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are usually purchased by a black merchant. | natural and less capricious than the This, however, is not always the course other, he never fails to indulge it. pursued: government sometimes judges it Where fortune has so much to do with more advantageous to fish the banks on its

own account, and to dispose of the pearls afterwards to the merchants. When this plan is adopted, boats are hired for the season on account of government, from different quarters; the price varies considerably according to circumstances; but is usually from five to eight hundred pagodas for each boat. There are, however, no stated prices, and the best bargain possible is made for each boat separately. The Dutch generally followed this last system; the banks were fished on government account, and the pearls disposed of in different parts of India or sent to Europe. When this plan was pursued, the Governor and Council of Ceylon claimed a certain per centage on the value of the pearls: or.

if the fishing of the banks was disposed of

peril and profit, of course there is no
deficiency of conjurors, who by divers
enigmatical grimaces, endeavour to
If
ostracise this submarine invader.
they are successful they are well paid
in pearls; and when a shark indulges
himself with the leg of a Hindoo, there
is a witch who lives at Colang. on the
Malabar coast, who always bears the
blame.

A common mode of theft practised by the common people engaged in the pearl fishery, is by swallowing the pearls. Whenever any one is suspected of having swallowed these precious pills of Cleopatra, the police by public sale, they bargained for a stipu- apothecaries are instantly sent for; a lated sum to themselves over and above brisk cathartic is immediately deswhat was paid on account of government. patched after the truant pearl, with The pretence on which they founded their the strictest orders to apprehend it, in claims for this perquisite, was their trouble whatever corner of the viscera it may in surveying and valuing the banks."-be found lurking. Oyster lotteries are (pp. 59-61.)

carried on here to a great extent. The banks are divided into six or They consist in purchasing a quantity seven portions, in order to give the of the oysters unopened, and running the oysters time to grow, which are sup- chance of either finding or not finding posed to obtain their maturity in about pearls in them. The European gentleseven years. The period allowed to the men and officers who attend the pearl merchant to complete his fishery is about fishery through duty or curiosity are six weeks; during which period all the particularly fond of these lotteries, and boats go out and return together, and frequently make purchases of this sort. are subject to very rigorous laws. The The whole of this account is very well dexterity of the divers is very striking; written, and has afforded us a great they are as adroit in the use of their degree of amusement. By what cufeet as their hands, and can pick up rious links, and fantastical relations, are the smallest object under water with mankind connected together! At the their toes. Their descent is aided by distance of half the globe, a Hindoo a great stone, which they slip from gains his support by groping at the their feet when they arrive at the bot- bottom of the sea for the morbid contom, where they can remain about two cretion of a shell-fish, to decorate the minutes. There are instances, how-throat of a London alderman's wife. ever, of divers who have so much of It is said that the great Linnæus had the aquatic in their nature as to remain under water for five or six minutes. Their great enemy is the ground shark; for the rule of "eat and be eaten," which Dr. Darwin called the great law of nature, obtains in as much force fathoms deep beneath the waves as above them this animal is as fond of the legs of Hindoos as Hindoos are of the pearls of oysters; and as one appetite appears to him much more

discovered the secret of infecting oysters with this perligenous disease; what has become of the secret we do not know, as the only interest we take in oysters is of a much more vulgar, though perhaps a more humane nature.

The principal woods of cinnamon lie in the neighbourhood of Columbo. They reach to within half a mile of the fort, and fill the whole surrounding prospect. The grand garden near

the town is so extensive, as to occupy | in chewing cinnamon, the acrid juice of a tract of country from ten to fifteen which excoriates the mouth, and puts miles in length. them to the most dreadful tortures.

Nature has here concentrated both the

beauty and the riches of the island. Nothing can be more delightful to the eye, than the prospect which stretches around Columbo. The low cinnamon trees which cover the plain allow the view to reach the groves of evergreens, interspersed with tall clumps, and bounded everywhere with extensive ranges of cocoa nut and other

large trees. The whole is diversified with small lakes and green marshes, skirted all round with rice and pasture fields. In one part, the intertwining cinnamon trees appear completely to clothe the face of the plain; in another, the openings made by the intersecting footpaths just serve to show that the thick underwood has been penetrated. One large road, which goes

out at the west gate of the fort, and returns by the gate on the south, makes a winding circuit of seven miles among the woods. It is here that the officers and gentlemen belonging to the garrison of Columbo take their morning ride, and enjoy one of the finest scenes in nature.”(pp. 336, 337.)

As this spice constitutes the wealth of Ceylon, great pains are taken to ascertain its qualities, and propagate its choicest kinds. The prime sort is obtained from the Laurus Cinnamomum. The leaf resembles the laurel in shape, but is not of so deep a green. When chewed it has the smell and taste of cloves. There are several different species of cinnamon tree on the island; but four sorts only are cultivated and barked. The picture which we have just quoted from Mr. Percival of a morning ride in a cinnamon wood is so enchanting, that we are extremely sorry the addition of aromatic odours cannot with veracity be made to it. The cinnamon has, unfortunately, no smell at all but to the nostrils of the poet. Mr. Percival gives us a very interesting account of the process of making up cinnamon for the market, in which we are sorry our limits will not permit us to follow him. The different qualities of the cinnamon bundles can only be estimated by the taste; an office which devolves upon the medical men of the settlement, who are employed for several days together

The

The island of Ceylon is completely divided into two parts by a very high range of mountains, on the two sides of which the climate and the seasons are entirely different. These mountains also terminate completely the effect of the monsoons, which set in periodically from opposite sides of them. On the west side, the rains prevail in the months of May, June, and July, the season when they are felt on the Malabar coast. This monsoon is usually extremely violent during its continuance. The northern parts of the island are very little affected. In the months of October and November, when the opposite monsoon sets in on the Coromandel coast, the north of the island is attacked; and scarcely any impression reaches the southern parts. The heat during the day is nearly the same throughout the year: the rainy season renders the nights much cooler. 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 sea-coast. 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 capable 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, wild-hog, 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 Ceylonese 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

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 would be in this. Α 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 further 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.

DELPHINE. (E. 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,

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 for- * All books are written upon it in gotten,) and who, after having been Ceylon.

sleeps in a nightcap of steel, and position that he has been serving in dagger-proof blankets. To us it the French emigrant army against his country-is shot, and upon his dead. body falls Delphine, as dead as he.

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 spi ritual, eloquent, and alert, ever choice in expression, happy in allusion, and judicious in arrangement.

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 book, 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 apo thecary 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.

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 in- This novel is a perfect Alexandrian. trigues of Madame de Vernon, an The last two volumes are redundant, hackneyed Parisian lady, who hopes, and drag their wounded length: it by this marriage, to be able to discharge should certainly have terminated where her numerous and pressing debts. the interest ceases, at the death of Leonce, who, like all other heroes of Madame de Vernon; but, instead of novels, has fine limbs, and fine qualities, this, the scene-shifters come and pick comes to Paris-dislikes Matilda- up the dead bodies, wash the stage, falls in love with Delphine, Delphine sweep it, and do everything which the with him; and they are upon the eve timely fall of the curtain should have of jilting poor Matilda, when, from excluded from the sight, and left to some false reports spread abroad re- the imagination of the audience. We specting the character of Delphine humbly apprehend, that young gentle(which are aggravated by her own im- men do not in general make their prudences, and by the artifices of tutors the confidants of their passion; Madame de Vernon), Leonce, not in a at least we can find no rule of that fit of honesty, but of revenge, marries kind laid down either by Miss the lady whom he came to marry. Hamilton or Miss Edgeworth, in their Soon after, Madame de Vernon dies. treatises on education. The tutor of discovers the artifices by which she had Leonce is Mr. Barton, a grave old prevented the union of Leonce and gentleman, in a peruke and snuffDelphine-and then, after this catas-coloured clothes. Instead of writing trophe, which ought to have terminated to this solemn personage about second the novel, come two long volumes of causes, the ten categories, and the complaint and despair. Delphine becomes a nun-runs away from the nunnery with Leonce, who is taken by some French soldiers, upon the sup

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

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 stil

"Nec febris intersit nisi dignus vindice appears charming even among the young

nodus Inciderit.'

Delphine and Leonce have eight very bad typhus fevers between them, besides haemoptoe, 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 Del. phine 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.

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.

and beautiful of her own sex. The paleness of her complexion, the slight relaxation of her features, indicate the languor

of indisposition, and not the decay of years; the easy negligence of her dress accords with this impression. Every one concludes, that when her health is recovered, and she dresses with more care, she must be completely beautiful: this change, however, never happens, but it is always expected; and that is sufficient to make the imagination still add something more to the natural effect of her charms.” — (Vol. i. p. 21.)

the manner in which this book is trans Nothing can be more execrable than lated. The bookseller has employed one of our countrymen for that purpose, who appears to have been very lately caught. The contrast between the passionate exclamations of Madame de Staël, and the barbarous vulgarities of poor Sawney, produces a mighty ludicrous effect.

One of the heroes, a man

of high fastidious temper, exclaims in a letter to Delphine, "I cannot endure this Paris; I have met with ever so many people whom my soul abhors." the accomplished and enraptured Le

And

We

once terminates one of his letters thus: I will give you a call to-morrow.' "Adieu! Adieu! my dearest Delphine. doubt if Grub Street ever imported from Caledonia a more abominable

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