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that a ship will be four degrees nearer to Port Jackson in the latter situation than it would be in the former. But there is, perhaps, a greater advantage to be gained by making a passage through the strait, than the mere saving of four degrees of latitude along the coast. The major part of the ships that have arrived at Port Jackson have met with N. E. winds, on opening the sea round the South Cape and Cape Pillar; and have been so much retarded by them, that a fourteen days' passage to the port is reckoned to be a fair one, although the difference of latitude is but ten degrees, and the most prevailing winds at the latter place are from S. E. to S. in summer, and from W. S. W. to S. in winter. If, by going through Bass Strait, these N. E. winds can be avoided, which in many cases would probably be the case, there is no doubt but a week or more would be gained by it; and the expense, with the wear and tear of a ship for one week, are objects to most owners, more especially when freighted

with convicts by the run.

"This strait likewise presents another advantage. From the prevalence of the N. E. and easterly winds off the South Cape, many suppose that a passage may be

made from thence to the westward, either to

the Cape of Good Hope, or to India; but the fear of the great unknown bight between the South Cape and the S. W. Cape of Lewen's Land, lying in about 35° south and 113° east, has hitherto prevented the trial being made. Now, the strait removes a part of this danger, by presenting a certain place of retreat, should a gale oppose itself to the ship in the first part of the essay: and should the wind come at S. W. she need not fear making a good stretch to the W. N. W., which course, if made good, is within a few degrees of going clear of all. There is, besides, King George the Third's Sound, discovered by Captain Vancouver, situate in the latitude of 35° 30′ south, and longitude 118° 12′ east; and it is to be hoped, that a few years will disclose many others upon the coast, as well as the confirmation or futility of the conjecture, that a still larger than Bass Strait dismembers New Holland." (p. 192, 193.)

We learn from a note subjoined to this passage, that in order to verify or refute this conjecture, of the existence of other important inlets on the west coast of New Holland, Captain Flinders has sailed with two ships under his command, and is said to be accompanied by several professional men of considerable ability.

Such are the most important contents of Mr. Collins's book, the of which we very much approve, bestyle cause it appears to be written by himself; and we must repeat again, that nothing can be more injurious to the opinion the public will form of the authenticity of a book of this kind, than the suspicion that it has been tricked out and embellished by other hands. Such men, to be sure, have existed as Julins Cæsar; but, in general, a correct and elegant style is hardly attainable by those who have passed their lives in action: and no one has such a pedantic love of good writing, as to prefer mendacious finery to rough and ungrammatical truth. The events which Mr. Collins's book records, we have read with great interest. There is a charm in thus seeing villages, and churches, and farms, rising from a wilderness, where civilised man has never set his foot since the creation of the world. The contrast between fertility and barrenness, population and solitude, activity and indolence, fill the mind with the pleasing images of happiness and increase. Man seems to move in his proper sphere, while he is thus dedicating the powers of his mind and body to reap those rewards which the bountiful Author of all things has Neither is it assigned to his industry.

any common enjoyment, to turn for a while from the memory of those distractions which have so recently agitated the Old World; and to reflect, that its very horrors and crimes may have thus prepared a long æra of opulence and peace for a people yet involved in the womb of time.

J. FIEVÉE. (E. REVIEW, 1803.) Lettres sur l'Angleterre. Par J. Fievée. 1802.

Or all the species of travels, that which has moral observation for its object is the most liable to error, and has the greatest difficulties to overcome, before it can arrive at excellence. Stones, and roots, and leaves, are subjects which may exercise the understanding without rousing the passions,

different effects, that a judgment of foreign nations, founded on rapid observation, is almost certainly a mere tissue of ludicrous and disgraceful mistakes; and yet a residence of a month or two seems to entitle a traveller to present the world with a picture of manners in London, Paris, or Vienna, and even to dogmatise upon the political, religious, and legal institutions, as if it were one and the same thing to speak of abstract effects of such institutions, and of their effects combined with all the peculiar circumstances in which any nation may be placed.

A mineralogical traveller will hardly fall foul upon the granite and the feldspar of other countries than his own; a botanist will not conceal its nondescripts; and an agricultural tourist will faithfully detail the average crop per acre: but the traveller who observes on the manners, habits, and institutions of other countries, must have emancipated his mind from the extensive and powerful dominion of association, must have extinguished the agreeable and deceitful feelings of national vanity, and cultivated that patient humility which builds general inferences only upon the repetition of 2ndly. An affectation of quickness individual facts. Everything he sees in observation, an intuitive glance that shocks some passion or flatters it; and requires only a moment, and a part, to he is perpetually seduced to distort judge of a perpetuity, and a whole. The facts, so as to render them agreeable late Mr. Petion, who was sent over to his system and his feelings. Books of travels are now published in such vast abundance, that it may not be useless, perhaps, to state a few of the reasons why their value so commonly happens to be in the inverse ratio of their number.

into this country to acquire a knowledge of our criminal law, is said to have declared himself thoroughly informed upon the subject, after remaining precisely two and thirty minutes in the Old Bailey.

3rdly. The tendency to found observation on a system, rather than a system upon observation. The fact is, there are very few original eyes and ears. The great mass see and hear as they are directed by others, and bring back from a residence in foreign countries nothing but the vague and customary notions concerning it, which are carried and brought back for half a century, without verification or change. The most ordinary shape in which this tendency to prejudge makes its appearance among travellers, is by a disposition to exalt, or, a still more absurd disposition, to depreciate their native country. They are incapable of considering a foreign people but under one single point of view-the relation in which they stand to their own; and the whole narrative is frequently nothing more than a mere triumph of national vanity, or the ostentation of superiority to so common a failing.

1st. Travels are bad, from a want of opportunity for observation in those who write them. If the sides of a building are to be measured, and the number of its windows to be counted, a very short space of time may suffice for these operations; but to gain such a knowledge of their prevalent opinions and propensities, as will enable a stranger to comprehend (what is commonly called) the genius of a people, requires a long residence among them, a familiar acquaintance with their language, and an easy cir culation among their various societies. The society into which a transient stranger gains the most easy access in any country, is not often that which ought to stamp the national character; and no criterion can be no more fallible, in a people so reserved and inac. cessible as the British, who (even when they open their doors to letters of introduction) cannot for years overcome the awkward timidity of their But we are wasting our time in nature. The same expressions are of giving a theory of the faults of tra so different a value in different coun- vellers, when we have such ample tries, the same actions proceed from means of exemplifying them all from such different causes, and produce such the publication now before us, in which

Mr. Jacob Fievée, with the most sur-
prising talents for doing wrong, has
contrived to condense and agglomerate
every species of absurdity that has
hitherto been made known, and even
to launch out occasionally into new
regions of nonsense, with a boldness
which well entitles him to the merit
of originality in folly, and discovery
in impertinence. We consider Mr.
Fievée's book as extremely valuable in
one point of view. It affords a sort of
limit or mindmark, beyond which we
conceive it to be impossible in future
that pertness and petulance should
pass. It is well to be acquainted with
the boundaries of our nature on both
sides;
and to Mr. Fievée we are in-
debted for this valuable approach to
pessimism. The height of knowledge
no man has yet scanned; but we have
now pretty well fathomed the gulf of
ignorance.

the English.-That they do not understand fireworks as well as the French; that they charge a shilling for admission to the exhibition; that they have the misfortune of being incommoded by a certain disgraceful privilege, called the liberty of the press; that the opera band plays out of tune; that the English are so fond of drinking, that they get drunk with a certain air called the gas of l'aradise; that the privilege of electing members of Parliament is so burthensome, that cities sometimes petition to be exempted from it; that the great obstacle to a parliamentary reform is the mob; that women sometimes have titles distinct from those of their husbands, although, in England, anybody can sell his wife at market, with a rope about her neck. To these complaints he adds that the English are so far from enjoying that equality of which their partisans boast, that

one but the servants of the higher nobility can carry canes behind a carriage; that the power which the French Kings had of pardoning before trial, is much the same thing as the English mode of pardoning after trial; that he should conceive it to be a good reason for rejecting any measure in France, that it was imitated from the English, who have no family affections, and who love money so much, that their first question, in an inquiry concerning the character of any man, is, as to his degree of fortune. Lastly, Mr. Fievée alleges against the English, that they have great pleasure in contemplating the spectacle of men deprived of their reason. And indeed we must have the candour to allow, that the hospitality which Mr. Fievée experienced seems to afford some pretext for this assertion.

We must, however, do justice to Mr. Fievée when he deserves it. He evinces, in his preface, a lurking uneasiness at the apprehension of exciting war between the two countries, from the anger to which his letters will give birth in England. He pretends to deny that they will occasion a war; but it is very easy to see he is not convinced by his own arguments; and we confess ourselves extremely pleased by this amiable solicitude at the probable effusion of human blood. We hope Mr. Fievée is deceived by his philanthropy, and that no such unhappy consequences will ensue, as he really believes, though he affects to deny them. We dare to say the dignity of this country will be satisfied, if the publication in question is disowned by the French government, or, at most, if the author is given up. At all events, we have no scruple to say, that to sacrifice 20,000 lives, and One of the principal objects of Mr. a hundred millions of money, to resent Fievée's book, is to combat the AngloMr. Fievée's book, would be an un-mania, which has raged so long among justifiable waste of blood and treasure; his countrymen, and which prevailed and that to take him off privately by at Paris, to such an excess, that even assassination would be an undertaking Mr. Neckar, a foreigner (incredible as hardly compatible with the dignity of it may seem), after having been twice a great empire. minister of France, retained a considerable share of admiration for the English government. This is quite inexplicable. But this is nothing to the treason of

To show, however, the magnitude of the provocation, we shall specify a few of the charges which he makes against

the Encyclopedists, who, instead of | l'Encyclopédie s'ensevelir sous la même attributing the merit of the experi-poussière." mental philosophy and the reasoning When to this are added the comby induction to a Frenchman, have mendations that have been bestowed shown themselves so lost to all sense of on Newton, the magnitude and the the duty which they owed their country, originality of the discoveries which that they have attributed it to an have been attributed to him, the adEnglishman, of the name of Bacon, miration which the works of Locke and this for no better reason, than that have excited, and the homage that has he really was the author of it. The been paid to Milton and Shakspeare, whole of this passage is written so the treason which lurks at the bottom entirely in the genius of Mr. Fievée, of it all will not escape the penetrating and so completely exemplifies that glance of Mr. Fievée; and he will very caricature species of Frenchmen discern that same cause, from which from which our gross and popular every good Frenchman knows the denotions of the whole people are taken, feat of Aboukir and of the first of June that we shall give the passage at full to have proceeded the monster Pitt, length, cautiously abstaining from the and his English guineas. sin of translating it.

"Quand je reproche aux philosophes d'avoir vanté l'Angleterre, par haine pour les institutions qui soutenoient la France, je ne hasarde rien, et je fournirai une nouvelle preuve de cette assertion, en citant les encyclopédistes, chefs avoués de la philosophie moderne.

ISLAND OF CEYLON.
(E. REVIEW, 1803.)

An Account of the Island of Ceylon. By
Robert Percival, Esq. of his Majesty's
Nineteenth Regiment of Foot. London.
C. and R. Baldwin.

In no

IT is now little more than half a cen-
tury since the English first began to
establish themselves in any force upon
the peninsula of India; and we at pre-
sent possess, in that country, a more
extensive territory, and a more nume-
rous population, than any European
power can boast of at home.
instance has the genius of the English,
and their courage, shone forth more
conspicuously than in their contest with
the French for the empire of India.
The numbers on both sides were always
inconsiderable; but the two nations
were fairly matched against each other,
in the cabinet and the field; the strug-

"Comment nous ont-ils présenté l'Encyclopédie ? Comme un monument immortel, comme le dépôt précieux de toutes les connoissances humaines. Sous quel patronage l'ont-ils élevé ce monument immortel? Est-ce sous l'égide des écrivains dont la France s'honoroit? Non, ils ont choisi pour maître et pour idole, un Anglais, Bacon; ils lui on fait dire tout ce qu'ils ont voulu, parce que cet auteur, extraordinairement volumineux, n'étoit pas connu en France, et ne l'est guère en Angleterre que de quelques hommes studieux; mais les philosophes sentoient que leur succès, pour introduire des nouveautés, tenoit a faire croire qu'elles n'étoient pas neuves pour les grands esprits; et comme les grands esprits français, trop connus, ne se prétoient pas à un pareil dessein, les philosophes ont eu recours à l'Angleterre. Ainsi, un ouvrage fait en France, et offert à l'ad-gle was long and obstinate; and, at miration de l'Europe comme l'ouvrage par excellence, fut mis par des Français sous la protection du génie anglais. O honte! Et les philosophes se sont dit patriotes, et la France, pour prix de sa dégradation, leur a élevé des statues! Le siècle qui commence, plus juste, parce qu'il a le sentiment de la véritable grandeur, laissera ces statues et

"Gaul was conquered by a person of the name of Julius Cæsar," is the first phrase in one of Mr. Newberry's little books.

the conclusion, the French remained masters of a dismantled town, and the English of the grandest and most extensive colony that the world has ever seen. To attribute this success to the superior genius of Clive, is not to diminish the reputation it confers on his country, which reputation must of course be elevated by the number of great men to which it gives birth. But the French were by no means deficient in casualties of genius at that period,

unless Bussy is to be considered as a government, and rendered it as diffi

man of common stature of mind, or Dupleix to be classed with the vulgar herd of politicians. Neither was Clive (though he clearly stands forward as the most prominent figure in the group) without the aid of some military men of very considerable talents. Clive extended our Indian empire; but General Lawrence preserved it to be extended; and the former caught, perhaps, from the latter, that military spirit by which he soon became a greater soldier than him, without whom he never would have been a soldier at all.

cult to enter the kingdom of Candia, as if it were Paradise or China; and yet, once there, always there; for the difficulty of departing is just as great as the difficulty of arriving; and his Candian Excellency, who has used every device in his power to keep them out, is seized with such an affection for those who baffle his defensive artifices, that he can on no account suffer them to depart. He has been known to detain a string of four or five Dutch embassies, till various members of the legation died of old age at Gratifying as these reflections upon his court, while they were expecting our prowess in India are to national an answer to their questions, and a repride, they bring with them the painful turn to their presents*: and his Majesty reflection, that so considerable a portion once exasperated a little French amof our strength and wealth is vested bassador to such a degree, by the upon such precarious foundations, and various pretences under which he kept at such an immense distance from the him at his court, that this lively parent country. The glittering frag-member of the Corps Diplomatique, ments of the Portuguese empire, scat- one day, in a furious passion, attacked tered up and down the East, should six or seven of his Majesty's largest teach us the instability of such do- elephants sword in hand, and would, minion. We are (it is true) better in all probability, have reduced them capable of preserving what we have to mince-meat, if the poor beasts had obtained, than any other nation which not been saved from the unequal has ever colonised in Southern Asia; combat. but the object of ambition is so tempt. The best and most ample account ing, and the perils to which it is ex-of Ceylon is contained in the narrative posed so numerous, that no calculating of Robert Knox, who in the middle of mind can found any durable conclusions upon this branch of our commerce, and this source of our strength.

In the acquisition of Ceylon, we have obtained the greatest of all our wants a good harbour. For it is a very singular fact, that, in the whole peninsula of India, Bombay is alone capable of affording a safe retreat to ships during the period of the mon

soons.

The geographical figure of our possessions in Ceylon is whimsical enough; we possess the whole of the sea-coast, and enclose in a periphery the unfortunate King of Candia, whose rugged and mountainous dominions may be compared to a coarse mass of iron, set in a circle of silver. The Popilian ring, in which this votary of Buddha has been so long held by the Portuguese and Dutch, has infused the most vigilant jealousy into the

the 17th century, was taken prisoner there (while refitting his ship) at the age of nineteen, and remained nineteen years on the island, in slavery to the King of Candia. During this period, he learnt the language, and acquired a thorough knowledge of the people. The account he has given of them is extremely entertaining, and written in a very simple and unaffected style; so much so, indeed, that he presents his reader with a very grave account of the noise the devil makes in the woods of Candia, and of the frequent opportunities he has had of hearing him.

Mr. Percival does not pretend to deal with the devil; but appears to have used the fair and natural resources of observation and good sense, to put together an interesting description of Ceylon. There is nothing in the book very animated, or very pro• Knox's Ceylon.

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