completely beautiful; their walk easy; their shoulders amorously rounded; their breasts firm, prominent, and perfectly separated; their feet small; their legs well turned; their hair is admirable, of a fine black, and flowing down their shoulders and loins; they avoided us with an annoying perseverance; and I apprehend their dread of us stood them in the stead of virtue.'-pp. 276.

He visited Tinian, and gives a drawing of those singular ruins found in the interior of an island to which Anson and his crew owed their safety; which was once a lovely paradise inhabited by a happy people, till the baneful visit of the Spaniards carried death and desolation to its shores.

We went over the island...... It must formerly have been the residence of a great people; extinguished no doubt by one of those catastrophes that annihilate empires and generations of men. You cannot proceed a league without finding some gigantic remains of old monuments among the brambles; and the whole island seems to be but one ruin. The trees are weak and scanty; but they have to make their way with 'difficulty through heaps of dry leaves, and decayed trunks of trees. Here and there we find old, bare, breadfruit trees, the tops of which, exhibiting a few grayish branches, indicate to the traveller the catastrophe of which they have been the victims, without denoting its epoch. Buffaloes and wild hogs can now with difficulty escape the arrow of the hunter: the eye at one glance takes in an ample space; and, if I may venture to say so, almost every part of Tinian recalled to my gloomy imagination the wild and arid soil of the peninsula of Péron.

A few low and feeble cocoa-trees still raise their withered heads; you would say they moaned the sadness of nature, and wished to die with her. Uniform plains of small elevation; a monotonous coast; a few reefs of rocks; trunks of trees parched by the sun; no road, no shelter; is not this the abode of melancholy?.... A scorching wind destroys vegetation, and deprives the ground of the power of reproduction. Every thing is in decay: vegetables grow with difficulty; the potatoes, yams, and water-melons, are all inferior to those of Rota; and I tremble while I think that Anson probably said no more than the truth, when he painted this country as an Elysium, as an abode of enchantment. . . . . Is there then no testimony remaining of this convulsion of nature which is yet so recent?'—pp. 282, 283.

These convulsions of nature' and 'catastrophes' are very convenient terms to get rid of difficulties, but have nothing to do with Tinian-the desolation of which, as we have said, must be sought in the persecuting spirit and the horrid cruelties of the Spaniards.

We are next presented with very long, dull and insipid details of what our painter calls the natives of the Carolinas, of whom, by the way, he could know nothing, as among two or three hundred islands he was only at two, which, strictly speaking, form no part of them. This very extensive group is yet to be visited and described, and would, no doubt, afford an interesting field to

the

the geographer, the moralist and the natural historian. From the little that may be gleaned from Kotzebue's visit to some islets on the eastern extremity of the group, the natives appear to be a fine race of men, of quick parts and good disposition. But M. Arago is not the person to profit by a visit to them: he, simple Corydon, would have been so totally occupied in making love to the brown beauties, and drawing their portraits, as to neglect all minor considerations. He had some difficulty, he tells us, in tearing himself away from one of them at Guahan. However, after a severe struggle, a decent quantity of sighs, and sobs, and broken interjections, we at length arrive at the Sandwich islands. Before the ship anchored several canoes came alongside, eagerly inviting the navigators to profit by the opportunity, and not to refuse the caresses of their wives,'-but on this subject we do not chuse to follow M. Arago. The dwellings of the natives are thus described.

'The huts of Owhyhee appear to me the best that we have seen since we have been in these semi-barbarous regions. Almost the whole of them have only one apartment, ornamented with mats, calebashes, and some country cloths. In that room fathers, mothers, boys, girls, and sometimes even hogs and dogs, all sleep together pêle-mêle: there the mothers offer their daughters to strangers; there the children learn, almost as soon as they are born, what they ought scarcely to know when they are grown up; there the son forgets what he owes to the father, because the father forgets what is due to the son; there, in short, the head of the family has no authority, except what he derives from his own strength, while his son is yet in the bonds of infancy. -part ii. pp. 64, 65.

Of the establishment of Riouriou, the son and successor of the late King Tamaamah, (the same whom Kotzebue calls Leo leodog of all dogs,) the following is M. Arago's description.

A miserable hut, built of straw, from twenty-five to thirty feet long, and from twelve to fifteen feet broad, the entrance to which is by a low and narrow door; some mats, on which several half-naked giants are reposing, and who bear the titles of ministers and generals; two chairs, on which are seated, on days of ceremony, a large fat, dirty, heavy, proud man, and a stout half-naked woman, who allows herself to coquet with every stranger, without betraying her fidelity to her large-jowled husband:-such is the palace of the monarch of the Sandwich isles; and such are the King and Queen of Owhyhee, and such is their dignified court.'-part ii. p. 89, 90.

M. Arago recommends strangers to make a point of getting acquainted with one of the wives, the 'stout half-naked woman

of the large-jowled husband,' because her face is pretty, her limbs plump, her eyes amorous, &c. As to Riouriou, if we may believe M. Arago, his reign is not likely to be lasting; and he

throws

throws out some mysterious and fearful hints about the English being on the watch to get possession of these islands-he need not alarm himself or his countrymen on this score; the English have already as many foreign possessions as they need, without going to the extremity of the Pacific to seek for more.

In the voyage homeward, M. Arago feels grievously disappointed in not stopping at Otaheite: he had calculated, by the number of buttons left on his waistcoat, how many conquests he would be able to make at that point of Venus consecrated by so many feasts;' taking care, however, to tell his dear friend to what a very low ebb his wealth in this respect had been reduced in the Carolinas and the Sandwich islands. Captain Freycinet, however, had other objects in view; and steered direct for Port Jackson, And here we have an instance of the unsuspicious ease with which a Frenchman dispatches his views of society from the visit of a few days, and how matters swell under his hands.

"England was infested by thieves and highwaymen; girls of the town were the ruin of families; a nook of land, almost at the antipodes of London, offered nations a secure asylum from storms; a few whale. fishers, and an experienced captain, gave a brilliant description of this country; a philosopher conceived a generous and philanthropic plan. Ships employed by the state were loaded with those whom the metro polis disowned as her children: they were landed in New Holland. . . . The robber obliterates the remembrance of his crimes by an active and laborious life: the prostitute becomes a wife and a mother, and remem bers her errors only to detest them; her children receive from her lessons of probity and honour: the lands are parcelled out by a judis cious, impartial, and rigid governor, who bestows with discernment, and refuses with firmness: they are cleared by vigorous hands, that acquire from them wealth, of which the possessor will have no reason to be ashamed. Lofty trees, that ages had so much trouble to rear, are felled, and rolled over the ground that fed them. Spacious buildings assume the place of smoky huts; an active and intelligent population is now in motion, and eager in pursuit of pleasure, on the very spot where savages formerly engaged in bloody combats. Obscure paths become broad and level roads: a town arises—a colony is formed→ Sydney becomes a flourishing city.-Part ii. p. 162.

I will not give you a description of the town, which I have just gone through: I am enchanted, and I had rather give my admiration some respite. Magnificent hotels, majestic mansions, houses of extraordinary taste and elegance, fountains ornamented with sculptures worthy the chisel of our best artists, spacious and airy apartments, rich furniture, horses, carriages, and one-horse chaises of the greatest elegance, immense storehouses-would you expect to find all these, four thousand leagues from Europe? I assure you, my friend, I fancied myself transported into one of our handsomest cities. Part ii. P. 163. So much for the colonists! Now for the natives.

• Most

Most of them (the women) want the two front teeth of the upper jaw; and I have seen a young girl of fourteen or fifteen undergo this painful operation with astonishing fortitude. She rested her head against a wall, while a woman much older than herself, whom I took to be her mother from the likeness between them, applied to the two teeth she wished to be removed, a bit of wood of the thickness of a quill, and struck it with a large stone. The young girl did not utter a single cry, or make the least wry face, though the operation was twice repeated. As I was very desirous of knowing whether this custom were generally adopted by all girls, and whether there were any period at which this sacrifice was enjoined them; I endeavoured by my gestures to make the old woman understand me, and asked why she had thus removed these two teeth. She answered me by a gesture so expressive, adopted in all the islands of the South Sea, that I no longer doubted but the young girl was about to be married; and I was still more convinced of this, when I saw a savage painted with a thousand stripes come up, throw a kangaroo skin over the shoulders of his intended, spit repeatedly in her face, and trace on her body stripes of all colours with ochre and gums. I confess this fashion of dressing, and the attention paid to it by her gallant adorer, so raised my curiosity, that I followed the happy couple as far as the wood that surrounds the governor's garden. The two spouses made their appearance a few minutes after, and I observed on the face of the husband some traces of the stripes that I had seen on that of the woman.

'Alas! how brief is the duration of gallantry among these men, barbarous as they are, though so near the state of nature! On his return from this excursion, the husband threw on his wife's shoulders a little bag, containing some provision, for which he was indebted to the generosity of the English; ordered her to walk a little faster; and even assisted her with a few kicks, that made her advance more speedily than she wished.'-Part ii. p. 170.

The sentimental adventures and conversations with the convicts of New South Wales excite a smile.-But we must hasten on to the Malouine, or, as we call them, Falkland islands. Here Captain Freycinet had the misfortune to run the Uranie upon a rock, where she was left a complete wreck; and her crew were compelled to make their way to Rio de la Plata in an American ship, which, fortunately, took them off before their provisions failed them; to the stock of which indeed they had derived no trifling supply from the carcase of a huge whale, that, by following the example of the corvette, was stranded on the shore of the island, with her two little ones, which, M. Arago says, they observed endeavouring in vain to get the dam afloat. These fell an easy prey to the shipwrecked navigators; as did also another sea-monster, which the cook, in prowling about the island, found floundering in a ditch'a horrible looking animal, as large as our vessel,' and which, upon examination, proved to be a hippopotamus.' A

ditch-dwelling hippopotamus in an island without a river, and in a latitude where that animal cannot possibly exist, is very well for M. Arago!-had he favoured us with a drawing of this horrible creature,' we should probably have discovered it to be a sea-elephant.

But enough, and more than enough.-Captain Freycinet must surely feel it incumbent on him to hasten his account of this Voyage round the world,' in order to wipe away the disgrace which a work so utterly worthless as the present cannot fail, in some measure, to attach to it. How the Astronomer Royal of France, a sensible, sober-minded man, should have suffered his brother to venture on such a publication, is matter of astonishment-but authors are a headstrong and a headlong race. If, however, the cacoëthes scribendi should again visit M, Arago, we would recommend him to try his hand on a sentimental novel, or

a romance.

ART. IV.-1. Report from the Select Committee on Poor-Rate Returns. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed 15th July, 1822.

2. A Bill to amend the Laws regarding the Maintenance of the Poor. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed July

24, 1822.

3. The Speech of Michael Nolan, Esq. delivered in the House of Commons, Wednesday, July 10, 1822, on moving for Leave to bring in a Bill to alter and amend the Laws for the Relief of the Poor.

4. A Speech delivered on the 24th of May, 1822, before the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, explanatory of the Measures which have been successfully pursued in St. John's Parish, Glasgow, for the Extinction of its compulsory Pauperism: with an Appendix. By Thomas Chalmers, D. D. Minister of St. John's Church, Glasgow.

A

CONSIDERABLE re-action has taken place in the public opinion, on the subject of the poor-laws and by that moderate course of thinking, into which the people of this country gradually subside, even upon the most inflammatory topics, hazardous schemes for their abolition have given way to proposals of a more sober kind, for their strict and severe administration. Reflection and experience have produced a general conviction, that the principles of the poor-law of Elizabeth are consistent with the sound policy of that important reign, and cannot, in the present state of things, be safely departed from; and that a com

pulsory