of the sports and customs which took place in

those golden days of yore,

When Christmas was a high day.'

And it gives us no small degree of satisfaction to note that the chaplains at St. James' Palace 'retain the custom' of having 'a tureen full of rich plum-porridge' served up, and not only served. up, but actually eaten on that festival at that table.' We hope we shall never see the time when this orthodox dish,* this venerable specimen of the talent of the ancient master-cook, shall be banished by turtle-soup or any heathenish dainty whatever.

The sons and daughters of Christmas, 'Old Christmas of London, and Captain Christmas,'t have seen strange vicissitudes since the family were last assembled at White Hall. Wassail, the neat sempstress, has abandoned the metropolis. Carrol has been divested of his tawny coat and red cap, and the flute has dropped from his girdle; he has been clothed anew, and taught to sing through the nose, at the 'Evangelical Tract Repository.' Mincedpie and Babie-cake are yet in good repute : they were persecuted, it is true, as malignants in the time of the commonwealth, but they recovered their estates and their credit, with the king. Gambol, with his hoop and bells, is consigned to Bartholomew-fair. Postand-Pair has long given up his place to a numerous train of illegitimate descendants. Misrule, if we are to believe John Bull when he is in a growling humour, is no longer content with his twelve days empire, but shows himself at every season of the year.

In the second volume we have the customs and ceremonies of common life.' It opens with the lady in the straw,' which was far from being a figurative expression in former times. So late as Henry the Eighth's time, there were directions for certain persons to examine every night the straw of the king's bed, that no daggers might be concealed therein.' The section on 'child bearing, churching, and christening customs,' is followed, not very categorically, by 'betrothing and marriage customs.' But this slight deviation from the decorous order of things by no means extends to the matrimonial chapter, which is arranged with great regularity and precision, as, a few pages beyond 'divinations at weddings, we meet with a dissertation on the saying that the husbands of false women wear horns.' Like all his predecessors, Mr. Brand has failed in his endeavours to recover the origin of the Cimier❜ di Cornovagia.'

6

But what are the hopes of men! even of reviewers! Since the above was written, we have learned, that the plum-porridge,' the tureen,' and the 'table,' have vanished all together. So it is! 'Star after star goes out, and-all is night' ↑ See Ben Johnson's Masque of Christmas.

The numerous train of popular notions, sports and errors,' furnish the contents of the remaining pages. On these we cannot enlarge as we have already exceeded our limits. Upon the whole this voluminous work may be useful (with proper caution) as a book of reference. Its materials have been amassed without much attention to their relative worth, of which indeed, we suspect the author to be no very competent judge. He takes no general view of his subject, and his desultory collections are made with so little care, and the notes and the text are so frequently at variance with each other, that the reader is left without any other help than his own sagacity may afford him, to arrive at any conclusion whatWe have already noticed that vulgar symptom of the Bibliomania, quoting passages in every one's hand from rare books or manuscripts penes autorem: this is so common with Mr. Brand, that persons unacquainted with his character must inevitably sur mise that he intended his two volumes to operate as the puff indirect upon his library.

ever.

ART. II. A Voyage round the World in the Years 1803, 4, 5, and 6, performed by Order of His Imperial Majesty Alexander the First, Emperor of Russia, in the Ship Neva, by Urey Lisiansky, Captain in the Russian Navy, and Knight of the Orders of St. George and St. Vladimir. London. 1814. 2. Voyages and Travels in Various Parts of the World, during the Years 1803-7, by G. H. Von Langsdorff, Aulic Counsellor to his Majesty the Emperor of Russia, Consul General at the Brazils, Knight of the Order of St. Anne, &c. &c. Part II. London. 1814.

T

WO quarto volumes, the produce of a Russian embassy to Japan and the circumnavigation of the globe, have already passed under our review. We have now before us two more of the same bulk, and from the same prolific source; and a few others from the portfolio of Doctor Tilesius are expected; not to mention Lieutenant Davidoff's account of his travels and voyages which is announced as in the press. The appearance of so many works by Russian officers, or by officers employed in the Russian service, in which the views and conduct of that government, with regard to its distant settlements, are freely canvassed; and the confidence with which the respective authors lay their labours at the feet of the Emperor Alexander, are no weak proofs of the desire of that amiable monarch to enlighten his subjects by encouraging the promulgation of the opinions and observations of men of science and literature.

The two ships Nadesda and Neva parted company, as our readers may recollect, at the Sandwich islands; the former to convey the ambassador to Japan, of whose reception we have given an ample account from Captain Krusenstern's valuable work; and the latter to visit the Russian settlements on the north-west coast of America. From the Sandwich islands, therefore the voyage of the Neva, under the command of Captain Lisiansky, may be considered as new ground, and to this part of his work we shall confine the few observations we may find it necessary to make. Having examined the narratives of the two commanders as far as the voyage was made in company, and compared their respective descriptions of the same objects, we find no material discrepancy in their accounts; and it is therefore but fair to presume that both have aimed at truth in point of intelligence, however, and apt selection of objects, we can by no means rank Lisiansky with Krusenstern. Neither of them is to be mentioned at the same time with Cook; but the latter, as far as careful investigation and laborious endeavours to acquire accuracy are concerned, may fairly be classed with Vancouver, and the former perhaps put on a level with Broughton.

Our old acquaintance, the Aulic Counsellor, whose second part, in the shape of a tolerable quarto, is also before us, had the felicity of seeing (with the exception of Canton) much more than the two commanders, either jointly or separately. On his return from Japan to Kamschatka, where in our XVIIIth. Number we left him, he engaged himself to accompany, in the capacity of physician, the ex-ambassador Von Resanoff, whose total failure in Japan had probably urged him to the endeavour of doing service to the Russio-American trading company by a visit to their settlements on the Aleutian islands, and on the north-west coast of America. They embarked in the Maria, a brig of a hundred and fifty tons, built at Ochotsk, commanded by a lieutenant of the navy; and after touching at several of the Aleutian islands, rejoined the Neva at the Russian settlement of Sitcha, on the coast of America. We have therefore the means of comparing a considerable portion of his present volume with that of Captain Lisiansky, with whom we observe he has frequently the misfortune to differ. We perceived this indeed in the former part of the Doctor's voyage. A remarkable instance of this difference occurs in the two descriptions of the customs of the inhabitants of the Sandwich islands. On the death of the king,' says the knight of St. Vladimir, every one in his dominions must pull out a tooth; and if a great man die, those who were subject to him must do the same; so that if an individual should have lost many masters, he may at last not have a tooth left in his head.' The Doctor has recorded the fact of

many of these islanders having lost their front teeth, but instead of ascribing the want of them to the exactions of the dead, he attributes it to the slings of the living, by which, he tells us, they are knocked out in battle. We think the chances are that neither account is the true one, and one of them is obviously false; but the writers of voyages and travels are seldom contented to set down simple facts, they must accompany them with their own conjectures, lest their readers should be left to the exercise of their own judgment. Our business, however, at present leads us into higher latitudes than the Sandwich islands.

It is well known that the Russian government has, since the middle of the last century, pushed its discoveries in the sea which separates the two continents of Asia and America, and which gradually contracts to a narrow channel, known by the name of Behring's Strait, not more, about the 65th parallel of latitude, or from Cape Prince of Wales to the East Cape, than 30 miles in width, and, at almost all times of the year choked up with ice. Lower down, about the parallel of 49° or 50° N. the Aleutian islands extend across this sea in a chain which may be compared to so many piers of an immense bridge, connecting the great promontory or peninsula of Kamschatka, on the continent of Asia, with the corresponding but smaller peninsula of Alaska, jutting out from the continent of America. These two peninsulas, and the whole chain of islands of which Oonalashka and Kodiak are the principal, are claimed as part of the Russian dominions.

· Kodiak, Kadjak, or Kuktak, that is to say, the Great Island, is the largest of all the islands that lie to the north between America and Asia. Including the small surrounding islands, it stretches from Lat. 56° 45' N. Long. 150° 20′ W. to Lat. 58° 35', Long. 153° 30'. It has been known to the Russians ever since the year 1750. Many speculative merchants from Ochotsk had visited the island for the sake of colJecting furs, between the years 1760 and 1770, till at length Gregory Schetikoff, a merchant of Irkutsk, thought of establishing a Russian factory here.

By degrees he reduced under his power this and the neighbouring islands, the population of which he estimated at fifty thousand persons; and embarking a very considerable property in the undertaking, laid the foundation of the present Imperial Russio-American trading Company. (Langsdorff, p. 59.)

To this settlement the ex-ambassador and his physician proceeded, in the first instance, by the way of the Aleutian islands, while the Neva shaped her course from the Sandwich islands towards the same destination. The crew of the vessel on which the Doctor embarked consisted of about sixty persons, of a most miserable description; they were composed, he tells us, of adventurers, drunkards, bankrupt traders, and mechanics, or branded cri

minals in search of fortune,' which they hoped to acquire by hunting sea-bears, seals, and sea-lions, and collecting furs for the Russio-American Company. Having fed the whole winter on the luxuries of Kamschatka, which consisted of hard bread, dry fish, and the fat of whales and sea-dogs, they were all dreadfully infected with the scurvy; and so lamentably deficient in articles of clothing, that they were swarming with vermin, which, with every precaution, found their way from the deck into the doctor's cabin, and kept him in a constant state of fever, disgust, and horror.'

Touching at the more northerly island of St. Paul, they found the stores of fox and sea-bears' skins, of sea-cows' teeth, of whalebone, seal-skins, and other articles of ivory, bone, and peltry, so fully supplied that it was resolved to carry away some of the fur hunters and fishers, lest the employment of so many at one spot should destroy the breed of valuable animals that produced them: strange to say, every one of these persons earnestly entreated to be permitted to remain on this miserable island, where their wretchedness was at least equal to that of the ship's company as described by the Doctor. They said that they had plenty of foxes and sea-bears for food and clothing; plenty of berries, of sea-fowl and their eggs which they considered as luxuries; they had comfortable holes dug in the earth, and store of fish bones and oil to light and warm them, and to cook their victuals: yet one of these men had once been an opulent merchant at Moscow! One would suppose,' says the Doctor, that these people, three or four of whom had married Aleutian women, lived in the utmost friendship and unanimity; but, alas, we could find nothing but discord and enmity among them." Captain Cook has left little for future navigators to relate concerning the poor and harmless natives of Oonalashka, unless it be tó record the melancholy reflections which must arise in the breast of every humane voyager on learning the rapid depopulation which has taken place on this and the contiguous islands. If Doctor Langsdorff is to be depended on, the male population of the islands which, in 1787, amounted to more than 3000, did not, in 1804, reach 300. At Kodiak also, and its neighbouring islands, a total extirpation threatens the native inhabitants; the fifty thousand that it was said to contain when first discovered being, at the time of his visit reduced to three or four thousand; and of this number the superintendant and overseer of Kodiak stated, there were, on that island, only four hundred and fifty men capable of labour.'

There seems to be no assignable reason for this extraordinary depopulation of the Aleutian islands. The selection of a few of the best hunters to send to St. George and St. Paul, and to the coast, which the Doctor thinks a 'leading cause,' is in our mind no cause at all; nor do we perceive that the accession of a few Russians has