Passage down the Missouri. The whole party, being united below the conflux of the Missouri and the Yellow-stone, prosecuted the remainder of their voyage together; experiencing, in the prospect of home, and in the ease with which they descended the river, a compensation for all their fatigues; and receiving the visits of the different tribes of Indians along the banks, the Mandans, the Ricaras, and even the faithless Tetons. The greatest change experienced by the travellers in their southward progress was that of climate. They had passed nearly two years in a cool, open country, and were now escending into wooded plains, eight or ten degrees farther to the south, but differing in point of heat much more than the case usually is in a correspondent distance in Europe. They were likewise greatly tormented with musquitoes. Notwithstanding all the tributary streams received by the Missouri, such is the power of evaporation that its channel becomes very little wider, or its volume of water very little larger, for the space of the thousand miles which intervene between the junction of the Yellowstone and the copious waters of the Platte. After having passed the mouth of the latter, they met, from time to time, traders on their way to the interior of the Indian territories; and they were amused on finding one of their own men forego the gratification of returning to his country and his friends, in order r to set out with some beaver-hunters on an excursion in which years might be passed in those wilds from which he had just escaped. The feelings of the rest of the party, however, were very different; and a general shout was raised when their eyes caught the first sign of civilization and domestic life, in the cowsfeeding on a frontier-plantation. On landing at La Charrette, the first village on this side of the United States, they were received with open arms by the inhabitants, who had long abandoned all hopes of their return. September 22. they found a detachment of American troops cantoned near the mouth of the Missouri, and passed the day in cordial intercourse with their countrymen. On the 23d they descended the Mississippi to St. Louis, which they reached at noon, where they received a most hospitable welcome; having thus completed a journey of nearly nine thousand miles. We shall now recapitulate the principal dates in the narrative, The expedition set out from the mouth of the Missouri, 14th May 1804. 1st Nov. 18th Aug. Reached the Pacific at the mouth of the Columbia 15th Nov. 1st July 23d Sept. 1806. Set out on the homeward journey Reached Traveller's Rest-creek in the midst of the Rocky mountains Returned to St. Louis at the mouth of the Missouri We have thus brought our report of these very interesting. travels to an end, and shall close the article with a few general observations. The task of preparing the journal for press devolved, we understand, chiefly on Capt. Clarke; his lamented associate, Capt. Lewis, having paid the debt of nature before the MS. was brought into a finished state. The composition is plain and unaffected; evidently the work of men anxiously bent on the attainment of the objects of the expedition, without any latent wish to gain favour with the public by dwelling on their personal hardships, or taking credit for any unusual share of fortitude or discernment. No where do they represent themselves as required to stimulate, by any extraordinary effort, the exertions of their followers; on the contrary, every man of the party is represented as obedient, assiduous, and zealous for the complete discharge of his duty. On rising from the perusal of such a narrative, a benevolent reader must feel gratified that the unhappy contest with a state, in no respect our natural enemy, is now at a close; and that both nations are at liberty to prosecute their discoveries and commercial enterprizes in security from hostile alarms. We have already mentioned a journal of these travels kept by Patrick Gass, one of the serjeants, which was published some years ago. (See M. R., Vol. Ixiii., No. for Nov. 1810.) This narrative was comparatively short, being comprized in an octavo volume; as was also another abridged work, intitled the "Travels of Captains Lewis and Clarke, with Delineations of the Man-> ners of the Indians," London, 1809. We reserved our report of the expedition until we should have before us the full and authentic narrative, in the publication of which a considerable delay took place. It results from the observations of Capts. Lewis and Clarke, that no part of the immense tract of country. visited by them is devoid of population; and that considerable difference prevails in the habits of the several tribes, or nations as they are called, of Indians, some being honest and hospitable, while others are selfish and addicted to theft. The majority, we fear, come under the latter description; so that it is incumbent on travellers to be steadily on their guard, even in situations of apparent security. The climate, particularly towards the interior, appears to be healthy; the party having experienced no other illness than that which naturally arose from bad diet, and exposure to rain at night. The grand feature of discovery, however, in the present narrative, is the extensive and accurate information obtained with regard to the navigation of the leading rivers. Not only is the Missouri now traced to its source, but another and apparently preferable channel of access to the centre of the Continent is found in the waters of the Yellow-stone. The Columbia and a considerable part of Lewis's river have been explored, and the way paved for discovering an additional conveyance by water to the Columbia, either by Clarke's river on the north, or the upper part of Lewis's river on the south. The want of timber for building canoes is an inconvenience of no very difficult remedy; and farther facilities will, in time, be found out by improving the roads or tracks, as well as by laying up stores of provision in situations in which the country does not, in its present state, afford them. Among the surveys remaining to be made by subsequent explorers, we may reckon the upper part of the Columbia in its course from north to south, and the copious stream of, the Multnomah, which flows into the mouth of the Columbia from the south-east. The great rivers that fall into the Missouri are the Osage, the Kanzas, and the Platte; the first of these was surveyed by Mr. Pike, but of the two others no satisfactory account is yet before the public. We shall return with pleasure to the task of rendering a report of any authenticated survey of Louisiana, whether it relate to the Platte, the Kanzas, or to the Red river; which, we understand, has lately engaged the attention of the American government. The present volume contains a map of the country passed by the travellers, with a few engravings on a small scale; viz. the antient fortification on the Missouri, p. 47.; the Falls of that river, p. 191.; and the Columbia Falls, pp. 47. and 379. ART. II. Quarrels of Authors; or, some Memoirs for our Literary History, including Specimens of Controversy to the Reign of Elizabeth. By the Author of " Calamities of Authors." Crown 8vo. 3 Vols. 11. 4s. Boards. Murray. 1814. Q UARRELS," says the Dictionary of the French Academy, "begin by words, and end often with blows "they pass from complaint to invective, and from invective to personal violence. There is something graceless, unbecoming, rude, and barbarous, in a quarrel; and literary men should not lightly be accused of the propensity. Could no milder name be found for that argumentative opposition, that disputatious rivalry rivalry, that polemic declamation, that sentimental jarring, that Of several competitory investigations in which our learned men have been engaged, an entertaining history is given in the present volumes, under the odious, perverse, insulting name of Quarrels. Mr. D'Israeli is a smart and lively writer, extensively familiar with the minor chronicles of literature, and adapted to communicate the interest which he takes in the subordinate feuds and private anecdotes of its heroes. His style, as we have before observed, has vivacity and brilliancy; it is "mottled with antithesis, and spangled with allusion:" but it sometimes reaches at wit in the attitude of affectation and conceit. Mr. D'Israeli has not observed the desirable chronological in the arrangement and collocation of his materials. On the contrary, he seems to have begun with the more recent, and to have crawled backwards to the more antient dissensions of our writers. This mode produces an inversion of historic succession in the anecdotes, which is painful to the habits of thought, and disturbs the flow of recollection. It also produces a decay of interest in the latter volumes; an anticlimax of solicitude, a growing torpor of the sympathy. The controversies with Pope in the first volume are more stimulant and more attractive of attention, than those of Davenant's æra in the second volume, or than those of Ben Jonson's time, in the third. In a new edition, we should prefer to see the materials placed in a strict chronological series. These, however, are slight imperfections; because, as each explosion of rival animosity is so recorded as to constitute a separate whole, the reader can, by means of the index, turn to each narrative in the real order of event. The study of controversial compositions is well adapted to teach dialectic resource, to prepare and fashion the mind for inventing new arguments in original cases, and to give a ready command of precise syllogistic induction. Bayle's Critical Dictionary, though but a compilation of controversial erudition, is still the grand European arsenal of literary arguments: it has formed more intellects, and scattered more instruction, than all the lecture-books of taste or the encyclopedies of science. Of the work before us, it might be said that it is adapted to form part of a supplement to Bayles and that it narrates various various English literary disputes which he has omitted, with more of text and less of annotation, but so as likewise to preserve biographical notices of the disputants, characteristic and pithy specimens of their style, and an abridged outline of their chief arguments. Chapter i. describes Warburton; an ecclesiastic of more intellect than learning, of more arrogance than tolerance; whose "Divine Legation of Moses," in the name of the Anglican church, sought to shew, and succeeded in shewing, that the doctrine of a future state formed no part of the revelation of Moses to the Israelites. The prophets of the captivity were those who first promulgated this belief in Palestine. The various hostile animadversions of Warburton's opponents are here rapidly pointed out, and critically appreciated to Lowth, especially, is awarded the praise of superior taste, sagacity, and urbanity. Not enough is said of Gibbon's Disquisition on the sixth book of the Æneid. Warburton was at heart a friend to the cause of illumination; his concessions to philosophy are momentous, and are made with glee: while his scurrilous invectives against philosophers, and his flimsy sophistical paradoxes, in fact form the exoteric declamation, by means of which he reconciled the church to connive at his bold desertion of important positions. The second, third, fourth, and fifth chapters relate successive squabbles of Pope with the dunces, with the printers, with Cibber, and with Addison. Much bibliographic knowlege of obscure volumes is here displayed by Mr. D'Israeli; whose account of the extraordinary transactions which accompanied the publication of Pope's Letters adds much to the evidence that Dr. Johnson could record on the subject. Concerning the difference between Pope and Addison, he is also curiously informed, and does justice to our critique in April 1769 on Ruffhead's inaccurate statements. The fact is, that Pope had a much stronger intellect than Addison. While Pope was young, and only a candidate for fame, Addison could patronize and praise: but, as soon as Pope had passed him in the career of public admiration, Addison felt envy. With a correctness of manner, more common in the religious than in the gentle manly world, Addison prompted some attacks on Pope's reputation, which were eventually avenged in the character of Atticus. A sixth chapter narrates Bolingbroke's posthumous attack on Pope, occasioned by the provisions in his will; and two appendixes accumulate minute particulars of the frays with Lintot and with Settle. Volume II. opens with the Dissensions, .we dare not say Quarrels, of the Royal Society; and even over these dissimi larities |