Kenny! James Kenny, set the sea-cale at this corner, and put down the grass cross corners; and match your macaroni yonder with them puddens, set--Ogh! James! the pyramid in the middle can't ye."

The pyramid in changing places was overturned. Then it was, that the mistress of the feast, falling back in her seat, and lifting up her hands and eyes in despair, ejaculated; "Oh, James! James!"

This is certainly a picture that warrants both Miss Edgeworth's assertion, that the society in Dublin is either positively good, or positively bad, and her sensible ridicule of the elaborate aukwardness of these second-hand gentry. The following is a picture of two ladies of a different class, who influence very considerably the plot of the story, and whose characters are maintained and put into play with great success.

Though every body cried "shame!" and "shocking!" yet every body visited them. No parties so crowded as lady Dashfort's; no party deemed pleasant or fashionable where lady Dashfort or lady Isabel was not. The bon-mots of the mother were every where repeated; the dress and air of the daughter every where imitated. Yet lord Colambre could not help being surprised at their popularity in Dublin, because, independently of all moral objections, there were causes of a different sort, sufficient, he thought, to prevent lady Dashfort from being liked by the Irish; indeed by any society. She in general affected to be ill-bred and inattentive to the feelings and opinions of others; careless whom she offended by her wit or by her decided tone. It was lady Dashfort's pleasure and pride to show her power in perverting the public taste.'

From the arts of this syren and the arms of this amazon, our hero however, after some hair-breadth perils fortunately escapes, not without the assistance or rather the advice of Count O'Halleran, a gentleman who, after a long foreign service, had returned to pass the autumn of life in his paternal castle.-There is something of minute accuracy in the following description of the Count's library, which convinces us that it is drawn from nature.

"His servant opened the door, went in before her, and stood holding up his finger, as if making a signal of silence to some one within. Her ladyship entered, and found herself in the midst of an odd assembly: an eagle, a goat, a dog, an otter, several gold and silver fish in a glass globe, and a white mouse in a cage. The eagle, quick of eye, but quiet of demeanour, was perched upon his stand; the otter lay under the table perfectly harmless; the Angola goat, a beautiful and remarkably little creature of his kind, with long, curling, silky hair, was walking about the room with the air of a beauty and a favourite; the dog, a tall Irish greyhound, one of the few of that fine race which is now almost extinct. The servant answered for the peaceable behaviour of all the rest of the company of animals, and retired.'

The following lively and but too accurate account of Lord Kill

patrick's

patrick's hospitable mansion, from the sarcastic tongue of one of his guests, will amuse, and perhaps surprise our readers.'

"Every thing here sumptuous and unfinished, you see," said lady Dashfort to lord Colambre, the day after their arrival. "All begun as if the projectors thought they had the command of the mines of Peru; and ended as if the possessors had not sixpence; des arrangemens provisatoires, temporary expedients; in plain English, make-shifts.-Luxuries, enough for an English prince of the blood. Comforts, not enough 'for an English woman.- -And you may be sure that great repairs and alterations have gone on to fit this house for our reception, and for our English eyes!-Poor people!-English visitors, in this point of view, are horribly expensive to the Irish. Did you ever hear that, in the last century, or in the century before the last, to put my story far enough back, so that it shall not touch any body living; when a certain English nobleman, lord Blank A-, sent to let his Irish friend, lord Blank B, know that ke and all his train were coming over to pay him a visit; the Irish nobleman, Blank B, knowing the deplorable condition of his castle, sat down fairly to calculate, whether it would cost him most to put the building in good and sufficient repair, fit to receive these English visitors, or to burn it to the ground.—He found the balance to be in favour of burning, which was wisely accomplished next day. Perhaps Killpatrick would have done well to follow this example. Resolve me which is worst, to be burnt out of house and home, or to be eaten out of house and home. In this house, above and below stairs, including first and second table, house-keeper's room, lady's maids' room, butler's room, and gentleman's; one hundred and four people sit down to dinner every day, as Petito informs me, beside kitchen boys, and what they call char-women; who never sit down, but who do not eat or waste the less for that; and retainers, and friends; friends to the fifth and sixth generation, who" must get their bit and their sup" for," sure, it's only Biddy," they say ;-continued lady Dashfort, imitating their Irish brogue.-And, "sure, 'tis nothing at all, out of all his honour, my lord, has.-How could he feel it— Long life to him!-He's not that way: not a couple in all Ireland, and that's saying a great dale, looks less after their own, nor is more offhandeder, or open-hearteder, or greater open-house-keepers, nor my lord and my lady Killpatrick."-Now there's encouragement for a lord and a lady to ruin themselves.'

In Lord Colambre's journey to Clonbrony, he witnesses a scene new to him, but we fear too common to excite much attention in Ireland; it is our painful duty to introduce it, to the wonder and regret of our English readers.

What are those people? pointing to a man and woman, curious figures, who had come out of a cabin, the door of which the woman, who came out last, locked, and carefully hiding the key in the thatch, turned her back upon the man, and they walked away in different directions: the woman bending under a huge bundle on her back, covered by a yellow petticoat turned over her shoulders; from the top of this

bundle

bundle the head of an infant appeared; a little boy, almost naked, followed her with a kettle, and two girls, one of whom could but just walk, held her hand and clung to her ragged petticoat, forming altogether a complete group of beggars. The woman stopped, and looked back after the man.

'The man was a Spanish looking figure, with gray hair, a wallet hung at the end of a stick over one shoulder, a reaping-hook in the other hand; he walked off stoutly, without ever casting a look behind him. "A kind harvest to you, John Dolan," cried the postillion, "and success to ye, Winny, with the quality. There's a luck-penny for the child to begin with," added he, throwing the child a penny. "Your honour, they're only poor craturs going up the country to beg, while the man goes over to reap the harvest in England. Nor this would not be, neither, if the lord was in it to give 'em employ.'-pp. 164, 165.

We wish that our limits permitted us to introduce our readers to a better acquaintance with Larry, the postillion, or, as he would be called in Ireland, the driver, and to give them some specimens of Irish posting which (we speak from experience) is most accurately described,--still more do we wish we could afford room for a few specimens of the epistolary talents of the said Larry: his letter to his brother, with which the volume concludes, is, to our judgment, quite perfect in its peculiar stile; cunning and simplicity, sense and folly, burlesque and pathos, are there mingled without incongruity or confusion, and present one of the most faithful descriptions of Irish manners, and one of the best specimens of Irish phraseology which even Miss Edgeworth herself has produced.

The other characters, though not so broad and prominent, are imagined and executed with equal skill, perhaps indeed we should say with greater; as it undoubtedly requires a less common power of conception and expression to give interest and truth to characters not marked with the strong lights and shades of affectation, passion, or national peculiarity. The simple minded dignity of Miss Broadhurst, a great heiress, who has learned to appreciate justly and without vanity, the cause and value of the general adoration which is paid to her, is well contrasted with the modest selfrespect, and ingenuous discretion of her friend Grace Nugent, whose birth is almost obscure, and whose prospects are entirely dependant: both these characters are highly interesting, and are marked with that undefined charm that almost always accompanies portraits drawn from the life. We should here, if we had not already reached our limits, have repeated and enforced our censure of Miss Edgeworth's systematic exclusion of all religious feeling from her characters: in this point, we hope, indeed we believe, that her delineations are unnatural. Grace Nugent surely deserved to be a Christian; and the, meek fortitude of Miss Sidney ought pot, in consistency, and truth, to be referred to any humbler cause.

Miss

Miss Edgeworth's views of this matter are to us entirely incomprehensible, and we have only to hope that she will learn to appreciate more justly the effect which may be produced by the sublimest motives that can influence human character:

'Else wherefore breathes she in a Christian land.'

But we must conclude: we opened these volumes with confident expectations of amusement and instruction, we have read them (except in the important article to which we have just alluded) without disappointment; and we now close them with anxious hopes that Miss Edgeworth by the general approbation which we have no doubt they will receive, may be encouraged to continue, and, in one point, to improve, so useful an exercise of her eminent talents.

ART. IX. Travels in the Interior of Brazil; particularly in the Gold and Diamond Districts of that Country, including a Voyage to the Rio de la Plata. By John Mawe. London.

1812.

IT may furnish amusement of no uninteresting kind to speculate on the degree of civilization and improvement likely to be obtained respectively by the Spanish and Portugueze colonists of South America, who, after an equally long series of grievances and discouragements, may be said to begin together a new career, under circumstances altogether different. At the moment that one of these colonies is endeavouring to shake off the trammels of the parent state, the other is receiving into her bosom her expatriated monarch. The result of these two events, and their influence on so large a portion of the human race, cannot fail of being highly important. Both colonies will, no doubt, finally profit by them, but the impulse communicated by the vigour and spirit of revolutionary principles will probably give the lead to Spanish America; while the old government of Portugal will tardily admit new regulations, however obvious their advantages may appear. Indeed, it is not at all improbable that, in the hope of reoccupying the throne of Portugal, the advisers of the Prince Regent will recommend the continuance of the present discouraging and repressive system. These men have estates in Portugal, to which they still hope to return, whatever power may ultimately possess it; and a narrow policy prevents them from seeing that, in spite of their efforts, Brazil must ultimately follow the fate of Spanish America.

There are, perhaps, no people in the world more attached to the person of their sovereign than the Portugueze his arrival at Bahia, therefore, was hailed with the warmest and most lively feelings of joy and gratitude; as if, instead of seeking an asylum among them,

he

he had undertaken the voyage for no other purpose than to advance their happiness. He was received with all the magnificence which they had the means of displaying, and an immediate offer was made to subscribe a sum of money equal to half a million sterling, to build a suitable palace for the royal family, provided he would condescend to reside there. The inhabitants of Rio de Janeiro were equally well disposed to hail the arrival of the royal visitor; and were beginning their preparations, when the impolitic and arbitrary proceedings of his ministers turned their loyal and patriotic feelings into those of disgust, even before the appearance of their prince among them. Agents had been sent forward to take forceable possession of the best houses in the town for the use of the regent's suite. The consequence of this ill-judged measure was, that many people of the first rank and respectability, thus dispossessed of their property, abandoned the town altogether, and retired to their farms, from whence the greater part never returned. Another arbitrary act was that of forestalling the market for the use of the palace, by ordering all the daily supplies to be brought thither before they were exposed to the public.

No material improvements have as yet followed the prince into America. The inquisition, it is true, has been formally abolished, but its effects were neither felt nor dreaded in the Brazils. The general condition of the people appears to be the same as before. The same wretched system of agriculture still prevails; the same difficulty of communication between the various parts of the colony still exists; and the same vexatious restrictions and impositions still continue. There is some consolation, however, in being assured, that the regent has indicated a disposition to patronize every attempt to diffuse among his transatlantic subjects a taste for useful knowledge; that he has already adopted measures for effecting a reform in the institutions for public instruction; and that he has evinced a love of science by establishing a lectureship on chemistry, to which our countryman Doctor Gardner has had the honour of being appointed. The estimation in which Mr. Mawe himself was held by the prince; the missions upon which he was employed; and the ready manner in which all his wishes were gratified, certainly bespeak, in the mind of the regent, a desire to enlarge the boundaries of knowledge, and to promote the welfare of the colonists: but he is unfortunately surrounded by men of contracted and illiberal views.

We now proceed to lay before our readers some account of the book which has given rise to the preceding observations. Mr. Mawe, it appears, undertook in 1804 a voyage of commercial experiment to the Rio de la Plata, with a British licence, and under Spanish colours. His destination was Buenos Ayres; but the

master