cures their legal fictions-their special action on the case for calling a scoundrel by his proper name. What trifling with common sense! what tampering with human life! The same act in those days was murder in a court of justice, and honour in a ballroom. You see that spot beneath us which still retains its primæval name, the once famous Chalk Farm. It was there that our "good old forefathers" used to meet and pistol one another upon principles which we are unable to comprehend. I shall not go in detail through the folly of their institutions: let a single fact suffice. The youth of those times were taught their first notions of government in the Republican writers of Greece and Rome; and when they came to man's estate, were certain of being pilloried or hanged if they ventured, in word or act, to manifest a distaste to monarchical establishments. The same spirit of perverseness disgraced their literature. I have sometimes taken up a volume of their now-forgotten poetry, but at the first page have been compelled to fling away the unnatural trash in disgust. Their most popular poetry was the apotheosis of all that can be conceived most loathsome or abominable in wretchedness or in crime. Reprobates, who even then would not have been admitted into decent society, and who, if indicted at the quarter-sessions, must have been sentenced to whipping and low diet, were versified into right good poetical heroes; and the records of their misdemeanors were (to use the critical cant of the day) "to last as long as the English language." What a complimentary presentiment of our morals and our taste! Nor was this generation only irrational; it appears to have been completely miserable. I read that suicide was one of the customs of the country. Only imagine what a fearful and precarious tenure must have been existence, when a man, though he should escape the vengeance of the laws, and his neighbour's spring-guns, and his friend's bullet, was, after all, in hourly danger of blowing out his own brains. We laugh or shudder at these things; but they called themselves enlightened, and would have denounced as a fantastic speculator, any one who should hold (what we admit as self-evident truths) that capital punishments may be abolished without increasing crimes-that the laws should not favour partridges-that it is wiser to spend our money in drinking French wine, than in shedding French and English blood-that an appetite for military glory is the test of a barbarous age-that the democratic writers of antiquity are not the fittest manuals of allegiance-that poetry should not countenance beldames and ruffians-and, finally, that it was very unthinking in those who denied all this, to call themselves "a thinking people."" "Music.-Mamaboo, the celebrated violin player from Timbuctoo, who for the last four years has been performing in the principal capitals of Africa and Europe, made his first appearance before a British audience on the 20th ult. We found that fame had not belied his powers. Nothing can exceed the brilliancy of his execu tion. He was frequently and rapturously encored. Mamaboo is not only one of the most admirable musicians of his age, but we have it from good authority that he possesses the mind and manners of an accomplished gentleman. He speaks his own language with great elegance, and French and English with considerable fluency. One little trait of him is worth relating. The day after his arrival in London, when asked what national object of curiosity he was most desirous to visit, he feelingly replied, The grave of Clarkson.' He confirms our late statement, that a splendid monument to the memory of that illustrious philanthropist has been erected in the capital of Timbuctoo. The following is the inscription, as translated by Mamaboo. The Africans, now free and happy, remenber the benefits conferred four hundred years ago upon their suffering ancestors by Thomas Clarkson, an Englishman.' And yet perhaps the single specimen of the civilization of modern Africa, as manifested in the talents of this interesting stranger, should be contemplated as a more valuable and affecting memorial of our countryman's merits, than the most gorgeous tribute that architecture could bestow." "Antiquities. Velocipede. A fellow of Cambridge has just published an interesting Treatise upon the origin and use of this curious instrument, respecting which the opinions of antiquarians have been so long divided. The prevailing notion of late has been, that it was a mere plaything of our ancestors; but the present writer advances a different theory, which he certainly supports with considerable ability and research. The substance of his doctrine may be shortly stated: He produces incontestable documents to show, that the period when the Velocipede first appeared in England was in the nineteenth century, towards the close of what was denominated the Peninsular war.' (It may be necessary to inform some of our readers, that this war was conducted in Spain, under the auspices of Wellington, a well-known general of his day; and that its successful result was to give a timely check to the ambitious encroachments of Napoleon Bonaparte.) Now,' says our author, the enemy being, at the commencement of the contest, superior in cavalry, (an historical fact) is it not quite natural to assume, that the Government would buy up all the spare horses in the kingdom, and ship them off to reinforce the British army? My conclusion, therefore, is, that in the general scarcity of horses, caused by this necessary measure, Velocipedes were invented to supply their place. This conclusion is corroborated by three most powerful circumstances: First, There is extant a coloured engraving, bearing date about the period in question, in which a Royal Duke is represented as travelling from London to Windsor on a velocipede. Is it to be imagined, that a prince of the blood would not have procured a horse, if the substitute were not the familiar vehicle of the higher classes? Secondly, Velocipedes fell into disuse shortly after the conclusion of the war; and, Thirdly, I find, by the parliamentary records, that about the same time the agricultural tax was repealeda tax, let me say, which our ancestors, notwithstanding their ignorance of the first principles of political economy, would never have imposed, had not the pressing demands of the state for those ani mals been such as to justify the apparent impolicy of the measure." On the whole, we are rather disposed to concur with this ingenious antiquarian." "AMERICA. "To the Editor of the Old Hampstead Magazine. London, July 17, 2200. “Mr. EDITOR,—I cannot refrain from making a few observations upon a letter signed Columbus, inserted in your last, wherein the writer, as it appears to me, has been seduced by his national prepossessions into a strain of very invidious comparison, and into many unfounded conclusions upon the subject of the respective merits of America and England. "The first point that he introduces, and on which he seems especially to pique himself, is, the superior courtesy and refinement of manners, which so pre-eminently distinguish the American gentleman from the less fortunate inhabitant of every other quarter of the globe. Really, Mr. Editor, this is going rather too far. This is the first time I ever heard it was a misfortune to have been born an Englishman; and even if it were so, I should not deem it preeminently courteous' in this American gentleman,' to make a voyage across the Atlantic for the purpose of telling me so. I know not what Columbus's notions of refinement may be, but I sincerely pray, that the youth of Old England may long continue uninfected by the finical airs and jaunty gait, and effeminate babble, and sentimental languor, and superhuman grimace, of the Transatlantic coxcombs that infest our drawing-rooms. "He goes on: Even the boasted "British fair" consider their attractions incomplete, unless their minds have received a final polish in the brilliant circles of Washington and Philadelphia, and their persons a final fascination from the unrivalled productions of the American loom.' Mr. Editor, in answer to this pretended superiority of American manners and manufactures, I appeal to all (except the ladies, who will never listen to reason) whether English conversation and English stuffs have not always been allowed, by the most competent judges, to be fully equal (in my opinion they are far superior) to any thing in that way that we have seen imported from America-and if the British fair' have had the folly to think otherwise, does not Columbus see that it is, and has been from time immemorial, a part of woman's nature to despise every thing native, and to dote upon whatever is foreign. They must have foreign fashions, foreign phrases, foreign attitudes, foreign perfumes, foreign shrubs and flowers; even in daily conversation, the indelible character of their sex breaks out, and, try to fix their minds upon what you will, they are sure to fly off to something foreign to the subject. It is hence, believe me, and not from the intrinsic beauty or value of the articles, that we see our wives and daughters bedizened in Kentucky gauze, and East Florida satin, and Susquehannah lace, and head-dresses à l'Illinois, and the various other items of Transatlantic frippery. "Columbus complains of our travelling: he rails at the insolence of our waiters and hostlers, and descants in a strain of sensitive sublimity upon the transcendent horrors of a double bedded room, 'an abomination never heard of in his native land." In answer to this exquisite tirade, I shall merely ask him, if he ever chanced to hear of the homely Jonathan of days of yore, who never grumbled at making one of three-in-a-bed, and would have been affronted at its being hinted to him that he was not enjoying substantial comfort. I shall not follow Columbus through his pompous detail of the political importance and resources of the American empire, nor through his rapturous eulogiums upon the American schools of painting and sculpture, and upon the generations of statesmen, philosophers, and poets, whose names have shed a lustre upon the land that produced them.' As to some of the facts asserted, I shall only say, that, judging from a single specimen, I must allow his countrymen to possess the inventive faculty in a high degree, while his reasonings and general views seem to savour more of the exploded absurdities of three or four centuries ago, than of the juster notions that distinguish the present philosophic and enlightened age. "Your constant Reader, LITERATURE. BRITANNICUS." "To the Editor of the Old Hampstead Magazine. "SIR-Your inhuman allusion to me in your late strictures upon modern poetry was too palpable to be misunderstood. I have therefore to inform you, that my poem was submitted to the public at the ardent solicitations of several literary friends, whose judgments are not inferior to that of any periodical critic in the kingdom. But I never expected that it could please the present degenerate taste. I told them what I now tell you, that it was written for posterity, and to the decision of an impartial posterity I confidently appeal. Yours, July 5, 2200. TO THE DAISY.* "ANTHONY SANGUINE." SWEET simple flower, though lost to fame, Surely thou 'rt Nature's favour'd flower! Then bade thee grace young Spring's new power, The glowing God beheld thee fair, And, pleas'd at Nature's friendly care, He said, "Henceforth be call'd mine eye." * "Thus the word 'daisy' is a thousand times pronounced, without our adverting to the beauty of its etymology, viz. 'the eye of day.'' MAG. vol. i. p. 133. art. CAMPBELL'S LECTURES. NEW MONTHLY 1 I Now forward to you the conclusion of my friend's narrative "On the formation of the intellectual and moral character of a Spanish Clergyman.' My next letter will introduce you to a national spectacle peculiarly our own,-to the arena of a bull-fight. L. D. "The Spanish universities had continued in a state worthy of the thirteenth century, till Campomanes, an enlightened minister of Charles III., gave them an amended plan of studies, which, though far below the level of knowledge over the rest of Europe, seems at least to recognise the progress of the human mind since the revival of letters. The present plan forbids the study of the Aristotelic philosophy, and attempts the introduction of the inductive system of Bacon; but is shamefully deficient in the department of literature. Three years successive attendance in the schools of logic, natural philosophy, and metaphysics, is the only requisite for a master's degree; and, though the examinations are both long and severe, few of the Spanish universities have yet altered the old statute, which obliges the candidates to draw their theses from Aristotle's logics and physics, and deliver a long discourse upon one chapter of each; thus leaving their daily lectures perfectly at variance with the final examinations. Besides these preparatory schools, every university has three or four professors of divinity, as many of civil and canon law, and seldom less of medicine. The students are not required to live in colleges. There are, however, establishments of this kind for under-graduates; but being, for the most part, intended for a limited number of poor boys, they make no part of the Academic system. Yet some of these colleges have, by a strange combination of circumstances, risen to such a height of splendour and influence, that I must digress into a short sketch of their history. "The original division of Spanish colleges into minor and major, * Page 165. |