"No enthusiasm is more real than Moore's, and not a poet trifles half so well," said his lady. "No man, or woman either, can send out his little winged conceits, the unique creations of his own brain; in fact, no one but Moore can make any thing of a mere conceit; and very often he bewitches, and strives to bewitch, with nothing else."

"He was never yet vulgar, nor mouthy,' nor puzzling," resumed the author, "nor heavy, flat, or dogmatical. He is not, to be sure, the eagle of poetry, soaring out of sight, and clutching the thunderbolts, nor any other great bird with wings as heavy and less power to use them."

"But he is the little lark of poetry, though," Mrs. Drudge went on, "for ever on the wing, for ever singing his sweet song, and for ever pleasing us with its repetition."

"No dramatist, however, and no painter from nature, either visible nature, or as she works under the veil of the human breast. He once attempted to be both, and failed. Moore lives with us in his Native Melodies, and not, with the exception, perhaps, of Paradise and the Peri, in his Lalla Rookh. The two longest poems in that volume are after-thoughts of his genuine mind, not half of them Moore; and they would never have been written, if his bookseller, or his purposes, had not set him to make money by a precedent. There is little human drama in the long speeches his ideal people hold together, and little nature in the highly wrought, and fiery, or frightful pictures or situations with which he has surrounded them. By a blessed coincidence, Westall was an illustrator of Moore's pictures. They were born for each other."

"And now," said I, "tell me something of Wordsworth and Coleridge."

Mr. Drudge looked down, played with his wine-glass, and smiled.

"Do you recollect any such poets, my dear?" politely endeavouring to fill up the pause, said Mrs. D.

"Does he recollect!" I repeated, "to be sure he does."

"Being something of a bibliophile, I do recollect, then. By a singular chance I possess a few very old volumes, attributed to gentlemen of the names you have mentioned; and I must say it is a pity they are not rather better known, if it were only for the curiosity of the thing. But the greatest pity is, that these authors seemed to have laboured all along for the profound obscurity into which they have at last fallen; or rather this eventual fate is no novelty to them, inasmuch as from the very first they were selfenveloped in it."

"În different ways, however," said I: "Wordsworth appeared obscure from choice; Coleridge in spite of himself: the one never intelligible but when he could not help it; the other never so, but as matter of chance; and I was therefore always better disposed towards the infatuation of Coleridge, than towards what seemed to me the elaborate flirtation of Wordsworth."

This criticism is too nice, perhaps too flippant, for me," bluntly rejoined my host; "but let that pass; I think we have now done with your list.'

An eccentric suggestion is started by Mr. Drudge, that Mr. Thomas Campbell is the author of the Waverley novels. He is also hard upon the periodical works of the present age. With some absurdity there is mixed considerable truth in the following remarks:

"Behold, on the other hand, a grand army of Reviews, of all shapes and prices, from five shillings down to fourpence, in many of which was to be had the cream of from five to five-and-twenty authors together, carefully skimmed for your sipping palate, and ready for use at your tea or coffee in the morning. Moreover, you bought ready-made opinions for your money, a few shillings or pence, as it might be, and so were saved the trouble of forming your own. And what man or miss in his or her senses might be expected to pay a great deal for so little, when, with a little, he or she could have the great deal ?"

"No one did so," said Mr. Drudge: " the reading public' rested satisfied with periodicals alone, and the author was left on the publisher's shelf. Of course no author would continue to write for the profit of other persons only; so the pen was at last totally abandoned, and the sole comfort resulting to authors was, to see their monstrous tyrant, the periodical press, sharing with themselves a common ruin and oblivion."

"The periodical press!" I exclaimed," truly, Sir, it was a species of steam-loom, or thrashing or winnowing-machine, that, with its short methods and unnatural despatch, threw thousands of honest people out of bread."

"I wonder," said Mrs. Drudge," they never rose out against it, as, about the same time, the indignant trades, weavers, and spinners, and carders, rose out against the mechanical encroachments, monopoly indeed, of Manchester, Glasgow, and other manufacturing places. Surely, if the great body of authors were united, (but that was, in itself, rather a difficulty,) one night would have been sufficient for the demolition of all the periodical presses in London and Auld Reekie."

"Or I should have chosen a more legal proceeding," said Mr. Drudge. "It is my fixed opinion that a good action,Authors v. Reviewers, might have been made out, to go, for damages, to a special jury, in King's Bench. I think an author might have crippled them in a thumping verdict, not on account of their defamatory praise or censure, but on account of their pirátical quotations. Where was their right to republish, without end, the best part of a man's book? Was it not as black piracy as if the promulgators of the sixpenny Cain did so, without any dull or prattling remark at the head, the tail, or between the passages ?""

REV. MAY, 1825.

G

The

The author seems most at home in that part of this whimsical farrago which contains his criticisms upon painting. He is introduced by Mr. Drudge to the fine arts, exhibitions then (2030) open; and considerable judgment is displayed on these subjects: but we forbear farther citations, lest the author should charge us with pirating the best parts of his work, which though very unequal, and often insupportably dull, and trivial, contains nevertheless many sound and just reflexions expressed in pleasing and elegant language.

ART. XI. An Account of the Colony of Van Diemen's Land, principally designed for the Use of Emigrants. By Edward Curr. 12mo. pp. 207. 5s. Boards. Cowie and Co.

WHE

WHEN the vessel goes to wreck, the planks, and spars, and empty casks are tossed by conflicting waves and drifted by the currents to various and distant shores; so are the sons and daughters of misery blown about, they heed not where, to seek a perilous subsistence in sunless forests and unhealthy swamps, exposed to the attacks of beasts of prey, or to the still more formidable attacks of lawless, untamed man. Even Van Diemen's Land, the abode of congregated felons, has its "settlers," and has its puffers too - men who, for selfish purposes, mock at the misfortunes of their fellow creatures, and allure them to a den of thieves by the most captivating and treacherous enticements. Mr. Curr has exposed, with becoming indignation, the audacious falsehoods contained in a work entitled "Godwin's Emigrant's Guide to Van Diemen's Land," prepared, it seems, either by a writer who had never set foot on the colony which he presumes to describe; or, having visited it, has for some sinister purpose made a paradise of pandemonium. We express ourselves strongly; perhaps rather too strongly. It is the moral and not the physical features of the country which would deter us, above those of all other countries on earth, from settling in New South Wales or Van Diemen's Land; at least for a generation to come. Curr's business in the colony not being of an agricultural nature, his residence was in Hobart Town, where he continued from February, 1820, to June, 1823, making excursions through most parts of the country. His account being given with all the appearance of strict impartiality, no part of the purpose of the work is to recommend emigration. In all countries there are certain unquiet spirits who, from the mere desire of change, and of seeing the world, will quit their homes. 'To such I can offer no hopes,' says Mr. Curr, and scarcely any

Mr.

advice.

advice. I can only assure them that poverty will be their portion the moment they set foot on Van Diemen's Land,' which nevertheless possesses many advantages of climate and navigable streams.

Hobart Town contains about 600 houses and 3500 inhabitants: but let no one mistake this for a sign of colonial prosperity. It is by an enormous issue of paper money that much of this building has been carried on: it is hardly credible that promissory notes are issued to pay the bearer sixpence, on demand! To these notes are often added, "payable in dollars at five shillings each,' and sometimes they are made payable in colonial currency. It is astonishing what an issue the parties find for this sort of paper, and with what avidity it is received, even at par with Spanish dollars. Those persons who do not issue, will yet receive it, relying on the facility of paying it to others. If there is not honor among thieves, there seems to be plenty of credit at any rate. Where materials and labor can be obtained by a man who has no other property than in such notes as these, building may go on very merrily for a time. It must be owing to this inordinate issue that house-rent, likewise, is very dear; namely, from one to two hundred a year for moderate accommodation; and that Hobart Town, where it is often difficult to procure the most ordinary comforts and necessaries of life, is, in all respects, an expensive place to live in. It is impossible that this system should last long.

The moral condition of the lower classes, consisting chiefly of prisoners, or of those who are become free by the expiration of their term of servitude, is neither better nor worse than might be expected. They have not forgotten their old practices, although instances of improvement are not wholly wanting; particularly, Mr. Curr says, among that class of persons who have received the benefit of education. Many of these rise to independence; a few to opulence: and, it is to be hoped, there are some who have redeemed their lost reputation. Though the receivers of stolen property are numerous and notorious, personal outrages, it seems, are rare; and the fact is accounted for thus, namely, that the chances of escape from justice are so numerous that it is seldom necessary for the robber to add the crime of murder for his security. This ingenious argument probably escaped the acute mind of Sir Samuel Romilly: but we trust it will not be thrown away on his illustrious follower in the task of reforming our criminal jurisprudence, Sir James Mackintosh. If there were no chance of escape if punishment certainly and inevitably followed crime the criminal code would soon become a dead

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letter. He who commits murder on the person whom he lias robbed, extinguishes one evidence, no doubt; but what must that state of society be where it is perpetrated for the sake of security? "Set a thief to catch a thief" is an old proverb. The police at Van Diemen's Land ought to be the very model of perfection but it is just the contrary. A murderer knows that he will certainly be hanged if he is taken, tried, and found guilty but if he knew as certainly as he committed murder that he would be taken, tried, found guilty, and hanged for it, he would not commit the crime.

Bagdad is one of the most populous settlements: the traveller in passing through it may reckon about twenty farmhouses.

The mention of a farm-house must not, however, mislead the English farmer.. He naturally couples with it barns, cow-houses, and other out-buildings; a yard for the collection of manure; and a garden contiguous to the homestead. At the same time, he pictures to himself the thrifty housewife busied in the concerns of her household, her dairy, and her poultry. But here, for the most part, is little of the kind, and that little is any thing but picturesque or pleasing.

The cottage is usually built of sods, logs, or mud, and thatched with straw; a few logs laid together in the style of the American fence, perhaps, compose a pig-sty; and an open detached yard of the same materials, serves to contain the working cattle.

These are in a majority of cases the only features of a farm+ house in Van Diemen's Land, unless, indeed, we think proper to add the disgusting appearance of wool, bones, sheep-skins, wasted manure, and the confused heaps of ploughs, harrows, carts, fire-wood, and water-casks, with a few quarters of mutton or kangaroo hanging on a neighbouring tree, and a numerous tribe of dogs and idlers; the former barking, the latter lounging about. Every thing betokens waste and disorder, the total absence of industry and economy. As to the thrifty mistress of the house, her place is too frequently supplied (among the lower classes in particular) by being of a different nature, generally a convict, or one free by the expiration of her term of transpor tation. In respect to the dairy and poultry, the latter are indeed generally to be met with; but the possessor of a hundred head of cattle often cannot command milk to his tea.

'Such is, for the most part, the uninviting state of a farm-house in Van Diemen's Land, so opposite to the comfort, neatness, convenience, and frugality, which are conspicuous on the first approach to houses of a similar class in England. Though it would be too much to expect the economy, good order, and comfortable appearance in a new colony, where there has as yet been time for little more than what is necessary for existence; yet we too frequently see in the cottages and fields, much to remind us of the idleness and profligacy in which a great proportion of the inhabit

ants