ciety, even language itself, and all that constitutes a nation, must disappear. The laws of nature, it would seem, are not made for the pretended conqueror of the world. Wherever he turns the deluge of his dominion, the land, like the ocean, must present one plain unvaried surface. In this, as in every other respect, we trust the conduct of England will ever display a contrast to his. How far it may be practicable, or expedient to lay a foundation for our future establishment in the Archipelago, by applying to the Ionian islands already in our possession such a system of government as would be suited to that establishment, whenever it might be required, we leave to the decision of higher authorities. Nor will we take upon ourselves to determine how far it may be possible to combine such a system of conciliation towards the Greeks as may be eventually useful to ourselves, with that line of policy towards the Porte which our present and prior interests demand. Much might be done by a judicious choice and distribution of our agents in the islands and maritime provinces of Turkey. In general, it may be remarked, that in proportion as England extends her communication, and strengthens her influence in the ill-connected parts of the Turkish empire, she will find herself able, in the decisive and inevitable moment, either to sustain the courage of the Porte, or to prevent the spoiler from engrossing the whole of his prey. This peculiar advantage she derives from the general loyalty of her principles, and the little inducement which she evidently has, either by nature or the genius of her government, to authorise any scheme of dismemberment. With respect to the volume which has led to these cursory remarks, we have confined ourselves to a simple report of its plan and general contents, without going into any critical examination of its merits in point of execution. The fact is that we wish to give every possible encouragement to so meritorious a work, and feel inclined rather to trust to time and experience, for the correction of any errors that may appear in it, than to appeal for a more hazardous remedy to the severe hand of criticism. Its faults are the faults of youth, and we may confidently hope that a riper age will remove them. That it is only by a steady perseverance in pursuits of this sort that the Greeks can hope to arrive at their favourite object of political emancipation, is confirmed to us by the evidence of a traveller, whose remarks we have already had occasion to commend. Weak and untutored minds,' says Mr. Douglas,* are seldom able to support with steadiness the sudden glare of reason: the event of the French revolution may inform us that * Essay on the modern Greeks, pp. 197, 198. a gradual a gradual progression is necessary, and the seeds of rational liberty will never prosper in a soil not prepared by proper cultivation to receive them. The Greeks have commenced, however, with moderation and wisdom; and if the wild fancies of politicians and enthusiasts do not hurry them out of the course in which they are advancing with cautious but accelerated steps, another age may witness the glorious period when the torch of knowledge shall conduct them to the enjoyment of happiness and freedom. • Τόν δε, πορὼν γενῖᾳ θαυματὸν ὕμνον, Εκ λεχέων ἀνάγει φάμαν παλαιὰν Γὰρ πέσεν. ἀλλ ̓ ανεγειρομένα ART. VIII. The Lay of the Scottish Fiddle. A Poem. In Five Cantos. Supposed to be written by W S, Esq. First American, from the Fourth Edinburgh Edition. 8vo. pp. 238. London; Cawthorn. 1814. IT T was to be expected that in the process of time an American wag should make his appearance. In a nation derived from so many fathers it has justly been matter of wonder that there should. hitherto have existed so tame a uniformity, and that the composition of such various elements should produce the merest monotony of character that the world has yet seen. It is not our business to inquire into the cause of this phenomenon, or to trace why the thoughtless, dissolute, and turbulent of all nations should, in commingling, so neutralize one another that the result should be a people without wit or fancy. We will only observe that when the vulgar and illiterate lose the force of their animal spirits they become mere clods; and that the founders of American society brought to the composition of their nation few seeds of good taste, and no rudiments of liberal science. As population thickens however, and intercourse spreads, the arts and manners of polished society must arise, and it may be safely prognosticated that America will in time produce poets, painters, and musicians.-But we must attend to the work before us. An intelligent observer of our theory will have anticipated that the first effort of American wit would necessarily be a parody. Childhood is every where a parodist. America is all a parody, a mimicry of her parents; it is, however, the mimicry of a child GG 2 'tetchy tetchy and wayward in its infancy,' abandoned to bad nurses and educated in low habits. The Lay of the Scottish Fiddle resembles the 'Lay of the Last Minstrel,' as small beer does champaign :-nor are the poetical powers of the parodist shamed by the soundness of his judgment. More than half the volume consists of notes, (under the name of Walter Scott,) giving, in a kind of tiresome drawl, rendered yet more oppressive by an affectation of smartness, a miserable detail of petty squabbles in huts and hamlets, of which neither the name nor the knowledge ever crossed the Atlantic. The story we can scarcely discover; the tendency is sufficiently clear-to calumniate the naval officers of Old England, and to libel its own countrymen of New England. The cause of hatred to Great Britain is obvious enough; the grounds of enmity to the New Englanders is the complimentary and, we believe, the just accusation of having approached more nearly than the other states to the feelings and manners of European society. How the author contrives to combine his satires upon British naval officers and New-York innkeepers, we cannot (though we have read the poem with great diligence) presume to guess. The writer is, we perceive, very angry and very scurrilous; but we are not sufficiently versed in the scandal of American faction to be able to ascertain the objects of his individual attack. We only know that every Englishman is a 'Sir,' or a 'Childe,' and every American innkeeper a 'Lord,' but what the humour of this liberality of titles is we have not discovered. When we do understand any of our author's lucky hits, we hold it very stuff o' the conscience' to set them forth. Our readers therefore have the satisfaction of learning, that Sir John Warren (whom, for his sake, we are glad to find an object of American dislike) is pleasantly denominated Sir Bolus. Marry why?' aye, that indeed is worth inquiring. The worthy admiral was, it seems, not only christened John, but Borlase; and by dropping, and changing ase into us, we have the ingenious logogriphic title of Sir Bolus! Admiral Cockburn's name likewise affords the author some clegant allusions, though he has not been able to fashion it into so humorous an appellative; but he intimates that a 'cock' is a bird of spirit, and that there can be no burn' without fire. Childe Cockburn, therefore, must have the fire of a hero and the spirit of a cock. This is admirable; but the author has yet a higher stroke of wit in store: a cock has a red comb, and fire which burns is red, and therefore Admiral Cockburn's prime personal ornament must be a huge fiery-red nose.' This is a theme of unbounded pleasantry throughout the poem, and as it is really the best joke of all, it would be unjust not to say that we ourselves have seen Admiral Cockburn, and and are enabled to assever that the huge fiery nose' is an invention, of which the whole credit belongs to our American genius. His own modesty, indeed, leads him to intimate that he borrowed the idea from Sir J. Falstaffe, who calls Bardolph 'Admiral' because he carries the lanthorn in the poop;' but we cannot permit him so to undervalue his talents. There is, however, one of Sir John's commentaries on the nose of his friend of which he might have made use. ''Sblood,' says Bardolph, when he could no longer bear the knight's sarcasms- -'I wish my nose were in your belly.'-' God 'a mercy!' replies Sir John, so should I be sure to be heart-burn'd.'-We quote this for the sake of observing, that there occurred a practical joke 'germain to this matter;' for this fiery-nosed Cockburn, we are assured, got into the very bowels of the land;' in consequence of which, the town of Havre-de-Grace and some others were destroyed, not by a metaphorical, but a real and bona fide couflagration. On this subject our parodist is very indignant; and totally forgetting who first invaded their neighbour's territory, he puts into the mouth of an old woman the following tirade against the outrageous determination of Great Britain to go to war with America, who had already-gone to war with her. 'As tottering near the smoking heap Where Where the bed-ridden and the old Who points our hopes to realms of bliss, And thus, as farmer Caleb saith, 66 ACTS AS THE BULWARK OF OUR FAITH."~p. 118, &c. This passage affords a fair specimen of the author's powers: it is the peroration of his poem, written with peculiar care, and for poetry, pleasantry, satire, good sense, and good logic, equals, if it does not surpass, any other that we could select. The old lady, however, might, we think, have been more fairly made to complain, that it was Mr. Madison's invasion of Canada which doomed to destruction her distant cottage, and that a spark from the fire which the Americans lighted on the shores of Ontario, spread the conflagration to the banks of the Chesapeake. Bad reasoning we can equally forgive in an American old woman and an American poet; but when that poet turns statesman in his notes, we think we have a right to expect some distant respect for common sense. To this couplet 'And universal patriots grown, Feast for all victories but their own.' he subjoins the following note. 'Mr. Sis supposed here to allude to the following resolution, which was put by Mr. Quincy, in the senate of Massachusetts, and agreed to. "Resolved, as the sense of the senate of Massachusetts, that in a war like the present, waged without justifiable cause, and prosecuted in a manner that indicates that conquest and ambition are its real motives, it is not becoming a moral and religious people to express their approbation of military or naval exploits, which are not immediately connected with the defence of our sea-coast and soil." It is somewhat remarkable, that the very same individuals, who thus thought it unbecoming "a moral and religious people" to rejoice in the victories of their country, feasted most lustily for the Russian victories. p. 218. By this admirable piece of ratiocination the author thinks he proves that those who deemed it unbecoming a moral and religious people to wage unjustifiable war, or to express approbation of ex-. ploits prompted by a spirit of conquest and ambition, must therefore think it unbecoming to rejoice for the ill success of unjustifiable war, and for the successful defence of native and national independence. Our |