parison of the magnetic influence near the pole with what it has been observed to be on the equator, might lead to important results; and the swinging of a pendulum as near to the pole as can be approached, to compare with the oscillations observed in the Shetland islands and in the southern hemisphere, would be a great point gained for science.

In conclusion, we cannot help thinking, that the problem of a north-west passage and the approach to the pole would have been solved long ago if the Act of the 16th Geo. III. which holds forth such liberal encouragement for the discovery of either had been differently framed, or so far amended as, by a graduated scale, to proportion the reward to the distance discovered; as many whaling vessels, when unsuccessful in the fishery, would then be induced to make the attempt, for the chance of earning a small reward, which they are now deterred from doing, as, in case of failure, after whatever risk, they would be entitled to nothing. It might be well also to new model the custom-house oath, which requires the master and owner of every Greenland ship to swear, that 'the master and ship's company shall proceed and use their utmost endeavours to take whales, or other large creatures, living in the seas, and on no other design or view of profit.' Under this oath, the encouragement meant to be given by the legislature is a complete nullity; and the attempt of the master of a whaler to avail himself of it must be made at the hazard of his ears.

ART. XII. Panorama d'Angleterre, ou Ephémérides Anglaises politiques et littéraires. PUBLIEES par M. Charles Malo, de l'Athénée des Arts, des Académies de Lyon, de Douai, &c. Tom. I. Paris. 1817. pp. 332.

IT has been our fortune to introduce to the notice of our readers two couple of travellers, namely, Sir John Carr and Miss Plumtre, and General Pillet and Lady Morgan; to which we believe we may say that the annals of literature cannot add a third. M. Charles Malo, however, pleads strongly to be admitted into this delectable society. To say nothing of our inability to provide a suitable partner for him, we must hesitate to grant him this distinction on his own account-he is, to be sure, as credulous, as silly, and almost as ignorant as the objects of his emulation; but he has neither the impiety, indecency, nor jacobinism of the latter, nor the absurd and self-complacent vanity of the former pair; and, moreover, though he affects to describe England, it is not very clear that he ever visited it, and it is certain that the work published by him is almost wholly written by others. These circumstances are more than sufficient for our justification, and M. Charles Malo must therefore be con

tent, at present, to stand aside.-But though we cannot admit him into such high company, he really has some little merits of his own which will divert our readers, and make them perhaps lament that, instead of borrowing from bad English publications, he had not trusted to his own original and highly amusing talents for absurdity and misrepresentation.

We would first call the reader's attention to the inimitable naïveté with which he selects, as the motto to his description of England, the two words Nihil Anglicum.' As M. Charles Malo appears to be a member of the institution called the Athénée, we must presume that he knows the meaning of these words, and we can therefore only attribute to the amiable candour of an ingenuous mind this early confession, that in his description of England there is Nothing English!-and this is no accidental admission; for the first lines of his text are equally modest: For ages past,' says he, 'the English have been writing about France, and the French about England; and the only care of each party seems to be the rivalling the other in dreams, inventions and romances.'-p. 1.--and while he admits that his book is a compilation from these visions, he candidly owns that his endeavours have been to compose a work on England eminently French.'-p. 3.

The eminently-French manner of describing foreign countries is so well known, that it seems somewhat tautological to promise us. that style of writing, after having just before prepared us for ' reveries and romances.' M. Charles Malo, however, thinks he never can say enough in proof of his candour, for he adds, that he looks upon this volume as the first stone of a monument which he wishes to erect to the national character of his country.' This noble sentiment may show his impartiality and fitness for the task he undertakes; but-as he very earnestly solicits criticism-we would venture to submit to him whether the spot on which he has thought proper to found this national monument is well chosen? and whether it would be perfect good taste to erect a monument to Buonaparte at Waterloo, or a statue of Marshal Davoust in the Exchange of Hamburgh?

We will be however as candid as M. Charles Malo, and frankly admit that this blunder is merely verbal, and that if he had called the great work which he is building, a monument of the inferiority of England to France, it would not have been so liable to criticism: that this is his real intention appears from a circumstance to which we solicit the attention of our readers, namely, that the quarries from which he draws the chief materials for this anti-anglican monument are the opposition newspapers of England. -He, however, does not entirely confine himself to them.-He begins by translating Bishop Burnet's tract addressed to the Elec

tress Sophia upwards of a century ago, and he adds what he calls copies textuelles of Magna Charta, the Bill of Rights, the Habeas Corpus Act, and the acts of Navigation and Settlement. These copies textuelles are not copies but translations, and such translations as might be expected from M. Charles Malo, who has the misfortune of being wholly unacquainted with the English language. It is this little defect which makes him mistake the petition of right in the reign of Charles I. for the Bill of Rights in 1689;and it is pleasant enough to see all the praises which different authors have bestowed on the latter lavished on a paraphrase of the former.

But M. Charles Malo soon attempts a more intelligible topicthe characters of our eminent public men. He finds them ready made to his hand in a publication which he does not name, but which we believe to be the Independent Whig.' We are sorry that we have not at hand the means of verifying this fact; but whencesoever they may be borrowed, they are the joint result of the lowest party malignity, and the most entire ignorance of the personages described; indeed M. Charles Malo himself suspects as much, for he introduces them with this note :'

These portraits at first sight will appear to be dictated by an independent spirit; but the angry and decided tone, jokes alike gross and illfounded, and, above all, an ill-disguised partiality, should put us on our guard against believing in the likeness which the author pretends to have caught.'-p. 87.

And yet M. Charles Malo thinks it consistent with the neutralité de son rôle' to present to his countrymen these gross, ill founded, angry, and partial daubings as the genuine portraits of the public men of England! We venture to believe, however, that M. Charles Malo has, here and there, added some touches of his own; at least we cannot conceive how any Englishman could say that Mr. Wellesley Pole and Mr. Croker play the most prominent parts in the House of Commons ;' (p. 94.) and yet, that the former gentleman owes his chief consequence to his brothers, one of whom (can this be Lord Wellesley?) is 'un MAGISTRAT d'un très grand mérite; and the other (meaning, we apprehend, the Duke of Wellington) un militaire fort RESPECTABLE, (p. 95.)—that Mr. Canning's oratory is particularly deficient in flow and in brilliancy, (p. 119.)-and that il se retranche prudemment derrière une gravité lourde,' (p. 119.)—that Mr. Tierney once enjoyed such a popularity, that de nobles députés MM. Alcock et Favall dansèrent presque de joie en entendant les oracles qui sortaient de sa bouche; quand un seul de ses regards suffisait pour métamorphoser le plus sale district de Southwark en un lieu de fête, un théâtre de la joie ;' but that-so fleeting is popularity—these very

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people, to show their contempt, soon after called their dogs Tierneys.'-p. 113.

He next undertakes to give his countrymen a view of the police and manners of London, and for this purpose he extracts from Mr. Colquhoun's work, and the Parliamentary Reports on the Police and Mendicity of the metropolis, all the extraordinary and often exaggerated anecdotes which they contain-God knows there is but too much vice and misery in all great towns! and, as London is by much the greatest in Europe, it may naturally happen that there is a proportionate quantity of wretchedness to be found in its streets; but we firmly believe that there is no more than its proportion. If we were to take the pains of collecting all the instances of atrocity and misery which are related of Paris in various works, and in the daily journals, we are afraid M. Charles Malo's monument would not have much superiority to boast and what would the result be, if a free and fearless committee of the Chamber of Deputies could carry the light of public inquiry into the Circean styes of the Palais Royal, and the gloomy recesses of the Cité and of the Fauxbourgs?

M. Charles Malo's next chapter is on reform in parliament.— This precious essay, and a plan for a constitutional reform, though always proceeding in the first person, as 'I think, 'I propose,' are copied without any avowal on the part of M. Charles Malo, who seems to have expended all his candour in his preface, from an English pamphlet ; and to this luminous piece M. Charles Malo adds, on the same authority, as a ' pièce justificative et irrécusable, a most curious document, quite unknown in France,' namely, a list of the members of the House of Commons, the places for which they sit, and the patrons who return them.

Our readers may perhaps like to see a specimen of this authentic and irrécusable document, which, after having been largely distributed for the information of the populace of England, is now translated for the improvement of the statesmen and the literati of France. It states, for example, that the representation of the county of Bedford is sold (vendu) to the Duke of Bedford and Lord St. John ;-that of Berkshire, and its two representatives, Mr. Neville and Mr. Dundas, to Lord Craven ;-that the city of Carlisle, with Sir James Graham and Mr. Curwen, is sold to the Duke of Norfolk ;-that Derby town and county, and the four members, are sold to the Duke of Devonshire ;-that Dorsetshire is sold to Lord Rivers ;-Herefordshire and Radnorshire to Lord Oxford;-Worcestershire, with Lord Elmsley and the Honourable Mr. Lyttelton, to Lord Foley ;-these, amongst an hundred instances equally convincing, cannot but prove to England and

France the immediate necessity of a parliamentary reform; which, indeed, M. Charles Malo represents as so undeniable, that it is thought, by well-informed persons, that the government itself means to introduce his system of reform, or, at least, some parts of it, into the next elections;' (p. 170.) which is not surprising, as much of the plan is supported, he says, by the doctrines du célèbre Blackstone,' as well as by those d'un autre célèbre jurisconsulte très connu, Sir William.' (p. 152.)

The next division of M. Charles Malo's work is the Red Book of England-the looking-glass of John Bull.' This is also a copy from some of the jacobin catchpennies of the day; in which, in a list of placemen, pensioners, and sinecurists, are included the names of not only all the public men now alive, but of several who have been long dead, of others who never had places nor pensions, and of all the bishops, deans, and other dignitaries of the church. This valuable document is introduced to the reader by an extract of a speech of John Horne Jooke (so M. Charles Malo carefully spells the name) to the electors of Westminster, in 1796, and all the speeches of Mr. Jooke, and of such others, are quoted as irrécusable' evidences of the general corruption of England. How well fitted M. Charles Malo is for treating these matters, our readers will judge from hearing that Lord Ellenborough is clerk in chief to the court of King's Bench; that Sir Philip Stevens, Baron, has not been dead these fifteen years, as we supposed, but is at this hour a commissioner for executing the office of admiral of the fleet with a salary of 1,500l. per annum; that all the official persons whose names are in the patent of the Board of Control have 1,500l. per annum each from that department, &c. We have no doubt M. Charles Malo will say that he found all this in the Independent Whig,' or some similar work: we only quote them as instances of the talents and information which he brings to the work of building a monument to the glory of France on the inferiority of England.

The pleasantest account, however, which he gives, is of the bishoprics. He has found in some old calendar the ratings of them in the king's books, and on this authority he sagaciously states that, in 1782, all the bishoprics of England put together only cost the government 21,000l.; but that now they occasion an expense to the government of 169,000l.-that is, an increase of 137,000l. in thirty-five years. But this (he adds) is not the only reflection which this table excites.' (p. 247.) The last observation suggests one reflection which perhaps is not amongst those to which M. Charles Malo alludes, namely, that it is hardly possible to make more mistakes in a small space than he has here contrived to assemble.