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manner to indulge the various tastes for regu-Selections from the Works of Madame de lar or irregular gardens; yet always bearing in mind that the trees should not be suffered to rise too high in the line immediately behind the statue.

As from the great extent of Russell Square it is advisable to provide some seats for shade or shelter, a reposoir is proposed in the centre, with four low seats, covered with slate or canvas, to shelter from rain, and four open seats to be covered with climbing plants, trained on open lattice, to defend from the sun these seats surround a small court-yard, to be kept Jocked, in which may be sheds for gardeners' tools, and other useful purposes.

Genlis; consisting principally of precepts, maxims, and reflections, moral, religious, and sentimental. Crown 8vo. pp. 215, with a Life of Mad. de G. pp. 17. Price 5s. bds. Cundee, London, 1806.

It is not always that works of imagination which pass uncensured in France, are admitted into good company in England: the ideas of the two nations on the morals and the delicacies of life, are often contradictory; and their customs, founded A few years hence, when the present on those ideas, are opposite of course. patches of shrubs shall have become thickets, Very seldoni can we recommend the whole of a French tale, without excep --when the present meagre rows of trees shall have become an umbrageous avenue,and the tion, however we may approve, or even children now in their nurses' arms shall have admire, individual parts of it. We perbecome the parents or grandsires of future ge-ceive, therefore, an advantage in forming nerations, this square may serve to record,

that the Art of Landscape Gardening in the beginning of the nineteenth century was not directed by whim or caprice, but founded on a due consideration of utility as well as beauty, without a bigotted adherence to forms and lines, whether straight, or crooked, or scrpentine.

selections from the works of popular French authors: in which those passages which are excellent may be combined, while those which are censurable may be omitted. It is true, that such fragments must always be very defective; they to tally forego the connection, the progress, the termination, and unquestionably the A New Pocket Atlas and Geography of interest of a story; they therefore, must England and Wales, illustrated with fifty-five copper plates, shewing all the not be considered as even attempting to great post roads with the towns and vil- do justice to the skill of the original lages situated thereon, also a descrip- author, or to present any adequate evidence of his merit. They must be action of the Air, Soil, -Productions and Manufactories, as well as the number cepted as, what they profess to be, Seof Hundreds, Cities, Boroughs, Mar-lections only and if judiciously executed ket-towns, Parishes, Houses, and In- they have, at least, the merit of amusing without tiring the reader. habitants. By John Luffman, Geog. pocket size, price 7s. 6d. plain, 10s. 6d. coloured. Lackington and Co. London.

1806.

This title fully describes the contents of the work. The author assures us that he has consulted the best authorities. On examining the pages of the work itself, we find them composed of, a plate printed by way of head piece, at the top of the page; and letter press description below it. We must confess, that the plates are in our opinion, too small; they too much resemble watch papers; nor can we, with

With respect to the work before us, it appears to be well executed; we have not observed in it any thing deserving of blame; but believe it is a fair selection from the works of Mad. de G. Those who are pleased with the French manner of thinking, and style of writing, will be gratified by adding this neatly printed volume to their libraries. As a specimen we quote the following article on travelling, and the manner of writing travels. We could be glad if some of our modern tourists would follow the advice of this lively and sensible French female.

out recourse to our very best spectacles, A traveller is always interesting when he distinguish their contents. They might Fave been twice as large, and more dis-is neither self-sufficient nor loquacious. The inct, on the same page, had a little dex-veracity of great talkers is justly questioned. terity been employed in managing the letter press. They are neatly executed; but are on different scales. There is a general map, not ill-thought, at the end.

A traveller who takes delight in relating his adventures, lays himself open to great suspicion; and as he cannot excite curiosity but by inspiring confidence, he can attain this two-fold object only by displaying simplicity,

modesty, and reserve. Young men in particular, should not speak of their travels unless when they are asked. People take delight in asking questions of travellers, and listen with pleasure to their answers; but they think them exceedingly tiresome when they begin telling of their own accord long stories, concerning which nobody made any enquiry. La Bruyère the Less.

The manner of writing travels ought to be pure and elegant, but likewise simple, concise and serious. A style that is neither epigrammatic, too florid, or impassioned, should be shunned by travellers as well as historians: because both ought to inspire confidence, and scrupulous impartiality, accuracy and fidelity are required of them. Brilliant talents may embellish these indispensable qualities, but cannot make amends for the want of them. Enthusiasm is always justly suspected: it constitutes the principal merit of an ode, of a poem or an oration; but it is only misplaced in travels. A person wishes to appear an universal genius; and in a pamphlet of two hundred pages displays erudition were none was wanted; consequently he is but a pedant. He strives to be eloquent and profound in writing a letter, instead of which he is obscure, diffuse, and perplexed. If he writes his story, he is anxious to exhibit at one and the same time the gravity and great ideas of a statesman, with the gracefulness, ease and delicacy of a wit, and he is superficial, inconsistent; he writes without discernment and without dignity. Finally, the writer of travels pretends to display philosophy, fire, energy, lively sensibility, poetic talents: and he composes a ludicrous and insipid romance, destitute of imagination, plan or interest. Let us fairly admit that it is high time to retrench from works of this kind the extacies on lofty mountains, the religious horrors in the recesses of vast forests, the prose idyls on meads and verdure, the emphatic descriptions of rocks, of precipices, of grottoes, of cascades, and especially those long details written with such complacency, of all the traveller's sensations,details, which compose whole volumes and merely inform you that the author was afraid on a certain occasion; that on such a day he was struck with admiration, or deeply moved; that another time he fell into a pleasing melancholy; and other particulars of no higher importance. Were all these little confidential communications suppressed, travels would be neither less instructive nor less entertaining. Renounce then all this romantic common-place; be judicious, accurate, an attentive observer, and if you can write well, you will obtain eminence as a traveller.-Ibid.

Never appear astonished at customs which differ from those of your native country.

This astonishment has all the appearance of censure; and besides, it does little honour to the understanding. Can you expect to find at Moscow, the customs cominon at Rome? Ibid.

Travellers are continually talking of national character, and imagine themselves acquainted with the character of all the individuals of a nation, when they have studied that of the inhabitants of a town or a province. This is a great error. There may exist a national spirit, as for instance, in England; there may be a national character in states as limited as the little republics of Lucca and St. Marino; but there is no national character in the countries divided into extensive provinces. A Norman, a Gascon, the native of Champagne and of Auvergne, are Frenchmen, and yet they have all very different characters. The more the limits of an empire are extended by conquest, the more striking this diversity becomes.-Ibid.

Before people set out on their travels in foreign countries, they ought to be well acquainted with their own, and to be able to draw comparisons. This method of procecding is certainly the most natural, and this has undoubtedly caused it to appear less brilliant.-Ibid.

Travels from Buenos Ayres, by Potosi, to Lima, with notes by the translator, containing topographical descriptions of the Spanish possessions in S. America. By Anthony Zachariah Helms, formerly director of the mines near Cracow,

&c.

1806.

12mo. pp. 300. London, Philips

These travels took place so far back as the year 1789, since which period we have reason to suppose that these countries have experienced very considerable changes. The government of Buenos Ayres (vide Panorama, p. 374) having been greatly favoured by royal edicts, un. der which its trade has been extensively augmented, has lately received consider able accessions of population, part of which it appears consisted of emigrants from the neighbouring governments. M. Helms was a miner, and these papers do credit to his observation, and skill in his profession: but they testify at the same time the difficulties he had to struggle against, in his attempts (for he did not succeed) to effect improvements, among the Spanish superintendants and workmen at the mines. The public board by which these works are governed, is ac cused of ignorance in metallurgy; the viceroy is accused of supineness, to say

nothing worse, and individuals are accused of barbarism, and of counteracting with all their might the royal commissioners, by secret cabals and the basest calumnies.

There is, then, no superabundance of general information communicated by M. Helms incidentally he drops a remark, or observation, which is entitled to notice by reason of the paucity of travellers, who have described this country; but he does not profess to overpass the boundaries of the science which he understood; and, if we desire to obtain a knowledge of the inhabitants, or of the productions of S. America, (mines excepted) this is not the work in which to seek it. The editor has felt this deficiency so sensibly, that he has added all in his power to the value of the volume by way of appendix; and to this appendix he has also added miscellaneous facts. We must do him the justice to say, that his labours are, in our opinion, more amusing than the reports of the author, and that to those who have not seen later Spanish authorities, they may convey some, though irregular, ideas of the people and the provinces to which they refer.

The notion of wealth is so strongly entrenched in the imagination of some inconsiderates, that they think nothing too much to endure for its acquisition: the auri sacra fames acts on the principle of nil mortalibus arduum, and since our acquisition of an establishment in S. America, we may apply to the instant mercantile speculations of our commercial men, the words of Juvenal :

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fuel, must therefore be brought from a dis tance of thirty to sixty miles, and larger trees fit for building even from Tucuman, being dragged across the mountains by the hands of men. A beam of timber sixteen inches square and thirty-four feet in length, costs at Potosi, two hundred pounds. p. 41.

No European, nor even the negroes, are robust enough, for one year only, to resist the effects of the climate, and support the fatigues of working the mines, in the mountainous regions. In the mountains or mine country the negroes like the Europeans, cannot endure the daily alternations of heat and cold; but become sickly, and soon die an untimely death. 35.

To the Indians we are in fact indebted for all the gold and silver brought from every part of Spanish America. Yet to these good and patient subjects their haughty masters leave, as a reward of their toil, scarcely a sufficient pittance to enable them to procure a scanty meal of potatoes and maize boiled in p. 17

water.

It appears that Europeans are usually visited with a hectic fever, in the course of two or three months; and M. Helms himself, quitted the country, as too injurious to his health to permit his longer stay.

We are favoured with a few very concise descriptions of the inhabitants of these regions, in different places of this Journal: this subject seems to have interested the writer less than the state of the roads, and the distances from town to

town.

We learn from our author, that the wild Indians dread fire-arms: that their weapon is a sling, or rope, of six ells in length, with an angular stone, or piece of lead fastened to the end of it—with which weapon, we re collect, Orellana and nine fellow warriors. cleared the deck of Admiral Pizarro's own ship, from Spaniards, as may be seen in Anson's Voyage. The wild Indians have no intercourse with the civilized Indians, or with the Spaniards, but mortally hate them both.

The Creole is lazy, licentious, indelicate, hypocritical, fanatical, tyraunical, yet is himself enslaved by his mulatto and black females, who rule him with despotic sway.

The converted Indians, who are styled Fideles, in contradistinction to the savages, whom they call Barbaros, Infideles, Bravos, are very obedient, patient, docile, timid and suspicious. In their intercourse among themselves, they give strong proofs of humanity and a love of Justice. Their colour resembles dark bronze; they have an agreeable physiognomy, and muscular limbs they are of a middle stature, and endowed with an

excellent understanding, but are pensive and melancholy.

Several of the Mines of Potosi are drowned by water; and till that is drained away they cannot be worked. A mountain near La Paz contains so much gold, that when, about eighty years ago, a projecting part of it tumbled down, they severed from the stone lumps of pure gold weighing from two to fifty pounds.

M. Helms further observes, that, so much do rich ores abound in some places, that if worked with a moderate industry and knowledge of metallurgy, they might yield considerably more than the quantity necessary for the supply of the whole world and it is, perhaps, a fortunate circumstance, that the ignorance of the miners, and the oppressive measures of the Spanish government, have prevented more from being drawn from this inexhaustible source than has actually been obtained, and from general experience appears to be required, as a circulating medium in commerce: otherwise, gold and silver must long ago have been depreciated to an inconvenient degree.

M. Helm assures us, that a thick stratum of red arsenic, was by some ignorant superintendant taken for cinnabar, and some hundreds of the workmen perished in the operation of smelting it.

While such inconveniencies are attendant on those subterranean riches, which unthinking mankind by general convention, have agreed to call wealth; we cannot but congratulate our country, that honest industry is the wealth of Britain; and that the gold and silver of Peru are sure to find their way to this island in exchange for the manufactures which our labour produces. Spain is not enriched by her mines, not invigorated as a nation, nor elevated among the powers of Europe on the contrary, metallic wealth has ruined her natural resources, has enervated that strength of which she was once in possession, and has given such a bias to the inclinations of her population, that she with difficulty preserves herself from that submission to a foreign power, which urged a few degrees further, becomes a state of vassalage not to be distinguished from slavery

We have already hinted at the supplementary collections of the Editor, in which he has endeavoured to supply the barrenness of his author, as to accounts of the people, the animals, and other productions of these climates; without this accession, the Journey of M. Helms

would have been thought scarcely deserv ing of publication, as a work; though it might have been abstracted into a good article for a magazine. But, an active original writer is too concise, or too inbook-maker is never at a loss; and if the considerable, alone, he may nevertheless form a volume, with proper Addenda and Corrigenda derived from the labours of others.

Ensayo Hydrografico do Piemonte, &c.A Hydrographic Essay on Piedmont, by Jose Theresio Richelotti, formerly Professor of Mathematics in the University of Turin. Translated (from the Italian into the Portuguese Language) by Francisco Furtado de Mendonça; and dedicated to His Royal Highness the Prince of Brasil, Regent of Portugal. Royal quarto, pp. 135. Rome, 1803. From the nature of its situation, at the lower parts of a vast chain of mountains, as its name implies, Piedmont possesses every facility for irrigating whatever levels, or plains, or vallies may be interspersed throughout its surface. The mountains furnish rivers, varying in their degrees of rapidity, according to the declivity of the steeps along which they descend; and according to the direction of their courses, whether more direct or winding, whether shorter or longer; and whether their streams be more copious and abundant in water, or deficient and insignificant.

In a country of such diversity of levels, and where human skill could easily and certainly obtain an absolute command over the descending current, it was natural that the effects of water in fertilizing the soil, and encreasing the quantity and value of its productions, should not only be observed, and a participation in them be generally desired, but that the prin ciples and the practice of this art should engage the attention of the judicious, till at length it was reduced to the principles of a science, and was studied with all the advantages of scientific postulata, united to those of daily experience, and prac tical demonstration.

It is true enough, that, for ordinary purposes, the eye is no bad judge of the differences between relative heights; yet we must admit, that a mathematical determination of levels has much more accuracy than estimates by the eye. Among a chain of mountains, and the various si

milar or dissimilar elevations with which they abound, those deceptions whereby our natural organs of vision are deluded, would occur with peculiar force and frequency, and would embarrass the most diligent inspector, who should depend on the powers of sight. But the effectual and orderly distribution of a current of water, to lands of different levels, cannot be established without a correct knowledge of the differences, however slight in appearance, between those levels, and consequently of the proper precedency and succession in which fields, &c. may be placed with respect to their reception of the beneficent stream. Professor Richelotti, therefore, in composing his original of the work before us, was honourably engaged in the service of his country, which might eventually derive much benefit from his labours; and as Portugal has many vallies among her mountains, not unlike those which form the riches of Piedmont, the translation of this performance into the Portuguese language was likely to benefit this latter country in an eminent degree. For this reason we regard the work before us as an extremely honourable instance of Lusitanian patriotism, especially in the exalted character under whose patronage it was effected, and we doubt not but it has been useful in those provinces to which its contents are of the greatest importance.

It opens with an account of the origin of the rivers and torrents of Piedmont, and of the materials which compose their beds. This chapter illustrates the distinctions which the inhabitants ascribe to various parts of the Alps: as the great Alps, the maritime Alps, &c. ; it offers also descriptions of these mountains, their geological characters, &c. The second chapter describes the nature and qualities of the rivers and streams of Piedmont; the third describes their courses, with those of the rivulets, and of the canals of irri

gation. This is succeeded by reflections on the improvements of which this branch of agriculture is capable, and the more extensive benefits to which these rivulets and canals are competent. The usages and laws that ought to govern these establishments is an important subject of inquiry, and is entered into by our author at some length. This forms the fifth and last chapter of the work. It is, however, succeeded by Addenda, from which we

learn the relative population of the provinces of Piedmont, those irrigated, and those not irrigated; but as the enumeration was made so long ago as 1775, we shall not extract it, because we are morally certain, that late events to which that country has been subject, have totally abrogated whatever inferences might be drawn from those statements. A number of notes (24) are added, and an index concludes the volume. Four large plates, containing six representations of the rivers, streams, and various currents of Piedmont, with the situations of their sluices, and examples of the manner of admitting their waters on to the lands, add greatly to the value and interest of this perforinance.

We have already commended the pas triotic intention of rendering this work useful to Portugal. We are not aware that much of it is applicable to the present state of our own country. Our opportunities of irrigation are not general; and the frequency of rain in this island distinguishes it greatly from those hotter climates, where the seasons of rain are more certain, and the interval between those seasons is so scorching, that human desires are almost limited to the possession of cool shades and refreshing streams. Our summers are not so fervid, our plains are more extensive, our mountains are neither so high, nor so closely adjoining to our levels; and only here and there can a stream be diverted from its course, without injury to some mill, or other establishment, which would speedily complain of any diminution of water.

Our geographers may, however, tako a hint from this work, and add to the value of their maps, by paying more attention than they have hitherto done to marking the elevations of mountains, and the levels of those rivulets which flow from their sides. It is true, that our best artists endeavour to describe in their maps

the face of the country they represent; but it is also true, that till very lately there was scarcely an English map extant, from which the highest part of the extent it included could be guessed at; and perhaps we are indebted for those improvements which have lately taken place to the necessity of ascertaining levels for the direction, not of canals for irrigation, but of those for navigation-the water highways of our ever-verdant island,

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