public and private prosperity,-so magnificent, and at the same time, so solid a fabric of social happiness and national grandeur. I pay this just tribute of admiration with the more pleasure, as it is to me in the light of an atonemeut for the errors and prejudices, under which I laboured on this subject, before I enjoyed the advantage of a personl experience. A residence of nearly two years in that country,-during which period, I visited and studied almost every part of it.—with no other view or pursuit than that of obtaining correct information, and, I may add, with previous studies well fitted to promote my object,-convinced me that I had been egregiously deceived. I saw no instances of individual oppression, and scarcely any individual misery but that which belongs, under any circumstances of our being, to the infirmity of all human institutions.'

'The agriculture of England is confessedly superior to that of any other part of the world, and the condition of those who are engaged in the cultivation of the soil, incontestibly preferable to that of the same class in any other section of Europe. An inexhaustible source of admiration and delight is found in the unrivalled beauty, as well as richness and fruitfulness of their husbandry; the effects of which are heightened by the magnificent parks and noble mansions of the opulent proprietors: by picturesque gardens upon the largest scale, and disposed with the most exquisite taste: and by gothic remains no less admirable in their structure than venerable for their antiquity. The neat cottage, the substantial farm-house, the splendid villa, are constantly rising to the sight, surrounded by the most choice and poetical attributes of the landscape. The vision is not more delightfully recreated by the rural scenery; than the moral sense is gratified, and the understanding elevated by the institutions of this great country. The first and continued exclamation of an American who contemplates them with unbiassed judgment, is

Salve magna Parens frugum, Saturnia tellus,
Magna virum.

"It appears something not less than impious to desire the ruin of this people, when you view the height to which they have carried the comforts, the knowledge, and the virtue of our species: the extent and number of their foundations of charity: their skill in the mechanic arts, by the improvement of which alone, they have conferred inestimable benefits on mankind; the masculine morality, the lofty sense of independence, the sober and rational piety which are found in all classes; their impartial, decorous, and able administration of a code of laws, than which none more just and perfect has ever been in operation; their seminaries of education, yielding more solid and profitable instruction than any other whatever; their eminence in literature and science-the urbanity and learning of their privileged orders-their deliberative assemblies, illustrated by so many profound statesmen, and brilliant orators. It is worse than ingratitude in us not to sympathise with them in their present struggle, when we recollect that it is from them we derive the principal merit of our own CHARACTER the best of our own institutions—the sources of our highest enjoyments—and the light of freedom itself, which, if they should be destroyed, will not long shed its radiance over this country.'

What will Mr. Walsh say to this picture of the country he has so laboured to degrade?—and what will our readers say, when they are told that MR. WALSH HIMSELF is the author of this picture!

So, however, the fact unquestionably stands. The book from which we have made the preceding extracts, was written and published in 1810, by the very same individual who has now recriminated upon England in the volume which lies before us,—and in which he is pleased to speak with extreme severity of the inconsistencies he has detected in our Review! That some discordant or irreconcileable opinions

should be found in the miscellaneous writings of twenty years, and thirty or forty individuals under no effective control, may easily be imagined, and pardoned, we should think, without any great stretch of liberality. But such a transmutation of sentiments on the same identical subject-such a reversal of the poles of the same identical head, we confess has never before come under our observation; and is parallel to nothing that we can recollect, but the memorable transformation of Bottom, in the Midsummer Night's Dream. Nine years, to be sure, had intervened between the first and the second publication. But all the guilt and all the misery which is so diligently developed in the last, had been contracted before the first was thought of; and all the injuries, and provocations too, by which the exposition of them has lately become a duty. Mr. W. knew perfectly, in 1810, how England had behaved to her American colonies before the war of independence, and in what spirit she had begun and carried on that war:-our poor rates and taxes, our bull-baitings and swindlings, were then nearly as visible as now. Mr. Colquhoun had, before that time, put forth his Political Estimate of our prostitutes and pickpockets; and the worthy laureate his authentic Letters on the bad state of our parliaments and manufactures. Nay, the EDINBURGH REVIEW had committed the worst of those offences which now make hatred to England the duty of all true Americans, and had expressed little of that zeal for her friendship which appears in its subsequent numbers. The reviews of the American Transactions, and Mr. Barlow's Epic, of Adams's Letters, and Marshal's History, had all appeared before this timeand but very few of the articles in which the future greatness of that country is predicted, and her singular prosperity extolled.

(To be Continued.)

345

ART. IV. Miscellaneous Articles.

Extracts from Rocca's Memoirs of

the War in Spain.

March of the French Army.We traversed France as if it had been a land newly conquered and subjected to our arms. The emperor Napoleon had ordered that his soldiers should be well received and feasted every where; deputations came to compliment us at the gates of his good cities. The officers and soldiers were conducted immediately on their arrival to sumptuous banquets prepared beforehand, and on our departure, the magistrates thanked us again that we had deigned to spend in one day many weeks' private revenues of their municipal chests. The soldiers of the grand army did not lose in France the habit they had contracted in Germany, of now and then maltreating the citizens or peasants with whom they lodged. The allied auxiliaries, in particular, would not comprehend why they were not to behave in France as in an enemy's country: they said it must be the custom, as the French troops had not behaved otherwise to them in Germany and in Poland. The inhabitants of the towns and villages through which we passed, suffered all patiently, till the armed torrent was drained off. Our troops were composed, besides the French, of Germans, Italians, Poles, Swiss, Dutch, and even Irish and Mamelukes; these strangers were all dressed in their national uniforms, and spoke their own languages; but, notwithstanding the dissimilarity of manners, which raise barriers between nations, military discipline easily united them all under the powerful hand of one; all these men wore the same cockade, and they had but one shout of war, and one cry to rally.

We crossed the Seine at Paris, the Loire at Saumur, the Garonne at Bordeaux; there, for the first time since we left Prussia, we enjoyed a

VOL. 11.

few days of rest, while the rest of the army was employed in gaining the other bank of the river. We next traversed the uncultivated tract between Bordeaux and Bayonne. In these solitary plains, as in the moors of Prussia and Poland, the sandy soil no longer resounded under the horses' feet, the regular and accelerated noise of their ironshod hoofs no longer served to renew their ardour. Vast forests of pine and of cork bound the horizon at an immense distance; one sees at long intervals single shepherds, clad in black sheep-skins, mounted on stilts six or seven feet high, and leaning on a long pole; they remain motionless on the same spot, without ever losing sight of their flocks, which feed around them on the heath. When the Emperor Napoleon crossed these wide plains, the poverty of the country did not permit it to furnish the usual horse guard of honour: he was escorted by a detachment of these shepherds, who, with their tall stilts, kept pace through the sand with the horses at full trot.

Some leagues beyond Bayonne we reached the Bidassoa, a rivulet which bounds France in the Pyrenees. As soon as one sets foot in the Spanish territory, one perceives a sensible difference in the aspect of the country, and in the manners of the inhabitants. The narrow crooked streets of the towns, the grated windows, the doors of the houses always carefully shut, the severe and reserved air of the inhabitants of all classes, the distrust which was generally shown towards us, increased the involuntary melancholy which seized us on our entrance into Spain.

We saw the Emperor Napoleon pass before he arrived at Vittoria; he was on horseback; the simplicity of his green uniform distinguished him amidst the richly clothed generals who surrounded him; he waved XX