who informed him of it? who is come from that quarter? If he expatiates on mortification and abstinence, Why, says the squaw, does not the holy father, who preaches to us such fine morality, practise it himself? If he speaks on the subject of confession, the squaw ascribes it to the curiosity of the priest, and contends that God has no need of knowing what the Indians are doing so that with such commentaries, the sermon is more prejudicial than favourable to the progress of faith.' The second volume is divided into three chapters, having many subordinate sections; of which the first particularizes the produce, the second relates the commerce, and the third gives the history and political condition of the country. - It is observed at p. 51. that some persons in Columbia are establishing sugar-refineries in order to smuggle refined sugar into Jamaica, where refineries are not permitted. At p. 195. some observations are made on water-communications, which might advantageously be founded in the British provinces of Demerara and Essequibo; - and at p. 286. the author hazards the prophecy that Santa Fé de Bogota will ultimately receive and export its merchandise by means of the river Orinoco. Commerce, he thinks, will desert the sea-coasts, and finally employ the fresh waters. It is very unfortunate that the ministers of Great Britain should have been so insensible to the value of Guyana at the last peace; when it would have been easy to procure a considerable extension of continental territory near the mouths of the Orinoco. In the historical memoir which concludes this work, the victory of Carabobo, gained by Bolivar over La Torre, is celebrated as the critical battle which decided the independence of Colombia. A copy of the Constitution follows, of which we present the introductory paragraph, addressed to the inhabitants. It is a very British constitution, but with an elective king. The most ardent desire of all and each of your representatives has been, to perform faithfully the high duties which you have assigned to them; and they believe that they have fulfilled those sacred functions in presenting to you the Constitution, which has been sanctioned by the general voice. In it you will find, that, on the basis of the union of a people formerly constituting different states, has been raised the firm and solid edifice of a nation whose government is popular representation, of which the legislative, executive, and judicial powers, accurately divided, have their duties marked out and defined, yet forming a whole of so combined and harmonious a kind, that by it are protected security, liberty, property, and equality of law. The legislative power, divided into two chambers, gives you full share in the formation of your laws, and the best right to hope hope that they will ever be just and equitable: you will not be bound but by those to which you have consented through the medium of your representatives, nor will you be subject to any other taxes than those which they have proposed and approved: no burdens can be imposed on any one which shall not be common to all; and these shall not be imposed to satisfy the passions of individuals, but to supply the wants of the Republic. The executive power, combined in one person, to whom it belongs to watch over the internal tranquillity and external security of the Republic, possesses all the faculties necessary for the discharge of its high duty. You will find that, in the splendour of its authority, it may confer benefits, but can cause no injury: its sword will be unsheathed only against the enemies of the government, without the possibility of offending the peaceful Colombian: it resembles a sun whose beneficent warmth, diffused throughout the territory of the Republic, contributes to develop the precious seeds of our happiness and prosperity. Public education, agriculture, commerce, the arts and sciences, and all the branches of national industry, are under the order of its wise administration, and subject to its benign influence. The judicial power, where the attempts of intrigue lose all their force, and riches their ascendancy, before which no one can appear with a serene countenance, unless he be clothed in the simple garb of justice, is destined impartially to remove your strifes, to restrain the evil-doer, and to cherish innocence: at its respected seat all will render homage to the law; and you will there behold the passions subdued, the trammels of artifice cut asunder, and the truth laid open. Such is the plan on which has been raised the Constitution of Colombia. Your representatives have placed an unbounded confidence only in the laws; for it is they which must secure equity between all and each, and which are at once the support of the dignity of the Colombian, the source of liberty, and the soul and council of the Republic. • The general council, in its deliberations, has had no other views than the common good, and the aggrandizement of the nation. The principal agents of the government depend on your elections: consider, meditate well, that on the right conduct of these depends your happiness, that intrigue and faction should never direct your judgment; whilst knowledge, virtue, and valour, prudently chosen and elevated by you, are the firm columns which perpetuate the duration of the edifice.' An appendix of tariffs, state-papers, news-paper-accounts of public meetings, and other such connected matter, completes this production; which, on the whole, is a book of merit. It was difficult to collect so much sound information concerning so unvisited a region: yet we think that it might undergo some abridgment with advantage; and we presume that it requires some corrective revisal.-Portraits of Zea and Bolivar ornament the volumes. ART. ART. III. History of Spanish and Portuguese Literature. By Frederick Bouterwek. Translated from the original German by Thomasina Ross. 2 Vols. 8vo. 17. 4s. Boards. Boosey and Sons. 1823. THE 66 men: HE German literati are certainly an extraordinary race of they are the Titans of modern literature, and lie almost buried under their own load of erudition, heaped up high as Olympus," as if they were resolved to vie with their giant ancestors and scale the very clouds. Like them, too, are they punished for their lust of knowlege, by falling prostrate under the weight of their own works: for, seriously, such would appear to have been their fate, when we contemplate the huge piles of sacred and profane learning treasured up from the age of the monks, through that of the Lutherans to the present, in the numerous libraries of the Continent. Among these, even Mr. Dibdin's researches and illustrations glimmer like a little taper amid a world of awful ruins, and barely light the way. Yet, in spite of this their "unwieldy strength," it must always be deemed highly honorable to the German scholars and historians that they have rendered themselves liable to such a charge; and that they have often. devoted a whole life to the illustration of a single subject, and carried the land-marks of human knowlege as far as human inquiry and exertions could possibly reach. The same ambitious spirit, and the same indefatigable industry, seem to extend throughout the whole system of their literature. Their histories in every branch, their Bibliothecas, their annual fairs, and even their Almanacks, are on a scale beyond those of any other people. It is true, however, that the causes of all this are to be sought in the peculiarities of their government and their situation, more than in their own genius and merits; and we do not mean to assert that their literary intercourse, or the circulation of their productions, may be compared, cæteris paribus, with the English: though even we can stand no competition with them for the voluminous character of their writings. It is thus that they have, in modern times, become the great store-house of ecclesiastical and temporal learning, of the national literature of other people, and of the most extended inquiries into all branches of science and of art; while rival writers have been contented with employing them without acknowlegement, or appealing to them by way of authority. In most instances, they have furnished the abstracts and compendiums on all subjects which have lately been discussed on the Continent; except, indeed, the lucubra tions of the Holy Alliance, in which they have not yet taken a share though, with the aid of the Carbonari, it is said, they were fast approaching that holy and forbidden ground, the only one which their daring steps have left untrodden. Through the medium of these extracts and translations from the more enlarged works of their neighbours, surrounding nations have, of late, made themselves somewhat more familiar with the grand labors of the Germans, who have assumed that imposing attitude in European literature which such labors merit. In particular, the French and the English are greatly indebted to them, in their account of the literature of other states; which embraces, however, much narrower views than those that have been taken by those German authors from whom their materials have been chiefly drawn ; and it is singular that these more curtailed accounts have been far better received in the countries in which they have been published, than the works or full translations of the original works themselves. Many of the latter have appeared both in France and England without attracting much attention; while other productions, expressly founded on them, from the pens of English and French writers, have been very generally read. M. de Sismondi has in this way availed himself of the History before us; drawing his information on Spanish and Portuguese literature chiefly from the sources afforded him by the learned Bouterwek. He acknowleges that numerous passages are taken nearly entire from the German, and this fact is rendered still more apparent from the English translations of both publications which have recently appeared. In his "View of the Literature of the South of Europe," M. de Sismondi has compressed into one moderate volume the most essential portion of all that is here contained in two, of much larger dimensions; and, in general, he is careful to declare his obligations. We should add that he has wholly re-modelled his materials, and infused into them the lively spirit of a French writer: but his account is not in any way so ample and complete with regard to Spanish and Portuguese literature, as that from which it is taken.As the two works, however, were composed on a very different plan, and with perfectly distinct objects, they can scarcely be brought into a comparison. M. de Sismondi gives a view of southern literature, delivered in a course of lectures, rapid, general, and reflective; while M. Bouterwek supplies a regular and detailed history of the subject, throughout its different epochs. That the language and poetry of the Peninsula have recently become very popular among us, we may consider as in some some degree proved by our being now presented with a version of such a book as this: the researches of Mr. Southey, Mr. Dunlop, Mr. Dillon, and other admirers of the old romances, having already prepared us for more extended inquiries, with which theirs, indeed, bear no sort of proportion. The numerous specimens that we have likewise received of Spanish romantic poetry, from the pens of some of our own poets, subsequently to the versions of Mr. Southey, have added a new interest and more powerful attractions to the subject. In the pages of M. Bouterwek we find very particular notices of many of the romantic writers, whose productions have been thus ably rendered by the genius of our countrymen no translations surpassing in point of beauty and expression some of those that have been given by Mr. Bowring, Mr. Wiffen, and Mr. Lockhart. We should imagine that this circumstance would tend, in the eyes of English readers, to impart a double interest to the work before us; more particularly as it is very ably rendered from the original, and displays both elegance and fidelity. The language is in general easy and spirited; and we should scarcely have expected from the pen of a female such a translation from so difficult and erudite an author as Bouterwek. Varied and profound as are this writer's researches on the present subject, they constitute only a small share of the immense undertaking to which they refer, viz. the "History of Arts and Learning, from the Restoration to the End of the Eighteenth Century, by a Society of learned Men;" one branch of which has been completed by Mr. B. in twelve volumes, of which the present are the third and fourth. The department allotted to him appears to have been Poetry and Eloquence, as exhibited in their rise, progress, and decline, throughout the respective nations of Europe. The last volume was published at Göttingen in the year 1819. His view of Spanish literature has been translated also into the French language, but not nearly so faithfully or so well as into the English. We must consider the volume relating to Portuguese literature as on the whole the most valuable of the two: not only because its subject is the least known, but because it is in itself the most interesting. Moreover, the general features of Portuguese poetry and romance have a much stronger resemblance to the English than the Castilian, or, indeed, than to those of any other nation of Europe; and it is not a little strange that we can boast only of a single version of Camoens, while we have been nearly overpowered with specimens from the Castilian poets, who are so far less in unison with English taste and feelings. The depth and |