ftate brought from heaven to Charlemain, and carefully preferved among the imperial regalia to this day. Many further arguments of their bigotry might be enumerated, fuch as a celebrated chapel fomewhere in the Auftrian diftricts, endowed with so many spiritual privileges, that a fingle mals faid in it is fufficient to deliver a foul from purgatory; not to forget their torches of wood, bleft, and carried about as prefervatives against fire and lightning, nor their ridiculously pious falutations of each other at certain annual feftivals. To this exceffive superstition in the invocation of faints, one may add, their notorious susceptibility of belief in all thofe pious forgeries, calculated by men of more fimplicity than wisdom to ferve religious purposes. Such, for example, is the ftory of Hatto, archbishop of Mentz, reported for his cruelty to the poor to have been devoured by rats; as likewife, that of the expulfion of those animals from a certain province by a relation of St. Hubert, which is held equally unquestionable. Credulity, indeed, seems epidemical in Germany. Even in Brandenburgh, a protestant country, the ghost of an old woman, who was difobliged by an elector of that houfe fome centuries ago, has, they fay, infested his posterity ever fince; and ufually haunts their palaces by way of fignal on their approaching deaths. This abfurd notion is treated with more seriousness than one would be apt to imagine; and it is well known, that the death of the first king of Pruffia was haftened by a fudden fright occafioned by the fight, as he, for the moment thought, of an apparition clad in white, and which proved to be his queen, whofe mind was difordered, and who burst into his apartment, and waked him with great roughness and violence, as he fat Aumbering in a chair.

Whilft the German grandees are infatuated with the ideas of dignity annexed to their rank, there is another class of people, who, in a very oppofite station of life, entertain equal notions of their own importance. These are the peasants of fome of thofe happy districts, which belong to the imperial cities, or which, though they acknowledge the fovereignty of fome prince, retain fuch privileges and franchifes as enable them to escape oppreflion, and enjoy the fruits of their labour. These profefs no efteem for any but pecuniary merit. Hence the whole drift of their lives is not fo much to enjoy, as to amafs immenfe hoards of money, of which they make a most ample parade, whenever they find themselves in the prefence of title-bearers, the poverty of whofe finances forms a striking contraft to their high pretenfions. Far different from these are the other boors in most parts of Germany, who are fervile to fuch a degree, that in the leaft verbal intercourfe with any of E e 4 their

their fuperiors, they exprefs the deepest sense of their inferiority by the moft fubmiflive abjectnefs of behaviour.

Befides the merit of the Germans in philofophy and experimental knowledge, which has been already taken notice of, they were famous for mechanical inventions, long before either the English or the French; and Europe in general muft acknowledge itself indebted to them for the noble inventions of gunpowder and printing; though a celebrated author will allow them but little merit therein, when he obferves, that the greatest discoveries were made by chance, and that we owe them to the dulleft nations, as gunpowder and printing to the Germans. With regard, however, to the first of these, the merit of finding out the compofition itself has been refused them in a very learned publication.

Our author then concludes his review of the national character of the Germans, by a panegyrick upon that people, in which he allows them to excel in candour and fimplicity, as well as laboriousness and frugality; and cites many instances to prove, that they are justly entitled to general praife, on account of these truly valuable qualities.

We come now to the character of the Dutch, which concludes the work.--Our reviewer begins by beftowing the highest praises upon that people for the defperate and perfevering courage, with which they afferted their liberty, and of which they difplayed the most amazing proofs in thofe ever memorable fieges of Harlem and Leyden, not undeservedly compared to thofe of Saguntum and Carthage. At the fame time we acknowledge, that they fuftained thefe fieges with great courage and heroifm, we cannot help confidering that fpirit of ferocity, which but too frequently discovered itfelf in the befieged, and feems to make part of the national character of the Dutch. Of this we fhall cite but one inftance. At the fiege of Harlem, a Dutchman tore out the heart of a Spaniard, eat half of it himself, and then threw the remainder to a dog. Such a piece of barbarity would refle&t dishonour even upon the favage inhabitants of America. The Dutch, having eftablished their liberty in defiance of the tyranny of Spain, maintained it with equal refolution against the ambition of France; they difplayed an enthusiasm for liberty equal to that of any of the republicks of antiquity, when they rejected the hard conditions offered them by the haughty invader, and formed a refolution, rather than embrace flavery, to abandon their native country, and tranfport themfelves, their wives, children, families, in a word, their whole nation to the extremities of the globe. There is likewise, as our author juftly obferves, fomething truly admirable in that

con

conftant refolution, by which the Dutch maintain the poffeffion of their country against the fea, whilft the inhabitants of other countries have scarce induftry enough to cultivate theirs.

Our reviewer next obferves, that the profperity of Holland is in a great measure owing to its becoming a place of refuge to all fuch merchants and men of business as were by oppreffion prevented from enjoying the fruits of their labour in their own country. On the very commencement of the Dutch republic the inhabitants and riches of Brabant and Flanders were driven by tyranny and perfecution into Holland; the thirty years war in Germany brought this republic an equal fupply in the middle of the last century, when fuch numbers fled from the scenes of defolation in which that unhappy country was fo long involved. Add to this that the revocation of the edict of Nantz, which deprived France of her most valuable fubjects, was an addition of people and treasure to Holland, almost equal to either of the two former. No people ever understood the art of making the most of the public revenues better than the Dutch, whose unparalleled œconomy was the fund from whence they drew those treasures, that enabled them, even in the infancy of their commonwealth, to make a grateful return of the most timely affistance to their generous friend queen Elizabeth, when menaced with an invasion by the Spaniards in the eighty-eighth year of the fixteenth century.

'Tis a remarkable inftance of policy in the Dutch, that they have found means to intereft the principal individuals throughout Europe in their funds, and to render their country the channel and center of all pecuniary negociations between states and fovereigns; and even the depository of their treasures, as well as of the riches of their fubjects.

Though our author feems difpofed to dwell chiefly upon the bright fide of the character of the Dutch, he is notwithstanding obliged himself to acknowledge that of all nations they poffefs the least of thofe external accomplishments, the acquifition of which is fo highly prized in moft other places. That their behaviour is harfh, uncouth, and unpolite he acknowledges; and that they fhew a contemptuous indifference for all, the profperity of whole circumftances is not well ascertained. Money is amongst them the only fure road to power and preferment, as amongst the ancient Carthaginians, whom they refemble in other particulars, by no means advantageous to their character. The Punica fides has been but too much verified in them, it being the general complaint of foreigners, that they are of a circumventing deceitful difpofition; and that those who have any dealings with them, must be very cautious

and

and continually on their guard, or else they are fure to be overreached. We can, therefore, by no means agree with our author, when he reprefents the Dutch as a candid, downright people, who ftand in need of no refinement in their behaviour, and are feldom converfant in fraud and deceit. Neither can they be easily defended from the charge of inhofpitality and fhyness to foreigners, nor cleared from the imputation of want of perfonal generofity. But charges ftill feverer may be brought against them, which our reviewer is fo partial to them, as either to touch upon lightly, or entirely overlook. What can be faid in extenuation of their barbarous behaviour at Amboyna, where they inflicted the most studied cruelties upon the English? It is in vain for our author to endeavour to palliate it by affirming, that it was the act only of a few, as those few may be confidered as the representatives of the whole nation, fince it never either disavowed or punished them. Another, and still more fevere charge is, that, in order to obtain the privilege of trading to Japan, they confented to trample upon the cross, a condition which all the other inhabitants of Europe had rejected with horror, and which the Dutch have vainly attempted to vindicate themselves from by feveral printed apologies. This circumftance fhews fuch an inordinate love of lucre, as no fhining qualities can atone for. Partial, however, as our reviewer is to the Dutch, whom he cries up as models of virtue and fortitude, the force of truth extorts from him an acknowledgment, that an alertnefs in feizing every opportunity to fecure their intereft, to the exclufion of all other parties, has long been a vice inherent in their characters; and that they have ever fhewn themselves refolutely determined to pursue it to the most cruel and irreparable detriment of all who might happen to come in for a competition; infomuch, that shortly after their formation into a political body, one of their firft exploits was to ruin the commerce of Antwerp, by finking veffels loaded with ftones in the mouth of the Schelde, and thereby for ever shutting up the entrance of that river to fhips of burthen. He even goes fo far to acknowledge, that upon fome occafions, they made equity give way to intereft in a manner totally inconfiftent with the rules of honour and gratitude; and for which no atonement could have been too ample, and scarce any punishment too fevere. Our author celebrates them for the calmnefs and refignation with which they meet every change of fortune; virtues, which contribute to render them, in fome refpects, the happieft of mortals. He adds, that no people more thoroughly practife the maxim of Horace,

Nil admirari, &c.

But

But this coolness and indifference of temper, this flowness to admire, is the reason that there is fcarce any thing brilliant even among their most striking characters; and that even fuch of them as have diftinguifhed themfelves moft, may be faid in the words of Tacitus to be magis extra vitia quam cum virtutibus. We may likewife hereby account for the little fuccefs with which they have cultivated the pleasing and imitative arts, as they are much inferior to their neighbours the Flemings in painting, and their best poets are only known to themfelves. With regard to literature, they are little more than tranflators and tranfcribers; for, though there is not a city in Europe which abounds more with authors by profession than the Hague, they fubfift entirely by borrowing from their neighbours, infomuch that a dearth of literature in France or England is fure to be followed by a dearth of the fame kind in Holland; and what Ovid has faid of Echo may be properly applied to the Belgic mufe:

Nec prior ipfa loqui, nec reticere loquenti.

In a word the Dutch can boaft few illuftrious names in the republic of learning except Erafmus, Boerhaave, and Grotius. We thought it neceffary to add these few remarks upon the ftate of arts and literature in Holland, as the author, who confines himself to political confiderations, has totally neglected that article. For a character of the work, we refer the reader to our last Review.

IV. Obfervations on Modern Gardening, illuftrated by Defcriptions. 8vo. Pr. 35. 6d. T. Payne.

VERY different from the ufual practice of writers, our au

thor has difplayed, under a modeft and humble title, a much larger portion of entertainment than a reader of taste will be induced to expect. Every quality neceffary to a true relish for the fine arts, enters this ingenious compofition. Agreeably to his own idea of the fubje&t, the writer lavishes all the powers of tafte, fancy, and expreffion, to elevate gardening to a place among the more liberal ftudies: he has extended the bounds of this laft to every thing great and beautiful in nature; and justly places it in a clafs above landscape painting, inafmuch as reality exceeds reprefentation. His comparative remarks upon this fubject are new and ingenious:

That a fubject is recommended at least to our notice, and probably to our favour, if it has been distinguished by the pencil of an eminent painter, is indifputable; we are delighted to

fee