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and says, that this persecution assumes now a jesuitical character; particularly since the government, to prevent the young Hungarians from frequenting the excellent German Universities, has founded, or pretended to found, two Protestant Universities in Hungary. Proselytism penetrates even into public instruction, and the author fears there is an intention to destroy, if possible, the envangelical church in Hungary.

He maintains that in the other Austrian States, where the Emperor is absolute, the Protestants are less tormented than in Hungary,

where his power is limited by the constitution. It will be asked how

the author dared to reveal these truths: it will be seen by the title that his work appeared at Leipsic, and we have since learnt that it was not published till after his death. M. de Berzeviczy died in February, 1822; he was the author of two other works upon Hungary, De commercio et industria Hungariæ. Published at Leutchau in 1797, and De indole et conditione Rusticorum in Hungaria, without date, in 8vo. and also two German works upon the commerce of Europe.

ENGLISH BOOKS.

Fables for the Holy Alliance.— Rhymes on the Road, &c. By Thomas Brown, the Younger. 12mo, pp. 198. London, 1823.

It is so foreign to our habits to review any party or even political work, unless it relates to general principles of political science, or unless it involves facts and questions which may effect our national history, that we cannot review the volume now before us, or notice it otherwise than in very general terms. The fables display a rich vein of light satire, and they exhibit great vivacity of manner, with considerable brilliancy of imagination. The union of these qualities, with the mellifluous nature of the verse, clearly points out the real author of the volume. We run no risk of error in pronouncing that there is but one poet now living who could have composed either these Fables, or the "

Rhymes on the Road." Some of them are in this eminent author's best style; and although the wit and elegance of the volume cannot fail to render the work a source of amusement to even the most illiberal of the opposite party, we cannot ourselves but regret, that such high qualities of the poetic temperament should be devoted to any subject so ephemeral in its nature, or so partial in its application. A poet like Mr. should write for posterity and for mankind. It is evident that the old latin adage, non generant aquila columbas, is not always true.

The Naval History of Great Britain from the year 1783 to 1822. By Edward Pelham Brenton, Esq. Captain in the Royal Navy. 4 vols. 8vo. London, 1823.

A work like that which we have now the pleasure of noticing may obviously be intended either to excite the bravery and emulation of future naval officers, or may be designed to afford to the general reader that strong degree of interest which men always take in authentic histories of personal bravery and adventure; it may even assume a higher character, exhibiting the whole science of naval warfare, with the effect of naval operations upon the security and prosperity of kingdoms, and upon the international policy of the civilized world. These three objects of a naval history are by no means incompatible, and accordingly Captain Brenton has endeavoured to unite them in the work which he has now presented to the public. This gentleman from his professional experience, from his opportunities of arriving at many facts by his acquaintance with the actors in the scenes he describes, and from his access to the papers of, excepting one, the greatest naval characters, has been able to produce an invaluable work, combining the most lively and intense amusement with much of information most important to every class of readers.

We think Captain Brenton what may be called pretty fair, generally speaking, in his strictures upon

naval characters and events; but we look sometimes in vain for those strong terms of reprobation with which, as an historian and a patriot, he ought to brand many of those individuals, who, during the American and the succeeding wars, were lamentably deficient in their professional zeal or courage; nor does he sufficiently stigmatize that scandalous perversion of principle, which, within the period of his history, was but too often displayed by the executive government to the great injury of our country. On this principle we read his account of the naval campaign in the Channel, in 1794, with diminished satisfaction. Surely something strong should have been said of the Captain of the Cæsar, of the spirited and patriotic Major of marines, who brought him to a court-martial, and of the highly reprehensible conduct of the administration in shielding the guilty, or at least in negatively oppressing the guiltless. From personal and professional knowledge we can venture to say, that the conduct of the Rear-Admiral in not intercepting the return ships into Brest, after the battle of the first of June, might have been more strongly stated. Surely some term of horror might have been expressed at the treatment of the crew of the Hermione, as well as upon the needless severity of executing the mutineers so long after a crime to which they had been stimulated by such dreadful ill usage. The dignity of history is rather sunk by the social mention of sirnames, without the rank or christian names of the parties. Some parts of the history might, we apprehend, be curtailed with advantage.

But the merits of the work are very considerable, and the interest which a perusal of it excites is intense and varied. To support our opinion we need but refer to the account of the mutinies of the Bounty and Hermione, and of the general mutiny of the navy, of the actions between the Nymph and Cleopatra, or of the Ruse de Guerre so admirably practised by Captain Hood in the Juno.

Our limits prevent our entering at any length into Captain Brenton's views of continental affairs, and of

the general policy of Great Britain, and we, therefore, conclude our review by bearing testimony to the merit with which this gentleman has recorded the history of his profession, during the most eventful period of our national existence.

Description of the Ruins of an ancient City, discovered near Palenque, in Guatemala, in Spanish America. Translated from the Spanish. 4to. pp. 128. London, 1823.

This work is dedicated, with permission, to Lord Holland, a nobleman so distinguished in literature in general, and particularly in the literature of Spain, that the prefixture of his name is a sufficient guarantee for the authenticity of the original Spanish documents, of which this work professes to be a translation; and the critic is, therefore, left only to the task of examining into the nature of these ruins, and into the sagacity of the speculations that have been formed upon their discovery.

Guatemala is a narrow mountainous tract of country, about 100 miles broad, and 400 miles long, situated on the western shores of the Isthmus of Darien, and consequently washed by the Pacific Ocean. It is very subject to earthquakes, and the capital of the province was destroyed by these convulsions of nature in 1751, and again in 1773, when the Spanish government built a capital, about twenty-five miles distant from the site of the former city.

Several ruins having been reported to exist near Palenque, a city on the Isthmus, and on the Micol, a river emptying itself into the Bay of Campeche, the Cabinet of Madrid, on the 15th May, 1786, issued an order for the exploring of these objects of antiquarian research, and the execution of these instructions were intrusted to a Captain Antonio del Rio, of whose report to government on the subject we have now a literal translation.

Captain del Rio found a line of road extending half a league, and covered with ruins, at the extremity of which, on an elevation, were situated the remains of fourteen stone houses, the most dilapidated of which were sufficiently perfect to

have their apartments discernable. The most considerable of these buildings stands in a rectangular area of 450 yards by 300, and on a mound twenty yards high; it is surrounded by the remaining thirteen ruins. The fragments of stone buildings viewed from this spot extend in a line E. and W. near eight leagues, and from N. to S. not more than half a league. Under the chief building are the remains of a subterranean stone aqueduct of great solidity, and at a distance of twenty leagues to the South are similar ruins, in one of which the friezes, with statues and figures in relief, are still in good preservation; eight leagues to the North are other extensive ruins, and the whole line of country, on the interior borders of Campeche, bears evident marks of former population by a people advanced in civilization. But the principal building near Palenque is an architecture rude and massive, and resembling the gothic. The entrance on the East is by a portico thirty-six yards long and three broad, supported by rectangular pillars, or rather isolated pilasters, without base or pedestal, with massive architraves, ornamented by a species of shield, and over this architrave, between two of the pilasters, there is extant a frieze of five feet long by six broad. Between the windows, some of which are square and others in the form of a Greek cross, are medallions containing heads and other devices. Beyond the portico is a square court, entered by seven steps, and on the south side of which are remaining four small chambers without ornament. There is another court and a tower of sixteen yards high, with an interior tower and a flight of steps leading to the summit. There are very numerous devices on various parts of the building, all in relief, and generally in medio relievo, many of them grotesque and therefore probably intended to represent their deities. The blocks of stone composing the building were generally very large, being sometimes seven or eight feet long by about four feet broad. A second building examined by Captain del Rio had a saloon of sixty feet long by ten feet broad, orna

mented by stucco figures of females with children in their arms, in demirelief. All these fourteen buildings were of great similarity in their architecture, and analogous in the arrangement and distribution of their compartments. Captain del Rio indulges in very little conjecture, and broaches no theory or hypothesis relating to his discoveries, but has confined himself simply to reporting facts, and giving literal and linear descriptions of these vestiges of antiquity.

Captain del Rio's report is dated June 24, 1787, and in 1794, a Doctor Paul Felix Cabrera, of the city of New Guatemala, published a treatise on these discoveries of the Spanish officer, in which he endeavours to prove a connexion anciently existing between the Americans and the Egyptians, and other people of our hemisphere. Our Spanish doctor, like all theorists, has no notion of stopping half way in his ocean of deductions; for he not only tells us that he has solved the grand problem of the aborigines, or first population of America, but

he informs us who were the first inhabitants of Mexico, and precisely when they first arrived, &c. &c. Virgil tells us, "Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas,' " and if he speaks truth, the antiquaries must be a most happy class of gentlemen, for no objects of antiquity can be discovered that dozens of causes do not follow in rapid succession, and, although contradictory, the greater part of them are always given in the ex cathedra form.

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Doctor Cabrera is a faithful Catholic, but he thinks it consistent to give us a broad assertion (page 26), that the scriptures are a record of superstitions, idolatries, and other errors repugnant to true religion." Now, with Hamlet, "we hold it not honesty to have it thus set down," and least of all by one possessing the degree of doctor. Following this assertion we have pages of reasoning too contemptible for us to notice; and although the problem of the first population of America has been declared by the greatest authors to be a mere theory, elucidated by no histories, manuscripts, nor traditions of the American tribes, the doctor, on a

host of assumed or perverted data, and by a chain of reasoning that could prove any thing and every thing, comes to a positive conclusion that the Americans are derived from the Egyptians, Carthagenians, Jews, &c. &c. that the ancient Atlantis was no other than the island of Hispaniola, and, in short, so wonderfully successful has this Doctor Paul Felix Cabrera been in his historical and antiquarian researches, that he has even given us a chronological table, containing all the Mexican Kings from 291 years to 34 years before Christ. We will not insult our readers by saying any thing further of the part of this volume which relates to Doctor Cabrera, who exhibits a strong proof of the mischief done to society by rearing men to a religion, which can be supported only by means of training the mind to the perversion of its ratiocinative and other faculties.

The report and graphic illustrations of these antiquities by Captain Antonio del Rio are well worthy of the attention of the curious, but his discoveries do not appear to us to throw the smallest light upon the problem of how America first became inhabited by the human species; they merely establish that cities and populous districts existed formerly on the borders of Campeche, and that their inhabitants were not identically the same people as those whom the Spaniards, on their arrival, found in such power in other parts of Mexico. Writers on such subjects have the absurd habit of selecting two distant nations, and tracing some resemblance in their ancient customs, manners, religions, and civil architecture, they draw the inference that one must have been descended from the other, forgetting that such resemblances merely prove the general analogy of our animal nature; and that man, under similar stages in the scale of civilization, will have analogous institutions, and analogous objects both of ornament and of convenience, although these may be all modified differently by various contingent circumstances.

The human figures copied by Captain del Rio all bear a resemblance to each other, and have a

contour both of face and of body different from any race that we have yet been made acquainted with ; but how is it possible to tell whether these figures were good or bad representations of a people who have left no other records of their existence, or whether they might not have been capricious personifications of their objects of worship. On such subjects all is vague conjecture, and it is idle to speculate on such uncertain data. The origin of the human race is beyond the powers of the human faculties to discover, and it is no mark of wisdom to inquire into that which, from the nature of the human mind, it is abstractedly impossible for us to ascertain. Sufficient is it for us to know that the great object of our being made is, to modify our thoughts and conduct so as to produce the greatest possible sum of happiness to society, with the least quantity of evil.

Matins and Vespers, with_Hymns, and occasional devotional Pieces. By John Bowring, 12mo. pp. 255. London, 1823.

If the volume before us were of less merit, or even devoid of any pretensions to public favour, any literary censures ought to fall rather on ourselves and on other critics than upon Mr. Bowring; for the high degree of praise which we, in common with others, bestowed upon this gentleman for his translations in his " Russian Anthology" was calculated to act as a stimulus to any person to put forth his powers in original composition.

These matins, vespers, and hymns breathe a fervid spirit of piety and devotion, but we doubt whether they will do more than sustain the reputation that Mr. Bowring has acquired by his preceding works. Considering the prodigious number of forms of almost every possible description, which men of every degree of talent have devoted to the subject of religious worship, it is obvious that it is almost impossible for any person to compose a volume of this description without repeatedly recurring to ideas and to figures which have been before presented to the public, or without

frequently varying from himself more in form of expression than in substance of thought. It is for these reasons that the little volume now before us bears no impress of novelty, and even in those compositions which most evince Mr. Bowring's powers of intellect, and display his usual strength and elegance, we often meet with ideas that have been made familiar to us by preceding authors, or which we have before seen in the present volume, either in other forms, or in forms but little varied from what may be immediately under our cogni.

But Mr. Bowring's good zance. sense and candour are commensurate with his intellectual superiority, for in his preface he acknowledges having taken much from foreign authors, and to this praise we may add that his devotional feelings are far from proscriptive or circumscribed by any spirit of sect, or attachment to creed or religious theory; they breathe the feelings of general piety to the Godhead, and are such as every denomination of christians may join in with equal zeal and sincerity.

There is a matin and a vesper for every morning and evening of a week in spring, in summer, in autumn, and in winter, and after which we have about sixty pages of hymns and light devotional pieces.

whilst others recall to our recollection the psalms in the sacred volume. Who is there that will not have such associations created in his mind by the following lines:—

"How shall I praise Thee, Lord of Light,

How shall I all thy love declare."

"Come hither, spirit, come, they say."

"The Heavens, O Lord, Thy power
proclaim,

And the earth echoes back thy name;
Ten thousand voices speak thy might,
And day to day, and night to night."

"How sweet to think of him, how
sweet
To hold with him communion meet,
In his blest presence to rejoice."

But the recurrence of the same ideas in different, and not very different language is almost endless, we shall mention but one or two instances:

P. 60.-"No distance can outreach thy eye,

No night obscure thy endless day," &c.

P. 155.-"Darkness deep, or distance wide,

Cannot man from God divide." P. 60.-No night of sorrow can conceal

Man from thy notice, from thy care."

We have thus already passed our judgment in general terms upon the volume, and it remains for us only to support that judgment by a few opinions in detail, or by giving a few references to particular pieces, or a few quotations from particular In page 107 we have again; passages. We must only here express our satisfaction in acknowledging that every merit of the work is peculiarly to be attached to the author, whilst its defects are solely to be attributed to his course having been so frequently traversed before.

We have just quoted,

"How sweet to think of him, how sweet,

To hold with him communion meet."

In elucidation of this remark we may refer to the first matin (page 3), which the author has rendered impressive, but which yet does not contain a single idea that has not been before us repeatedly, or which is not obvious to every educated person. Many of the pieces associate the mind immediately to some of Addison's most celebrated hymns, Eur. Mag. May, 1823.

"In such an hour as this how sweet,
communion
To hold with Heaven
meet."

But in spite, if we may use the term, of the ground having been worn out before him, Mr. Bowring's genius has made many of his pieces attractive and pleasing; the following is simple and pretty:

"When the arousing call of morn
Breaks o'er the hills, and day new
born

Comes smiling from the purple east,
And the pure streams of liquid light
Bathe all the earth-renewed and

bright,

K

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