them as boundless as that of the hierarchy in the middle ages; with this difference, that the former strove for light and liberty, the latter for darkness and slavery. This is another outbreak of that second great revolution, which, solely by intellectual means, without any admixture of physical force, is advancing to its accomplishment; and whose simple but resistless weapons are public discussion and the press. L'Estrange is a man of philosophical mind and unalterable calmness. His manners are those of an accomplished gentleman, who has traversed Europe in various capacities, has a thorough knowledge of mankind, and with all his mildness cannot always conceal the sharp traces of great acuteness. I should call him the ideal of a well-intentioned Jesuit.' Vol. I. pp. 333-337.

In a note we are told, that all the Catholic children in Ire'land are carefully instructed, and can at least read, while the 'Protestant are often utterly ignorant.' We cannot doubt that the Author was told this: that he should have swallowed the impudent falsehood, is a proof how much credulity is generally associated with scepticism, and how powerful and inveterate are the prejudices of the liberal. But we cannot find the same excuse for the monstrous allegation, that the English, like true Turks, 'keep the intellects of their wives and daughters in as narrow 'bounds as possible, with a view of securing their absolute and 'exclusive property in them'; and that in general their success is perfect'. This from a German, is somewhat too bad; and even the Translator is fain to attempt an awkward apology for his Author.

In the second volume, we are introduced to the leaders of the Catholic Association in groupe.

The three most prominent speakers are O'Connell, Shiel, and Lawless. Mr. Fin and Mr. Ford also spoke well, and with great dignity of manner. Shiel is a man of the world, and has even more ease in society than O'Connell: but as a speaker, he appeared to me too affected, too artificial; and all he said, too much got up; his manner was theatrical, and there was no real feeling in the "delivery" of his speech, as the English expressively call it. I am not surprised that, in spite of his undoubted talents, he is so much less popular than O'Connell. Both are very vain, but the vanity of O'Connell is more frank, more confiding, and sooner satisfied; that of Shiel, irritable, sore, and gloomy. The one is therefore, with reference to his own party, steeped in honey; the other in gall; and the latter, though contending for the same cause, is evidently jealous of his colleague, whom he vainly thinks to surpass. Mr. L s is the Don Quixote of the Association. His fine head and white hair, his wild but noble dignity, and his magnificent voice, excite an expectation of something extraordinary when he rises: but the speech, which commences in an earnest tone, soon falls into the most incredible extravagancies, and sometimes into total absurdity, in which friend and foe are assailed with equal fury. He is therefore little heeded; laughed at when he

Per

rages like King Lear, unmindful of his audience, and of all that is passing around him. The dominant party, however, use him to make a noise when they want him. To-day he outdid himself to such a degree in the flight he took, that he suddenly erected the standard of Deism in the midst of the Catholic, arch-Catholic Association. haps, indeed, this was only done to give occasion to O'Connell to call him indignantly to order, and to bring in a pious tirade; for on the orator's rostrum as on the tub, on the throne as in the puppet-show booth, clap-traps are necessary.' Vol. II. pp. 118, 119.

On turning over the leaf, we light upon an atheistic defence of suicide, as an expedient much to be preferred to a loss of selfrespect. Judas Iscariot must, in our Author's opinion, have acted like a philosopher in hanging himself. But we have already intimated our resolution to refrain from comment upon the impious ribaldry which is perpetually spirting itself upon the reader, and marring the pleasure he might otherwise have enjoyed in accompanying the Prince on his Irish Tour. After visiting Galway, Cork, and Cashel, his Highness returned to Dublin, crossed the Channel to Holyhead,-explored the beauties of the Wye,-visited Chepstow, Bristol, Bath, Salisbury; and after a short stay in the metropolis, returned to his half-native soil' of France. Wishing to part with him in good humour, we shall make room for one more specimen of his skill in description. It is no small advantage to the Wye', he remarks, that two ' of the most beautiful ruins in the world lie on its banks'; and he expresses his admiration, that so many Englishmen should travel thousands of miles, to fall into ecstasies at beauties of a • very inferior order to these.'

6

In the centre of a deep basin, encompassed by mountains of various forms, we descried immediately above the silver stream, the celebrated ruins of Tintern Abbey. It would be difficult to imagine a more favourable situation, or a more sublime ruin. The entrance to it seems as if contrived by the hand of some skilful scene-painter to produce the most striking effect. The church, which is large, is still almost perfect: the roof alone and a few of the pillars are wanting. The ruins have received just that degree of care which is consistent with the full preservation of their character; all unpicturesque rubbish which could obstruct the view, is removed, without any attempt at repair or embellishment. A beautiful smooth turf covers the ground, and luxuriant creeping plants grow amid the stones. The fallen ornaments are laid in picturesque confusion, and a perfect avenue of thick ivy-stems climb up the pillars and form a roof over-head. The better to secure the ruin, a new gate of antique workmanship, with iron ornaments, is put up. When this is suddenly opened, the effect is most striking and surprising. You suddenly look down the avenue of ivy-clad pillars, and see their grand perspective lines closed, at a distance of three hundred feet, by a magnificent window eighty feet high and thirty broad: through its intricate and beautiful tracery you see a wooded mountain,

from whose side project abrupt masses of rock. Over-head, the wind plays in the garlands of ivy, and the clouds pass swiftly across the deep blue sky. When you reach the centre of the church, whence you look to the four extremities of its cross, you see the two transept windows, nearly as large and as beautiful as the principal one: through each you command a picture perfectly different, but each in the wild and sublime style which harmonizes so perfectly with the building. Immediately around the ruin is a luxuriant orchard. In spring, how exquisite must be the effect of these gray venerable walls rising out of that sea of fragrance and beauty! A Vandal lord and lord-lieutenant of the county conceived the pious design of restoring the church. Happily, Heaven took him to itself before he had time to execute it.

From Tintern Abbey, the road rises uninterruptedly to a considerable height above the river, which is never wholly out of sight. The country reaches the highest degree of its beauty in three or four miles, at the Duke of Beaufort's villa, called the Moss House. Here are delightful paths, which lead in endless windings through wild woods and evergreen thickets, sometimes on the edge of lofty walls of rock, sometimes through caves fashioned by the hand of Nature, or suddenly emerge on open plateaus to the highest point of this chain of hills, called the Wind-cliff, whence you enjoy one of the most extensive and noble views in England.

'At a depth of about eight hundred feet, the steep descent below you presents in some places single projecting rocks; in others, a green bushy precipice. In the valley, the eye follows for several miles the course of the Wye, which issues from a wooded glen on the left hand, curves round a green garden-like peninsula rising into a hill studded with beautiful clumps of trees, then forces its foaming way to the right, along a huge wall of rock nearly as high as the point where you stand, and at length, near Chepstow Castle, which looks like a ruined city, empties itself into the Bristol Channel, where ocean closes the dim and misty distance.

On this side of the river, before you, the peaked tops of a long ridge of hills extend along nearly the whole district which your eye commands. It is thickly clothed with wood, out of which a continuous wall of rock, festooned with ivy, picturesquely rears its head. Over this ridge you again discern water,-the Severn, five miles broad, thronged with a hundred white sails, on either shore of which you see blue ridges of hills full of fertility and rich cultivation.

The grouping of this landscape is perfect: I know of no picture more beautiful. Inexhaustible in details, of boundless extent, and yet marked by such grand and prominent features, that confusion and monotony, the usual defects of a very wide prospect, are completely avoided. Piercefield Park, which includes the ridge of hills from Wind-cliff to Chepstow, is therefore without question the finest in England, at least for situation. It possesses all that Nature can bestow; lofty trees, magnificent rocks, the most fertile soil, a mild climate favourable to vegetation of every kind, a clear foaming stream, the vicinity of the sea, solitude, and, from the bosom of its own tranquil seclusion, a view into the rich country I have described, which receives a lofty interest from a ruin the most sublime that the imagina

tion of the finest painter could conceive,-I mean Chepstow Castle. It covers five acres of ground, and lies close to the park on the side next the town, though it does not belong to it.'

Vol. II. pp. 189–192.

Art. V. Liberia; or the Early History and Signal Preservation of the American Colony of Free Negroes on the Coast of Africa. Compiled from American Documents. By William Innes. 18mo. pp. 152. Edinburgh, 1831.

AT Cape Mount, where the western coast of Africa begins to trend to the south-east, commences what is usually called the Windward Coast. This is again divided into the Grain Coast, terminating at Cape Palmas; the Ivory Coast, extending from that point to the mouth of the Lagos; and the coast of Adoo, terminating at the mouth of the Assinee. On that On that part of the Grain Coast which has been called the kingdom of Cape Mount, but which appears to be divided among several petty tribes, has been founded the American colony, composed of Africo-Americans and liberated Africans, to which has been given the name of Liberia. Monrovia, the chief settlement, is situated half a mile from the mouth of the river Mesurado (Mont-Serado), about two miles within the extremity of the cape of that name. The district of country which comes more especially within the influence of the Colony, extends from the river Gullinas, about 100 miles N.w. of Monrovia, as far eastward as the Kroo country; but the proper territory of Liberia terminates south-eastward at the mouth of the Junk river, the head-waters of which approach those of the Montserado, so as to leave only a very narrow strip of high land between them; and the streams flowing in opposite directions, at the back of the territory, almost isolate it from the main land. The width of this peninsular tract in no part exceeds one league, between the rivers and the ocean, and in many places is narrowed to half that distance. Its length is about twelve leagues. The purchase of this tract, called the Montserado, or Mamba territory, was effected in 1821, by the American Colonization Society, the origin of which will be best explained by the following circular statement put forth by the Society, and addressed to the British public.

So far back as 1698, the Assembly of Pennsylvania, to put an end to the introduction of slaves, laid a duty of 10l. per head, upon their importation; but this benevolent law, together with about fifty of similar tenor, which were passed by the neighbouring colonies up to the period of their Revolution, were all refused the sanction of the mother country. In their declaration of Independence, dated July 4th, 1776, the introduction of slaves was one of the great causes of complaint.

Scarcely had that struggle ceased, when a Colony on the coast of Africa, similar to that of Liberia, was proposed; but the prosecution of the Slave Trade, by every civilized Power, defeated these benevolent views. In 1796, the plan was again revived in a series of luminous Essays by Gerard T. Hopkins, a distinguished friend in Baltimore; and shortly afterwards, the legislature of Virginia, a State containing nearly one-third of the black population of the Union, pledged its faith to give up all their slaves, provided the United States could obtain a proper asylum for them. President Jefferson negotiated in vain for a territory either in Africa or Brazil; but that great State again renewed its pledge in 1816, by a vote of 190 to 9, (most of the members being slave-holders,) upon which, Gen. C. F. Mercer, the Wilberforce of the American Congress, opened a correspondence with the philanthropists of the different States, which led to the formation of the AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY, on the 1st of January, 1817.

The great objects of that Society, were-t -the final and entire abolition of slavery, providing for the best interests of the blacks, by establishing them in independence upon the coast of Africa; thus constituting them the protectors of the unfortunate natives against the inhuman ravages of the slaver, and seeking, through them, to spread the lights of civilization and Christianity among the fifty millions who inhabit those dark regions. To meet the views of all parties, they had a most difficult path to tread; but, as all legislation on the subject of slavery was specially reserved to the respective States by the Articles of Confederation, and had become the basis of the Constitution of the United States, they very wisely, instead of denouncing an evil which they had not the power to overthrow, had recourse to the more sure, but gradual mode of removing it, by enlightening the consciences, and convincing the judgements, of the slave-holders. Their theory is justified by experience; for while our little colony has grown quite as fast as could be wished for by its most judicious friends, these principles have been silently gaining ground in the slave States, yet so rapidly, that the number of slaves offered gratuitously by benevolent owners, exceed ten-fold the present means of the Society to receive and convey them to Africa. The disposition of Virginia has been already shewn. Delaware and Kentucky have also proved their anxiety to concur in so noble a cause; and Dr. Ayres, the earliest Governor of Liberia, now a resident of Maryland, asserts "that, owing to the plans and principles of colonization being better understood, in less than twenty years there will be no more slaves born in that State."

A party in South Carolina is now almost the only opponent that the Society has at home; and, as if to afford the most incontestible evidence that its plan will destroy the institution of slavery in the United States, they ground their opposition upon the inevitable tendency of colonization to eradicate slave-holding, and thereby deprive them of their property.

But if the present means of the Society are inadequate to effect its purposes, it will be recollected that only eight years have elapsed since Cape Messurado, then a mart for the sale of 10,000 fellow-creatures annually, was purchased from the natives; that unhallowed