together with the purest water from distant mountains, a source of health and comfort to the people.' p. 447. After this, p. 540, he quotes the MS. journal of Mr. Heber, who says, I could find no aqueduct, nor did there appear any need of one, as there are many beautiful springs bursting out of different parts of the higher town-The springs have all been carefully preserved in cisterns, -and one of them, in particular, is a delightful bath.' It would be easy to add other instances in which these travellers are at variance, and in which their discordant statements occasion no small perplexity to the attentive reader.

We have already expressed our disapprobation of that coarse and virulent style of invective with which our author uniformly pursues the nation as well as the government of Russia. We are, indeed, aware that such language has its eulogists, who will return him thanks for the boldness with which he has spoken out, and for daring to call things by their right names;' yet we must continue to protest against this too easy and familiar mode of eloquence. We must even venture to express our opinion, in opposition to Dr. Clarke, that the conquest and subsequent treatment of the Crimea, described by his critical encomiasts, in a fine vein of metaphor, as the damned spot which all the perfumes of Astrachan* will not sweeten, nor the waters of Wolga wash away, are not illustrative of the Russian character, nor infinitely worse than even the conduct of modern France towards Switzerland and Spain.'

That the Russian troops have committed in the Crimea all those excesses in which the soldiery of every nation,when not restrained by the wholesome coercion of discipline, are apt to indulge, we can readily believe; that they were encouraged, and even instigated by their officers to the commission of those excesses, we also believe; and we fear that even the illustrious Suvarof, whom Dr. Clarke has singly exempted from his general censure, did not practise, either in the Crimea or in Poland, the morality which, in his public addresses, he recommended to his armies. But we do not admit that a whole nation can fairly be made responsible for the crimes of a set of men cut off from domestic society, and actuated only by the love of plunder or the love of mischief. If Dr. Clarke had seen his favourite Don Cossacks on the territory of a beaten enemy, he would perhaps have found that' auferre, rapere, trucidare,' &c. was a motto no less applicable to them than to the other Russian troops: yet we do not therefore object to the

Astrachan is a place of considerable trade. The market is plentifully supplied with provisions of all kinds, but especially fish. After the sale is over, what remains of the common sorts is thrown to the dunghill, where the hogs and poultry feed upon them; and hence it happens that their very pork and fowls taste of fish.-Bell's Travels, Vol. i. p.39.

highly favourable picture of their domestic life by which he has repaid their kind hospitality. No one attributes, to the depravity of the universal population of France, the wide desolation produced by Buonaparte's legions; neither can it be supposed that the able commentators on Dr. Clarke, when they compare the conduct of the Russians in the Crimea with that of Britons in India, would infer from such a parallel that the English people are generally void of faith or humanity.

The conquest of the Crimea was certainly, on the part of the Russian government, a manifest usurpation, achieved by that mixture of fraud and violence which ambition, when possessed of sovereign power seldom scruples to employ. It was one of those common acts of injustice which are to be found in the history of every nation; which the vulgar often admire; which the good must always lament; and which the wise are bound to reprobate. But wise men seldom delight in exaggeration; they do not seek for inflated superlatives; nor adopt the rant of fanaticism in delivering the impressive award of justice. It seems to be almost universally admitted, that the conduct of the French government towards Switzerland and Spain has exhibited extreme ambition so blended with extreme malevolence, as to defy a comparison with any abuse of power which history has yet recorded; so that those who contend that the usurpation of the Crimea is infinitely worse' than these, can only be considered as evincing their contempt for the judgment of mankind, and as substituting the language of petulant and childish invective for that of rational abhorrence. In the Crimea, as in Poland, the dissensions of a turbulent aristocracy finally subverted the fabric of government; and the loss of independence was, in both, the lamentable but natural consequence. It is surely absurd to claim our peculiar commiseration for the calamities of that once happy and peaceable country' which its whole history represents as alternately torn to pieces by intestine discord, or engaged in sanguinary conflicts with its neighbours; and it is worse than absurd to compare the restless contests of the Tartar Mirzas for the choice of a master, with the struggles of the virtuous Swiss or high spirited Spaniards for their national existence. When Catherine II. extorted from the Turkish emperor the concession of independence to the Khans of the Crimea, both the contracting parties were perfectly aware that this pretended independence was a word without a meaning; and that their act was substantially nothing more than a transfer, from one sovereign to the other, of the allegiance of an irregular army, accustomed to subsist by plunder; and which, if it secured against their inroads the provinces of Russia, would proportionally endanger those of the Ottoman empire. That both the rival courts, whilst they pretended to acquiesce in this compromise,

secretly laboured to establish their exclusive supremacy, and directed to that object all the subsequent intrigues of their respective factions, is, in itself, so probable, is supported by so much evidence, and has been so generally credited, that we cannot consent to disbelieve it on the single assertion of Dr. Clarke, who thinks fit to represent the Turkish party as guided by the manœuvres of Potemkin, no less than the wretched Sahim Gherai, the puppet, and ultimately the victim of Russia. The real conduct of the court of Petersburg towards that unhappy prince; the pillage of his subjects and the devastation of the country, which appear to have been silently tolerated; and the shameful negligence which occasioned such a waste of life during the conveyance of the Armenian and other Christian colonists from the Crimea to the interior of the empire, cannot be defended or palliated; and we should be satisfied to leave these topics to the pencil of Dr. Clarke, if we were not persuaded that the exhibition of moral as well as of physical deformity is injured by caricatura, the extravagance of which, where it means to excite horror, is generally only mean and ludicrous.

ART. X. Extracts from the Diary of a Lover of Literature. 4to. pp. 250. Ipswich, Raw; London, Longman. 1810.

TH

HAT this age abounds with readers, needs no other proof than the fœcundity of the press; that many of them take notes analytical and critical, can scarcely be doubted; and that he who is conscious of his own acquirements, desires the fame of possessing them, has been proverbial ever since the time of Persius: these considerations must be our excuse, if we dread the opening of a new channel to publication. A perusal of the present volume indeed, satisfies us that the writer has set the standard of his diary too high to give legitimate encouragement to every real or imaginary lover of literature, whose vanity might incline him to acquaint the public with his opinions.

Our author, as appears from his work, having checked a bias towards the bar, has made general literature his principal profession; and has been in the useful habit of criticising, analyzing or confuting, sometimes the whole argument, and sometimes particular passages of the various books which have passed under his review. From the voluminous common place book which such a habit rapidly produces, he has taken a pretty large sample, including the remarks of five years from 1796 to 1800. To the question, with what pretensions, he answers,

These are simple, and easy of statement. To furnish occupa

tion, in a vacant hour, to minds imbued with a relish for literary pur suits, by suggesting topics for reflection and incentives to research, partly from an exhibition of whatever struck me as most interesting in the thoughts of others, during a miscellaneous course of reading, and partly too, from a free and unreserved communication of the thoughts they gave rise to in my own mind-this is all that I venture to propose to the Reader as my aim in the publication of the following Extracts: and if, in the prosecution of this purpose, I should be so happy as to conciliate that good will which is not unlikely to result from the tolerabie execution of such a design, I shall fully have accomplished every thing, so far as an Author's feelings are concerned, to which my ambition, or my vanity (if it must be so), aspires.' Pref. p. 6.

If poetry pleases, by exciting a succession of interesting emotions, and picturesque nature delights by a succession of agreeable images, the general reader may reasonably be gratified by the quick succession of literary ideas which this publication will present to him. The writer, except that Adam Smith is his guide in his theory of morals, and Burke the god of his political idolatry, has closely adhered in his course of reading and opinions to the motto of the Rambler. The immortal dead, and the perishable race of living writers appear before us as suddenly, and glance by us as rapidly, as the figures in a phantasmagoria: some too bearing a principal, and some a subordinate part in the representation; some leaving a confused and vague, and others a distinct and vivid recollection. After stating this, it is unnecessary to add that a scene so diversified cannot be the legitimate subject of a review; being in fact itself a review of all that is most prominent in ancient or modern literature.

We conceive that we can only perform our duty to the public by presenting them with some specimens of the execution of this journal, and to the author by considering two or three of those peculiar opinions which occur, it is true, in separate parts of his volume, but with an evident continuity of design and sentiment.

'Oct. the 6th.-Pursued Boswell's Life of Johnson. The distinguishing excellence of Johnson's manner, both in speaking and writing consists in the apt and lively illustrations by example, with which, in his vigorous sallies, he enforces his just and acute remarks on human life and manners, in all their modes and representations: the character and charm of his style, in a happy choice of dignified and appropriate expressions, and that masterly involution of phrase, by which he contrives to bolt the prominent idea strongly on the mind. Burke's felicity is in a different sphere: it lies in the diversified allusions to all arts and to all sciences, by which, as he pours along his redundant tide of eloquence and reason, he reflects a light and interest on every topic which he treats; in a promptitude to catch the language and transfuse the feelings of passion; and in the unrestrained and ready use of a `style, the most flexible, and the most accommodating to all topics,

"from grave to gay, from lively to severe," that perhaps any writer, in any language ever attained." Ipsæ res verba rapiunt." As ops posed to each other, condensation might perhaps be regarded as the distinguishing characteristic of the former, and expansion of the latter.' p. 9.

• July the 20th.-Finished the perusal of the orations of Demos. thenes. Upon the whole, I am rather surprised, I confess, though it be to my shame, at the transcendental fame of the orator; and cannot help ascribing it, in some measure, to traditional veneration. Of the effects of these harangues upon an Athenian audience at the time, I can readily believe any thing: but they exhibit nothing of that arti ficial construction and rhetorical embellishment, which is calculated to extort the applause of the critic by profession; nor of that impassioned and overwhelmed eloquence, which secures the admiration of the world at large. Sheer sense, urged with masculine force and inex tinguishable spirit is all they have to boast; nor do I meet with any thing in any of them (and when I say this, I am not unmindful of Partridge's critique upon Garrick)-which a person of sound judgment and strong feeling, long practised to an Athenian auditory, might not very naturally be supposed to urge in the same manner, on a similar occasion, without much premeditation. The speech on the Crown, is evidently the most laboured of any: yet how inferior is it in genius, erudition, taste, and pathos, to Burke's matchless diatribe on the attack of the Duke of Bedford and Earl of Lauderdale!' p. 37.

‹ April the 15th 1798.-Mr. L. breakfasted and spent the day with me. Had a long and interesting conversation on the subject of Rousseau. He had brought a volume of the Nouvelle Héloïse in his pocket; and spoke of its author, notwithstanding his own partiality for classic literature, as, without any exception, the greatest genius and the finest writer that ever lived. I can impute this only to a temporary fascination to a fervid but transient glow of feeling, which of all men, his favourite is the most calculated to impart, and himself to catch.

'Rousseau is a character who has by turns transported me with the most violent and opposite emotions, of delight and disgust, admiration and contempt, indignation and pity; but my ultimate opinion of him, drawn as it is from a pretty attentive consideration of his writings and his actions, will not, I think, easily be changed.

This extraordinary man, it is evident, was constitutionally of an arden: spirit, vivid imagination, and most acute feeling. A mind thus attempered, is naturally prone to brood over its own visions; to hang, with fond complacency, upon a scene where every thing is arrayed at the disposition of the will and in the tinct of fancy; and to turn aside with soreness and disgust from the spectacle of real life, in which good and ill are so intimately and stubbornly mingled; where apathy suc ceeds enjoyment; interest and self-will dissolve the charm of social intercourse; avarice and pride disturb the dreams (the endearing dreams) of sentiment and passion; and even the sweet sympathies of pity itself, are chafed and exasperated into anguish, by the coarse manners, squalid rags, and loathsome horrors, that too often accompany