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turned the solitary islet of Ascension into a kind of Turtle Preserve for the Aldermen of our own cities, so will the Cobourg Peninsula become a nursery of sea-slugs for the profounder gourmands of Pekin; and who can estimate the importance of so widely, and home-felt a traffic?

Here, then, the magnificent problem of founding a free community of mixed races-an asylum for the victims of the various oppressions of the Eastern Archipelago may possibly be worked out on a scale deserving of so vast an experiment. The principles which have proved so successful in the development of the little Communities of Penang and Singapore-where tribes the most opposite in character live together in harmony-may here be applied to a Continent. There is here room to receive the overflow of the swarming millions of China and the Islands; and to nurse the miscellaneous colony under the flag of Britain, until a new Union like that of America, though composed of men of other kindreds and widely different habits, may have spread itself over the tropical half of Australia.

It is, indeed,' says Captain Stokes, to the country behind--at present unvisited, unexplored, a complete terra incognita-and to the islands within a radius of 500 miles, that we must look, if we would form a correct idea of the value of Port Essington to the Crown. At present, it may seem idle to some to introduce these distant places as elements in the discussion of such a question; but no one who reflects on the power of trade to knit together even more distant points of the earth, will think it visionary to suppose that Victoria must one day-insignificant as may be the value of the districts in its immediate neighbourhood-be the centre of a vast system of commerce ;-the emporium, in fact, where will take place the exchange of the products of the Indian archipelago, for those of the vast plains of Australia. It may require some effort of the imagination, certainly, to discover the precursor of such a state of things in the miserable traffic now carried on by the Macassar proas; but still, I think, we possess some data on which to found such an opinion; and I am persuaded that Port Essington will ultimately hold the proud position I predict for it.'*

This is no baseless speculation, distant though the period of its accomplishment may be. It is nothing more than the fair development of those social tendencies and wants which every one may see in actual operation ;-a dream, but pregnant with truth; a single life may see it fulfilled. The case of Mr Brooke proves, among many things besides, of how little use it is to oppose the traditionary coldness and caution of the Colonial Office, to the unseen force which impels us on in

* Discoveries in Australia, Vol. ii. p. 359,

our career. The occupation of New Zealand was forced on us by the unauthorized enterprise of individuals; we shall be similarly compelled to fix ourselves on some portion of the shores or adjacent islands of Borneo. Let us then stretch out a friendly and strongly helping hand to Mr Brooke. Conquerors, in a certain sense, we needs must be, while our Empire continues in its present course of development; but it is in our power to restrict ourselves to peaceful conquests; and our earnest endeavour must be to render them beneficent. The great work to be done in North Australia requires little preparation ; and, let some Doctors say what they will, no painfully pre-considered course of action. The force of events will determine far more than we can forecast; and will undoubtedly disarrange our wisest combinations, if we are unwise enough to embody them in unbending decrees. The truth is, that for founding colonies, at all events, if not for governing them also, good men are of incomparably greater importance than the best of all possible regulations. A Sir Stamford Raffles, a Captain Grey, or a Mr Brooke, are worth, for such purposes, all the theories which have been spun out of ingenious brains, touching the relations of capital and labour. Nor are such men absolutely scarce; though relatively to the needs of our colonial service they are deficient indeed. The great point is, to attract them to it. And what attractions does the Colonial Service present, to compensate for the abandonment of that liberty of action which is so tempting to ardent minds?—a li berty of action which may produce favourable results, as in the case of Mr Brooke, but which, no doubt, may also greatly embarrass legitimate government, and prove the ruin of him who exercises it. It is matter of notoriety, that, generally speaking, military and naval officers alone can afford to undertake the government of our smaller colonies; because they alone can retain their fessional employment and prospects, along with those slender and precarious offices. To a civilian, the acceptance of such a place is generally ultimate ruin. And yet, many of our colonial difficulties have arisen from warlike governors not seeing their way clearly, under circumstances where talents and habits of a different order from theirs were required;-talents and habits, the exercise of which, in more fortunate instances, has rescued Colonies from depression produced by bad measures, and calmed the fury of dissensions which former want of judgment had pro

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But we must not trespass further beyond our present province; and must avail ourselves of some after occasion to show, how the introduction of better regulations into this great branch of service, might, with no great increase of expenditure, go far towards meet

ing the pressing demand for talent and character, in a sphere of which the importance and the difficulty are likely to augment at such a rate as to set all existing official routine at defiance.

Australia is tempting ground to imaginative, as well as practical speculators; and it would have given us pleasure, had Captain Stokes' recent work, named among the others at the head of this article, happened to attract our notice somewhat earlier, to have introduced our readers more in detail to the narratives of adventure, and other important matters, contained in it. A separate article, indeed, might well be devoted to it. But we have already wandered even further south of the Straits of Singapore,' than the Dutch expounders of the treaty of 1824; and must return to the mysterious Continent on some after and fitter opportunity.

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ART. VII.-1. A Hand-book for Travellers in Spain, and Readers at Home. With Notices of Spanish History, By RICHARD FORD, Esq. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1845.

2. Revelations of Spain in 1845. By AN ENGLISH RESIDENT. (J. M. Hughes, Esq.) 2 vols. 8vo. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1845.

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Tis rare to find two works, both written by clever men well acquainted with their subject, presenting so striking a contrast as these; not merely in selection of materials and arrangement for that was to be expected from their plans—but in tone, spirit, modes of viewing things, taste, feeling, predilections and antipathies. Mr Ford considers Spain as a great nationMr Hughes as a distracted and ill-governed one: Mr Ford descants on the chivalrous character of the people - Mr Hughes on their poverty and pride: Mr Ford discovers germs or relics of grandeur where Mr Hughes can see nothing but waste and ruin in a word, Mr Ford evidently likes the Spaniards with all their faults-Mr Hughes dislikes them with all their virtues Mr Ford would not care how soon he quitted once again the domestic comforts of England for the rambling, scrambling life he formerly led on the Peninsula; while Mr Hughes evidently prefers a beefsteak to an olla podrida, and brown stout in a pewter tankard to the best Xeres that ever smacked of the skin.

Yet the cause of the difference lies on the surface, and there is no more solid ground of conflict than existed between the two knights who fought about the colour of the shield. The one is an amateur artist, gifted with a quick eye for natural beauty, a memory stored with the romance as well as with the graver

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facts of history, and an imagination that finds food alike in the real and the ideal the fine site of the ruin and the battle-field, or the rich thronging associations connected with them. The other is more of the economist and calculator than the poet; he has evidently got up his history for the occasion; and whenever he exerts himself to be eloquent or grandiloquent, (see pp. 8-9,) we long to remind him of Swift's famous advice to a young writer-Whenever you have written any thing you think 'ticularly fine, strike it out.' But he is a good observer, and a sound thinker; and (so far as we are capable of judging) though his praise may not be invariably well directed, his indignation is always in the right place. To him, however, (except in his last chapter,) Spain is pre-eminently and essentially the land of factions and Camarillas; where patriotism is a name, liberty a byword, corruption all-pervading, and where revolution follows revolution without producing the slightest change of system, or the remotest advantage to the mass. To Mr Ford, on the contrary, it is ever, with all its demerits (and he is blind to none of them), the land of Cervantes and Lope de Vega, of Murillo and Velasquez, of the Alhambra and the Escurial-the land which sent forth Columbus to discover a new world, and Cortez and Pizarro to conquer it -the centre of that vast empire 'Spain with the Indies,' which first boasted (the boast is now transferred to England) that the sun never set upon its flag; and, according to his mode of thinking, there is ever something, even among the most unerring symptoms of disorder or decay, that redeems or compensates for the degeneracy of the nation, the neglect of the government, and the lost glories of the crown. The very robbers give a zest to a journey; and if rags abound among the peasantry, they are of the exact colours that suit the foreground of a drawing.

Yet there is no attempt to hide the unfavourable side. The scenes are described, the facts set down, with the most scrupulous accuracy. Keep away from Spain, by all means, (is Mr Ford's uniform language,) if you are not up to roughing it;' and cannot enjoy travelling without the certainty or a fair prospect (for there is nothing certain in this life, in or out of Spain) of a civil landlord, a well-ordered kitchen, and a comfortable bed at your halting-place; or if your nerves are apt to be shaken by the click of a knife in the dark passage of a hostelry, or the sight of a sallow-faced bandit-looking fellow unslinging a long gun on a hill-side some twenty paces from your path. But if you have strong nerves and a good stomach-if you are fond of old pictures and Gothic architecture, fishing, shooting, sketching, love-making, fandangos and fun; above all, if you have a taste for adventure, no invincible distaste for garlic,

and no great objection to be laid flat upon your face in the middle of the road while the Turpins of the South are examining your baggage-come away with me to the orange groves of Seville and the sierras of Castille; and rest assured that you will come back (if you do come back) at the end of a six months' peregrination, with such a stock of new sensations and impressions as no other country in Europe, nay, no other country in the whole world, could produce within the time.

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The author of the Revelations (who would not be thought matter-of-fact or unimaginative in comparison with any other author than Mr Ford) says, that the English traveller might fancy himself thrown back into a state of society such as existed in his own country four or five centuries ago; and it may fairly be doubted, whether, in some of the most essential points of civilization, the Spaniards are much further advanced than the English during the wars of the Roses; whether internal communication, for instance, is much safer or quicker than when Falstaff and company projected the expedition to Gadshill; or whether a merchant setting forth to visit a correspondent in a distant city, might not have an equal chance of finding it in a state of siege on his arrival, or of encountering a party of free lances on the way. But this makes books about a country so much the pleasanter; and both the books before us will be found very pleasant; though we are aware that, in giving this peculiar praise to a 'Hand-Book,' we subject ourselves to a comparison with that correspondent of Dr Johnson's, who tells him that he had just concluded the second perusal of his Dictionary. But the truth is, Mr Ford's Hand-Book' is unlike all other Hand-Books, and must be criticised on more extended principles. He has executed admirably what (with all due respect to the rest of Mr Murray's capital hands') we must call the less intellectual portions of his undertaking; but nature meant him for something much higher and better than a literary laquais de place; and his mind, filled to bursting with memories, fancies, reflections and observations, that have been accumulating for years, breaks out with a succession of flashes on topic after topic, and compels us to forget the guide and Cicerone in the lettered and accomplished gentleman, who has done us the honour to give us a seat in his Britska, or suffered us to ride alongside of him, and is kind enough to give us the advantage of his taste, observations, reading, and prior acquaintance with the country, as we proceed.

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His political conclusions alone must be taken with some grains of allowance; for we see, or fancy we see, one all-per

VOL, LXXXIV. NO. CLXIX,

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