and promising as any,) and prairie, or meadow ground, where the grass grows from six to eight feet high, consequently coarse; yet I have seen many tons of very sweet fodder for cattle, and I have no doubt, but with a little good English husbandry, it may be greatly improved. The woodlands provide the farmer with timber for his buildings, utensils, fire, &c. in the greatest abundance, and will continue to do so for many years to come. This timber land, when put into cultivation, is cleared of all the wood under twelve inches, for 15s. 9d. an acre, and the trees girded, or cut round through the sap, to destroy the vegetation; and then the plough prepares it for a crop of Indian corn, of which it requires not more than one bushel to sow ten acres, and produces from forty to sixty bushels, of eight gallons per acre, which now sells at 1s. 9d. to 2s. 3d. a bushel. The barrens are generally cleared by grubbing, which costs about 18s. an acre. All the fencing is done by split rails, laid in angles one on another, for which the timber is felled, and the rail split at 3s. 4d. a hundred; and it takes about 5000 to inclose in a ring fence 40 acres, which I am now preparing for the ensuing spring. As to the prairie or meadow land, little or no trial has yet been made on it. The produce of wheat has not yet been ascertained, but the crops look very promising; and from what is obtained within ten miles of us, we have no doubt but we may reasonably expect from twenty-fiveto forty bushels, of eight gallons per acre, which now sells at from 3s. 4d. to 4s. 6d. the bushel. Barley and oats have not yet been tried, but we see no reason to fear succeeding in our attempt at cultivating them. All the extra produce of the farms meet a ready sale, if not on the farms, at the town of Evansville, on the banks of the Ohio, at about ten miles from the centre of this settlement, which is a very thriving place, and likely to do much business with New Orleans, &c. The price of labour row in the winter, is 3s. 44d. a day, or 2s. 3d. a day, and board. Our houses or cabins, are generally built of logs of timber, cut to certain lengths for the sides and ends, notched at the corners into each other, and when these do not come close together, a piece of wood, roughly hewn, is put between, and fastened on the outside, with a kind of cob or mud; and I must acknowledge, that rude as are these buildings, I have met with

as much hospitality in them as I ever did in the best dining or drawing-room in England.

As to the breed of cattle, &c. the horses, generally speaking, are not such as could be wished for cart horses, being very slender, and partaking of the blood.

The oxen work well, and some of the cows are good for the dairy. Pigs are in abundance, but not of the first quality; a few, if any, of the farmers know how many they possess, the sows commonly running and farrowing in the woods. I might here remark, that what tends to injure the breed of all the cattle in this country, is their being at large in the forests. When they shall be kept in inclosed grounds, and the proper methods adopted in regard to breeding, great alterations in their size and strength may be expected: nay, there is no reason that they should not be as efficient here, in all respects, as in any other part of the world. Horses sell at from £9 to £25 each; good working oxen £12 to £18 a pair: steers, £3 10s. to £5 a pair; cow and calf, £3 to £4 10s. ; store pigs of about 120lbs. from 15s. to £1; beef and pork, from 2d. to 2‡d. a pound. During so short a residence in these parts, I have not been able to collect much information on the subject of natural history. I have learnt, however, that there are few bears and panthers; many wolves; opossums and racoons, not many; stags and hares are very abundant. We can purchase a deer for 4s. 6d. the skin of which is dressed at a trifling expence, and makes excellent trowsers for country use. Turkies are plentiful, and sold for 1s. 1d. each. Pigeons, pheasants, partridges, woodpeckers, hawks. red-birds, and various other birds, of the richest plumage, are found here. The rivers abound with fish, but very few are caught, as every person appears to be better employed for the present.

SAUNDERS HORNBROOK.

N the Christian Observer for February last, there is a review of Mr. Plumtre's Original Dramas; and the critic takes the opportunity of discussing the subject of the lawfulness of dramatic writing and acting. I am not about to offer any objection to the moral and religious reasoning that is introduced, but I would notice an omission, into which these very good people are continually falling: it is this-the

corresponding sounds and characters in the English language.

We know no royal road to geometry," said the philosophers of Egypt to their sovereign: "I know of no easy way to become a good painter," was the frequent remark of the first president of our academy of the fine arts to his pupils. Just so, Sir, however depressing may be the fact, it may be said that no royal road nor easy way can be pointed out to speak or read Spanish. I must, therefore, be forgiven, if I require even grown gentlemen, not to learn to dance, but to resume their horn-book, and study their A, B, C:-but to business.

The vowels, the soul of all languages, are in Spanish pronounced altogether as in Italian, and (with the exception of u, which, in Spanish as in Italian, always retains the full sound of the English oo, as in good) altogether as in French. It must, however, be observed, that, contrary to what may be asserted in grammars of merited repute, neither in the Spanish, nor the Italian, nor the French, has the vowel a any sound at all similar to that of the English words awe, law. Its sound, even when alone, or closing a syllable, is so short as to render it perhaps impossible to represent it on paper. It comes the nearest, in fact, to that sound which it would have when the syllable terminates in a consonant, but the consonant is suppressed. It greatly resembles that of the article a in the words a man: it will require a nice ear to discriminate between the a in famine French and famine English. No Parisian could endure to be told that he lived in Pauris, although he call his eity Paree and we Paris, the a is sounded the same by both. No peculiarity of enunciation sooner betrays the Englishman (the South-Briton I mean) in Paris than his long, broad awe in his commaung vous-portéz-vous? Of the Spanish consonants, those only which differ from our sounds shall be noticed. The first is b, which is uttered by a compression of the lips much gentler than that employed for our letter. In this respect it so nearly coincides with the v, or rather the v approaches so nearly to the b, that they may be said to meet half-way between the sounds attributed to them by us and other nations of Europe. Hence arises an equivocal orthography in Spanish books, not a little embarrassing to the student of the language. Thus,

verbo (a word) may be seen as berbo, bervo, vervo; yet the student must have made great progress indeed, if he be able to distinguish the sounds of the consonants in those different words. The c is pronounced precisely as in English, never as ch, (as in Italian) with this difference, that the pronunciation formerly confined to the South of Spain having of late years pervaded the greater part of the kingdom, that letter, before e and i, is uttered with a sort of lisp, by advancing the tip of the tongue between the teeth. Thus the phrase cerca de el palacio (near the palace) is pronounced nearly as therca de el palathio. When c is followed by h, it sounds precisely as in English in the word church; as in chico (little), mucho (much). In words derived from the Greek it sounds like : but in several instances the h is suppressed, as in cronista for chronista (a chronicler or annalist), arquitetura (architecture). The consonant d occasions no small trouble to foreigners; for they hardly ever arrive at that degree of softness in the sound which a Spanish ear can endure. In some books of instruction the scholar is directed to pronounce it like th; but that is incorrect, for the d still retains its proper value, but expressed with a delicacy so peculiar, as in some cases, in the ear of a stranger, to be almost wholly suppressed. In the beginning of a word its English sound is pretty entire, as in Don Diego de Durante; but in the body, or at the end, the sof tening is indispensable. At the end, indeed, d is almost quiescent; hence our pronunciation of Trinidad is enough to throw a Spaniard into fits: he sounds that name nearly as Thrinitha. We now come to those guttural sounds of certain consonants, at which a South Briton is alarmed for the integrity of his palate and larynx. And, indeed, not without good reason, if his language be, as he is ready to affirm, devoid of such vile harsh modes of locution. His neighbours the Welsh, the Scotch, and the Irish, the Germans, the Hebrews, the Arabs, &c.; those he allows to possess such rude emissions of the breath; but from his mother-tongue they have long been discarded. Were people, however, to condescend to understand one another, their supposed differences would often wholly disappear. In Spanish are three consonants, g, j, and 2, of which the first and last in certain cases, and the second in all cases, must be pronounced with a gut

tural

of

tural aspiration; but in no case with the forcible effort generally imagined. Before a, o, and u, the sound of g resembles that in English, but sensibly softened and declining a little towards the guttural English h. Hence the delicacy of the Spaniard in naming Don Gaspar de Guzman will be obvious, when compared with the full force of the g; the term guapo (handsome) approaches very nearly to huapo, or the English what. Before e and i the sound g may be said to coincide with that of our h in hell, hill: hence general (heneral), Gibraltar (Hibraltar). The se ond consonant, j, in all cases sounds like our h, as in Jamaica (Hamaica), an island improperly named by us; for besides the aspiration of the j, the a and i ought to be separately sounded, and not as a diphthong, making it a word of four syllables. The proper names Jesus, José, Juan, are pronounced hesus (that is, hesoos) hosé, huan. The letter h can hardly be said to have any sound, but it is retained to point out the origin of certain words, as hombre, from homo, a man. The consonant k is found in Spanish, as in Latin, in a few foreign words alone, and sounded as in English. When is single, it sounds as with us; but when double, the sound agrees with that of ly in English, of lli in French, and gli in Italian. Thus the great precursor of the circumnavigators of the globe, whom we call Magellan, is in Spanish Magallanes, in Portuguese, his proper tongue, Magalhanes, in Italian, Magaglianes; but all pronounced as Magallyanes. Single n sounds as in English; but double n, formerly written nn, as Espanna, but now with a mark over it, as España (Spain) is pronounced Espanya ; baño (bath), banyo; Castaños, Castanyos, &c. In speaking of the letter c, it was mentioned that the Andalusian lisp, or conversion of c into our th, was become prevalent in Spain.. The same remark may be generally applied to the manner of soundings; thus, Andalusia is commonly pronounced as Andaluthía; laying at the same time the accent on the vowel i, as well as on the first syllable An. The letter, already mentioned, sounds before all the vowels, like the Spanish g before e and i; that is, it is aspirated. If a be followed by a consonant, or have a circumflex over it, the English sound (ks) is preserved, as in extender (to extend), existir (to exist). The consonant z, before all the vowels, and at the end of a word, is

sounded like th English, in death, breath; thus zozobrar (to be overset) thothobrar; Andaluz (an Andalusian) Andaluth. In modern printed Spanish books we often meet with the character ç, called cedilla, which denotes the soft sound of c before a, o, or u, where, without that mark, c would be sounded hard: but the truth is, that the character is only an ancient mode of writing z, and consequently ought always to be sounded soft. Many of our Newspapers, Gazettes even, during the late campaigns in Spain, astonished plain men with accounts of the exploits of a set of incomprehensible fellows termed cacadores: at last the mystery was unfolded, that those heroes were just plain caçadores (better cazadores), from caça, the chase; what the French call chasseurs, and we light infantry. The largest of the isles Pityusae, in the Mediterranean, was in former times styled Ebusus, a name which degenerated into what our geographers and map-makers have usually called Ivica; but it is plain from its derivation, as well as from the uniform practice of the Spaniards, French, and Italians, that the name ought to be pronounced and written Iviça, or still better Iviza. London, 5th April, 1820. J. D.

For the Monthly Magazine. NOTES made during a JOURNEY from LONDON to HOLKHAM, YORK, EDINBURGH, and the HIGHLANDS of SCOTLAND, in July and August 1819, by JOHN MIDDLETON, esq. the author of an AGRICULTURAL VIEW of MIDDLESEX, and other works.

WE

[Concluded from p. 415.]

EDNESDAY, 25th Aug.-We quitted Leeds and viewed a small steam-engine and machinery raising coal from a depth of 165 yards or 495 feet in square wooden cases, which contain about fifteen cubical feet each; this quantity of coal is sold for twenty-pence on the spot, but much the greater part is carried off by a rail-way to the ships. This was between Leeds and Wakefield, where the whole country is worked for coal, which as usual are found under free-stone and black shale. Some of the stone quarries are cleared of water by steam engines, and all the coal-pitts are drained in that manner. A Mr. Blackenstone, from near Newcastle (Northumberland) has extensive pitts here, which are spoken of as curiosities of their kind; his access to the coal strata is said to be by an

inclined

inclined plane; the others are raised vertically. We also heard of his using a steam-engine under ground.

Wakefield stands upon a hill, and every street opens towards a well cultivated country. There are two good churches, a new court-house, and a new asylum for the insane, together with many very respectable dwellinghouses near the new church. The Black Bull is a large handsome inn, of modern erection, in the best street; but we were taken to the White Hart, an old white-washed house near the older church and were well off.

We called on Mr. Yates, at Rotherham, and he kindly shewed us the casting shops of Messrs. Walker, where the iron-bridges of Southwark, Sunderland and others were manufactured. At this time very little was doing by a few men who were kept together casting some war-shells. We then drove to the Tontine Inn, at Sheffield, for the night; and the next morning being the 26th of August, we were politely shewn the cutlery manufactory of Messrs. Rogers and Son, as well as the silverplating works of Messrs. Gainsford, Nicholson and Co.

Sheffield is a clean town in a very agreeable valley, where cultivation and plantations ascend the rising ground on every side. It has the advantage of Leeds in the cleanliness of its streets, and the appearance of the neighbouring country is far superior. Even the inhabitants and inns were more agreeable to us at Sheffield than they were at Leeds. Thence along a finely cultivated dale two or three miles, and over a heathy common of high elevation said to abound with grouse, a few miles; then down a steep hill and along a very rocky precipice of free-stone and of considerable length, to which must be added a mile along a beautiful dale to Stoney Middleton, where the rocks are all grey lime-stone, and the fissures in it contain much lead ore. At a smelting-mill we learned that a pig of lead weighs one hundred and a half or twelve stone. We were a little surprised that a rather lusty man sixty years of age could have worked in smelting lead ore upwards of thirty years. The condition for smelting lead ore is at per ton on the pig-lead obtained. The smelters find every thing except the ore, and they smelt for any person. At this mill they shewed us pigs belonging to four or five persons recently made.

now

Lord George Cavendish is mining at a depth which occasions his using a powerful steam-engine to clear it of water. And we were told another engine must be set to work before his Lordship can avail himself of the treasure (lead ore), which lies at a greater depth than his present means can extract it from.

Friday, 27th August.-We quitted Stoney Middleton and drove along a chasm with lime-stone rocks on each side of the carriage, which are of great heights and on the north side perpendicular; the road gradually ascending for about two miles to the top of land of very high elevation, where there are lead mines on every side, and in some cases close to the road. We then gradually descended through the village of Tideswell and rocky glens to Buxton.

Buxton is an agreeable place, and at the Eagle is a good inn. The company at this place were amused by a band of music at sun-set for an hour in the crescent; which comprises eight uniformly fine houses. The stable buildings are placed at a proper distance from the crescent, in a circle with a covered ridge under a colonade; the whole is the most complete thing of its kind. The country and village are fine; and with saddle horses we could have spent a few days, or perhaps weeks, here satisfactorily.

On quitting Buxton we passed along the vale of Ashford, and stopped to examine the marble works of Messrs. Brown and Maw; where the labour of sawing, scowering and polishing is mostly done by machinery moved by water. We then were accompanied into the marble mines, and there we viewed the strata of grey lime-stone, as well as the several marbles of entrochal, madrepore, and black in their natural situations. This was a short but gratifying visit. We then pursued our course to Bakewell, where there is an excellent inn. We changed horses and proceeded to Chatsworth, where we viewed that rather splendid seat of the Duke of Devonshire; the usual cascade, was exhibited, which in the dry season of August served to shew its defects. Instead of a continued cascade which would require the constant running of a rivulet, the artificial means only caused a fall over three or four steps at a time in succession the whole way down a long declivity. If ever this piece of art can be viewed with satisfaction, it

must