that mankind remained much the same, and always would do so. Cows and horses did not change: and why then should men? He had forgot that cows and horses do not learn to read and write." Ay, that was very well too," said N.; "I don't know but I agree with him rather than with you. I was thinking of the same thing the other day in looking over an old Magazine, in which there was a long Debate on an Act of Parliament to license Gin-drinking. The effect was quite droll. There was one person who made a most eloquent speech to point out all the dreadful consequences of allowing this practice. It would debauch the morals, ruin the health, and dissolve all the bonds of society, and leave a poor, puny, miserable, Lilliputian race, equally unfit for peace or war. You would suppose that the world was going to be at an end. Why, no! the answer would have been, the world will go on much the same as before. You attribute too much power to an Act of Parliament. Providence has not taken its measures so ill as to leave it to an Act of Parliament to continue or discontinue the species. If it depended on our wisdom and contrivances whether it should last or not, it would be at an end before twenty years! People are wrong about this: some say the world is getting better, others complain it is getting worse, when, in fact, it is just the same, and neither better nor worse." "What a lesson," said I, "for our pragmatical legislators and idle projectors!"

I said, "I had lately been led to think of the little real progress that was made by the human mind, and how the same errors and vices revived under a different shape at different periods, from observing just the same humour in our Ultra reformers at present, and in their predecessors in the time of John Knox. Our modern wiseacres were for banishing all the fine arts and finer affections, whatever was pleasurable and ornamental, from the commonwealth, on the score of utility, exactly as the others did on the score of religion. The real motive in either case was nothing but a sour, envious, malignant disposition, incapable of enjoyment in itself, and averse to every appearance or tendency to it in others. Our peccant humours broke out and formed into what Milton called a crust of formality' on the surface; and while we fancied we were doing God or man good service, we were only indulging our spleen, self-opinion, and self-will, according to the fashion of the day. The existing race of free-thinkers and sophists would be mortified to find themselves the counterpart of the monks and ascetics of old; but so it was. The dislike of the Westminster Reviewers to polite literature was only the old exploded Puritanic objection to human learning. Names and modes of opinion changed, but human nature was much the same."-"I know nothing of the persons you speak of," said N- -; "but they must be fools if they expect to get rid of the showy and superficial, and let only the solid and useful remain. The surface is a part of nature, and will always continue Besides, how many useful inventions owe their existence to ornamental contrivances ! If the ingenuity and industry of man were not tasked to produce luxuries, we should soon be without necessaries. We must go back to the savage state. I myself am as little prejudiced in favour of poetry as almost any one can be; but surely there are things in poetry that the world cannot afford to do without. What is of absolute necessity is only a part; and the next question is how to

so.

occupy the remainder of our time and thoughts (not so employed)
agreeably and innocently. Works of fiction and poetry are of incal
culable use in this respect. If people did not read the Scotch novels,
they would not read Mr. Bentham's philosophy. There is nothing.
to me more disagreeable than the abstract idea of a Quaker, which
falls under the same article. They object to colours; and why do they
object to colours? Do we not see that Nature delights in them? Do
we not see the same purpose of prodigal and ostentatious display run
through all her works? Do we not find the most beautiful and daz-
zling colours bestowed on plants and flowers, on the plumage of birds,
on fishes and shells, even to the very bottom of the sea?
All this pro-
fusion of ornament, we may be sure, is not in vain. To judge other-
wise is to fly in the face of Nature, and substitute an exclusive and
intolerant spirit in the place of philosophy, which takes in the greatest
variety of man's wants and tastes, and makes all the favourable allow-
'ances it can. The Quaker will not wear coloured clothes; but he
would not have a coat to his back, if men had never studied
any thing
but the mortification of their appetites and desires. But he takes care
of his personal convenience by wearing a piece of good broad-cloth, and
gratifies his vanity, not by finery, but by having it of a different cut
from every body else, so that he may seem better and wiser than they.
Yet this humour, too, is not without its advantages: it serves to cor-
rect the contrary absurdity. I look upon the Quaker and the fop as
two sentinels placed by Nature at the two extremes of vanity and
selfishness, and to guard, as it were, all the common-sense and virtue
that lie between." I observed that these contemptible narrow-minded
"You should not
prejudices made me feel irritable and impatient.
suffer that," said N- -; "for then you will run into the contrary
mistake, and lay yourself open to your antagonist. The monks, for
instance, have been too hardly dealt with-not that I would defend
many abuses and instances of oppression-but is it not as well to have
bodies of men shut up in cells and monasteries, as to let them loose to
make soldiers of them and to cut one another's throats? And out of
that lazy ignorance and leisure, what benefits have not sprung? It is
to them we owe those beautiful specimens of Gothic architecture which
can never be surpassed; many of the discoveries in medicine and in me-
chanics are also theirs; and, I believe, the restoration of classical learn-
ing is owing to them. Not that I would be understood to say that all,
or a great deal of this, could not have been done without them; but
their leisure, their independence, and the want of some employment to
exercise their minds, were the actual cause of many advantages we now
enjoy; and what I mean is, that Nature is satisfied with imperfect in-
struments. Instead of snarling at every thing that differs from us, we
had better take Shakspeare's advice, and try to find

Tongues in the trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.'".

I said, the hardest lesson seemed to be to look beyond ourselves. "Yes," said N, "I remember when we were young, and were making remarks upon the neighbours, an old maiden aunt of ours used to say, 'I wish to God you could see yourselves!' And yet, perhaps, after all, this was not very desirable. Many people pass their whole lives in a very

comfortable dream, who, if they could see themselves in the glass, would start back with affright. This has often struck me in West, how happy it was for him that he lived and died in the belief that he was the greatest painter that had ever appeared on the face of the earth. Nothing could shake him in this opinion, nor did he ever lose sight of it. It was always My Wolfe, my Wolfe :'--I do assure you literally, you could not be with him for five minutes at any time, without his alluding to this subject: whatever else was mentioned, he always brought it round to that. He thought Wolfe owed all his fame to the picture: it was he who had immortalized Wolfe, not Wolfe who had immortalized him. I remember once being at the Academy, when Sir Joshua wished to propose a monument to Dr. Johnson in St. Paul's, and West got up and said, that the King, he knew, was averse to any thing of the kind, for he had been proposing a similar monument in Westminster Abbey for a man of the greatest genius and celebrity-one whose works were in all the cabinets of the curious throughout Europe--one whose name they would all hear with the greatest respect" and then it came out after a long preamble, that he meant Woollett, who had engraved his Death of Wolfe. I was provoked, and I could not help exclaiming, My God! what, do you put him upon a footing with such a man as Dr. Johnson one of the greatest philosophers and moralists that ever lived? We have thousands of engravers at any time!'-and there was such a burst of laughter at this-Dance, who was a grave gentlemanly man, laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks; and Farington used afterwards to say to me, Why don't you speak in the Academy, and begin with My God!' as you do sometimes?' But the thing that provoked me was, I knew West was only thinking of the engraving of Wolfe, who had already a monument erected to him in the most select part of Westminster Abbey, and West thought, if he could get a monument to Woollett there also, he should come in between them." I said, I had seen something of this humour in him. He once very good-naturedly showed me a Rubens he had, and observed with great nonchalance," What a pity that this man wanted expression!" I imagined Rubens to have looked round his Gallery. "And yet," said N, "he thought in his pictures he had accumulated an invaluable property, and that they would be caught up at his death like so many Correggios. It was this that kept him alive. If he could have seen how much he wanted, he would, perhaps, have done nothing. Yet," he continued, "it is the consciousness of defect, too, that often stimulates the utmost exertions. If Pope had been a fine, handsome man, would he have left those masterpieces that he has? But he knew and felt his own deformity, and therefore was determined to leave nothing undone to extend that corner of power that he possessed. He said to himself, they shall have no fault to find there. I have often thought when very good-looking young men have come here intending to draw, What! are you going to bury yourselves in a garret? And it has generally happened that they have given up the art before long, and married or otherwise disposed of themselves." I had heard an anecdote of Nelson, that, when appointed post-captain, and on going to take possession of his ship at Yarmouth, the crowd on the quay almost jostled him, and exclaimed, "What! have they made that little insignificant fellow a captain? He

will do much, to be sure!" I thought this might have urged him to dare as he did, in order to get the better of their prejudices, and his own sense of mortification. "No doubt," said N, "personal defects or disgrace operate in this way. I knew an admiral who had got the nickname of Dirty Dick' among the sailors, and, on his being congratulated on obtaining some desperate victory, all he said was, 'I hope they'll call me Dirty Dick no more!' There was a Sir John Grenville, or Greenfield, formerly, who was appointed to convoy a fleet of merchantships, and had to defend them against a Spanish man-ofwar, and did so with the utmost bravery and resolution, so that the convoy got safe off; but after that, he would not yield till he was struck senseless by a ball, and then the crew delivered up the vessel to the enemy, who, on coming on board, and entering the cabin where he lay, were astonished to find a mere puny shrivelled spider of a man, instead of the Devil they had expected to see. He was taken on shore in Spain, and died of his wounds there; and the Spanish women afterwards used to frighten their children, by telling them "Don John of the Greenfield was coming!"

LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA.

No. I.-Slavery.

Cape of Good Hope, Jan. 5, 1826. THE mildness of Slavery at the Cape has been much dwelt upon by certain travellers, whose opinions on this subject, being re-echoed by the Quarterly Review and similar publications, seem to be generally admitted in England as perfectly just and incontrovertible. I am now satisfied, however, that the term, except in a very restricted sense, is altogether inapplicable. The general condition of slaves in this colony, compared with some others, (such, for example, as the Isle of France,) may, indeed, be correctly described as less deplorable: but with all its boasted alleviations, and in spite of every sweetening ingredient, slavery at the Cape is assuredly still a bitter and baleful draught.

Should the comparative mildness of Cape slavery, however, be admitted, what a powerful argument does not this admission make for the speedy annihilation of human bondage throughout their colonies, by the powers of Christian Europe? If slaves are such wretched beings as I shall soon prove them to be, even at the Cape, what must be their condition in other colonies? What must be the condition of their masters?

The slaves of this settlement can claim no respite from their masters' service, except on Sunday; and, as regards the household slaves, only partially on that day. They cannot legally marry, or legitimate their offspring, without the concurrence of their owner-a concurrence which his interests or his prejudices induce him, in almost every instance, to refuse. They cannot claim their freedom on presenting their purchase-money, They are frequently sold by public auction on the death or bankruptcy of their owners; and they are liable at all times, from casualty or from caprice, to be irretrievably separated from their wives, children, and dearest connexions. At pub. lic sales the distressing spectacle of the wife torn from the husband, and the children from the parents, is so familiar as scarcely to interest the feelings of the spectators. Coarse jocularity and indecent merriment seldom fail, on such occasions, to be rudely bandied between the auctioneers and the rival bidders. Moreover, the slave is liable to be flogged whenever his owner's arrogant caprice may require it; and should he suffer ill-treatment from his

master or the magistrate, he possesses in the laws (at least as they are usually administered) no security for obtaining redress.

Yet the slave-holders in this colony continually exclaim-"Our slaves are as well fed and clothed as your English peasantry-infinitely better than your wretched Irish: in what respect, then, can they be considered objects of commiseration?" Such assertions may be undeniable; but the deduction drawn from them is not, on that account, the less fallacious. A few facts will show the futility of such arguments.

In August 1825, I was walking with a friend in the streets of GraaffReinett (a country town about five hundred miles from the capital), when we were accosted, in pretty good English, by a man of the Malay complexion. My companion, whom he addressed by name, asked how he came to know him. The man replied, that he had occasionally seen him at the house of his former master in Cape Town. On farther inquiry, he told us the following distressing story:

He was a slave, and had a wife and several children also in slavery. Being an expert waggon-driver, his master was offered a high price for him by a person from Graaff-Reinett. The offer was accepted, but the agreement concealed from the object of it. He was ordered to proceed with the waggon of his new purchaser into the interior, but given to understand that it was on his old master's business, and that he should return in a few months. On arriving at Graaff-Reinett, however, he was made acquainted with the transaction, and then found that he was for ever separated from all he cherished on earth. Even some little property in money and clothes, which he had hoarded and left behind him, he had never been able to recover, although two or three years had elapsed, and he had made repeated applications for it. The poor man appeared extremely dejected, and his melancholy tale was afterwards fully confirmed to me by other authority.

Another recent illustration I shall extract from the letter of a friend-a gentleman in the civil service of the East India Company, who recently spent some years at the Cape.

"While I was residing in the vicinity of Algoa Bay, there came to the house, late at night, an old slave woman, who had fled from the ill usage of her mistress. She bore on her body marks of previous ill-treatment, having had three of her ribs broken at an earlier period of life, when she was in the possession of a former master. She was then in the family of au English resident, who had married a Dutch woman, and had been some years settled at within a few miles of

Algoa Bay. Her dress was a filthy untanned sheep-skin petticoat, with a few old rags about her head, and a dirty sheep-skin thrown over her shoulders. She had absconded from her master's house the preceding night; and after concealing herself in the day-time, had made her way, the night following, to the house where we resided.

"The next morning, the son of the owner came to drive back the old woman before him. When I proposed to purchase from him the freedom of the slave, and stated her advanced age, he said that the work that old creature did was very considerable; and instanced her bringing daily to the house as much fire-wood on her back as any man could carry; adding, that, though he was willing to let the unhappy wretch have rest in her latter years, he could not part with her services under five hundred rixdollars. Ultimately, however, he agreed to reduce her price to four hundred."

The poor creature, thus emancipated, by the generosity of a stranger, now enjoys liberty and repose at the Missionary Institution of Bethelsdorp ; but how seldom, among innumerable cases of equal hardship, can it happen that a solitary individual is thus relieved?

Examples, such as these, of the wretchedness of slavery at the Cape, might be adduced without end, for they are of familiar and every-day occurrence. But since the authority of distinguished writers is so often brought forward to prove that in South Africa slavery is little more than a name, let us now produce the evidence of a celebrated traveller on the subject. Dr. Sparrian, a man not less distinguished for his candour and integrity than