or, a still more absurd disposition, to depreciate their native country. They are incapable of considering a foreign people but under one single point of view the relation in which they stand to their own; and the whole narrative is frequently nothing more than a mere triumph of national vanity, or the ostentation of superiority to so common a failing.

But we are wasting our time in giving a theory of the faults of travellers, when we have such ample means of exemplifying them all from the publication now before us, in which Mr. Jacob Fievée, with the most surprising talents for doing wrong, has contrived to condense and agglomerate every species of absurdity that has hitherto been made known, and even to launch out occasionally into new regions of nonsense, with a boldness which well entitles him to the merit of originality in folly, and discovery in impertinence. We consider Mr. Fievée's book as extremely valuable in one point of view. It affords a sort of limit or mind-mark, beyond which we conceive it to be impossible in future that pertness and petulance should pass. It is well to be acquainted with the boundaries of our nature on both sides; and to Mr. Fievée we are indebted for this valuable approach to pessimism. The height of knowledge no man has yet scanned; but we have now pretty well fathomed the gulf of ignorance.

We must, however, do justice to Mr. Fievée when he deserves it. He evinces, in his preface, a lurking uneasiness at the apprehension of exciting war between the two countries, from the anger to which his letters will give birth in England. He pretends to deny that they will occasion a war; but it is very easy to see he is not convinced by his own arguments; and we confess ourselves extremely pleased by this amiable solicitude at the probable effusion of human blood. We hope Mr. Fievée is deceived by his philanthropy, and that no such unhappy consequences will ensue, as he really believes, though he affects to deny them. We dare to say the dignity of this country will be satisfied, if the publication in question is disowned by the French government,

or, at most, if the author is given up. At all events, we have no scruple to say, that to sacrifice 20,000 lives, and a hundred millions of money, to resent Mr. Fievée's book, would be an unjustifiable waste of blood and treasure; and that to take him off privately by assassination would be an undertaking hardly compatible with the dignity of a great empire.

To show, however, the magnitude of the provocation, we shall specify a few of the charges which he makes against the English. That they do not understand fire-works as well as the French; that they charge a shilling for admission to the exhibition; that they have the misfortune of being incommoded by a certain disgraceful privilege, called the liberty of the press; that the opera band plays out of tune; that the English are so fond of drinking, that they get drunk with a certain air called the gas of Paradise; that the privilege of electing members of Parliament is so burthensome, that! cities sometimes petition to be exempted from it; that the great obstacle to a Parliamentary reform is the mob; that women sometimes have titles distinct from those of their husbands, although, in England, any body can sell his wife at market, with a rope about her neck. To these complaints he adds that the English are so far from enjoying that equality of which their partisans boast, that none but the servants of the higher nobility can carry canes behind a carriage; that the power which the French Kings had of pardoning before trial, is much the same thing as the English mode of pardoning after trial; that he should conceive it to be a good reason for rejecting any measure in France, that it was imitated from the English, who have no family affections, and who love money so much, that their first question, in an inquiry concerning the character of any man, is, as to his degree of fortune. Lastly, Mr. Fievée alleges against the English, that they have great pleasure in contemplating the spectacle of men de-/ prived of their reason. And indeed we must have the candour to allow, that the hospitality which Mr. Fievée

?

experienced seems to afford some pretext for this assertion.

One of the principal objects of Mr. Fievée's book, is to combat the Anglomania, which has raged so long among his countrymen, and which prevailed at Paris to such an excess, that even Mr. Neckar, a foreigner (incredible as it may seem), after having been twice minister of\ France, retained a considerable share of admiration for the English government. This is quite inexplicable. But this is nothing to the treason of the Encyclopedists, who, instead of attributing the merit of the experimental philosophy and the reasoning by induction to a Frenchman, have shown themselves so lost to all sense of the duty which they owed their country, that they_have attributed it to an Englishman*, of the name of Bacon, and this for no better reason, than that he really was the author of it. The whole of this passage is written so entirely in the genius of Mr. Fievée, and so completely exemplifies that very caricature species of Frenchmen from which our gross and popular notions of the whole people are taken, that we shall give the passage at full length, cautiously abstaining from the sin of translating it.

Quand je reproche aux philosophes d'avoir vanté l'Angleterre, par haine pour les institutions qui soutenoient la France, je ne hasarde rien, et je fournirai une nouvelle preuve de cette assertion, en citant les encyclopédistes, chefs avoués de la philosophie moderne.

Comment nous ont-ils présenté l'Encyclopédie? Comme un monument immortel, comme le dépôt précieux de toutes les connoissances humaines. Sous quel patronage l'ont-ils élevé ce monument immortel? Est ce sous l'égide des écrivains dont la France s'honoroit? Non, ils ont choisi pour maître et pour idole, un Anglais, Bâcon; ils lui on fait dire tout ce qu'ils ont voulu, parce que cet auteur, extraordinairement volumineux, n'étoit pas connu en France, et ne l'est guère en Angleterre que de quelques hommes studieux; mais les philosophes sen

*Gaul was conquered by a person of the name of Julius Cæsar,' is the first phrase in one of Mr. Newberry's little books.

toient que leur succès, pour introduire des nouveautés, tenoit à faire croire qu'elles n'étoient pas neuves pour les grands esprits; et comme les grands esprits Français, trop connus, ne ce prêtoient pas à un pareil dessein, les philosophes ont eu recours à l'Angleterre. Ainsi, un ouvrage fait en France, et offert à l'admiration de l'Europe comme l'ouvrage par excellence, fut mis par des Français sous la protection du génie Anglais. O honte! Et les philosophes se sont dit patriotes, et la France, pour prix de sa dégradation, leur a élevé des statues! Le siècle qui commence, plus juste, parce qu'il a le sentiment de la véritable grandeur, laissera ces statues et l'Encyclopédie s'ensevelir sous la même poussière.'

When to this are added the commendations that have been bestowed on Newton, the magnitude and the originality of the discoveries which have been attributed to him, the admiration which the works of Locke have excited, and the homage that has been paid to Milton and Shakspeare, the treason which lurks at the bottom of it all will not escape the penetrating glance of Mr. Fievée; and he will discern that same cause, from which every good Frenchman knows the defeat of Aboukir and of the first of June to have proceeded - the monster Pitt, and his English guineas.

2

ISLAND OF CEYLON. (E. REVIEW, 1803.)

An Account of the Island of Ceylon. By Robert Percival, Esq. of his Majesty's Nineteenth Regiment of Foot. London. C. and R. Baldwin.

Ir is now little more than half a century since the English first began to establish themselves in any force upon the peninsula of India; and we at present possess, in that country, a more extensive territory, and a more numerous population, than any European power can boast of at home. In no instance has the genius of the English, and their courage, shone forth more conspicuously than in their contest with the French for the empire of India. The numbers on both sides were always inconsiderable; but the two nations were fairly matched against each other, in the cabinet and the field; the struggle was long and obstinate; and, at the conclusion, the French remained masters of a dismantled town, and the English of the grandest and most extensive colony that the world has ever seen. To attribute this success to the superior genius of Clive, is not to diminish the reputation it confers on his country, which reputation must of course be elevated by the number of great men to which it gives birth. But the French were by no means deficient in casualties of genius at that period, unless Bussy is to be considered as a man of common stature of mind, or Dupleix to be classed with the vulgar herd of politicians. Neither was Clive (though he clearly stands forward as the most prominent figure in the group) without the aid of some military men of very considerable talents. Clive extended our Indian empire; but General Lawrence preserved it to be extended; and the former caught, perhaps, from the latter, that military spirit by which he soon became a greater soldier than him, without whom he never would have been a soldier at all.