F.R. and L.S. and William Spence, Esq. F.L.S. Illustrated by Coloured Plates."

On the Nature and Treatment of the various Distortions to which the Spine and the Bones of the Chest are subject: with an Inquiry into the Merits of the several Modes of Practice, that have been hitherto followed in the Treatment of these Diseases. By John Shaw, Lecturer on Anatomy and Surgery. In 8vo. Also, Engravings, in folio, illustrative of the Work.

The Night before the Bridal, a Spanish Tale; Sappho, a Dramatic Sketch; and other Poems, By Catherine Grace Garnett, Daughter of the late Dr. Garnett, of the Royal Institution. In 8vo.

Dr. Forster's Perennial Calendar, and Companion to the Almanac; containing Illustrations of the Calendar for every Day in the Year. In one thick Volume 8vo..

Dr. Thornton's Green-House Companion; intended as a Familiar Manual for the General Management of a GreenHouse. With numerous useful Lists, Directions as to Soils, &c.

The Lives of the Dukes of Bavaria, Saxony, and Brunswick, Ancestors of the Kings of Great Britain, of the Guelphic Dynasty: with Portraits of the most Illustrious of these Princes, from Drawings made from Ancient Statues and Paintings, by the Old Masters. By Sir Andrew Halliday.

The First Part of the third Folio Volume of Mr. Lodge's Illustrious English Portraits; accompanied with Biographical Narratives.

A Series of Original Views of the Collegiate and Parochial Churches of England. By Messrs. Neale and J. Le Keux accompanied by Historical and Descriptive Ac

counts.

Memoirs of Samuel Pepys, Esq. Secretary to the Admiralty, during the Reigns of Charles the Second, and James the Second, and the intimate Friend of the celebrated John Evelyn: now first deciphered from the original MSS. written in Short Hand, and preserved in the Pepysian Library. In two 4to. Volumes.

Batavian Anthology; or, Specimens of the Dutch Poets: with Remarks on the Poetical Literature and Language of the Netherlands. By John Bowring and Harry S. Van Dyk.

Observations illustrative of the History and Treatment of Chronic Debility; the prolific source of Indigestion, Spasmadic Diseases, and various Nervous Affections. By William Shearman, M.D.

THE

BRITISH CRITIC,

FOR DECEMBER, 1823.

ART. I. Travels in various Countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa. By Edward Daniel Clarke, LL.D. Part the Third. Scandinavia. Section the Second. 4to. 556 pp. 31. 13s. 6d. Cadell. 1823.

IT is but natural that we should turn to these pages with feelings of very poignant regret; and their lamented author is so fully publici juris, that we may be permitted to express these feelings without reserve, and with an entire confidence that they will be in unison with those of all to whom they are addressed. Few who have found time to write so much and so well, have lived more among mankind and for mankind than the late Dr. Clarke; few have left in the affections of those with whom they lived most closely, a more vivid or a more permanent memorial. To an intellect originally rapid and penetrating, he had applied the most assiduous culture; and profiting by a rare combination of opportunities both for study and for travel, in the privacy of the closet and on the open stage of the world, he united in himself a wider range and a greater diversity of knowledge, than commonly falls to the lot of a single individual. Enterprizing and energetic, he contemned all obstacles which appeared to withstand acquirement; prompt and courageous, he overcame all real difficulties in its pursuit; frank and liberal, he treasured it up only that he might more largely dispense it when attained: for if we were asked to name that quality which predominated over all others in the constitution of his mind, which tempered and mitigated the abundant warmth of a naturally ardent disposition, and which prevented its luxuriance from running as it were to waste, we should be amply borne out by all who were even slightly acquainted with his character, when we state it to have been-Benevolence. After a youth of early Academical distinction, and subsequently of laborious and extensive travel, not easily rivalled among our countrymen, in the meridian of life he found himself once more in

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that sea of learning which had formed him as a nursing mother, and which he always cherished with the fondest regard. Here, not only by the love of science and of letters with which himself was so profoundly imbued, but still more by the singular power with which he was endowed of awakening others also to feel the same; by the elegance and attractiveness of the pursuits in which he skilfully shewed the path, and successfully allured so many to follow; and by the brilliance which his free and courteous hospitality diffused around social intercourse, it is scarcely too much to say that he impressed almost a new stamp upon his University; and that, without endangering the manliness and solidity of her ancient studies by rash and hasty innovations, he introduced a taste for additional branches, which have increased her grace and heightened her practical utility.

From this voluntary course of honourable and beneficial labour, he was snatched away too early and too suddenly for all except himself; and the only consolation which could be suggested to those who knew him best, arose from the very source which made their sorrow bitterest at the moment. The volume now before us was nearly ready for publication at the time of his decease. It completes the series published under his own immediate superintendence, and finishes the history of his travels. Another posthumous volume is now being arranged from his miscellaneous papers, and we cannot doubt that its extensive circulation will amply recompense that openness of hand and singleness of eye which distinguished Dr. Clarke in life, and which have contributed to make his loss so irreparable to his family*.

The public are already acquainted with Dr. Clarke's researches in the greater part of Norway. The present volume opens with his residence at Christiania. Here, under the guidance of Bernard Anker, the Lorenzo of Scandinavia, as he has been well termed by Wolff, he had favourable opportunities of observing Norwegian manners; which in many points do not appear to have made rapid strides towards civilization. Even an assembly at the house of the Governor was thronged with gentlemen smoking, spitting, and playing at whist at the same time, while the score of their game was marked in chalk upon the table. But the magnificence of the brothers of the family of Anker atoned for these petty barbarisms. The establishments of both Peter and Bernard were on a scale of unrivalled splendour, and their charities

Subscriptions are received by Cadell, in the Strand; and Payne and Foss

Pall-Mall.

were as unconfined as their hospitality. Their names are too generally and too advantageously known to need any pause upon them here: but the reader may form some notion of the difficulties which the founders and supporters of almost every institution connected with knowledge or benevolence had to encounter, and the resources which they brought with them to the struggle, from a single incidental fact which was mentioned to Dr. Clarke. When he observed that the philosophical instruments in Bernard Anker's library were of English manufacture, his host rejoined, "I must send to England for almost every thing; all the linen of my family is sent annually to London to be washed."

The commerce of Christiania, at the time of Dr. Clarke's visit, consisted in an annual export, to the amount of 150,000l. in timber, iron, copper, alum, glass, and skins. The imports were about two-thirds of this sum, principally from England; in cloth, stockings, camlets, hardware, lead, and coals; the rest was corn, from Denmark and the Baltic. The population, including the old town and suburbs, did not exceed 9000. That of Norway altogether, over a surface of 21,000 miles, was 970,000. The whole export of the kingdom was little short of two millions sterling. The streets of Christiania were narrow and filthy, intersected by open sewers, in which all the drainage of the houses was allowed to stagnate. Norway did not possess a single bookseller's shop; nevertheless Christiania could boast its public library, the legacy of a native.

The Kongsberg mines were a point of great attraction to Dr. Clarke. They are situated about forty miles west of the capital, and are termed by Ponloppidan, who wrote in 1751, the most considerable, profitable, and inexhaustible of any European mines: yet when Dr. Clarke saw them they were worked by the Government at th annual loss of 240,000 rix dollars; and were kept open only from the fear of depriving a great number of inhabitants of all subsistence, if they should once be closed. The metal is found in detached masses, not in regular and continuous veins, so that the labour is a perpetual lottery of profit and loss. Some of the masses of native silver thus found, are of enormous size and weight. One preserved in the Royal Museum at Copenhagen is nearly six feet in length, in one part measures six inches in diameter, and weighs 568 (Danish) pounds. About 2300 men are employed in the works. Their wages are a shilling a day, with an allowance of more than two-thirds drawback on the price of corn. Their hours of toil are from five in the morning till one in the afternoon; all farther time, if required, receives

extra payment: and employment is found even for children of twelve years of age. The great loss to Government arises from the long train of intendants and assessors, whose salaries engross the profits: for more than 5000 persons of all ranks (exclusive of their families and children) receive pay from Kongsberg according to the establishment; and in the country at large 14,000 families, immediately or collaterally, derive their support from the mines. There can be little doubt, that in private hands they would become a source of considerable gain.

On his return from these mines Dr. Clarke proceeded once again to Sweden. We shall transfer him to the iron mine of Persberg.

"As we drew near to the wide and open abyss, a vast and sudden prospect of yawning caverns and of prodigious machinery prepared us for the descent. We approached the edge of the dreadful gulph whence the ore is raised; and ventured to look down; standing upon the verge of a sort of platform, constructed over it in such a manner as to command a view into the great opening as far as the eye could penetrate amidst its gloomy depths: for, to the sight, it is bottomless. Immense buckets, suspended by rattling chains, were passing up and down: and we could perceive ladders scaling all the inward precipices; upon which the workpeople, reduced by their distance to pigmies in size, were ascending and descending. Far below the utmost of these figures, a deep and gaping gulph, the mouth of the lowermost pit, was, by its darkness, rendered impervious to the view. From the spot where we stood, down to the place where the buckets are filled, the distance might be about seventy-five fathoms; and as soon as any of these buckets emerged from the gloomy cavity we have mentioned, or until they entered into it in their descent, they were visible; but below this point they were hid in darkness. The clanking of the chains, the groaning of the pumps, the hallooing of the miners, the creaking of the blocks and wheels, the trampling of horses, the beating of the hammers, and the loud and frequent subterraneous thunder from the blasting of the rocks by gunpowder, in the midst of all this scene of excavation and uproar, produced an effect which no stranger can behold unmoved. We descended with two of the miners, and our interpreter, into this abyss. The ladders, instead of being placed like those in our Cornish mines, upon a series of platforms as so many landing-places, are lashed together in one unbroken line, extending many fathoms; and being warped to suit the inclination or curvature of the sides of the precipices, they are not always perpendicular, but hang over in such a manner, that even if a person held fast by his hands, and if his feet should happen to slip, they would fly off from the rock, and leave him suspended over the gulph. Yet such ladders are the only