its own strength nor the goodness of its cause, relies only on the tender affections of those whom it addresses. We now arrive at the crisis to which all the preceding distress was no more than a necessary preparation : if Bianca had been drawn with feelings in the smallest degree less acute, or less painfully agonized,it would have been impossible to justify the poet's next conception. For at this point she is told of the debate in council on Bartolo's disappearance, and in the madness of the moment she rushes to accuse her husband, regarding solely his consequent separation from Aldabella, and never taking into the account any other circumstances that must necessarily attend it. To make restitution of that ill-acquired and pernicious wealth, and to become poor again, was to restore to her happiness and Fazio; farther than this she did not look. When the duke pronounces on him the first part of his sentence,confiscation of his wealth,she rushes forward rejoicing, 'Oh, we'll be poor again! Oh, I forgive thee, we'll be poor and happy,' &c. and when he ends with the condemnation to death, she starts, as from a fairy dream, to a horrid and unimagined reality. This was no easy incident to conduct, and was besides a very hazardous one, as complete success in the execution could alone justify it. There will be many, doubtless, who will still condemn it as exceeding the limits of poetical probability; such people must pass on to the toilsome repentance of Bianca, to her harrowing remorse, and to the expiation which she offers by a broken heart. Mr. Milman must see by the extent of our remarks the value which we set upon his performance; we have examined his pretensions to public favour with perfect impartiality: it has been sometimes our duty to censure, but more frequently it has been our grateful task to express our approbation of him. Before we part on this occasion, he will excuse us if, in the same tone of justice and friendship, we address a few words of advice to him. We do it the more boldly from the good sense which we discover in his alterations on comparing the first and second editions of Fazio. In the first he had not, indeed, committed the foul crime of pampering loose imaginations by licentious images, but he certainly had, in some instances, dressed virtuous passion in too warm and vigorous language. These have all been corrected, and the voluntary correction of error is very creditable: Mr. Milman well knows that what is innocent in itself may become pernicious from the weakness, or the corruption, of the recipient. It was well said by whoever was the author of Brittain's Ida 'But were thy verse and song as finely fram'd As are those parts, yet should it soone be blam'd, That the author of Fazio is blest with no common portion of poetic genius it is impossible to doubt; indeed it is with this conviction, rather than with full satisfaction in his performance, that we rise from the reading of it. All that he has yet done is but the presage and the promise of the future poet; it is as nothing to build his fame upon; he may stifle the flame by injudicious treatment, he may suffer it to expire by neglect. Let him not be deceived by the dangerous and ambiguous oracle, that poets must be born, not made; they must be made, as much as painters, as sculptors, as orators are made. True it is that nature must do much; but culture, moral and intellectual, and all the thousand circumstances that give the colour to man's life, must do as much, or more. To Mr. Milman we feel warranted in saying, that the path lies open before him; we exhort him to fulfil his destiny; but if he makes the resolution, it should be made seriously and deliberately, with a full knowledge of the sacrifices it will require, and the objects to which it legitimately leads. It is not to rise on the popularity of a London season, to be a speculation for booksellers, engravers, and music-makers, to be a shuttlecock for reviewers, an idol of sentimental young ladies, or the oracle of a côterie; these are neither the objects, nor the path which leads to them, the school of a true poet. Under such circumstances, and in such scenes, it is said that human nature is to be studied, and a necessary knowledge of the world acquired; with as much truth, we imagine, it might be asserted, that smooth shillings and crooked sixpences would teach us the coinage of the country. Vanity, indeed, (the very cankerworm of mental excellence,) is soothed and pampered, but the powers of the mind are enervated, its attention dissipated, its application blunted, and all its creative freshness utterly blighted. The true poet, as he has a nobler aim, so has he a more laborious and, we will add, a more delightful discipline to submit to; he that pledges himself to the pursuit should consider that he has undertaken no less than the general improvement of his intellectual faculties, the perpetual study of nature in all her forms and accidents, and, above all, the elevating, the purifying, and softening of his heart. By long and enthusiastic labours, of no limited for exclusive range in literature, he must enrich his memory and regu late his taste; not only the present, but the past, not only the poets, but the historians, the philosophers, the critics, and the divines, are capable of adding new treasures, or better order, to his acquired stores. In accord with these pursuits, will be the perpetual study of nature in all the grandeur, the variety, the sublime harmony inanimate creation, in the faithful instincts and beautiful forms of animals, and, above all, in the mysterious volume of the Heart of of Man. But, lastly and chiefly, the poet will be busy in the improvement of his own moral frame; he will strive to act always from lofty motives, and for worthy objects; he will accustom himself, on principle, to yield to the impulses, and delight in the ties, of domestic affections; he will encourage the softness of his feelings, because he knows that the tenderest may still be the firmest heart; he will be earnest in the practical study of his duties, and his happiness will be prayer, and elevation of the soul to heaven. A being so disciplined would be neither too wise, nor too great, for those around him; neither idle, nor abstracted, nor ignorant of worldly matters; and anxious to diffuse happiness, he would be practically useful in his sphere, and be the light and life of his own immediate circle. Yet consistently with all this within his own breast, he might have, perhaps, a purer and a fairer world of his own conception; the scenes of his own painting, the music that sounded only in his own ear, the forms that passed before his mental eye, and the spirits he had himself given birth to, might be richer, and sweeter, and brighter, and nobler, than the realities on which they were founded. But though beyond nature, they would not be unnatural; and thus alone, by the exhibition of models that may be loved and followed without fear or reproach, can poetry perfectly fulfil her noblest aim of purifying while she augments the sources of human pleasure. ART. III. Travels in Beloochistan and Sinde; accompanied by a Geographical and Historical Account of those Countries; with a Map. By Lieutenant Henry Pottinger, of the Honourable East India Company's Service. 4to. London. 1813. WE E can scarcely conceive a bolder undertaking, or one more fraught with perils and difficulties and discomforts of every kind, than that which is described in the volume we are about to notice. Two British officers, under the disguise of 'horse dealers' in the employ of a Hindostannee merchant of Bombay, launch into the midst of an unknown and barbarous country, the inhabitants of which are robbers by profession, and inspired with that deadly hatred of infidels, which is so strong and universal a feature among the followers of Mahomet, in every part of the world to which his baneful doctrines have extended;-liable, moreover, every moment, to be detected as spies, where detection would probably be destruc tion. The country itself, through which they set out with a determination to penetrate, was known to be such as would necessarily deprive them of the conveniences, and very often of the necessaries of life they knew they must not only be exposed to the common dangers and fatigue of travelling, but to the severer trials of hup- ger, thirst, and sickness-the almost certain result of exposure to great vicissitudes and extremes of climate, between that of the snowy mountains and the burning sandy plains. With all these discouragements before their eyes, and a thousand others that the busy imagination would be apt to conjure up, Captain Christie and Lieutenant Pottinger determined to see none of them; but with light hearts, and ardent minds, set out on their journey, anticipating only the pleasure they should derive from developing the geography of 'countries utterly unknown to Europeans, of whose people, government, and customs, no records are extant since the time of Alexander the Great.' The very idea of retracing the steps of the Macedonian conqueror gave an interest and animation to their enterprise, and seemed to infuse new zeal into the breasts of our travellers. The result of this arduous undertaking is the volume which Lieutenant Pottinger has given to the public; the general outlines of which, he tells us,' were originally compiled in an Official Report of the journey, and submitted to the Governor General, for the information of the Supreme British Government of India; but that he afterwards threw it into the shape of a regular Diary, and inserted such anecdotes and descriptions, illustrative of the manners and habits of the natives, as would have been superfluous in the Official Report.' In this shape it may be considered as forming the counterpart of Mr. Elphinstone's volume, and completing the description of the vast tract of country between Persia and Hindostan, by adding to the account of Caubul that of its two most southern provinces or tributary states, Beloochistan and Lower Sinde. We are indebted for these volumes, as well as the Geographical Memoir of the Persian Empire,' by Lieutenant Macdonald Kinneir, and the important and interesting, History of Persia' by Sir John Malcolm, to the restless ambition of Bonaparte, whose views on the Eastern world, after the peace of Tilsit, could neither be mistaken, nor treated with indifference by the British government at home, or its representatives in India: the latter of whom, with a laudable zeal, and in the proper spirit of military precaution, anticipated every measure that the former could have desired, by the mission of Sir J. Malcolm to Persia, of Mr. Elphinstone to Caubul, of Mr. Smith to Sinde, and of our present travellers through Beloochistan. It may be of use to the reader if, before we set out, we exhibit, from various parts of the volume, a brief sketch of the general aspect of the country, its extent, divisions, and population: this appears the more necessary, as neither Chardin, nor Hanway, nor any of the modern writers on Persia, Affghanistan, or Hindostan, have given any account of them. The boundaries of Beloochistan, taken in its largest acceptation, are as follows: on the northward, ! Affghanistan and Seistan; on the westward, the Persian provinces of Laristan and Kirman; on the southward, the Indian Ocean or Erythrean Sea; and on the eastward, a part of Sinde and Shikarpoor. Omitting some projecting points, it may be said to extend between the parallels of 25° and 30° of northern latitude, and between 58 and 68° of eastern longitude, comprehending a surface whose mean length may be estimated at 550, and breadth at 300 geographical miles. Mr. Pottinger, on his own authority we believe, makes it to consist of six divisions. 1. The provinces of Jhalawan and Sarawan, and the district of Kelat. 2. The provinces of Mukran and Lus. 3. The province of Kutch Gundawa, and district of Hurrund Dajel. 4. Kohistan, (country of hills,) west of the desert. 5. The desert. 6. The province of Sinde. The incorrectness of such a division must be obvious, as Sinde is a tributary state of Caubul, governed by its own Ameers, over whom the Khan of Khelat, the Chief of Beloochistan, has neither jurisdiction, power, nor pre-eminence; but as these countries are perpetually changing masters, the divisions of them are of little importance those above mentioned, with the exception of Kutch Gundawa, which is naturally a part of Sinde, and Mukran, which borders on the sea, were traversed by Lieutenant Pottinger. The Brahooick mountains springing abruptly, to a conspicuous height and grandeur, out of the sea at Cape Mowaree or Monze, and running nearly in a northern direction till they fall in with some of the numerous branches thrown off by that enormous pile known by the name of the Hindoo Koosh, or the Indian Caucasus, form a natural and precipitous barrier between the plains of the Indus and the mountainous regions of Beloochistan. From this main trunk, on its western side, branch out inferior chains of mountains in every direction, leaving between them valleys that are generally narrow, but capable of cultivation, with sloping sides well adapted for feeding cattle. The ranges of mountains, however, in advancing to the northward, instead of forming valleys, are connected only by plains of sand, totally destitute of vegetation; and they finally disappear in this direction, in the two great sandy deserts of Seistan and Kirman. Mr. Pottinger unfortunately had no barometer with him, to assist him in ascertaining the height of any of these mountains; but he conjectures, from a comparison of the Ghauts or passes, with some of those in Hindostan, and from observations on the beds of rivers and the temperature of the atmosphere, that the city |