seated on a strong hill, in a commanding and pleasant situation, being surrounded by fruitful valleys and abundance of olive-trees. In its centre stood the city of Samaria, by Herod called Sebaste (of which its present name is a corruption). Here are some remains of ancient edifices, particularly of a large cathedral church attributed to the piety of the empress Helena.

Nablous, or Napolose (the Sichem of the Scriptures) is a populous town, containing nearly 10,000 inhabitants, all of whom, with the exception of about fifty Greek Christians, are Mohammedans: and the grounds around it bear the marks of opulence and industry. It fully occupies the valley between the two hills of Gerizim on the south, and Ebal on the north. Though a place of considerable trade with Damascus and the towns on the sea-coast, yet there were no Jews here, who remained as permanent residents. The Samaritans, of whom a remnant remained in Maundrell's time (the close of the seventeenth century), are now reduced to scarcely half a dozen, or a dozen families, who perform their sacred rites in studied seclusion and obscurity, and are, if possible, more despised here than the Jews are in other Mohammedan cities.

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Before we conclude this article, we cannot but advert to the contemptuous epithets, which Mr. Buckingham very liberally pours forth, in some of his strictures on the reputed holy places, and on the gross and absurd impositions practised in Palestine on the credulity of pilgrims and travellers. We confess, that we could wish such epithets and remarks had been omitted, as we have heard, that they have been considered as displaying a contempt for religion itself. As, however, this intelligent traveller, in his preface, disclaims any such intention, we have (to borrow his own expression) put the most favourable construction' upon the passages in question; especially as he has every where made a laudable application of his researches to the elucidation of the Scriptures, and (as our extracts will shew) has in many instances happily succeeded in throwing much light on sacred geography.

The volume is handsomely and correctly printed, and is en+ riched with a map of Palestine, chiefly from that of the accurate geographer, D'Anville, and also with several plates representing the plans of ancient edifices, and copies of inscriptions, besides a portrait of the author, and nearly thirty vignettes, beautifully executed on wood, exhibiting views of places, costumes, and ruins.

1g polufevell edodol silt 38 „odw dd: to wedbanong sdr ART. IX-Private and Original Correspondence of Charles Talbot, Duke of Shrewsbury, with King William, the Leaders of the Whig Party, and other distinguished Statesmen ; illustrated with Narratives historical and biographical, from the Family Papers, in the Possession of her Grace the Duchess of Buccleugh, never before published. By William Coxe, F. R. S. Archdeacon of Wilts, &c. 4to. Longman and Co. London, 1821.!

Ir is among the principal accomplishments: of an English gentleman to be well read in the political history of his own country; not merely in the series and succession of great events, as they chase one another down the stream of time, but in the various scenes of conflict, debate, and fermentation, by which each of these events have been accompanied and characterised. It is only by thus examining the details of critical conjunctures, and studying each epoch with reference to the views of the parties, and the qualities of the persons chiefly concerned in its developement, that we become practically acquainted with our constitution. One would be glad, because it would be honourable to our nature, to find that our political system had been the result of foresight and contrivance; that every good institution had owed its existence to its own merits, and a clear anticipation of its beneficial effects; but our constitution is no such creature. The English mind has no doubt largely impressed its intelligence upon it in each particular stage of its progress; but it has received very many of its most important accessions, and its ultimate complex formation, from fortuitous occurrences and critical emergencies, producing results often very different from, and sometimes entirely contrary to, those which were foreseen or intended. The thing, as it exists, has, in great measure, come about by an agency independent of human contrivance or controul, the product of an involuntary developement of latent tendencies, and of effects which human speculation has neither designed nor expected. A mighty moral order, mysteriously advancing through cloud and sunshine, stillness and storm, and all the vicissitudes of foul and fair, has educed by degrees that political phenomenon--a constitution in itself not luminous, but shedding light and glory upon the nation living under its practical influence. The more we thus regard the formation and progress of our happy polity, the more we shall become satisfied that man has not conventionally made it, and could not make it; and the more we shall be disposed to a timid forbearance from the dangerous work of undoing what can never be re-made, or re-enacted, or voted again into existence. It was this view of our constitution that appears to have regulated

the proceedings of those, who, at the glorious Revolution of 1688, embodied its prescriptive excellencies into the great settlement of our liberties which was then effected.

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As an historical fact, the Revolution of 1688 furnishes the strongest example possible, in support of what we have said above of the danger of taking to pieces the product of circumstances which no human power can again summon into being. They treated the constitution as a contract, not of instrumental and simultaneous formation, but as one to which successive generations had put their seals, and which nature and experience had adopted and approved. And therein consisted their admirable discernment. They did not falsify history, by affecting to recur to any primitive scheme of political perfection; still less did they hold themselves at large to treat the settlement of the British constitution as a new creation: it was the principle and spirit of that great proceeding, neither to do or undo a jot more than the necessity of the case demanded ;-to work upon the existing model; and to recognize as sparingly as possible the right of recurring to abstract and original principles. The whole of that extraordinary transaction stood upon the plea of necessity. The only right set up was the right of self-preservation the great apology of nature the eldest of all rights; always to be implied, and therefore never necessary to be promulgated. Nothing marks so decisively the clear views and cautious discernment of the great agents in the work of the Revolution, as the care they took to use no more violence than the occasion required; and to give to every procedure the semblance, as far as was practicable, of an effort of the constitution itself for its own continuance. Standing as it were upon the verge of the great magazine of original power, they were aware of the danger of explosion; and abstained as much as possible from the handling of any thing that carried fire in its composition. It would scarcely be too much to say, that the change in the political condition of the country effected in 1688, was less a revolution than an effort to avoid revolution. It was a happy combination of intellectual power to redeem the country from the plague of popery and arbitrary rule, and to secure it by a permanent barrier against future contagion. Morally speaking, the Revolution had been wrought by James the Second. The transaction of 1688 was in virtue and effect a restoration. King William came in, not as a conqueror, but as a continuator; that sort of qualified and constitutional king, which Charles the Second, had the terms of his restoration been agreeable with the manly and sound propositions suggested and recommended by the best patriots of that juncture, would have returned to the seat of his ancestors. voz

Mr. Burke, in his "Appeal from the new to the old Whigs, has wisely referred us to the impeachment of Dr. Sacheverel, as affording to the Whig ministry, and Whig House of Commons. of that day, a remarkable opportunity of putting upon record their political tenets on the subject of that great constitutional event of 1688, and of exhibiting to the world its true grounds and principles. The managers of that prosecution had also been the prime movers in that great event, and when the heat and agitation of its execution and accomplishment were over, they deliberately laid before the nation the motives and the maxims which had governed them and their colleagues upon that occasion. They made it clearly appear in all their speeches upon that celebrated trial, that though the Revolution supposed the right of resistance, it practically grounded itself on the argument of necessity.

We shall not trouble our readers with long quotations from the speeches of the managers of the impeachment of Dr. Sacheverel; one may suffice for all, for all are in the same strain of reasoning. "Your Lordships," says Mr. Lechmere, "were acquainted, in opening the charge, with how great caution, and with what unfeigned regard to her Majesty and her government, and the duty and allegiance of her subjects, the Commons made use of the words necessary means to express the resistance that was made use of to bring about the Revolution, and with the condemning of which the Doctor is charged by this article; not doubting but that the honour and justice of that resistance, from the necessity of that case, and to which alone we have strictly confined ourselves, when duly considered, would confirm and strengthen, and be understood to be an effectual security for an allegiance of the subject to the crown of this realm, in every other case where there is not the same necessity; and that the right of the people to self-defence, and preservation of their liberties, by resistance, as their last remedy, is the result of a case of such necessity only, and by which the original contract between the king and people is broken. This was the principle laid down and carried through all that was said with respect to allegiance; and on which foundation, in the name and on the behalf of all the Commons of Great Britain, we assert and justify that resistance by which the late happy Revolution was brought about."

In the same most admirable pamphlet the profound writer shews clearly, from the whole text of the Revolution, and the authority of its greatest expounders, who, as he reminds us, were not, "umbratiles doctores, men who had studied a free constitution only in its anatomy, and upon dead systems, but who knew it alive and in action; " that the Revolution made "no essential change in the constitution of the monarchy, or in any of its

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ancient, sound, and legal principles; that the succession was settled in the Hanover family, upon the idea, and in the mode of an hereditary succession, qualified with protestantism; that it was not settled upon elective principles, in any sense of the word elective, or under any modification of election whatsoever: but, on the contrary, that the nation, after the revolution, renewed by a fresh compact the spirit of the original compact of the state, binding itself, both in its existing members and all its posterity, to adhere to the settlement of an hereditary succession in the protestant line, drawn from James the First, as the stock of inheritance." In treating of the true character of the Revolution of 1688, the great author of the pamphlet alluded to, has therein bequeathed to the British people maxims of more conservative value than are to be found in the collective wisdom of all its other political philosophers. "Their principles," speaking of the principles of the theoretic reformers, "always go to the extreme. They who They who go with the principles of the ancient Whigs, never can go too far. They may, indeed, stop short of some hazardous and ambiguous excellence, which they will be taught to postpone to any reasonable degree of good they may actually possess. The theory contained in his book (his own immortal book on the French revolution) is not to furnish principles for making a new constitution, but for illustrating the principles of a constitution already made, It is a theory drawn from the fact of our government. "The whole scheme of our mixed constitution, is to prevent any one of its principles from being carried as far as taken by itself, and theoretically, it would go. To avoid the perfections of extreme, all its several parts are so constituted, as not alone to answer their own several ends, but also each to limit and controul the others: insomuch, that, take which of the principles you please, you will find its operation checked and stopped at a certain point. The whole movement stands still rather than that any part should proceed beyond its boundary. From thence it results, that in the British constitution there is a perpetual treaty and compromise going on, sometimes openly, sometimes with less observation.", The

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British constitution has not been struck out at an heat by a set of presumptuous men; it is the result of the thoughts of many minds in many ages. It is no simple, no superficial thing, nor to be estimated by superficial understandings. An ignorant man, who is not fool enough to meddle with his clock, is, however, sufficiently confident to think that he can safely take to pieces, and put together at his pleasure, a moral machine of another guise, importance, and complexity, composed of far other wheels, and springs, and balances, and counteracting and co-operating powers. Men little think how immorally they act in meddling

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