litical,' at the Cider-cellar, in Maiden-lane;' but above all, The Free and Easy under the Rose,' which assembled at the Horn.

It was originally kept by Bates, who was never so happy as when standing behind a chair with a napkin under his arm; but arriving at the dignity of alderman, tucking in the calipash and calipee himself, instead of handing it round to the company, soon did his business.'-Fruits of Experience, p. 59.

The members of the last-named association were called 'buds of the rose,' and had a button which might have pleased Anacreon. But for the full and particular history of all these festive haunts, as also of those who frequented them, and of their sons, wives, daughters, cousins, and, above all, customers, we must refer the curious reader to Mr. Brasbridge's own chronicle. We have never had the pleasure of seeing the author personally, but if we may judge from the portrait engraved at the beginning of his book, he is one of the most comely and healthy, as well as loyal and contented of octogenarian literati.

So much for five of these ten autobiographical worthies. One word more, and we conclude.

Few great men-none of the very highest order-have chosen to paint otherwise than indirectly, and through the shadows of imaginary forms, the secret workings of their own minds; nor is it likely that genius will ever be found altogether divested of this proud modesty, unless in the melancholy case of its being tinged, as in Rousseau, with insanity. There was, therefore, little danger of our having too much autobiography, as long as no book had much chance of popularity which was not written with some considerable portion of talent, or at least by a person of some considerable celebrity in one way or another. But the circle of readers has widened strangely in these times; and while an overwhelming preponderance of vulgarity among them tempts one class of writers to the use of materials which, in elder times, they would have held themselves far above; a still more disgusting effect is, that it emboldens beings who, at any period, would have been mean and base in all their objects and desires, to demand with hardihood the attention and the sympathy of mankind, for thoughts and deeds that, in any period but the present, must have been as obscure as dirty. The mania for this garbage of Confessions, and Recollections, and Reminiscences, and Aniliana, is indeed a vile symptom.' It seems as if the ear of that grand impersonation, the Reading Public,' had become as filthily prurient as that of an eaves-dropping lackey.

If this voluntary degradation be persisted in, the effects of it will, ere long, be visible elsewhere than in literature. An universal

spirit of suspicion will overspread the intercourse of society, and no class of persons will suffer more, than those who found easy access in former days to circles much above their station, in virtue of the general belief, that their garrulity was not at least the veil of a calculating curiosity, and that, however poor their wit might be, they were capable of receiving kindness and condescension, without any notions of turning a penny by the systematic record of privacies too generously exposed.

If any ridicule could terminate this abomination, the autobiographical silversmith would supply it: he has put parody out of the question. But the nuisance has gone far beyond a jest. None can hope to guard against the treachery deep-working and slowthe odia in longum cocta, of a Horace Walpole; but people have themselves to blame, if their feelings, or those of their children after them, are outraged in consequence of the levity with which they admitted the companionship, on any terms, of farce-wrights and professional buffoons.

ART. VII.-Dartmoor; a Descriptive Poem. By N. I. Carrington, author of the Banks of the Tamar. With a Preface and Notes, by W. Burt, Esq., Secretary of the Chamber of Commerce, Plymouth; and Eight Vignettes and Four Views, illustrative of Scenery, drawn and etched by P. H. Rogers, Esq., Plymouth. Hatchard. 1826.

THE subject of this poem is a district of singular interest, not

only to the picturesque tourist, but to the naturalist and antiquary-we will not add, to the farmer or the political economist; for, notwithstanding all that is said as to its capability of being turned to the purposes of cultivation, and after all the attempts that have been made, and partially succeeded, towards redeeming Dartmoor from the sterility with which the hand of nature has stamped it, we hold it among the remotest of speculations, that the thin and scanty covering of peat earth with which its basis of primitive granite is far from completely invested, can ever be made, we will not say to reward the projector, but even to supply fuel for the rage of improvement.

We will not deny that our wish, if not the parent of our persuasion, is at least in some degree akin to it. The very vicinity of this desolate tract to some of the richest and most highly-cultivated land in the kingdom-the insularity of its position, surrounded on all sides by a region of smiling loveliness, on which it looks down frowning in stern and lonely retirement, ought, we cannot help thinking, to protect it against the thought of invasion or disturbance.

The

6

The mention of railroads' can scarcely be pleasant to him who contemplates from the summit of one of its loftiest tors the distant prospect of civilisation beneath him, so strangely contrasted with the absolute seclusion of the spot from whence he surveys it. We feel as if separated by some impassable, though viewless barrier, from the habitable earth that lies spread out like a map before our eyes, and forget that it is possible, in the space of an hour or little more, to rejoin the world of which we seem to have taken our last farewell.

Dartmoor, in its general form and features, will not, by those whose impressions are formed from mountain-scenery, be allowed the praise of picturesque. When viewed from the north and north-west, from the borders of Exmoor to the promontory of Hartland, it forms a boundary to the distant horizon, which, from its continuity and gradual rise, approaches, if it does not quite reach, the character of magnificence; but, viewed from all other directions, it presents the aspect merely of an elevated table-land, broken into

'a number of hemispherical swellings, or undulations, gradually overtopping each other, and here and there interrupted by deep depressions, yet without forming what may be properly called distinct mountains. It is covered with black and brown peat, and crowned at intervals with tors; some rising like pillars or turrets, others composed of blocks piled together, others divided into horizontal or perpendicular strata, and others so symmetrically arranged as to resemble the ruins of ancient castles. Innumerable masses of stone, more or less rounded and smoothed, lie scattered over the general surface. To a person standing on some lofty point of the moor, it wears the appearance of an irregular broken waste, which may be best assimilated to the long, rolling waves of a tempestuous ocean, fixed into solidity by some instantaneous and powerful impulse. Even at a distance it has this billowy aspect, which, in every zone, according to Humboldt, is the characteristic of primitive chains.'

But what it wants in outline is amply compensated by the advantages it derives from various accidental features and appendages.

The changeful hues of the moor, at different periods, are picturesque objects for many miles round. At one time the clouds creep up the acclivities, and envelope them in a white vapour, through which the sun breaks with difficulty. At another, their nakedness is exposed to the full glare of its beams. At another, light and shade either chequer the surface, or follow each other in rapid alternation. Mornings and evenings, they are of a deep blue colour; but when the snow mantles them with its fleecy skirt, they remind the spectator of the Apennines.'

To the poetical worshippers of nature, it possesses character

istics far more valuable, and which raise far nobler emotions than the mere picturesque is capable of exciting.

The roaring of torrents, after heavy rains, and when the wind favours its transmission, is sublime to a degree inconceivable by those who have never heard this impressive music in a wild and solitary district. It is occasionally louder by night than by day, which the peasants consider as a prognostic of rain, and often strikes the ear even at three miles' distance. This majestic sound applies to the rivers generally, when swollen and agitated, but the falls of Beckey and Lydford afford particular examples of it. De Luc, in his Geological Tour through England, gives a very picturesque account of the former. "A beautiful stream," he says, was first seen to precipitate itself from above, and for some way to bound, divided, from block to block, often disappearing between them, and again issuing forth in several rills, which glided along their mossy surface, falling upon some of them in a sheet of water, with the alternate glittering and transparency of silver gauze; but this sheet was soon lost amongst the blocks, whence the stream repeatedly burst forth, and afterwards, flowing calmly for some distance, rushed precipitately down another slope."

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The numerous rivers and smaller streams which take their rise from the moor, and, in their respective courses to the English and Bristol Channels, intersect the whole county westward of the Exe, and assign to it its most lovely and most distinguishing character, are equally beautiful and diversified, in the wilder features which mark their source and progress through the parent district, and in the softer scenes of valley and woodland which accompany them downwards to the sea. The principal are the Dart and Teign, whose direction is to the east and south-east; the Tavy and Plym, to the south-west; and the Taw, to the northward. They have all their source out of or near a lake called Cranmere Pool, which itself constitutes one of the principal curiosities of the district. It is situated

on the top of a high hill, never known to be dry, and consisting of morass, or red bog and rushes, which, in process of time, have so accumulated as to rise forty or fifty feet above the natural level. It is of an oblong form, about one hundred and fifty feet in length, by eighty broad, the water appearing to issue from a bed of gravel beneath the peat, which is here peculiarly excellent and abundant, although, from its remoteness, but little used. The precise site is difficult to be found, even by those who have before visited it, and it cannot be approached, without precaution, by man or horse, except in summer, when the ground, for a narrow space, is more solid than the rest. In the vicinity of the pool are quaking bogs. Some of the moor rivers are thought to have their immediate sources in the pool, but this is not precisely the fact. One only is so circumstanced. The others flow, in opposite directions, from the surrounding morass; but as the water with which

it is saturated is the produce of the pool itself, these particular rivers may be indirectly said to originate there, thus achieving what by many has been considered a physical impossibility. De Luc observes, that Cranmere, means the place (sea, or lake) of cranes, and it is possible that at one time these birds resorted to it. Wild ducks now make it their haunt in the winter-season. In Provence there is a place of the same name, and nearly of the same description.' *

Of the rivers above-mentioned, that which is the most considerable gives its name to the moor; and there is, perhaps, no other stream in the island which, within the same distance, exhibits so extraordinary a variety of river-beauties, from the wild rocky torrent to the sweet woodland brook, the clear, broad, pastoral water, and lastly the deep-indented, rock-bound harbour, in which form it closes its career. The exquisite scenery of Holne Chase, and that romantic neighbourhood, belong to its earlier character; the deep woods and old baronial hall of Dartington to its second or middle course ; while the downward sail from Totnes to Dartmouth Castle is, perhaps, unrivalled for the charms of its later and more familiar description.

The Teign, the Taw, the Tavy, and the Tamar, are next in importance, and the banks of them all are rich in scenes of loveliness and grandeur, and in haughty recollections. The streams of inferior rank it is not for us to enumerate; yet we cannot pass unnoticed the Ock, or Ockment, which glides by one of the most interesting of our monuments of old baronial power, the proud stronghold of the Redverses, the De Fortibuses, and the Courtenays, Okehampton Castle; nor the Lid which, rolling amidst rocks, and bursting through caverns of the most gloomy and terrible grandeur, visits in its course the old Norman keep of another castle, the once dreaded resort of oppression and cruelty, measured out under the name of justice, by the Lords of the Stannaries—a jurisdiction which still continues to be administered, though stripped of its odious and tyrannical attributes, and transferred from the damp and cheerless dungeon of Lidford to the far less formidable precincts of a comfortable inn-room at Tavistock.

The rivers and smaller streams of Dartmoor which are honoured with distinct appellations; amount to fifty-three in number: the nameless brooks and rivulets cannot be counted; and of bridges kept

The passages above-marked as quotation, with some others which follow, have been selected from the very valuable notes appended to the poem, which might have furnished us with many more of equal or superior merit. They comprise, in the whole, a more faithful and graphical delineation of the moor, its principal features, and remarkable productions, than any account we have before met with; and it is only to be regretted that, owing to the nature of the service which they were designed to perform, they are presented to the reader in so disjointed a shape. It is with sincere grief we add that, while this sheet is passing through the press, a report has reached us that their ingenious author (Mr. Burt) is no more.