might nevertheless still entertain a very indifferent opinion. But I cannot imagine high-minded and high-bred British officers, forming individual and fond friendship for a man of ferocious character. It comes within my express knowledge that the late General Sir Charles Stuart, fourth son of the Earl of Bute, the father of our present ambassador at Paris, the officer who took Minorca and Calvi, and who commanded our army in Portugal, knew your father in America, often slept under the same tent with him, and had the warmest regard for him. It seems but charity to suppose the man who at tracted the esteem of Lord Rawdon and General Stuart, to have possessed amiable qualities, so that I believe you when you affirm that he was merciful as brave. And now I leave the world to judge whether the change of opinion, with which I am touched, arises from false delicacy and flexibility of mind, or from a sense of honour and justice.

Here, properly speaking, ends my reckoning with you about your father's memory but, as the Canadian newspapers have made some remarks on the subject of Wyoming, with which I cannot fully coincide, and as this letter will probably be read in Canada, I cannot conclude it without a few more words, in case my silence should seem to admit of propositions which are rather beyond the stretch of my creed. I will not, however, give any plain truths which I have to offer to the Canadian writers the slightest seasoning of bitterness, for they have alluded to me,on the whole, in a friendly and liberal tone. But when they regret my departure from historical truth, I join in their regret only in as far as I have unconsciously misunderstood the character of Brant, and the share of the Indians in the transaction, which I have now reason to suspect was much less than that of the white men. In other circumstances I took the liberty of a versifier to run away from fact into fancy, like a school-boy who never dreams that he is a truant when he rambles on a holiday from school. It seems however, that I falsely represented Wyoming to have been a terrestrial paradise. It was not so, say the Canadian papers,

because it contained a great number of Tories; and undoubtedly that cause goes far to account for the fact. Earthly paradises, however, are not earthly things, and Tempe and Arcadia may have had their drawbacks on happiness as well as Wyoming. I must nevertheless still believe that it was a flourishing colony, and that its destruction furnished a just warning to human beings against war and revenge. But the whole catastrophe is affirmed in a Canadian newspaper to have been nothing more than a fair battle. If this be the fact, let accredited signatures come forward to attest it and vindicate the innocence and honourableness of the whole transaction, as your father's character has been vindicated. An error about him by no means proves the whole account to be a fiction. Who would not wish its atrocity to be disproved? But who can think it disproved by a single defender, who writes anonymously, and without definable weight or authority?

In another part of the Canadian newspapers, my theme has been regretted as dishonourable to England. Then it was, at all events, no fable. But how far was the truth dishonourable to England? American settlers, and not Englishmen, were chiefly the white men calling themselves Christians who were engaged in this affair. I shall be reminded, perhaps, that they also called themselves Loyalists. But for Heaven's sake let not English loyalty be dragged down to palliate atrocities, or English delicacy be invoked to conceal them. I may be told that England permitted the war, and was therefore responsible for its occurrences. Not surely universally, nor directly. I should be unwilling to make even Lord North's administration answerable for all the actions of Butler's rangers; and I should be still more sorry to make all England amenable either for Lord North's administration or for Butler's rangers. Was the American war an unanimous and heartfelt war of the people? Were the best patriots and the brightest luminaries of our Senate for, or against it? Chatham declared that if America fell she would fall like the strong man—that she would embrace the pillars of our constitution and

perish beneath its ruins. Burke, Fox, and Barre, kindled even the breasts of St. Stephen's chapel against it; and William Pitt pronounced it a war against the sacred cause of Liberty. If so, the loss of our colonies was a blessing, compared with the triumph of those principles that would have brought Washington home in chains. If Chatham and Pitt were our friends in denouncing the injustice of this war, then Washington was only nominally our foe in resisting it; and he was as much the enemy of the worst enemies of our constitution, as if he had fought against the return of the Stuarts on the banks of the Spey or the Thames. I say, therefore, with full and free charity to those who think differently, that the American war was disgraceful only to those who were its abettors, and that the honour of Englishmen is redeemed in proportion as they deprecate its principles and deplore its details. Had my theme even involved English character more than it does, I could still defend it. If my Canadian critic alleges that a poet may not blame the actions of his country, I meet his allegation, and deny it. No doubt a a poet ought not for ever to harp and carp upon the faults of his country; but he may be her moral censor, and he must not be her parasite. If an English poet under Edward III. had only dared to leave one generous line of commiseration to the memory of Sir William Wallace, how much he would have raised our estimation of the moral character of the age! There is a present and a future in national character, as well as a past, and the character of the present age is best provided for by impartial and generous sentiments respecting the past. The twentieth century will not think the worse of the nineteenth for regretting the American war. I know the slender importance of my own works. I am contending, however, against a false principle of delicacy that would degrade poetry itself if it were adopted; -but it never will be adopted.

I therefore regret nothing in the historical allusions of my poem except the mistake about your father. Nor tho' I have spoken freely of American af

fairs, do I mean to deny that your native tribes may have had a just cause of quarrel with the American colonists. And I regard it as a mark of their gratitude that they adhered to the royal cause, because the governors acting in the king's name, had been their most constant friends, and the colonial subjects, possibly at times their treacherous invaders. I could say much of European injustice towards your tribes, but in spite of all that I could say, I must still deplore the event of Christians having adopted their mode of warfare. If the Indians thirsted for vengeance on the colonists, that should have been the very circumstance to deter us from blending their arms with ours. I trust you will understand this declaration to be made in the spirit of frankness, and not of mean and inhospitable arrogance. If I were to speak to you in that spirit, how easily and how truly could you tell me that the American Indians have departed faster from their old practices of warfare, than Christians have departed from their habits of religious persecution. If I were to preach to you about European humanity, you might ask me how long the ashes of the Inquisition have been cold, and whether the slavetrade be yet abolished? You might demand, how many-no, how few generations have elapsed since our old women were burnt for imaginary commerce with the devil, and whether the houses be not yet standing from which our great-grandmothers may have looked on the hurdles passing to the place of execution, whilst they blessed themselves that they were not witches? ・ A horrible occurrence of this nature took place in Scotland during my own grandfather's life-time. As to warlike customs, I should be exceedingly sorry if you were to press me even on those of my brave old ancestors, the Scottish Highlanders.

I can, nevertheless, recollect the energy, faith, and hospitality of those ancestors, and at the same I am not forgetful of the simple virtues of yours.

I have been thus special in addressing you from a wish to vindieate my own consistency, as well as to do justice to you in your present circumstan

V. de Paule at first supplied funds for the support of twelve of these children, and it was soon put in his power to relieve all those who were found at the doors of churches. But that fervour which is always attendant on a novel establishment shortly began to cool: the supplies of money entirely failed, and the horrid outrages on nature were about to recommence. Vincent de Paule was not discouraged. He convoked an extraordinary meeting, caused a great number of these unfortunate infants to be placed in the church, and ascending immediately into the pulpit, pronounced, his eyes streaming with tears, the following discourse:

"You are not ignorant, Ladies, that compassion and charity first made you adopt these little creatures as your children. You have been their mothers

according to grace since the time that their mothers according to nature abandoned them. Consider now if you Cease for a

will also abandon them. moment to be their mothers, and become their judges. Their life and death are in your hands. Behold! I take the votes and suffrages. It is time! You must pronounce sentence, and declare if you will no longer shew them mercy. They will live if you continue your charitable care, but if you consent to abandon them, they all perish."

The only answer to this pathetic appeal was the tears and sighs of the audience; and on the same day, in the same church, and at the very instant, the Foundling Hospital was established and endowed with a revenue of forty thousand livres. G. B. F.

THE HOP.

ROUND Ivy, called Alehoof or Turnhoof, Glechoma hederacea, was generally used for preserving beer, before the use of hops was known.

It is said that the perfume of hops is so salutary, that when put between the outer cover and the pillow, they will procure sleep to those who are in delirious fevers.

HORSE RADISH.

Sydenham, who has been called the father of physic among the moderns, recommends it likewise in dropsies, particularly those which follow intermitting fevers. It is also extolled in cases of the stone. Thomas Bartholin affirms, that the juice of horseradish dissolved a calculus, or stony concretion, that was taken out of a human body.

Both water and rectified spirits extract the virtues of this root, by infusion, and imbibe the whole taste and pungency of the plant.

Boerhaave, who was so justly celebrated through Europe as professor of physic and botany, says it is one of those plants whose virtues are the least

*

equivocal: its aperient, antiscorbutic, and resolvent qualities purify the blood, agree with colds, and above all, cure dry hard coughs, and the extinction of the voice.

Dr. Cullen says, The root externally applied readily inflames the skin, and proves a rubefacient that may be employed with advantage in palsy and rheumatism; and if its application be long continued, it produces blisters."

The German authors give many examples of its being an excellent remedy, as well internally as for the exterior, in cases of the dropsy and rheumatism.

One drachm of the root, fresh scraped down, is enough for four ounces of water, to be infused in a close vessel for two hours, and made into a syrup, with double its weight of sugar; a teaspoonful of which swallowed leisurely, or at least repeated two or three times, has often been found very suddenly effectual in relieving hoarseness.

This volatile root, when received into the stomach, both creates appetite, and assists digestion; and is therefore

properly employed as a condiment with animal food.

M. Haller, a Swiss physician, informs us, that in Sweden they cultivate the Chinese horse-radish, from which they draw abundance of oil. Horse-radish scraped and infused in cold milk, makes one of the best and safest cosmetics.

Horse-radish possesses the same peculiar property of propagating itself as the ginger; for a small piece of the root, if buried in the earth, will form a new root and a perfect plant, which produces seed. In vain do we look into the pores of this root, to discover by what wonderful means nature has endowed it with this gift; and we may justly exclaim with David, "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it."

[We believe it to be also an excellent remedy for worms in children.]

LETTUCE.

We insert the whole article under this head as a specimen of the Author's manner.

Lettuce.-The Latins gave this plant the name of Lactuca from Lac, on account of the milky juice with which it abounds. The French, for the same reason, call it Laitue; the English name Lettuce is a corruption of either the Latin or French word, and in all probability originated from the former, as several of our old authors spell it Lectuce.

That this vegetable was in early times esteemed of the first rank among pot-herbs and salads, we learn from an anecdote related by Herodotus, and which also proves that lettuces were served in their natural state at the royal tables of the Persian kings at least 550 years before the Christian era. Cambyses, son of Cyrus the Great, had his brother Smerdis killed from mere suspicion, and, contrary to the laws, married his sister this princess being at table with Cambyses, she stripped a headed lettuce of its leaves; when, the king observing that the plant was not so beautiful as when it had all its leaves. "It is the same with our family," replied the princess," since you have cut off a precious shoot." This indiscreet allusion cost her own life.

Pliny tells us, that the ancient Romans knew but one kind of lettuce, which was a black variety, that yielded a great quantity of milky juice which caused sleep, therefore it was called Lactuca.

It is reported, adds this author, that Antonius Musa, a physician, cured the emperor Augustus Cæsar of a dangerous disease by means of the lettuce. Other authors notice that Augustus was eased of the violence of his disease by the use of this plant; which circumstance seems to have brought the lettuce into esteem at Rome; as Pliny says, after that time there was no doubt about eating them at all seasons of the year, and even preserving them, for they were used in pottage as well as in salads.

Columella notices the qualities of this

plant,

"And now let lettuce, with its healthful sleep, Make haste, which of a tedious long disease The painful loathings cures."

Athenæus and Constantine Cæsar say, that the Pythagoreans called this plant the Eunuch; and the ancients fabled, that after the death of Adonis, Venus lay upon a bed of lettuce; which evidently shews that they were acquainted with the cooling and opiate nature of this vegetable, which is still thought more salutary for those whose religious profession enjoins them a life of celibacy, than for settlers in new colonies.

We learn also from Pliny, that the Greek lettuce was a variety that grew both high and large, and that the Romans, in his day, cultivated the purple lettuce with a large root which was called Cæciliana. They had likewise the Egyptian, Cilician, and Cappadocian lettuce, besides the Astylis, or the chaste lettuce, which, he says, was often called Enunchion, because it was thought less favourable to Venus than other plants. This naturalist adds, they were all considered cooling, therefore eaten principally in the summer, Great pains were used to make them cabbage: they were earthed up with sea-sand, to blanch them and give them heart. The white lettuce was noticed, in that mild climate, to be the least able to endure cold.