the unfortunate Anna Boleyn with Henry VIII. This king, notwithstanding the atrocity of his character, was the friend of letters, and a benefactor of the university. The most celebrated of the colleges at Cambridge is Trinity College, founded by him. We saw there a very fine statue of Sir Isaac Newton in white marble, by Roubiliac. The artist has contrived to make a good drapery of the professor's robe. Sir Isaac Newton holds a prism in his hand, and looks up. His features are large and regular; and the expression of his countenance simple and sagacious, not unlike, I think, to Montesquieu's. The apartment of the philosopher is shewn. The University library is very large, and contains 90,000 volumes. Dr. Clarke, whose voyages are before the public, has enriched this university with antique marbles, rare manuscripts, and plants; and he has deposited in the library a very curious cast of Charles XII. the mould having been taken on his face four hours after his death at Frederickshall. The hole made by the ball is visible a little above the right eye. The mouth has a remarkable expression of contempt, and, upon the whole, it much resembles the portraits seen of him. I was employed in sketching this cast, when one of the under librarians objected to its being done, without permission being previously obtained. Another, however, stepped forth in defence of the arts, and said the permission was not necessary. During the altercation resulting from this conflict of authorities, I finished my sketch, and did not fail to shew my gratitude to the good-natured librarian. We had a letter of introduction, but the professor to whom it was addressed being absent, our only passport to the curiosities of the place was one which is very gene

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ally welcome, and in England, perhaps, more so than any where else.

There is a botanical garden attached to the university, and a lecturer, but who does not lecture; his chair is a sinecure. The garden appears well kept; but the plants grow and flourish in vain; the students, as we learnt from the gardeners, having no taste for this exotic fodder. Cambridge is, or was formerly, the whig university, and Oxford, on the contrary, in the high tory principles. Our guide informs us, that Cambridge may boast of the sublimity of Milton, the enthusiasm of Gray, the great discoveries of Bacon and of Newton, the penetration of Milner, and the erudition of Porson; and among its children reckons, besides several holy martyrs, Cranmer and Latimer,—Ridley and Wishart: he might have added to the illustrious men, Pitt,—and, I believe, Fox also. The guide I have mentioned is a little book, containing the history of the place, and a description of all its curiosities. There is no place of any note in England which has not its printed guide, with which the servants of the inn are eager to furnish you. This one informs me, that, during the period of revolutionary fanaticism which led Charles I. to the scaffold, Cambridge, notwithstanding its whiggism, suffered more than Oxford.

Some miles beyond Cambridge we found, at one of the inns, a boy of eighteen, seven feet nine inches high! I had never seen a giant, and had no idea of the effect. When sitting, his chair seemed likely to be crushed by his weight, as well as the table on which he rested his elbow; his feet and hands were particularly enormous; and when he rose, and crossed the room in two strides, with his head appearing to touch the ceiling, it was still more

extraordinary:-a man above the middle size could easily pass under his arm. This monstrous dis proportion with surrounding objects overthrew all received ideas, almost as much as if houses had been seen moving, and dogs and horses with wings flying in the air. If this appears an exaggeration, I can only refer to the sight of my giant. He confessed that he could not lift a greater weight than another man, and a walk of four or five miles was a good deal for him. His voice was strong, but without being in proportion to his body; big bones, but not yet well covered with muscles, and he did not look as if he had done growing. He does not eat much; his large mild eyes looked heavy, but he spoke sensibly. He told us that his father and mother, brothers and sisters, were all of common size.

June 29.-London, after such a long residence in it, appears like a sort of home; we are preparing, however, to leave it for a very long tour, by the West of England, Scotland, and return by the East. Aliens are required in time of war to apply at the alien-office, every three months, for a license to reside; a British subject must join in the application. For such a journey as ours I have been required to name the principal places through which we are to pass, which does not exactly agree with our wandering plans, and threatens difficulties. I am far from blaming any proper precautions; but there seems to be very little to fear here from spying, or from a surprise; the publicity of every thing renders the one useless, and the sea renders the other impossible.

Before leaving the capital, I have to remark, that formerly it was subject to frequent visitations of the plague. From 1592 to 1665 this frightful

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epidemic appeared five times; viz. 1592, 1603, 1625, 1636, and 1665, carrying off one-fifth each time. At the last period (1665), 97,000 persons perished by the plague in London ;* (as many as 1200 a-day). The following year (1666), the great fire destroyed 13,200 houses out of 66,000, that is, the fifth part of the city; but it was the part the most crowded, old, and ill-built; and since that time the plague has not again appeared! It is difficult not to admit the belief that the disorder owed either its origin or its progress to the state of things existing in that part of the town, or to a certain germ destroyed by the fire. It is remarkable, that these two successive devastations, the plague and the fire, far from diminishing permanently the town or its population, seem to have operated as an encouragement; for in 1686 (twenty years afterwards), I find the number of houses in London increased to 88,000, and the number of inhabitants from 500,000 to 695,000. It is true, that, besides these two extraordinary causes of increase and prosperity, fire and the plague, there had been a third still more active, although less local; for Sir William Petty, a contemporary author of great reputation in political arithmetic, informs us, that in ten years of the same interval of time, the civil wars had destroyed the fortieth

*This plague carried off 300,000 victims at Rome, under Nero; that is three out of ten, instead of two out of ten as in London --and much more recently, at Marseilles, in 1720, the plague destroyed 50,000 inhabitants; that is to say, probably more than half the number,-as Marseilles, in its most prosperous times (1780), contained only 90,000 inhabitants. The great plague, which ravaged the whole earth during fifty-two years, from 542 to 594, depopulated entirely and left empty a number of towns.

part of the people; that is to say, twice as many all over the country as the plague had done in London. We find that during the time which preceded the cessation of the plague, the increase of population of London had been still more considerable in proportion than during the twenty years which followed it, the numbers having doubled at every period of forty years: they were 77,000 in 1565, and 669,930 in the year 1682. The population of the rest of the kingdom did not increase near so rapidly; for the population of England, from 5,526,900 in 1565, came only to 7,360,000 in the year 1682, including London, which forms the eleventh part of the whole.*

Sir William Petty indulged himself in speculations on the future increase of London, and found, that, in 1802, it would contain 5,359,000 inhabitants, and all England, 9,825,000. This last prediction has been very curiously confirmed by the event, for in 1802 the census gave 9,706,378 for England and Wales; but, far from finding such an enormous proportion of that population accumulated in the capital in 1802, we find only 899,439; therefore the increase of London, however great, has advanced at a very retarded rate, and it will be more and more retarded. In support of the possibility of this prodigious extent of London, Sir William Petty observes, that a well cultivated space of country, forming the area of a circle of 70 miles in diameter, would suffice to feed this

* Sir William Petty estimates the population of England at the conquest, in 1066, at two millions only; which, compared to the late census, shews the population to have doubled every 360 years. None of the earlier calculations, however, are at all to be relied on.