roof of the coach, and gives us some little sketches of the country, mixed with anecdotes about the coachman. On reaching Oxford, we have good descriptions of most of the principal colleges, walks, gardens, &c. with a minute account of the costume and mode of living of the students; but a very meagre and unsatisfactory one of the present state of learning and science at this celebrated seminary. Indeed, we have hardly a word on the subject; though we cannot help thinking it would have been quite as acceptable to his learned correspondent, as the long account we are presented with of their kitchens, dinners and breakfasts, or even the following description of the chairs at Baliol, which we are tempted to extract as a specimen of the absu:d minuteness to which our author sometimes descends.

Their chairs are, beyond comparison, the easiest in which I ever fate down, though made entirely of wood: the feats are flightly con cave from fide to fide; I know not how elfe to defcribe their peculiarity of conftruction; yet fome thought and fome experience must have been requifite to have attained to their perfection of cafinefs; and there may be a fecret in the form which I did not difcover.'. II. 67.

However, in another part of the book, while on a visit to Cambridge, he makes some observations, from which we may gather his opinion of both universities.

I inquired what were the real advantages of these inftitutions to the country at large, and to the individuals who ftudy in them. "They are of this fervice," he replied, " to the country at large, that they are the great schools by which established opinions are inculcated and perpetuated. I do not know that men gain much here, yet it is a regular and effential part of our fyftem of education; and they who have not gone through it, always feel that their education has been defective. A knowledge of the world, that is to fay, of our world, and of the men in it, is gained here; and that knowledge remains when Greek and Geometry are forgotten." I asked him which was the beft of the two universities; he answered, that Cambridge was as much fuperior to Oxford, as Oxford was to Salamanca. I could not forbear fmiling at his fcale of depreciation : he perceived it, and begged my pardon, faying, that he as little intended to undervalue the establishments of my country, as to overrate the one of which he was himself a member. "We are bad enough,” said he, "Heaven knows; but not fo bad as Oxford. They are now attempting to imitate us in fome of thofe points wherein the advantage on our part is too notorious to be difputed. The effect may be feen in another generation ;-meantime the imitation is a confeffion of inferiority." II. 295-297.

To the question, whether we might regard the universities as the seats of learning and the Muses, we have the following particularly smart answer. 'As for the Muses, Sir, you have traversed the banks of the Cam, and must know whether you have

seen

seen any nine ladies who may answer their description.' He adds,

We do certainly produce verses both Greek and Latin which are worthy of gold medals, and English ones also, after the newest and most approved receipt for verfe-making. Of learning, fuch as is required for the purposes of tuition, there is much ;-beyond it, except in mathematics, none. In this we only fhare the common degeneracy. The Mohammedans believe that when Gog and Magog are to come, the race of men will have dwindled to fuch littleness, that a fhoe of one of the present generation will serve them for a houfe. If this prophecy be typical of the intellectual diminution of the fpecies, Gog and Magog may foon be expected in the neighbourhood of their own hills.

"The truth is, Sir," he continued, "that the inftitutions of men grow old men like themselves, and, like women, are always the laft to perceive their own decay. When univerfities were the only schools of learning, they were of great and important utility; as foon as there were others, they ceafed to be the best, because their forms were prefcribed, and they could adopt no improvement till long after it was generally acknowledged. There are other caufes of decline. We edu cate for only one profeffion; when colleges were founded, that one was the most important; it is now no longer fo; they who are deftined for the others find it neceffary to ftudy elsewhere, and it begins to be perceived that this is not a neceffary ftage upon the road. This might be remedied. We have profeffors of every thing, who hold their situations, and do nothing. In Edinburgh, the income of the profeffor depends upon his exertions; and, in confequence, the reputation of that univerfity is fo high, that Englishmen think it neceffary to finifh their education by paffing a year there. They learn fhallow metaphyfics there, and come back worse than they went, inafmuch as it is better to be empty than flatulent. " II. 297-299.

On leaving Oxford, we proceed through Worcester to Birmingham: the appearance of this place and of Manchester, which he shortly after visits, raises only the most melancholy images in the imagination of Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella. We have already noticed his abhorrence of the manufacturing system; and he has here an ample field for the display of his eloquence: he turns with disgust from the examination of these models of perfection in the mechanic arts, which are here everywhere to be seen: and the bustle of active industry, which is so cheerful a spectacle to many men, presents to his mind only the painful ideas of unceasing labour, poverty and misery. That there must be in all countries, where the population and the arts of civilized life have reached a certain point, a class of men who pass their days in labour for a pittance barely adequate to their subsistence, and who, of course, must be continually liable to want and misery, from accidents, and the follies and vices incident

Bb 2

cident to human nature, is a position which we are afraid cannot be denied. To divert the course of industry from one channel into another, would be of no avail; it would change the place, but could not alter the nature nor diminish the quantity of the evil.

There is, no doubt, much truth in the melancholy picture which is here presented to us, of the wretched state of the lower class of labourers; and it is drawn with much force and feeling. The following extract will explain our author's ideas on the subject, and at the same time afford a good specimen of that kind of declamatory eloquence in which he excels, and of which there are many examples in these volumes.

We purchase English cloth, English muffins, English buttons, &c. and admire the excellent fkill with which they are fabricated, and wonder that from fuch a distance they can be afforded to us at fo low a price, and think what a happy country is England! A happy country indeed it is for the higher orders; no where have the rich fo many enjoyments, no where have the ambitious fo fair a field, no where have the ingenious fuch encouragement, no where have the intellectual fuch advantages; but to talk of Englifh happinefs, is like talking of Spartan freedom,-the helots are overlooked. In no other country can fuch riches be acquir ed by commerce; but it is the one who grows rich by the labour of the hundred. The hundred-human beings like himfelf, as wonderfully fafhioned by nature, gifted with the like capacities, and equally made for immortality, are facrificed body and foul. Horrible as it muft needs appear, the affertion is true to the very letter. They are deprived in childhood of all inftruction and all enjoyment; of the sports in which childhood inflinctively indulges,-of fresh air by day, and of natural freep by night. Their health phyfical and moral is alike deftroyed; they die of difeafes induced by unremitting tafk work, by eonfinement in the impure atmosphere of crowded rooms, by the particles of metallic or vegetable duft which they are continually inhaling; or they live to grow up without deceney, without comfort, and without hope, without morals, without religion, and without fhame, and bring forth flaves like themselves to tread in the fame path of mifery.

The dwellings of the labouring manufacturers are in narrow freets and lanes, blocked up from light and air, not (as in our country) to exclude an infupportable fun, but crowded together, because every inch of land is of fuch value, that room for light and air cannot be afforded them. Here, in Manchefter, a great proportion of the poor lodge in cellars, damp and dark, where every kind of filth is fuffered to accumulate, because no exertions of domeflie care can ever make fuch homes decent. Thefe places are fo many hot-beds of infection; and the poor in large towns are rarely or never without an infectious fever among them, a plague of their own, which leaves the habitations of the rich, like a Gothen of cleanlinefs and comfort, unvifited.

Wealth flows into the country, but how does it circulate there? Not equally and healthfully through the whole fyftem; it fprouts into

wene

wens and tumours, and collects in aneurisms which starve and palfy the extremities. The government indeed raises millions, now, as eafily as it raised thousands in the days of Elizabeth: the metropolis is fix times the fize which it was a century ago; it has nearly doubled during the prefent reign a thousand carriages drive about the ftreets of London, where, three generations ago, there were not an hundred a thousand hackney coaches are licensed in the fame city, where at the fame diftance of time there was not one: they whofe grandfathers dined at noon from wooden trenchers, and upon the produce of their own farms, fit down by the light of waxen tapers to be ferved upon filver, and to partake of delicacies from the four quarters of the globe. But the number of the poor, and the fufferings of the poor, have continued to increafe: the price of every thing which they confume has always been. advancing; and the price of labour, the only commodity which they have to difpofe of, remains the fame. Workhouses are erected in one place, and infirmaries in another; the poor-rates increase in proportion to the taxes; and in times of dearth, the rich even purchase food, and retail it to them at a reduced price, or fupply them with it gratuitously: fill every year adds to their number. Neceffity is the mother of crimes; new prifons are built, new punishments enacted; but the poor become year after year more numerous, more miferable, and more depraved; and this is the inevitable tendency of the manufacturing fyftem.'

-149.

Leaving with pleasure scenes so little congenial to his feelings, our traveller proceeds by the canal to Chester, where a visit to the jail leads him to make some remarks on the state of the penal laws, and the excellent administration of justice in England. He suggests the following improvements-That a pleader should be permitted to defend the prisoner, as well as one to accuse him: where the innocence of the prisoner is proved, he ought to be indemnified for the losses he has sustained, and the expenses he has incurred by his imprisonment and trial: where he is convicted, the expense of bringing him to justice ought to fall upon the public, not upon the individual prosecutor, already a sufferer by the offence. The first and the last of these regulations have long been established in Scotland. The difficulty of distinguishing acquittal from proof of absolute innocence, makes us hesitate as to the practicability of the second.

Our next stage is Liverpool; of which we have a short description. Just praise is bestowed on the liberality and enterprize of the merchants; and literature is said to be in an uncommonly flourishing state for a commercial town; in proof of which, we have an account of their Atheneum, a public library and reading room, which was set on foot by two of the inhabitants, and in one day sufficient funds were subscribed to establish the finest institution of the kind in the kingdom.'

Bb 3.

We

We now proceed to Kendal, and come within view of the ro mantic scenery about the Lakes, of which we have an admirable description in the succeeding fifty or sixty pages. We followed our traveller with great pleasure throughout the whole of this excursion: the narrative is very lively and entertaining. The subject appears to be quite congenial to the taste of the writer, who shows a delicate perception of the sublimity and picturesque beauty of this delightful region. We bestow on this part of the book our unqualified praise; and recommend it to our readers as the best account we have met with of a part of the country which has been the subject of so many volumes of description. We would willingly make ample extracts, but our limits must confine us to the following.

We walked once more at evening to the Lake fide. Immediately oppofite the quay is a little inland with a dwelling-house upon it. A few years ago it was hideously disfigured with forts and batteries, a fham church, and a new druidical temple, and, except a few fir trees, the whole was bare. The prefent owner has done all which a man of taste could do in removing these deformities; the church is converted into a tool-house, the forts demolished, the batteries difmantled, the ftones of the druidical temple employed in forming a bank, and the whole island planted. There is fomething in this place more like the fcenes of enchantment in the books of chivalry, than like any thing in our ordinary world;-a building, the exterior of which promifed all the conveniences and elegan. cies of life, furrounded with all ornamental trees, in a little island the whole of which is one garden, and that in this lovely lake, girt round on every fide with thefe awful mountains. Immediately behind it is the long dark weltern mountain called Brandelow: the contrast between this and the island, which feemed to be the palace and garden of the Lady of the Lake, produced the fame fort of pleafure that a tale of enchantment excites, and we beheld it under circumftances which heightened its wonders, and gave the fcene fomething like the unreality of a dream. It was a bright evening, the fun shining, and a few white clouds hanging motionlefs in the fky. There was not a breath of air ftirring; not a wave-a ripple or wrinkle on the lake; fo that it became like a great mirror, and reprefented the fhores, mountains, fky and clouds fo vividly, that there was not the flighteft appearance of water. The great mountain-opening, being reverfed in the fhadow, became a huge arch; and through that magnificent portal the long vale was feen between mountains, and bounded by mountain beyond mountain,-all this in the water; the diftance perfect as in the actual scene; the fingle houfes ftanding far up in the vale-the fmoke from their chimneysevery thing the fame-the fhadow and the fubftance joining at their base; fo that it was impoffible to diftinguish where the reality ended and the image began. As we flood on the fhore, heaven and the clouds and the fun feemed lying under us; we were looking down into a sky, as

heavenly