Recollections of Europe. By J. Fenimore Cooper, Esq. author of "The Pilot," &c. 2 vols. London, 1837.

MR. COOPER's former volumes on France and Switzerland are, we presume, familiar to our readers. This work traverses a part of the same ground, but consists not of a regular account of his experiences in England and Europe, but of the "gleanings of a harvest already gathered." It consists of a series of letters, into which broken form all his surplus notes are thrown, enriched with the advantages of more mature reflection than the voyageur who writes out of the fullness of first impressions can find time to make. In this respect these "Recollections" are totally different from Mr. Cooper's previous works of travels, and indeed from any other works that profess to describe journeys of pleasure and observation. They are decidedly individual, and are marked by decided characteristics of the writer's mind and feelings; they trace the gradual progress of his opinions on the institutions and habits of European society, and present a continuous contrast, which does not always take a palpable shape, but which is perceptible in the tone throughout, between the New World and the Old. On this account the publication is curious, and, to a certain extent, valuable; although it must be confessed that there is a great deal of space lavished in its pages upon very unimportant topics.

When Mr. Cooper left New York in 1826 to visit Europe for the first time, he was biassed by strong American partialities—perhaps we ought to say prejudices. National pride, which is always the most invincible in a people who have been the architects of their own greatness, unassisted by alliances, and owing nothing to diplomatic leagues and commercial treaties, is carried to an excess in America that is unknown, and almost incomprehensible, in the old states who repose quietly upon their historical fame, and who maintain their prosperity under settled and long established institutions. The American is proud of his own land, and vain of his pride-if that sort of accumulation of the sentiment can be understood. There are no rivers, or lakes, or forests, in the New World, such as are to be found in the States: the industry of America covers a larger space, and exhibits a more vital principle of activity, than that of any other country. Then the Americans are a money-getting and money-loving race, and money is the main-spring of the power of nations as well as of individuals, and their resources in the way of profitable labour are almost inexhaustible. What care they for idle

fashion, and cold ceremonials? Plenty, and the prospect of superabundance, stand them in the stead of style; and they are enabled, by the rich fruits of their spirit of enterprise, to look with contempt upon the shallow luxuries of Europe, where the gilded shell is too often naked within. If you reproach them with their sordid views, their vulgarities, and their mean attempts to attain that elegance which they profess to despise, they refer you to what America will be a thousand years hence; they tell you that they live for the future and not for the present, that the arts of effeminate repose are unworthy of a power that aspires to the highest place in the scale of independent and selfsubsisting governments, and that practical sense is more enduring and respectable than the most refined externals. Such was the school in which Mr. Cooper's views of society were formed; and his first literary essays in Europe abundantly proved, that the spell of his early love maintained its influence over him for a long time, even after the novelty of the new scenes in which he mixed had passed away. In the beginning, no doubt, Mr. Cooper's feelings were, in great part, political: he had been accustomed to democracy on a large scale, and the civil checks of a different form of government, as well as the restraints of more cultivated intercourse, instead of shaking his faith in American habitudes, seemed to have had the effect of confirming him in all his predilections. Whenever an opportunity occurred in his novels for the expression of such sentiments, Mr. Cooper's opinions could not be mistaken: he regarded monarchies with distrust, considered aristocracy a great evil, and betrayed an anxious tenderness for what are called, in their most vague acceptation, popular rights. But as Mr. Cooper's experience enlarged, he appears gradually to have undergone a very remarkable transition. We could detect certain misgivings in his latter works, as if he were growing doubtful of long cherished theories, and had not yet quite made up his mind to abandon them. In his books on France, and Switzerland, these doubts become almost resolved into a renunciation of the theories altogether; and the volumes before us must be received as a clear recantation of the whole American heresy, and in some sort as a profession of the old established faith of the rest of all the civilised world. The reader may not discover this fact in a cursory perusal, nor is it disclosed in any direct avowal on the part of the author. But it is, nevertheless, the spirit of the production; which is a sort of reluctant, or perhaps unconscious, confession of that which nobody but an American would ever think of contesting-the superiority, intellectual, social, and political, of England and France over the United States. That other enlightened Americans will rapidly arrive at the same conclusion that a few years will develope an energetic action in the people, either for the dismemberment of the republic into separate states, or in ambitious rulers for the union of the whole under one arbitrary head (which is much more

likely to be realised), and that these acknowledgments of the stability of mixed governments, and the advantages of hereditary rank, are but the precursors of important changes, which the present generation, perhaps, may not live to witness; no man who has watched the progress of society, or traced the course of empires, can hesitate to admit. Mr. Cooper's opinions, therefore, are worthy of attention, as being in anticipation of his age, and prophetic of a destiny to which even he would be unwilling to contribute.

It must not be supposed, however, that these "Recollections" are essentially political; on the contrary, the greater part of the two volumes is filled with the lightest matter, sketches of society, chiefly in London and Paris, portraits of such distinguished individuals as accident happened to throw in the way of the author; long and minute descriptions of the modes of European life; and a collection of literary and fashionable gossip so pleasantly related, that the majority of Mr. Cooper's readers will derive more entertainment from this publication than from any of the very clever fictions upon which his reputation is based. That Mr. Cooper should think it necessary or judicious to dedicate so much consideration to these affairs of

mere form and courtesy which are almost instinc tive with Europeans, such as dinner table habits, the etiquette of visiting, the orders of precedence, costume, &c., will hardly surprise any one who has penetrated the impressions under which the work was written and if the truth must be told, a very great portion of the difference between the two stages of society represented in the two worlds, will be found to consist in these apparently trifling traits, which, with us, are lost in the insignificance that attaches to commonplace and every-day usages, but which are intricate, perplexing, and wearisome to less cultivated nations. As Mr. Cooper became familiar with the toil of formal society, he began to discover, not merely its elevating character, but its intrinsic utility; and having once fallen into it habitually, the roughness, and brusque mannerism of his own countrymen could no longer be tolerated by the accomplished traveller. In fact, without intending it to be so, this work is a severer satire upon America than the caricatures of Mrs. Trollope: it is more in earnest, contains more positive truth, and is much more likely than any work we have ever read to satisfy all sceptics that America is a century behind us in taste and general civilisation.

MR. BURFORD's Panoramas have long been great favourites with the public; and no wonder, when by a change as rapid as any in Shakspeare's Plays, a cockney traveller steps at once out of Leicester Fields into Constantinople, or, as in the present instance, finds himself amongst the glaciers of Switzerland. Steam-carriages and balloons, though pretty miracles in their way, are nothing to the magic of this transition; besides that Mr. Burford's travellers have the singular advantage of performing their journey without fatigue to their limbs, or hazard to their necks-" suave mare in magno est aliena periêla videre," which may be freely rendered for the present purpose, "it is a very pleasant thing to sit snugly by the fire of an Exhibition room, and imagine the painted figures on the canvass toiling amongst the glaciers of Mont Blanc." For ourselves we must honestly confess that, like Falstaff, we greatly admire taking our ease in our own inn, and though much amused by the accounts of Saussure, Clissold, and other daring adventurers, we have no mind to emulate their example.

Mont Blanc is a lion well worth seeing, and, as if that were not enough, poets, painters, and travellers, have all combined to make him a subject of wonder and curiosity; they have painted, talked, and written him up, as if they had been specially retained in his behalf. The consequence is, that

to pay their respects to this last lion, while here and there may be seen a learned tourist comparing notes with his recollections, and testing the painter's truth by that which he has himself observed. And is this, indeed, the monarch of mountains which Byron has crowned with a diadem of snow, and braced about with mighty avalanches; are these in truth the glaciers, so graphically described by the intrepid Clissold? is this the valley of Chamounix, associated with a thousand recollections, all grand, and all beautiful? We hardly know what to say to it; the picture is far from fulfilling our expectations; but, then, in common fairness, comes the question, is such a realisation of the fancy possible? To us, the painting is deficient in vividness and grandeur; there is a want of magnitude about it; though, perhaps, all these defects may rather be attributed to the nature of the exhibition, than to any deficiency of power in the artist. compared to the magic Diorama in the Regent's Park, and the moving pictures exhibited on the stage by Stanfield, it is certainly ineffective; but then, it must be candidly allowed, that the first of these dioramas owes no small portion of its effect to the peculiarity of its mechanical construction, while the second borrows half its brilliance from

As

the circumstance of its being seen by gas-light. Still, though the present panorama wants these adventitious aids, we may safely recommend it as a highly interesting exhibition.

THE patent theatres have been going over the old ground for the last month, and with much the same success as usual-that is to say with no success at all. The only novelties have been the appearance of Mr. Forrest in Howard Payne's Brutus, and a Mr. Hamblin in the part of Hamlet. There is a grievous disposition on the part of some critics to undervalue Mr. Forrest. He is not unlike Wallack in his style of acting, with less knowledge perhaps of the art, but with greater physical powers. Were he under the necessity of following the stage as a profession, and submitting to its drudgery for two or three years, there can be little doubt of the result. His merits are those of natural talent; his defects arise from the want of study and practice. We are accustomed to see actors burst upon us, on the London stage, in all the splendour of genius; and the spectator hence is too apt to infer, as honest Dogberry inferred of reading and writing, that acting-unlike other professions-comes by nature. Now the contrary happens to be the truth; almost all our first actors have gone through a long and hard apprenticeship, before they obtained the vacant chair of Garrick. Cooke, Kemble, Kean, Macready, were all, in the early part of their career, diligent students of their art, and that, which now appears the result of inspiration, has

been in fact only the result of genius, matured by long and painful study.

Mr. Hamblin, whom some of the papers call an American, is, in reality, the same Mr. Hamblin, who, about twenty years ago, played subordinate parts at Drury Lane theatre, then under the management of Elliston. On a particular occasion, in the absence of those of higher name, he was called upon to play the part of Hamlet; and such was his success, that the whimsical manager, in a fit of gratitude, rewarded him with-guess, gentle reader-with a tooth-pick case! but poor Elliston, with all his talent, never could speak, talk, or act, like any other man; still, the effect of this humble present was to fill the aspirant with new notions of his own powers. It could not be expected that the Prince of Denmark could sink into the private gentleman, or deliver messages. Accordingly he fled from Old Drury to sport his newly acquired diadem in the provinces. His success appears to have been great, and no wonder, for at least he had all the outward qualities of an actor, though we hardly know whether we can, in justice, concede to him that mens divinior, which is the essential quality of a genius. Still, a man may be a good, and even a first-rate, actor, without being a Kean, or a Kemble.

"The Chase, the Turf, and the Road," by Nimrod. Attila," a novel, by G. P. R. James.

..

An Account of an Expedition into the Interior of New Holland. Edited by Lady Mary Fox. "Picciola," or Captivity Captive.

A new edition of the Works of Goldsmith, with Notes. By James Prior, Esq.

Tableaux from Crichton, containing fourteen engraved Illustrations of Mr. Ainsworth's new Novel of Crichton. By John Franklin, Esq.

A Popular Account of the Public and Private Life of the Ancient Greeks, translated from the German of Heinrich Hase.

Modern India; or, Illustrations of the Resources and Capabilities of Hindoostan. By Dr. Spry, of the Bengal Medical Staff.

Temples Ancient and Modern, or Notes on Church Architecture. By Dr. Bardwell, Architect.

An Exploratory Voyage along the West Coast of Africa, and the Narrative of a Campaign in Kafferland in 1835. By Captain I. E. Alexander. The fourth volume of the Rev. C. Thirlwall's History of Greece.

The Spirit of the Woods, with 76 Coloured Engravings.

The Victims of Society. By the Countess of Blessington.

The State Prisoner. By Miss E. L. Boyle. The Married Unmarried. By the Author of "Almack's Revisited." Early Recollections, chiefly relating to the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge, during his long residence in Bristol. By Joseph Cottle.

Napoleon in Council; being the opinions of Bonaparte delivered in the Council of State; by the Baron Pelet. Translated by Captain Basil Hall.

BIRTHS.

On the 28th ult. at Bowness, Westmoreland, the Lady of Sir T. S. Pasley, Bart. of a son. On the 28th of December last, at Dowlais, Lady Charlotte Guest, of a daughter. On the 26th ult. in Green Street, Grosvenor Square, Mrs. A. Shelley, of a son. On the 21st ult. at Strut Rectory, the Lady of the Rev. R. Fitzhugh, of a son. On the 28th ult. the Right Hon. Lady de Tabley, of a daughter, who survived only a few hours. On the 6th, in Upper Harley Street, the Lady of J. Melville, Esq. of a son. On the 7th, Lady Howard, of a son and heir. On the 7th, at Calverthorpe, the Hon. Mrs. Handley, of a son. On the 7th, at Hilborowe-hall, Norfolk, the Lady of H. B. Caldwell, Esq., of a son. On the 5th, at Dover, the Lady of the Rev. J. H. Harrison, of

On the 28th ult., at Woodford, Essex, Adolphus William, son of J. A. Young, Esq., of Great Ormond Street, to Anne Eliza, daughter of E. Smith, Esq., of Woodford Wells. On the 27th ult., at Steeple Aston Church, the Rev. E. Boyle, to Elizabeth Margaret Colquhoun, daughter of the late A. Colquhoun, Lord Register of Scotland. On 26th ult., at All Souls Church, Langham Place, Captain J. A. Cox, to Elizabeth Golding, daughter of Major Maxwell, of Itraquhan, N.B. On the 14th September, at St. Thomas's Mount, Madras, Capt. Prior, of the 23d Regiment of Madras Infantry, to Elizabeth Lethes, daughter of Sir J. C. Mortlock, Commissioner of Excise. On the 18th ult., at Corwillgai, Carmarthenshire, Capt. J. Beck, Bombay Army, to Jane, daughter of the late J. Johnes, Esq., of Dolecothy. On the 2nd, at St. George's, Hanover Square, C. Turnor, Esq., of Stoke Rochfort and Panton House, Lincoln, to Lady Caroline Finch Hatton, daughter of the Earl of Winchilsea and Nottingham. On the 13th of Dec. last, at Lake Erie, Upper Canada, William Johnson, Esq., son of Lieut.-Col. Johnson, C.B. of the Hon. East India Company's service, to Louisa Jukes, only daughter of the late A. Jukes, Esq., M.D. of the Hon. East India Company's Service. On the 20th Dec., at Quebec, G. L. Baines, Esq., Lieut. 66th Regt., son of the late T. Danus, Esq., of Greenhill, King's County, Ireland, to Emma, daughter of W. Kemble, Esq., Quebee. On the

February 28, 1837.

7th, in Burlington Gardens, W. H. Harcourt Esq., of St. Leonard's Berks, to Elizabeth Georgiana Harriet, daughter of the Hon. Col. Cavendish. Ou the 7th, at West Ham, the Rev. R.D. Buttewer, of Clare Hall, Cambridge, to Mary, daughter of J. E. Boulcott, Esq., of Stratford House, Essex. On the 9th, at the Charterhouse, W. Straham, Esq., of Ashurst, to Anne, daughter of the late General Sir G. B. Fisher, K.C.H. On the 16th inst., at the British Embassy at Paris, the Rev. James Gillman, Rector of Barfreyston, Kent, to Sophia, only surviving daughter to the late Alexander Riley, Esq., of Euston Square, London.

DEATHS.

On the 26th ult., at Portsea, J. Franklin, Esq., R.N. On the 25th ult., the Rev. W. Farly, M. A. 45 years vicar of Effingham, Surrey. On the 26th ult., at Witley, Surrey, of influenza, the Rev. J. F. Chandler, aged 75. On the 19th ult., at Ashurst rectory, Northampton, Mary, wife of the Hon. and Rev. F. Powys, and sister of the late Lord Grey de Ruthyn, aged 58. On the 25th ult., at Tichborne parsonage, the Rev. S. Strut, aged 63. On the 26th ult., at St. Ninian's, Wooler, Northumberland, of influenza, Lady St. Paul, aged 58. On the 26th ult., at Jompting, Sussex, the Rev. T. C. Hooper, aged 63. On the 27th ult., in Gay St, Bath, aged 88, Eleanor, relict of the late J. Sutton, Esq., of New Park, Devizes, and sister of Viscount Sidmouth. On the 27th ult., at Ruddington, Nottingham, Lieut. General J. Grey, aged 76. On the 1st inst., C. I. Romilly, Esq., barrister-at-law, of Gray's Inn, aged 47. On the 11th ult., at Brighton, Anne, widow of Admiral Sir R. Onslow, Bart. G. C. B., aged 85. On the 1st, at Mersham, Mina, daughter, of Sir N. G. H. Jolliffe, aged 4. On the 5th, at Fraul, Sussex, Captain L. Menit, late of the H. E. I. Company's Service. At Brighton, of influenza, Mr. M'Queen, son of Lord Braxfield. On the 6th, at Greatford, Edward, second Marquis of Drogheda, aged 68. On the 4th, the Rev. G. Somers Clarke, D.D. Vicar of Great Waltham, aged 82. On the 7th, at the parsonage, East Dul. wich, Surrey, the Rev. E. N. Walter, rector of Leigh, Essex, aged 74. On the 20th, in Vine Street, Lieut. Henry Munro, one of the heroic defenders of Gibraltar under Gen. Elliot, aged 77. On the 7th, at Dorking, Surrey, the Rev. G. Fencham, M. P. vicar of that parish, aged 70. On the 20th, at Abbots Ripton, aged 19, Jessie, sixth daughter of J. B. Rooper, Esq., M.P. On the 20th, at Brighton, in her 19th year, Hannah Augusta, only child of Augustus Gortling, L.L.D. On the 22d, at her residence, Tilney St., Park-lane, the Hon. Mrs. A. Stanhope.