much cooler. The climate, upon the whole, is much more temperate than on the continent of India. The temperate and healthy climate of Ceylon, is, however, confined to the seacoast. In the interior of the country, the obstructions which the thick woods oppose to the free circulation of air, render the heat almost insupportable, and generate a low and malignant fever, known to Europeans by the name of the Jungle fever. The chief harbours of Ceylon are Trincomalee, Point de Galle, and, at certain seasons of the year, Columbo. The former of these, from its nature and situation, is that which stamps Ceylon one of our most valuable acquisitions in the East Indies. As soon as the monsoons commence, every vessel caught by them in any other part of the Bay of Bengal is obliged to put to sea immediately, in order to avoid destruction. At these seasons, Trincomalee alone, of all the parts on this side of the peninsula, is capacle of affording to vessels a safe retreat; which a vessel from Madras may reach in two days. These circumstances render the value of Trincomalee much greater than that of the whole island; the revenue of which will certainly be hardly sufficient to defray the expense of the establishments kept up there. The agriculture of Ceylon is, in fact, in such an imperfect state, and the natives have so little availed themselves of its natural fertility, that great part of the provisions necessary for its support are imported from Bengal.

Ceylon produces the elephant, the buffalo, tiger, elk, wildhog, rabbit, hare, flying-fox, and musk-rat. Many articles are rendered entirely useless by the smell of musk, which this latter animal communicates in merely running over them. Mr. Percival asserts (and the fact has been confirmed to us by the most respectable authority), that if it even pass over a bottle of wine, however well corked and sealed up, the wine becomes so strongly tainted with musk, that it cannot be used; and a whole cask may be rendered useless in the same manner. Among the great variety of birds, we were struck with Mr. Percival's account of the honey-bird, into whose body the soul of a common informer appears to have migrated. It makes a loud and shrill noise, to attract the notice of anybody whom it may perceive; and thus inducing him to follow the course it points out, leads him to the tree where the bees have concealed their treasure; after the apiary has been robbed, this feathered scoundrel gleans his reward from the hive. The list of Cey

lonese snakes is hideous; and we become reconciled to the crude and cloudy land in which we live, from reflecting, that the indiscriminate activity of the sun generates what is loathsome, as well as what is lovely; that the asp reposes under the rose; and the scorpion crawls under the fragrant flower, and the luscious fruit.

The usual stories are repeated here, of the immense size and voracious appetite of a certain species of serpent. The best history of this kind we ever remember to have read, was of a serpent killed near one of our settlements, in the East Indies; in whose body they found the chaplain of the garrison, all in black, the Rev. Mr.- (somebody or other, whose name we have forgotten), and who, after having been missing for above a week, was discovered in this very inconvenient situation. The dominions of the King of Candia are partly defended by leeches, which abound in the woods, and from which our soldiers suffered in the most dreadful manner. The Ceylonese, in compensation for their animated plagues, are endowed with two vegetable blessings, the cocoa-nut tree and the talipot tree. The latter affords a prodigious leaf, impenetrable to sun or rain, and large enough to shelter ten men. It is a natural umbrella, and is of as eminent service in that country as a great-coat tree I would be in this. A leaf of the talipot tree is a tent to the soldier, a parasol to the traveller, and a book to the scholar.* The cocoa tree affords bread, milk, oil, wine, spirits, vinegar, yeast, sugar, cloth, paper, huts, and ships.

We could with great pleasure proceed to give a farther abstract of this very agreeable and interesting publication, which we very strongly recommend to the public. It is written with great modesty, entirely without pretensions, and abounds with curious and important information. Mr. Percival will accept

our best thanks for the amusement he has afforded us. When we can praise with such justice, we are always happy to do it; and regret that the rigid and independent honesty which we have made the very basis of our literary undertaking, should so frequently compel us to speak of the authors who come before us, in a style so different from that in which we have vindicated the merits of Mr. Percival.

* All books are written upon it in Ceylon.

DELPHINE. (EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1803.)

Delphine. By Madame de Staël Holstein. London. Mawman. 6 vols. 12mo.

THIS dismal trash, which has nearly dislocated the jaws of every critic among us with gaping, has so alarmed Bonaparte, that he has seized the whole impression, sent Madame de Staël out of Paris, and, for aught we know, sleeps in a nightcap of steel, and dagger-proof blankets. To us it appears rather an attack upon the Ten Commandments, than the government of Bonaparte, and calculated not so much to enforce the rights of the Bourbons, as the benefits of adultery, murder, and a great number of other vices, which have been somehow or other strangely neglected in this country, and too much so (according to the apparent opinion of Madame de Staël) even in France.

It happens, however, fortunately enough, that her book is as dull as it could have been if her intentions had been good; for wit, dexterity, and the pleasant energies of the mind, seldom rank themselves on the side of virtue and social order; while vice is spiritual, eloquent, and alert, ever choice in expression, happy in allusion, and judicious in arrangement.

The story is simply this.-Delphine, a rich young widow, presents her cousin Matilda de Vernon with a considerable estate, in order to enable her to marry Leonce Mondeville. To this action she is excited by the arts and the intrigues of Madame de Vernon, an hackneyed Parisian lady, who hopes, by this marriage, to be able to discharge her numerous and pressing debts. Leonce, who, like all other heroes of novels, has fine limbs, and fine qualities, comes to Paris-dislikes Matilda-falls in love with Delphine, Delphine with him; and they are upon the eve of jilting poor Matilda, when, from some false reports spread abroad respecting the character of Delphine (which are aggravated by her own imprudences, and by the artifices of Madame Vernon), Leonce, not in a fit of honesty, but of revenge, marries the lady whom he came to marry.

Soon after, Madame de Vernon dies-discovers the artifices by which she had prevented the union of Leonce and Delphine-and then, after this catastrophe, which ought to have terminated the novel, come two long volumes of complaint and despair. Delphine becomes a nun-runs away from the nunnery with Leonce, who is taken by some French soldiers, upon the supposition that he has been serving in the French emigrant army against his country-is shot, and upon his dead body falls Delphine as dead as he.

Making every allowance for reading this book in a translation, and in a very bad translation, we cannot but deem it a heavy performance. The incidents are vulgar; the characters vulgar, too, except those of Delphine and Madame de Vernon. Madame de Staël has not the artifice to hide what is coming. In travelling through a flat country, or a flat brook, we see our road before us for half the distance we are going. There are no agreeable sinuosities, and no speculations whether we are to ascend next, or descend; what new sight we are to enjoy, or to which side we are to bend. Leonce is robbed and half murdered; the apothecary of the place is certain he will not live; we were absolutely certain that he would live, and could predict to an hour the time of his recovery. In the same manner we could have prophesied every event of the book a whole volume before its occurrence.

This novel is a perfect Alexandrian. The two last volumes are redundant, and drag their wounded length: it should certainly have terminated where the interest ceases, at the death of Madame de Vernon; but, instead of this, the scene-shifters come and pick up the dead bodies, wash the stage, sweep it, and do every thing which the timely fall of the curtain should have excluded from the sight, and left to the imagination of the audience. We humbly apprehend, that young gentlemen do not in general make their tutors the confidants of their passion; at least we can find no rule of that kind laid down either by Miss Hamilton or Miss Edgeworth, in their treatises on education. The tutor of Leonce is Mr. Barton, a grave old gentleman, in a peruke and snuff-coloured clothes. Instead of writing to this solemn personage about second causes, the ten categories, and the eternal fitness of things, the young lover raves to him, for whole pages, about the white neck and auburn hair of his Delphine; and, shame to tell! the liquorish old pedagogue

seems to think these amorous ebullitions the pleasantest sort of writing in usum Delphini that he has yet met with.

By altering one word, and making only one false quantity,* we shall change the rule of Horace to

'Nec febris intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus

Inciderit.'

Delphine and Leonce have eight very bad typhus fevers between them, besides hæmoptoe, hemorrhage, deliquium animi, singultus, hysteria, and fœminei ululatus, or screams innumerable. Now, that there should be a reasonable allowance of sickness in every novel, we are willing to admit, and will cheerfully permit the heroine to be once given over, and at the point of death; but we cannot consent, that the interest which ought to be excited by the feelings of the mind should be transferred to the sufferings of the body, and a crisis of perspiration be substituted for a crisis of passion. Let us see difficulties overcome, if our approbation is required; we cannot grant it to such cheap and sterile artifices as these.

The characters in this novel are all said to be drawn from real life; and the persons for whom they are intended are loudly whispered at Paris. Most of them we have forgotten; but Delphine is said to be intended for the authoress, and Madame de Vernon (by a slight sexual metamorphosis) for Talleyrand, minister of the French republic for foreign affairs. As this lady (once the friend of the authoress) may probably exercise a considerable influence over the destinies of this country, we shall endeavour to make our readers a little better acquainted with her; but we must first remind them that she was once a bishop, a higher dignity in the church than was ever attained by any of her sex since the days of Pope Joan; and that though she swindles Delphine out of her estate with a considerable degree of address, her dexterity sometimes fails her, as in the memorable instance of the American commissioners. Madame de Staël gives the following description of this pastoral metropolitan female:

‘Though she is at least forty, she still appears charming even among the young and beautiful of her own sex. The paleness of her complexion, the slight relaxation of her features, indicate the languor

* Perhaps a fault of all others which the English are least disposed to pardon. A young man, who, on a public occasion, makes a false quantity at the outset of life, can seldom or never get over it.