That still could keep afloat the struggling tars,

For yet they strove, altho' of no great use: There was no light in heaven but a few stars,

The boats put off, o'ercrowded with their crews;

She gave a heel, and then a lurch to port, And, going down head foremost-sunk, in short."

52.

Then rose from sea to sky the wild farewell,

Then shriek'd the timid, and stood still the brave,

Then some leap'd overboard with dreadful yell,

As eager to anticipate their grave; &c.

TH

For the Monthly Magazine. THE PHILOSOPHY OF COTEMPORARY CRITICISM. 1 No. XIV. Quarterly Review, No. 49. HE first article in the present Number bears the title of "the Spanish Drama," This is improper; for, in fact, it is a disquisition concerning the plays and genius of Calderon, with a few slight preliminary remarks, and an extract from Lord Holland's Life of Lopez de Vega. Such, howe ver, as it is, the critic is temperate and judicious; but we do not agree with him in thinking that there was any other cause than the general spirit of the age, for the resemblance which he finds between the plays of the Spanish and English stage. But perhaps when it is considered, that at one time the English and Spanish crowns were united-and that there was a chance of the union becoming perpetual by the progeny of Philip II. and Mary I., it may have been the fashion in England, during their time, to cultivate a taste for Spanish literature, and to imitate Spanish amusements, and to this fashion we may owe the resemblance in our dramatic entertainments which has been so often noticed, and never satisfactorily explained. We merely throw out the idea for consideration, with remarking only, that it was not till some time after this supposed fashion, that the resemblance alluded to became general, for the first English plays possessed a Grecian simplicity of fable.

The second article is a gentlemanly notice of Captain Lyon's narrative of his travels in Northern Africa, with a few touches at a most absurd example of the ignorance of mere book learning

men might have some chance to save themselves, for the boats were at some distance. Loss of Pandora frig.p.378. "We had scarcely quitted the ship, when she gave a heavy lurch to port, and then went down head foremost."

Loss of Lady Hobart packet.

52.

"At this instant, one of the officers told the captain she was going down, and bidding him farewell, leapt overboard: the crew had just time to leap overboard, which they did, uttering a most dreadful yell."

Loss of Pandora frig. pp. 197-8

concerning the Niger and the Nile, by one John Dudley,a vicar. We entirely agree with the reviewer in thinking Captain Lyon's book highly interesting, from the manner in which it is written; we think, also, that we can discern in the address and natural urbanity of the Captain, that he was well qualified for the task of exploring Africa. for his companion, Ritchie, he seems to have been a poor, weak, impracticable creature-and as little qualified to wend his way among barbarians as any one that ever embarked in an enter prise so difficult.

As

"The Sketch Book," the pleasant publication of Geoffrey Crayon, gent., furnishes the materials for the third ars ticle. We are gratified to observe that the endeavours of the American authors have been treated of late with more candour and indulgence among us than formerly. This is no doubt owing to their own improved taste, and partly to a better humour springing up towards them. Hitherto, indeed, to use a Yankee expression, the productions of the American press have been very trashy; but there is an urbane and European ease, even elegance, in the style of Mr. Washington Irving-that has done much to increase the literary consideration of his countrymen. We anticipate from his pen a lively and interesting account of the continent, although he seems to have fewer associa tions, in connection with what he will see in France and Italy, than any other author who writes so well. Perhaps his freedom from classical ideas will enable him to give us the more amusing work.

The fourth article, on the Military Force of Great Britain, is drawn up with ability, but deserves the severest

censure

censure. It may properly be divided into two parts, and upon the first we are disposed to bestow unqualified approbation. We never read a better, a clearer, or a more satisfactory sketch of the military history of Europe; but in noticing M. Dupin's respectable work, which gave occasion to the subject, the reviewer seems literally to lose his senses, and breaks out into the most contemptible party and national spleen that has ever disgraced the Quarterly Review. We cannot persuade ourselves that the first and second parts of this paper are by the same hand.

"The Etonian," a little periodical work, professedly published by Etonians, is tenderly dealt by in the fifth article. It certainly contains some proofs of respectable mediocrity, both in verse and prose; but if there had not been Etonians connected with the Quarterly Review, and some of them also with the Etonian, we should never have heard of these fading and falling leaves.

The sixth article is a very able disquisition concerning the Architecture of the middle ages, and it is executed with a finer impress of moral sensibility than might have been expected from a topic so purely antiquarian. It is one of the best papers on the subject that we have met with, and derives a degree of interest and value from the execution, highly ereditable to the author.

66

We do not well know what to make of the seventh, on the Annals of the Parish," an historical sketch of the vil lage manners of Scotland. It is sufficiently laudatory, and gives all due praise to the fidelity of the descriptions but it lugs in "by ear and horn" another work by the same author, for the express purpose, as it were, of felling it, most butcher-like, at once. We allude to "the Earthquake," in which we do think there are as many examples of true portraiture, as there are in the Annals, and some specimens of even higher and superior composition. The critic should have been more sparing of his approbation on the truth and simplicity of "the Annals," after condemning "the Earthquake," if he expected his readers to believe he was not actuated by some particular and peculiar motive.

The fifth volume of "Mitford's History of Greece," supplies matter for the eighth article, which, although exceedingly severe, without, however, being

abusive, is yet perfectly just. The style of Mr. Mitford is certainly about the very worst of the present dayarid, husky, uneven, hard, every thing, in a word, that is descriptive of grating harshness and discord. The honey of Hymettus, and the oil of Attica, have neither soothed his throat nor softened his lip-nor is he endowed with any portion of that fine spirit which ennobled the sentiments and gave elegance to the personal beauty of the human form. But bad as his manner is, we observe that the reviewer makes it worse in his quotations, by copying what, we think, he could not but know were errors of the printer, not of the writer. It is, however, a curious circumstance, that the Quar terly Review, which in general excels in classical topics, is, in this article, inferior to itself. We had a right to expect from it, on a History of Greece, one of the most splendid specimens of its best ability. But if Mr. Mitford has no merit in the art of composition, as a compiler he is entitled to very considerable praise, having brought together a great mass of materials, which some more skilful hand, we doubt not, will work into beautiful effect. Out of his "rugged lore" a single volume might be formed of unequalled interest, romantic simplicity and beauty.

The ninth article is devoted to Capt. Parry's Journal of the Voyage of Discovery. It is drawn up with ability, and where the writer confines himself to reflections on facts, and to pointing out the merits of the officers and men engaged in this enterprise of unexampled daring, we cannot but approve of the justness and propriety of what he says; but he unfortunately endeavours to be a philosopher, and hatches theories as easily as the Captain grew his cresses in the frying-pan. Nevertheless, he has furnished us with a pleasing and interesting paper. But the sublime of maritime adventure was never touched before the publication of Parry's jour nal, and it was impossible to speak of it without calling forth feelings of admiration and awe. It is amazing to hear the regrets of ignorance, that Parry's journal should possess so little interest-that is to say, should tell so little of the cannibals that each other eat,

"The Anthropophagi, and men whose

heads

Do grow beneath their shoulders." For ourselves we think it contains the

ultimate

ultimate triumph of the British naval spirit and discipline; and the cheerful Parry with his bold free-hearted companions, frozen up in the midnight horrors of the frozen regions, will in all times coming, be referred to by moralists and poets, as one of the richest tales of courage and fortitude, that philosophy or the arts have yet commemorated. The agreeable recreation of a newspaper for the ships, we should however notice, is an old marine contrivance: we have seen ourselves several highly amusing specimens of the soit, got up during the American rebellion, on board the men of war stationed along the American coast-not, however, either in purity or abilitythough exceedingly humorous-equal to the North Georgia Gazette.

The tenth article, relative to Scudamore on mineral waters, we recommend to all water-drinking invalids. It is one of the characteristics of the present day to compress and bring together the floes of subjects with which the ocean of literature is overspread, and a sensible book on mineral waters, drawn up with science, and no quackery, was much wanted. It has been supplied by Dr. Scudamore, and his work is reviewed in a judicious manner.

But by far the most interesting article of the Number is the eleventh, on Mr. James Fergusson's Reports of Discussions of the Consistorial Court of Scotland. It is, we conceive, impossible for any mind but those parchment intellects, whom the perusal of statutes and reports has dried up and drained of all human sympathy, to read this account of the state in which the law respecting marriage and divorce stands between the institutions of England and Scotland, without shuddering with horror and disgust. It has long been felt and confessed, that the marriage act of England is a daring usurpation over the laws of God and nature, and that the sins and sorrows to which it gives rise cannot be much longer endured. It must, and that shortly, too, be amended. But to hear it solemnly maintained by the tribunals of justice, that a marriage contracted in England, cannot be dissolved by any process short of an act of the English legislature-let the adultery take place in what country it may, or the parties be resident where they think fit-is one of the most audacious pretensions that ever legal presumption dared to set up against the rights and the natural fran

chises of mañ. Adultery is a crime— it is in all lands and in all societies, treason against the most sacred of all institutions. And is it to be tolerated, that the legislature of England shall say it shall not be punished by any other authority than that of the English judicature? The nation is under great obligations to the writer in the Quarterly Review, for directing the public attention to the importance of this question—and we trust and hope that Lord Ellenborough, who seems to have bestowed great consideration on the anomalies of the marriage act, will be induced to consider this serious question also, with the view of supplying some remedy of the kind we suggest, for we are well aware that it will not do to attempt any change in the marriage law of Scotland, nor would it be wise to try by any modification, to corrupt its rational simplicity, in any degree, by trying to adapt it to the workings of such a crude system of facilities to fraud and sin as the marriage law of England.

To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. SIR,

YOUR

6

OUR correspondent, Inquisitor, in your Number for June, p. 402, refers to a letter in the hand-writing of Junius, by the Bury post, and enquires who was at Bury at that date?' At what date? I suppose, however, the date intended is that of the letters of Junius. Also that Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, is intended. The only person, I believe, in that vicinity, whose name has ever been implicated in this puzzling affair, is General Lee. Now, could the hand-writing of the imitations, epigrams, &c. be identified with that of General Lee, it might doubtless be received as a sufficient proof, that he was really the author of the letters of Junius. This test surely cannot present insuperable difficulties, since Lee's MS. cannot yet be entirely extinct, and most probably some of his letters are yet preserved in the Davers' family, where he was so often an inmate.

I have periodically, but always hitherto anonymously, borne some share in the Junian controversy, having been a constant reader and enthusiastic admirer of the style and spirit, not indeed of the half-bred and insidious politics, of those letters from their first appearance, which was during my residence in Suffolk. Among my earliest juvenile essays (1769,) was an attempt

ed

ed imitation of the celebrated Junius; and if getting into a scrape in consequence, had been an evidence of success, I should not have been without a plea. At that period I do not recollect to have either heard or read of the name of General Lee, as the supposed author of Junius; I have no doubt, however, of his having been then resident in England; and a few years since, when Dr. Girdlestone published his pamphlet, I applied to Sir Charles Bunbury, for information on that point, and was by him directed to a person, who assured me of the fact from his own

personal knowledge. I nevertheless assigned a variety of sufficient reasons, to my own conviction at least, that Lee could not possibly have written those letters. He abandoned his country and what rational motive could there be, on either side, for concealment, had he been the writer? That some powerful motive of that kind does yet subsist, is sufficiently evident, because nobody doubts that the late king, and various accredited political persons, were in the secret, and that Junius, in the ultimate, made his peace at court. Somers Town. JOHN LAWRENCE.

For the Monthly Magazine. SUBMERSION of the Village of STRON, in BOHEMIA, as reported in a Letter from M. WINKLER, dated April 20, 1820.

T

HE village of Stron, in the estate of Fermian, in Bohemia, was situated on a declivity, in the NE. of the valley of Eger, about a league above Saatz, partly near the river, and partly in a gorge that descended towards the Eger. On a hill that forms a border to this gorge, were the church and parsonage house, and the village descended along the gorge parallel to the Eger, towards the NW. This hill contains beds of an earthy pit-coal that spread through the country, and are covered with strata of sand and alluvion. The Eger flows at the distance of about 200 toises from Stron. Previous to the accident, it formed a bay alongside of Stron, edged with hills of moving sand, not very lofty, but steep. On the higher part of the declivity were a number of springs that were quickly lost in the sands.

These springs have proved the cause of a calamity which in these countries, where glaciers and earthquakes are unknown, may be deemed unique in its kind. The water of the springs has MONTHLY MAG. No. 357.

gradually perforated large subterranean cavities in the strata of sand, so that, at length, the whole surface of the soil, with the church, the houses, and the gardens, rested only on some detached columns of sand that were daily diminishing. Whether subterranean combustions of pit-coal may not have co-operated, is a point hitherto undecided.

For a length of time the earth had been sinking in different places. Crevices appeared in the walls of the buildings; the doors would no longer shut, and some weeks ago, a great noise was heard in the middle of the night. The people are roused from their sleep; a singular movement of the earth advancing forward, and, at the same time, sinking, is observed. The inhabitants flee, remove their cattle, &c., and at some distance from the village, wait for the morning. Its appearance displays an image of destruction; half of the village had disappeared: where no houses had ever been, roofs and chimnies were seen rising from the ground. The hill, the church, and the parsonage were no longer to be found, and at some distance appeared a chaos of parcels of earth intermixed with ruins and crevices.

The church is eighty feet below the site it formerly occupied; it is divided into two, half of it buried in ruins. Here lies a steeple overthrown, and there a confused medley of statues, images of saints, stables, &c. The river is thrown out of its channel, and where it formed a bay, there is now an accumulation of earth. The churchyard is thrown into a shapeless heap, and the whole territory bears another aspect. In different patches are seen layers of a fat earth, over which the sand has glided. It seems that the Eger must have crumbled the props on which the hill stood, as they had ever

an inclination towards the river.

A number of things have been fortunately preserved, and, with the exception of some cattle, no lives were lost. Fifteen houses are yet standing, but the soil is insecure, and the downfal will probably be universal.

I was at a loss, at first, to recognize the country, and from the inhabitants I could only learn that they had been disturbed by a tremendous crash, and that they sought refuge by flight. The people were rich; their loss, in point of furniture, is not so considerable as in the superficies of the soil. Ꭰ

The

The village is now a sort of central spot for pilgrimage to the whole of Bohemia; the curious flock hither from every quarter to explore the effects of this phenomenon. It is impossible to form a just idea of it without inspection.

To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. SIR,

A to

S a general formula for finding

Calendar, seems to be rather a desideratum, I have sent the following for insertion in your widely-circulating Magazine, if you think your valuable pages have not been occupied too much with the subject already.

I know that several eminent mathematicians, compared with whose acquirements, mine almost vanish into nothing, have either failed in the attempt to give a general formula for this purpose, or declined the task. I therefore delayed sending this till I had given it every examination I was capable of giving it; and I now present it to you, Sir, under the most positive conviction that it will give the time of Easter correctly, for all years, according to the English regulations. Evesham, April 12th.

J. TOVEY.

reference to the high water mark in the Thames?

2. The difference of level between the Duke of Bridgewater's Canal, aud the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, a branch canal having lately been executed, which connects these two canals together?

3. The rise of the Thames from the sill of the lock at Brentford, to the river Kennet, near Reading, and from

Kennet and Avon Canal at Newbury? 4. The rise of the Severn from Stourport to the canal at Shrewsbury?

5. The difference of level between the Lancaster and the Leeds and Liverpool Canals, where they intercut each other? 6. The fall of the river Aire, from Leeds to the Lea?

7. The fall of the Thames, from Brentford to the sea?

8. The fall of the Severn, from the sill of the Canal lock at Worcester, to the Avon at Tewkesbury, thence to Gloucester, and from Gloucester to the sea?

9. The fall of the Bristol Avon from the Kennet and Avon Canal lock, at Bath, to Bristol Bridge, and thence to the Severn?

10. The fall of the river Kew (where it joins a branch of the Grand Junction Canal at Northampton) to Peterboro', and thence to the sea?

11. The fall of the Trent, from the sill of the last lock upon the Grand Trunk Canal to the Chesterfield Canal, and from thence to the Humber, where the Humber and Trent unite?

12. The fall of the Stratford Avon, from the sill of the Stratford Canal lock, to its junction with the Severn, at Tewkesbury.

13. If in the reply to the 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th enquiries, a reference were made to fixed points, contiguous to those estimated to be the high and low water marks, it would afford as great an approximation to accuracy as circumstances will admit; and probably a barometrical admeasurement, conducted with all the proper precautions, may be the most easily adopted in most of these cases. If observations were made with Sir Henry Englefield's barometer, at various situations on different canals, viz. on March 31st, June 30th, Sept. 30th, and Dec. 31st, and at the same time, would not they afford some confirmation of Canal surveys, or lead to some further investigation?