414 Review.-View of the British and American Constitution. One quality distinguishes this memoir, which, in a work of fiction, would be an unpardonable fault; but which seems almost inseparable from biography, written by the subject of it himself, from recollection. It adverts constantly to the future, so that the reader, prepared for every event before it occurs, hears it without surprise, and of course without much in Comparative View of the British and American Constitutions; with Observations on the Present State of British Politics, and of the probable consequences of introducing into Great Britain the mode of suffrage that exists in the United States; by a Gentleman some years resident in the United States. 8vo. Edinburgh, Ballantyne. THIS Pamphlet is not well calculated for circulation; it is by much too heavy. It is considerably heavier even than the author's former production, "A View of the State of Parties in America." That essay could not be made to circulate, it was, 66 by its own weight, immoveable and stedfast." The few copies that were carried off by main force from the shop of the bookseller (in that case erroneously styled the publisher), on being removed to the houses of the several purchasers, immediately assumed a determined character, and became fixtures. Indeed, we recollect a case in which the pamphlet was considered in that light, and, along with articles of a similar kind, transferred to the purchaser of a new tenement along with the tenement itself, where it remains to the present hour, "like Teneriffe or Atlas, unremoved." The violence of the effort to create circulation was proportioned to the weight of the object. But nothing could overcome the "Vis inertia." CJuly Long after its burial in the dust of oblivion, advertisements of its existence continued to infest the public prints. We believe the intention to have been good, though such behaviour on the part of the bookseller had the appearance of scorn and mockery. There is, however, in the public mind, a generous and humane feeling, which rises up indignantly against any attempt, real or apparent, to disturb the ashes of the dead. This was most strikingly exemplified on the death of that pamphlet. The whole affair was hushed up, and, in an incredibly short time, the offence was forgotten among the other enormities of the day. There was, in truth, something rather affecting in the "simple annals" of its history. Its conception was, no doubt, accomplished by severe and arduous efforts, and its birth attended with " difficulty and labour hard;" but no sooner had it beheld the light of day, and breathed the air of heaven, than, like those mysterious animals, which, it is said, have been dug out of solid rocks from the bowels of the earth, all symptoms of life and anima tion fled for ever, and it sunk into the incommunicable sleep of death, from which all subsequent endeavours to less. It was consigned to the rouse it have proved vain and profitin grave the same blue covering in which it was ushered into the world, and "its name shall be its monument alone." Indeed, but for those injudicious advertisements before alluded to, its parturition and funeral rites might have been contemporaneous, and it would have passed through this world of care and sorrow without spot, and blameless, "alike unknowing and unknown." But notwithstanding the impertinent interference of the newspapers, in a matter which was intended to be entirely confidential between the author and the public, the latter, it must be confessed, behaved with unusual delicacy and honour; the secrets which had been confided to it it faithfully kept, and no further notice was taken of the matter. But if, as we have already stated, the weight of that pamphlet rendered it unpublishable "either by moral or physical strength," how can this one, which is certainly heavier, be supposed capable of publication? No author has a right to request impossibilities of his bookseller. Mr John Ballantyne may seemingly acquiesce in the views of Mr Samuel M'Cormack, and, with his characteristic boldness, make an attempt at publication. But mark our words:-The publication will not take place. We have seen the attempt made upon one copy, which has for three months resisted the most strenuous efforts of a spirited publisher. That copy is not heavier than its brethren; but there, we are afraid, "sedet eternumque sedebit." At first many persons looked at it-some touched ita few attempted to lift it-and one gentleman from Tweeddale, a man of prodigious personal strength, actually raised it several inches from the table. Nothing, however, but the same sevenhorse power that brought it into the shop will be effectual for its removal. But to be serious. We declare, on our word of honour, that we have read this pamphlet, and think we can put any gentleman of a sound constitution on a plan by which he will be able to perform the same achievement. Let him on no account presume to read the affair in the usual way, straight on from beginning to end; but let him swallow a small dose of the beginning an hour before breakfast. Let the patient then take a sharp walk of a couple of miles, and a hearty breakfast. About twelve o'clock in the forenoon, let him take a few pages from -the end of the pamphlet, the frothy and watery nature of which will help him to digest the crudities of the beginning. The middle part may be taken about an hour before going to will communicate to us a short statement of its supposed contents, we shall lay it before the public in our next Number. We have not scrupled to mention the author's name (Samuel M'Cormack, Esq. one of his Majesty's Advocates-depute for Scotland), because he has openly avowed it. The Depute, however, is a sort of male coquette, and loves to dally with the public. He puts on his mask, and for a while wears it with an air of mysterious secrecy, till, feeling uneasy at the concealment, he takes it slily off before a circle of chosen admirers; then, sighing after nobler and more extensive conquests, he flings back his veil of foolscap, and exhibits to the public gaze features sparkling with all the fascination of conscious beauty. THIS smart little volume strikes us as a sort of phenomenon. It has been plainly brought out to suit the season; and, with a good deal of that elegant lightness and calm gayety which may be caught in the atmosphere of ladies' drawing-rooms, and select literary coteries, is highly suited to the taste and habits of those happy persons who can spare no time even for such studies, until they find that almost all their decent neighbours have left bed: it is a soft pulpy substance, with- that the invidious long dawn, and out any taste whatever; and in the morning the patient will awake fit for the usual occupations of the day. There is yet another mode of getting over this affair, which we can safely recommend on the authority of a judicious friend, who speaks of it in the highest terms. Begin boldly at the beginning; but instead of turning over one leaf at a time, turn over two or more. effect produced upon our friend's mind, by this mode of perusal, was almost the same as that which we ourselves experienced from the usual straight forward method; and to readers of weakly constitutions we would recommend it as preferable to our own. of a forward spring has bereft them of flambeaux, rattling squares, and busy routs. Notwithstanding this favourable conjuncture, we are afraid that these poems run more than an ordinary hazard of being overlooked by those who may not know the author from that gorgeous piece of fancy which he has chosen for his distinctive appellaThe tion. The essential characters of both are nearly alike, allowing a little for difference of subject and machinery; and as the author has defended his system with much vivacity, in a preface to the Paradise of Coquettes, extending to fifty-six pages, and containing as much wit and beautifully flowing English as might enliven whole volumes of criticism or apology, we must make so free with him as to state our notions. We find that we have not given a very full account of the matter of this pamphlet. If, however, either the author himself, or any of his friends, To our plain understandings, then, it seems, that all POETRY must be pathetic, according to the good old etymology of the word, which renders it significant, not merely of a tender pity for distress, but of sympathy with all the emerging varieties of human passion or highly descriptive of nature, in her loveliest hues and situations-or discursive, between nature and passion-looking abroad on nature and the seasons as they are associated with human feelings-or recurring, from the contemplation of objects, to the mind, with a deep-felt impression, that, in the ceaseless march of time, nature is still as fair as if there were neither sorrowing nor crime among mankind. To what part of this category the poetry of the author of the "Paradise of Coquettes" should be referred, we know not. Nothing seems to us more decisive of the character of this restless age, than the tendency which that formerly sympathetic race of the genus irritabile vatum now has to separate into schools. Each school has a separate language, and separate systems and sympathies of its own. The grand ambition of our author appears to be, that he may become the founder and the head of a new school. It is difficult to catch the evanescent varieties of his manner; but we must try, that our readers may know what they should expect in the fulness of time, when it will be unfashionable not to be able to refer to the Paradise of Coquettes for authority. It has all the trim gracefulness and measured vivacity of Pope, without the unconscious music of his manner; and is, to a wonderful nicety, just such a production, in every respect, as a wordy and ambitious member of that sect might be supposed to venture out with in these cloudy times, could he be produced to us with his broad hand-ruffles, and tall amberheaded cane. Times and propensities, however, are essentially altered. Pope caught the tone of society at one happy stroke. After the lapse of an hundred years, his Rape of the Lock is a model for pleasant raillery and easy satire as the letters of his friend, Lady Mary Wortley Montague, are patterns of acuteness of remark with negligence of manner. But the haut ton of society has now ceased to be the haut ton of letters. The moral enthusiasm of our own age we do not take to be greater than that of those which have preceded it; but we venture to assert, that it has a keener taste for deeptoned emotion, and high-raised excitement. Now, as we firmly believe this, we never expect to see our author leading a school. His great work is an effort, through nine parts, to be gay. It has something of the unmeaning flutter of a very fine lady, mixed with more of the watchful and provoking acuteness of a practised metaphysician. Almost every second line contains a nicely balanced antithesis; and the wit, with which it really sparkles till the eyes dazzle, is so quick and fleeting, and so shadowed out, that the mind racks itself in attempting to grasp its intent. The epithets are for the most part exquisitely happy, and wonderfully new. verse is so uniformly adjusted, by a complete and careful rythmus, as seldom or never to offend, by a harsh note, or an unfinished cadence-but rather to astonish by some fine breaks, and artificial collocations, more like those in the majestic blank verse of Milton, than any thing in the unvaried measure of couplets. The machinery is nicely culled from all those adjuncts and circumstances with which earthly coquettes are surrounded, or which can be supposed in that "Paradise of her kindred immortals," to which the au-. thor ultimately conducts his heroine. He could find no appropriate term for all this, but "the light and playful species of epic." Yet with this ingenious preparation, and all these negative qualities of poetry-when we take up these volumes, "We start, for soul is wanting there." There is ease which does not produce ease; there is gayety which does not excite spirits in the reader; there are no bursts of inspiration-almost no passages that are beautiful as well as brilliant, and no occasions on which we find any thing like an easy falling in with those ordinary trains of thought that are the very staple of poetry. There is rather more of a very elegant languor-and ready quickness of apprehension as to the developement and shadowing out of ideas which are the least tangibly relatedthan of a healthful sensibility, or much freshness, as well as depth of natural emotion. There is so much purity and delicacy, and such a choice of topics of illustration, that the author seems to deal out any illusion to the conventional realities of a rough and vulgar world as tokens only of smartness or sagacity. He seems not to write for the average of readers who delight in Lord Byron's poetry. He would appear to count rather on a critical wonder at difficulties of manner, and choice of subject overcome,--or an admiration of chaste effect and polished finishing,-than on the rapidly excited sympathy, the undiscrimi nating enthusiasm of ordinary men. It is not enough that such productions are those of a most ingenious and a most amiable man, who has the rare merit of being not only perhaps the most acute among the ingenious, but one of the very best among the acute. Every poet writes for fame; and, in this respect, poetry is not, like virtue, its own reward. The man, therefore, who submits himself " arbitrio popularis auræ," with more than two or three trials of a style and manner in poetry which are found to be any thing rather than popular, or even generally relished among the more respectful and indulgent race of critics, must submit to mediocrity of praise,-the "unkindest cut of all" to generous minds. And no friend can see a person of real talent come to this, without feeling even more than the force of a great poet's anathema, "Mediocribus esse poetis Non homines, non Dii, non concessere columnæ." " There are some agreeable copies of verses" in the same volume with the Bower of Spring; but we have already said so much of it and its favoured predecessor, as to have no room left for any quotations from either. All that we can give is an extract from verses addressed to Mrs Stewart, the lady of Mr Dugald Stewart, which are whimsically enough denominated "The NON-DESCRIPT-To a very charming Monster," but which contain nothing whimsical or unfounded in their praise. "Thou nameless loveliness, whose mind, Her sportive malice wrought thy frame,- For this she culled, with eager care, All that exalts the prouder man : Tir'd through her mazy realms I stray- Thy voice for pity's tones so fit, Eccentricities for Edinburgh, &c. By MR COLMAN's poetical productions LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC INTELLIGENCE. FROM the observations made by Professor Jameson, it would appear, that augite, hitherto considered a rare mineral, is very generally and abundantly distributed throughout Scotland. It is much to be regretted that we possess no mineralogical map of Scotland. Mr Smith, an industrious and intelligent surveyor, has published a mineralogical map of England and Wales, which, although incomplete, is a creditable work for a single individual. The public anxiously expect the promised map of England, from the active and intelligent president of the Geological Society of London, Mr Greenough. Professor Jameson has been for several years collecting materials for a general mineralogical map of Scotland; and it is expected, that he will soon communicate the result of his labours to the public. The celebrated Traveller, Baron Von Buch, is now printing, in London, a Mineralogical Account of the Canary Islands, which, it is confidently expected, will prove a classical work on the natural history of volcanoes. In the same work, he will treat particularly on the geographical and physical distribution of these nearly-tropical isles -in which investigation he will be materially assisted by the observations of the companion in his voyage, the late excellent but unfortunate Dr Smith of Christiana, who perished in the calamitous expedition up the Congo. Mr Boue of Hamburgh, an active and intelligent disciple of the Edinburgh school of Natural History, is about to publish a Tract of the Physical and Geographical Distribution of the plants of Scotland. We ought to have noticed, in a former Number, the Map of the County of Edinburgh, by Mr Knox. It is on four sheets, well engraven, and exhibits, in a lucid and accurate manner, the Physiognomy of that portion of Scotland. We would recommend it to the attention of those who are interested in geographical and geological researches, and the more so, as we understand that it is to be illustrated by a Memoir from the Professor of Natural History in the University of Edinburgh. Mont Blanc, hitherto considered as the highest mountain in the old world, is now far eclipsed by the lofty ranges of the Himmalah, which rise 27,000 feet above the sea. Even the Elbrus, a European mountain, measured by Wisnievsky, is said to be 2,500 French feet higher than the far-famed summit of Mont Blanc. A monstrous birth is stated to have taken place in the city of Lyopre: the wife of a Bramin, named Kishun Ram, had been brought to bed of a girl with four faces and When this ominous circumfour legs. stance was related to the Rajah, he instantly ordered a charitable donation to be made to the poor, to avert the calamity which such an occurrence was supposed to threaten. Ceylon Gaz. Mr Stanley Griswold, in the New York Medical Repository, informs us that earthquakes, extending for more than an hundred miles, are occasionally produced by the combustion of beds of coal in marshy places. New Barometer. We understand that an instrument has lately been invented by our very ingenious townsman, Mr Alexander Adie, optician, which answers all the purposes of the common barometer, and has the advantage of being much more portable, and much less liable to accident. In this instrument the moveable column is oil, enclosing in a tube a portion of nitrogen, which changes its bulk according to the density of the atmosphere. Mr Adie has given it the name of sympiesometer (or measure of compression). One of these new instruments was taken to India in the Buck inghamshire of Greenock, and by the direc tions of Captain Christian, corresponding observations were made on it, and on the common marine barometer, every three hours during the voyage. The result, we are informed, was entirely satisfactory-the new instrument remaining unaffected by the most violent motion of the ship. We may add, that the sympiesometer may be made of dimensions so small as to be easily carried in the pocket, so that it is likely to become a valuable acquisition to the geologist. The Glasgow Astronomical Society has lately procured a solar microscope from Dolland, the largest that celebrated optician has ever constructed. It is exhibited to most advantage betwixt eleven and two o'clock, during which hours the sun is in the best position for observing it. The first trial of this superb instrument disclosed some wonderful phenomena; hundreds of insects were discovered devouring the body of a gnat. These animalcula were magnified so as to appear nine inches long, their actual size being somewhat less than the fourteen hundredth part of an inch. The mineral |