It is possible that something like these events may have occurred in a place somewhat like this cavern; but the reader will judge whether such a manner of relating tends very much to support the writer's credibility. The hieroglyphics are thus described:

The hieroglyphics of the cave consist ofThe Sun in different stages of rise and declension-the Moon under various phases-a Snake, representing an orb, biting his tail-a Viper-a Vulture.-Buzzards tearing out the bowels of a prostrate man-a Panther held by the ears by a Child-a Crocodile-several Trees and Shrubs-a Fox-a curious kind of Hydra Serpent-two Doves-many Bears-several Scorpions -an Eagle-an Owl-some Quails-eight representations of animals which are now unknown, but whose former existence I before asserted, from the character and number of bones I have already described to have been found.' Vol. II. pp. 29, 30.

The compiler has then recourse to his Encyclopedia, or common-place book, for some learning on the subject of Grecian and Egyptian hieroglyphics, and he concludes his dissertation with saying,

I fear not then to declare my mind and again to assert, that the Indians possessed habits and manners similar to other nations of antiquity. In common they were the unsophisticated children of nature. In common they adopted the religion of nature, which is nothing more than the acknowledgment of God in his works, and worshipping those objects to which he is pleased to impart the most manifest degree of his character and power. It is not the individual thing itself that is adored, but the attribute of the Supreme Being which its dispositions and capacity figuratively unfolds.' Vol. 11I. p. 43.

In the same strain of solemn absurdity and false concord, the author often speaks of the innocent youths and venerable sages and sound instructions of the aboriginal hordes.

The other specimen we proposed giving, is an account of Mr. Ashe's unparallelled skill and fortitude in passing the falls of Louisville.

the

my

Notwithstanding the low state of the water, and imminent peril of passage, I determined on taking the chute without farther delay, and lay boat up below the falls, while I returned to the town, and made a short excursion through the country. I accordingly sent for the head pilot. He informed me that he feared a thunder gust was collecting. The late violent heats, and the prognostics declared by the noise of the falls, and the vapour suspended over them, were strong portentions of a storm, and made the passage too hazardous to be taken at the pilot's risk. Whenever I have determined on acting, I have not easily been turned from my intentions. This habit or obstinacy made me persist in going, and I told the pilot to prepare immediately, and that I would take the consequences of any loss on my own head. He agreed and repaired to my boat with six additional hands, and I shortly followed him, accompanied by two ladies and gentlemen, who had courage to take the fall out of mere curiosity, not

withstanding the great peril with which the act was allied. We all em barked. The oars were manned with four men each. The pilot and I governed the helm, and my passengers sat on the roof of the boat. A profound silence reigned. A sentiment of awe and terror occupied every mind, and urged the necessity of a fixed and resolute duty. In a few minutes we worked across the eddy and reached the current of the north fall, which hurried us on with an awful swiftness, and made impressions vain to describe. The water soon rushed with a more horrid fury, and seemed to threaten destruction even to the solid rock which opposed its passage in the centre of the river, and the terrific and incessant din with which this was accompanied almost overcome and unnerved the heart. At the distance of half a mile a thick mist, like volumes of smoke, rose to the skies, and as we advanced we heard a more sullen noise, which soon after almost stunned our ears. Making as we proceeded the north side, we were struck with the most terrific event and awful scene. The expected thunder burst at once in heavy peals over our heads, and the gust with which it was accompanied raged up the river, and held our boat in agitated suspense on the verge of the precipitating flood. The lightning, too, glanced and flashed on the furious cataract, which rushed down with tremendous fury within sight of the eye. We doubled the most fatal rock, and though the storm increased to a dreadful degree, we held the boat in the channel, took the chute, and following with skilful helm its narrow and winding bed, filled with rocks, and confined by a vortex which appears the residence of death, we floated in uninterrupted water of one calm continued sheet. The instant of taking the fall was certainly sublime and awful. The organs of perception were hurried along, and partook of the turbulence of the roaring water. The powers of recollection were even suspended by the sudden shock; and it was not till after a considerable time that I was enabled to look back and contemplate the sublime horrors of the scene from which 1 had made so fortunate an escape.

When in smooth water and my mind somewhat collected, I attended to the ladies who had the temerity to honour me with their company through the hazard of the falls,' &c. &c. Vol. II. pp. 271–275.

An abundance of still finer specimens of heroism and eloquence, may be found in this work by the curious reader. We shall not enlarge on the other sources of amusement which it furnishes, such as the practice of writing libations" for potations; "melecarpi" for metacarpi; "varigated" "reviberated,” “sinsibility," &c. &c.; but shall conclude by expressing our sincere conviction that those will very much undervalue the publication, who shall pretend that it affords. less of interesting adventure, curious incident, sublime mystery, original and authentic information, fine writing, and fine sentiment, or that it is less respectable in point of grammar and orthography, or that it is on the whole less fit for a circulating library, than the average of modern novels and

romances.

Art. IV. A History of the early Part of the Reign of James the Second ; with an introductory Chapter. By the Right Hon. Charles James Fox. To which is added an Appendix. 4to. pp. 486. Price, Elephant Paper, 51. 5s. royal 21. 10s. 6d. demy 11. 16s. Miller. 1808. MANY of our celebrated countrymen will always be recol

lected with regret, by persons who take the most serious view of human characters and affairs; but there is no name in the English records of the past century, that excites in us so much of this feeling as that of the author of this work. The regret arises from the consideration of what such a might have been, and might have done. As to talents, perhaps no eminent man was ever the subject of so little controversy, or ever more completely deterred even the most perverse spirit of singularity from hazarding a hint of doubt or dissent, by the certainty of becoming utterly ridiculous. To pretend to talk of any superior man was the same thing, except among a few of the tools or dupes of party, as to name generals to whom Hannibal, or Scipio, or Julius Cæsar ought to have been but second in command; or poets from whose works the mind must descend to those of Shakespeare and Milton. If all political partialities could be suspended in forming the judgement, we suppose the great majority of intelligent men would pronounce Fox the greatest orator of modern times; and they would be careful to fix the value of this verdict by observing, that they used the term orator in the most dignified sense in which it can be understood. Other speakers have had more of what is commonly and perhaps not improperly called brilliance, more novelty and luxuriance of imagery, more sudden flashes, points, and surprises, and vastly more magnificence of language. Burke especially was such a speaker; and during his oration, the man of intelligence and taste was delighted to enthusiasm, in feeling that something so new as to defy all conjectural anticipation was sure to burst on him at every fourth or fifth sentence, and in beholding a thousand forms and phantoms of thought, as if suddenly brought from all parts of the creation, most luckily and elegantly associated with a subject to which no mortal had ever imagined that any one of them could have been related before. Yet this very auditor, if he had wished to have a perplexing subject luminously simplified, or a vast one con-tracted, according to a just scale, to his understanding; if he had wished to put himself in distinct possession of the strongest arguments for maintaining the same cause in another place; if he had been anxious to qualify himself for immediate action in an affair in which he had not yet been able to satisfy himself in deliberation; or if he had been desirous for

his coadjutors in any important concern to have a more perfect comprehension of its nature, and a more absolute conviction as to the right principles and measures to be adopted respecting it, than all his efforts could give them, he would have wished, beyond all others, to draw Fox's mind to bear on the subject. For ourselves, we think we never heard any man who dismissed us from the argument on a debated topic with such a feeling of satisfied and final conviction, or such a competence to tell why we were convinced. There was, in the view in which subjects were placed by him, something like the day-light, that simple clearness which makes things conspicuous and does not make them glare, which adds no colour or form, but purely makes visible in perfection the real colour and form of all things round; a kind of light less amusing than that of magnificent lustres or a thousand coloured lamps, and less fascinating and romantic than that of the moon, but which is immeasurably preferred when we are bent on sober business, and not at leisure, or not in the disposition, to wander delighted among beautiful shadows and delusions. It is needless to say that Fox possessed, in a high degree, wit and fancy; but superlative intellect was the grand distinction of his eloquence; the pure force of sense, of plain downright sense, was so great that it would have given a character of sublimity to his eloquence, even if it had never once been aided by a happy image or a brilliant explosion. The grandeur of plain sense, would not have been deemed an absurd phrase, by any man who had heard one of Fox's best speeches.

And as to the moral features of the character, all who knew him concur in ascribing to him a candour, a good-nature, simplicity of manners, and an energy of feeling, which made him no less interesting as a friend, and might have made him no less noble as a philanthropist, than he was admirable as a

senator.

We have very often surrendered our imagination to the interesting, but useless and painful employment, of tracing out the career which might have been run by a man thus pre-, eminently endowed. We have imagined him first rising up, through a youth of unrivalled promise, to the period of maturity, unstained by libertinism, scorning to think for one moment of a competition with the heroes of Bond-street, or any other class of the minions of fashion, and maintaining the highest moral principles in contempt of the profligacy which pressed close around him. It is an unfortunate state of mind in any reader of these pages, whose risibility is excited when we add to the sketch that solemn reverence for the deity, and expectation of a future judgement, without which it is a pure

matter of fact that there is no such thing on earth as an in vincible and universal virtue. Instead of unbounded licentiousness, our imaginary young statesman has shewn his contempt of parsimony, by the most generous modes of expence which humanity could suggest, and his regard for the softer sex, by appropriating one of the best and most interesting of them in the fidelity of the tenderest relation. We have imagined him employing the time which other young men of rank and spirit gave to dissipation, in a strenuous prosecution of moral and political studies; and yet mingling so far with men of various classes, as to know intimately of what materials society and governments are composed. We have imagined him as presenting himself at length on the public scene, with an air and a step analogous and rival to the aspect and sinew of the most powerful combatant that ever entered the field of Olympia.

At this entrance on public action, we have viewed him solemnly determining to make absolute principle the sole rule of his conduct in every instance, to the last sentence he should speak or write on public affairs; to give no pledges, and make no concessions, to any party whatever; to expose and persecute, with the same unrelenting justice, the generally equal corruption of ministries and oppositions; to co-operate with any party in the particular case in which he should, judge it in the right, and in all other cases to protest impartially against them all; and to say the whole truth, when other pretended friends of public virtue and the people durst only to say the half, for fear of provoking an examination of their own conduct, or for fear of absolutely shutting the door against all chance of future advancement. We view him holding up to contempt the artifices and intrigues of statesmen, and hated abundantly for his pains, no doubt, but never in danger of a retaliation of exposure. He would not have submitted to be found in the society of even the very highest persons in the state, on any other terms of intercourse than those of virtue and wisdom; he would have felt it a duty peculiarly sacred and cogent, to make his most animated efforts to counteract any corruption which he might perceive finding its way into such society, and if those efforts failed, to withdraw himself so entirely as to be clear of all shadow of responsibility. Virtue of this quality would be in little hazard of afflicting any government with a violent impatience to have the man for a coadjutor, and therefore our imagination never placed him oftener or longer in any of the high offices of the state, than about such a space as Fox was actually so privileged; indeed a considerably shorter time, for even had it been possible that any set of men would have acceded