he saw there, that before he went away he engaged in his service two of the most ingenious mechanics in the colony, one of whom, a carpenter, among other things, was to make a plough, and the other was to teach his people the art of training oxen for the draught, and fixing them to the yoke. For a further account of this person, see the Report of the Directors of the Sierra Leone Company. London, 1795.'

It is curious to remark, that where any instance of civilisation and refinement is discovered in the manners of a barbarous people, it exists in a much higher degree than the same virtue in nations generally refined. There are many single points of barbarous courtesy much more rigidly adhered to than the rules of European politeness would require. We have often remarked this in the voyages of Captain Cook, among the islands of the Indian Archipelago; and there is a very remarkable instance of it among the natives of this coast. The houses (says Dr. Winterbottom) have seldom any other opening than the door, of which there are usually two opposite to each other. These serve the purpose of keeping up a current of air; they also admit the light; and afford an exit to the smoke of the fire, which is made in the middle of the floor. The entrance of a house is seldom closed by anything but a mat, which is occasionally let down, and is a sufficient barrier against all intruders. The most intimate friend will not presume to lift the mat and enter, unless his salutation is returned. Nay, when the door is thus slightly closed, a woman, by pronouncing the word Mooradee (I am busy), can prevent her husband from entering, even though he is assured she is entertaining her gallant. His only remedy is to wait for their coming out. The explanation of these insulated pieces of superlative refinement among savages, frequently is, that they are not mere ceremonies, but religious observances; for the faith of barbarous people commonly regulates all the frivolous minutiæ of life, as well as its important duties: indeed, generally considers the first as of greater consequence than the last. And it must be a general fact, at all times, that gross ignorance more

to a custom once

tenaciously adheres adopted, because it respects that custom as an ultimate rule, and does not discern cases of exception by appealing to any higher rule upon which the first is found.

The Africans are very litigious; and display, in their law-suits or palavers, a most forensic exuberance of images, and loquacity of speech. Their criminal causes are frequently terminated by selling one of the parties into slavery; and the Christians are always ready to purchase either the plaintiff' or defendant, or both; together with all the witnesses, and any other human creature who is of a dusky colour, and worships the great idol Boo-Boo-Boo, with eleven heads.

No great division of labour can of course be expected in such a state of society. Every man is a city in himself, and is his own tailor, hairdresser, shoemaker, and every thing else. Among the Foolahs, however, some progress has been made in the division of employments. The tanner and the blacksmith are distinct trades; and the ingenuity which they evince in overcoming obstacles, by means so inadequate to those which Europeans possess, may convince us what a stock of good qualities human nature has in store for cases of emergency. They put to sea canoes of ten tons' burthen, hollowed from a single tree; and although they are ignorant of the use of the potter's wheel, make earthen pots fit for every domestic use. Dr. Winterbottom thinks they may have learnt their pottery from Europeans; but if this is true, it is rather singular they were not instructed by the same masters in the use of the potter's most convenient and most prominent instrument. The common dress of the men consists in a shirt, trowsers, woollen cap or hat, which they buy of Europeans. Those who can afford it, are fond of decorating themselves in all the second-hand splendour they can purchase at the same market; and Monmouth Street embarks its decayed finery for the coast of Africa, where Soosoo rakes and loungers are joyfully vested in the habiliments of their Bond Street predecessors. The dress of the Pagan African is never thought complete, unless a variety of gree-grees, or

amulets, be superadded; these are to guard against every possible accident; but, as Dr. Winterbottom observes, are such very cumbersome protectors, that in all real dangers they are commonly thrown away. The Mahommedan religion is inimical to dancing, singing, and all the lighter species of amusement. Riding on horseback is the only exercise of those Africans who have adopted this dull faith. Sedentary amusements, such as reading and writing, which flatter the literary pride with which they are puffed up, are most congenial to their habits. The collation of manuscripts, which they perform with industry and accuracy, takes up much of their time. The Pagan African, on the contrary, is commonly a merry, dancing animal, given to every species of antic and apish amusement; and as he is unacquainted with the future and promised delights of the Arabian prophet, he enjoys the bad music, and imperfect beauty of this world, with a most eager and undisturbed relish.

There is something so natural, and so closely derived from human governments, in the notion of the immediate interference of Providence, that mankind are only weaned from it by centuries of contradiction and discussion. In all cases, where crime is alleged, the accused is obliged to prove his innocence by submitting to an ordeal. If he is burnt by red-hot iron, or scalded by boiling oil, he is immediately hurried to the gallows, with a zeal proportioned to the force and perspicuity of the evidence. In the neighbourhood of Sierra Leone, a curious species of pharmaceutical tyranny is resorted to for the purpose of ordeal. The bark of a particular tree, of purgative and emetic qualities, is infused into a large quantity of water, of which the prisoner is to drink about six calibashes quite full. If this judicial and inquisitive drink take a superior direction, and return by the aperture through which it is admitted, all is well; but if the least honourable and elegant of its powers predominate over the other, and it evince a disposition to descend, all opportunity of changing its line of egress is prevented, by

the immediate elevation of the accused person to the gibbet.

The desire of penetrating into futurity, and the belief that some persons are capable of doing it, is as difficult to eradicate from the human mind, as is the belief in an immediate Providence; and consequently, the Africans not only have their ordeal, but their conjurors and magicians, who are appealed to in all the difficulties and uncertainties of life, and who always, of course, preserve their authority, though they are perpetually showing, by the clearest evidence of facts, upon what sort of foundation it rests. But the most singular circumstance in the history of barbarians is, that tendency to form interior societies, comprehending a vast number of members, and rivalling the government in their influence upon public opinion. Such is the Areoy Society at Otaheite, and such the Society of the Purra in Africa. Every person, on entering into this Society, lays aside his former name, and takes a new one. They have a superior, whose commands are received with the most profound veneration. When the Purra comes into a town, which is always at night, it is accompanied with the most horrid screams, howlings, and every kind of awful noise. The inhabitants, who are not members, are obliged to secure themselves within doors. Should any one be discovered without, or peeping to see what was going forwards, he would infallibly be put to death. Mere seclusion of females is not considered by the Society as a sufficient guarantee against their curiosity; but all the time the Purra remains in town, the women are obliged to clap their hands, to show they are not attempting any private indulgence of espionnage. Like the Secret Tribunal which formerly existed in Germany, it punishes the guilty and disobedient, in so secret a manner, that the perpetrators are never known, and, from the dread of the Tribunal, not often inquired for. The natives about Sierra Leone speak of the Purra men with horror, and firmly believe that they have all strict and incessant intercourse with the devil.

This account of Africa is terminated by a single chapter on Sierra Leone; a subject on which we cannot help regretting that Dr. Winterbottom has not been a little more diffuse. It would derive a peculiar interest from the present state of St. Domingo, as the perils with which West India property is now threatened must naturally augment curiosity respecting the possibility of a pacific change of that system; and we should have read with pleasure and instruction the observations of so intelligent and entertaining a writer as Dr. Winterbottom, who is extensively acquainted with the subjects on which he writes, and has a talent of selecting important matter, and adorning it. Dr. Winterbottom says he has been in Africa some years, and we do not doubt the fact; he might, however, have written this book without giving himself that trouble; and the only difference between him and a mere compiler is, that he sanctions his quotations by authority, and embellishes them by his ingenuity. The medical volume we have not yet seen, but this first volume may be safely purchased.

of St. Paul's Churchyard; who flames in the van of Mr. Newberry's shop; and is, upon the whole, dearer to mothers and aunts than any other author who pours the milk of science into the mouths of babes and sucklings. Tired at last of scribbling for children, and getting ripe in ambition, she has now written a book for grown-up people, and selected for her antagonist as stiff a controversialist as the whole field of dispute could well have supplied. Her opponent is Mr. Lancaster, a Quaker, who has lately given to the world new and striking lights upon the subject of Education, and come forward to the notice of his country by spreading order, knowledge, and innocence among the lowest of mankind.

Mr. Lancaster, she says, wants method in his book; and therefore her answer to him is without any arrangement. The same excuse must suffice for the desultory observations we shall make upon this lady's publication.

The first sensation of disgust we experienced at Mrs. Trimmer's book, was from the patronising and protecting air with which she speaks of some small part of Mr. Lancaster's plan. She seems to suppose, because she has dedicated her mind to the subject, that her opinion must necessarily be valuable

1806.)

that her application may have made her more wrong, instead of more right. If she can make out of her case, that Mr. Lancaster is doing mischief in so important a point as that of national education, she has a right, in common with every one else, to lay her complaint before the public; but a right to publish praises must be earned by something more difficult than the writing sixpenny books for children. They may be very good; though we never remember to have seen any one of them; but if they be no more remarkable for judgment and discretion than parts of the work before us, there are many thriving children quite capable of repaying the obligations they owe to their amiable instructress, and of teaching, with grateful retaliation, "the old idea how to shoot."

In remarking upon the work before us, we

shall exactly follow the plan of the authoress, and prefix, as she does, the titles of those subjects on which her observations are made; doing her the justice to presume, that her quotations are fairly taken from Mr. Lancaster's book.

1. Mr. Lancaster's Preface.-Mrs. Trimmer here contends, in opposition to Mr. Lancaster, that ever since the establishment of the Protestant Church, the education of the poor has been a national concern in this country; and the only argument she produces in support of this extravagant assertion, is an appeal to the Act of Uniformity. If there are millions of Englishmen who cannot spell their own names, or read a signpost which bids them turn to the right or left, is it any answer to this deplorable ignorance to say, there is an Act of Parliament for public instruction?-to show the very line and chapter where the King, Lords, and Commons, in Parliament assembled, ordained the universality of reading and writing, when, centuries afterwards, the ploughman is no more capable of the one or the other than the beast which he drives? In point of fact, there is no Protestant country in the world where the education of the poor has been so grossly and infamously neglected as in England. Mr. Lancaster has the very high merit of calling the public attention to this evil, and of calling it in the best way, by new and active remedies; and this uncandid and feeble lady, instead of using the influence she has obtained over the anility of these realms, to join that useful remonstrance which Mr. Lancaster has begun, pretends to deny that the evil exists; and when you ask where are the schools, rods, pedagogues, primers, histories of Jack the Giant-killer, and all the usual apparatus for education, the only things she can produce is the Act of Uniformity and Common Prayer.

2. The Principles on which Mr. Lancaster's Institution is conducted. —'Happily for mankind,' says Mr. Lancaster, 'it is possible to combine precept and practice together in the education of youth: that public spirit, or general opinion, which gives such strength to vice, may be rendered serviceable to the

cause of virtue; and in thus directing it, the whole secret, the beauty, and simplicity of national education consists. Suppose, for instance, it be required to train a youth to strict veracity. He has learnt to read at school he there reads the declaration of the Divine will respecting liars: he is there informed of the pernicious effects that practice produces on society at large: and he is enjoined, for the fear of God, for the approbation of his friends, and for the good of his schoolfellows, never to tell an untruth. This is a most excellent precept; but let it be taught, and yet, if the contrary practice be treated with indifference by parents, teachers, or associates, it will either weaken or destroy all the good that can be derived from it. But if the parents or teachers tenderly nip the rising shoots of vice; if the associates of youth pour contempt on the liar; he will soon hide his head with shame, and most likely leave off the practice.'(pp. 24, 25.)

The objection which Mrs. Trimmer makes to this passage is, that it is exalting the fear of man above the fear of God. This observation is as mischievous as it is unfounded. Undoubtedly, the fear of God ought to be the paramount principle from the very beginning of life, if it were possible to make it so; but it is a feeling which can only be built up by degrees. The awe and respect which a child entertains for its parent and instructor, is the first scaffolding upon which the sacred edifice of religion is reared. A child begins to pray, to act, and to abstain, not to please God, but to please the parent, who tells him that such is the will of God. The religious principle gains ground from the power of association and the improvement of reason; but without the fear of man- the desire of pleasing, and the dread of offending those with whom he lives, -it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to cherish it at all in the mind of children. If you tell (says Mr. Lancaster) a child not to swear, because it is forbidden by God, and he finds every body whom he lives with addicted to that vice, the mere precept will soon be obliterated; which