who piques himself upon using no ceremony, and who assures you, you shall be heartily welcome if you will take them just in a plain way'-and when you seat yourself at the table, you find a dinner as much out of the usual routine of the said family as possible-in short, you find that a family dinner means a feast as sumptuous as the family can possibly provide. "Another asks you to take your bread and cheese-and upon assenting, you are ushered into an elegant drawing-room or diningparlour, and find the table covered with a variety of dishes, and are not allowed even to see the cheese, till after you have eaten heartily of two or three cold joints of meat, with pickles, pies, and tarts in thick array. Formerly, a very rational division of time prevailed alike in all classes of society, morning, noon, and night. But now the former has nearly swallowed up both the latter:-we have no afternoon and very little evening left. If you should luckily have dined early, and happen to stumble upon any other phrase than good morning, before six o'clock, you would be degraded irrecoverably in the esteem of your polite and fashion able friends. "You see the title of a book advertised, and being always more fond of truth than fable, you are attracted by the imposing mis nomer of No Fiction; when, after wasting your money in the purchase, and your time in the perusal of the book, you happen to discover that No Truth would have been a more appropriate denomination. "A friend invites you to accompany him to a snug little cottage he has taken in the country, just a box for his wife and two little daughters; hopes you will excuse its being a mere cottage; and when you arrive, expecting to find it scarce large enough to admit an additional visitor, it turns out to be, not indeed very lofty, but, in all other respects, a capital residence, with an elegant suite of rooms, coach-houses, stables, &c. "You are solicited to meet a few friends to spend an evening in a plain homely way, and are assured that NOBODY will be there-it isn't meant to be a party,' and, to your astonished simplicity, it proves to be only a score or two of people drest in their very gayest manner." Many more such instances of modern improvements in our good old truth-speaking language might be noted, but I have sent you these, merely to put your country friends, who are coming to town, and your studious men, who see very little of polite society, on their guard in mixing with the world; and remain, for the present, DEMOCRITUS, JUN. So far our able and humorous corres pondent has lightly treated an appaourselves of a note to express our serently light matter; but we shall avail ribus opinion, that nothing is to be considered as trivial when truth is in question. A careless habit of speech in little things leads to negligent language in higher concerns. "Simplicity and godly sincerity" inculcate the necessity of setting a strict watch on the door of our lips, and of confining ourselves, in the most common transactions of life, to the plain undecorated statement of sentiments and facts. We are no advocates for a stiff and quaint phraseology; we have no inclination to imitate the highly respectable from conversational usage, but we would body of The Friends in their departure firmly insist on a strict and undeviating adherence to truth, in small as well as great matters. Of course, we do not mean to be very severe on some of the expressions which are cited above, but we cannot help thinking that we might just as easily ask a friend to take his supper as his bread and cheese-to dine with us instead of asking him to a bare meal whom we mean to give a feust―to visit us in the country, instead of mis-naming an expensive villa, a cottage or a bor. POETRY. TO THE MEMORY OF MUNGO PARK. LET warlike songs sublime Yet not for these alone, Are tun'd the ennobling lyres ; Full oft is heard the sacred tone That Pity's self inspires. Awake the plaintive strings, The solemn lay be mine; The simple offering memory brings To deck the Wanderer's shrine. To visit fatal climes, To traverse shores unknown, Where darkly swells the heaving main Beneath the torrid zone. Fair Science' ample stores, T'enrich, enlarge, refine, With treasures glean'd in barb'rous realms, Illustrious Park! was thine. Ye wild resounding waves, That sweep the stormy main;— Deserts, where brooding silence sleeps, And dusky horrors reign. Ye skies of solar flame, Fierce blasts! whose scorching breath, O'er fields, in vernal hues array'd, Spreads instantaneous death. Dark silent woods, where terrors dwell, Not all your fatal toils, Nor lurking perils join'd, Could damp his fearless soul, or quench The ardour of his mind. For Science held th' eternal wreath Of fame before his eye, And Glory smooth'd his rugged path To immortality! On Niger's swelling tide, Bold sails his bark along; With joy his glowing soul expands, His hopes are warm and strong. REVIEW OF BOOKS. Cursory Remarks on the Evil Tendency of Unrestrained Cruelty, particularly on that practised in Smithfield Market. 8vo. 6d. London: Harvey and Darton, 1823. We have given a conspicuous place to this spirited and eloquent pamphlet, as we are anxious to give it our most cordial recommendation, and to express our own sentiments on that peculiar form of human depravity, which it faithfully and powerfully exposes. Man is made up of anomalies: with all his tender and sympathetic affections, he is by nature ferocious; and the English nation, with all its high civilization, its ardent feelings, and its liberal charities, bears a deep stain of guilt branded on its character, for the cruelties which have disgraced the land. Cold barbarity and savage levity have distinguished themselves alike in the perpetration and the defence of unmanly atrocities. In the fierce pastimes of darker ages, man perilled his own life and limb. The Spanish Matador,-in the bloody sports of a people usually stigmatised as infamous for sanguinary feeling-relies on his own craft and courage, in the conflict with the noble animal whose rage and sufferings make sport for a dastardly populace. But we go beyond all these. In the cockpit and the bull-ring, we play a safer game. Aloof, at cautious distance, stand Englishmen, to witness and exasperate the madness and the torture of brutes, whose better qualities they might learn to foster and to emulate-whose ferocious impulses it should be their delight to chide and tame. All this, however, is a matter comparatively insignificant. Cockfights and bull-runnings, criminal as they are, do not frequently occur; and the sufferings which they occasion, can hardly claim a thought, when compared with the agonies that are daily, hourly, and every moment, inflicted, not on individuals, but on herds and flocks of helpless, unresisting creatures. Intensely as we abhor cruelty, in all its shapes, we think lightly of its casual excesses, compared with the inflictions continually witnessed in our streets, on the animals who serve our convenience, or sustain our existence. On those days especially, when the markets of the metropolis receive their periodical supply, the long trains of jaded animals pass along our thoroughfares, thirsty and footsore, urged forward by oaths, curses, and blows, until the appalling mass of crime and misery is collected on that classic ground of cruelty-SMITHFIELD. Of the thousands who pass daily across that scene of torture, whence the cry of suffering nature has so often arisen to heaven, how few bestow even a momentary thought on the strange, the varied, the harrowing, and the animating circumstances which have caused its very name to become a proverb and a bye-word. How few pause to call to memory the worthies of our Protestant faith, who sealed their profession with their blood! How few recal the glorious transactions which have graven on our hearts an instinctive abhorrence of the sanguinary creed which called forth those bright displays of christian heroism! But the glorious army of martyrs, who thus perished in the breach, did not shed their blood in vain. Their testimony is on high, and on earth it is still remembered. They have bequeathed to us the name, the privileges, the feelings of a Protestant nation,-they have fixed a stigma on that fierce and tyrannous sect which has usurped the throne of conscience, that no so phistry can elude, no lapse of time efface. But our present business is with a more vulgar, and, if possible, a more odious barbarity; with a wanton and gratuitous cruelty, which has no plea, not even that of bigotry, to gloss and to uphold it; a vile and dastardly ferocity, delighting itself in the pangs of the creatures whom superior strength or craft have reduced beneath its tyranny. "We have heard much of the barbarities and horrors of slavery-of the savage and brutalizing exhibitions which degrade and disgrace other ages and other countries—of the Spanish bull-fights of the gladiatorial combats, and other barbarous shows, of the Roman amphitheatre ;-but, on no part of the globe, in no age of the world, can I imagine scenes of more atrocious cruelty, of more fiend-like depravity, than those exhibited in Smithfield-market. "Let the friends of humanity, the great philanthropists, who unite the love of justice with the power to administer it-the abhorrence of cruelty with the power to restrain it; who deeply feel, and anxiously desire to restrain, the depravity and consequent misery of their own species, as well as the suffering inflicted by that depravity on the lower creation, visit Smithfield, on a Monday, (the great cattle-day,) between the hours of ten in the morning and three in the afternoon; let them take their station at an upper window, commanding a general view of the market; and, from this field of observation, they will acquire a deeper insight into human nature-into the extremes of depravity into which it may be sunk, than they could easily obtain from any other quarter. and, from thence, they will perceive the necessity of some more effective restrictions upon the propensity to cruelty, than have ever yet been adopted. "But will they accept the invitation? Men of business have no leisure-men of refinement have no inclination for such a visit. I will therefore attempt to describe the scene from my own observation, and from the reports given me by eye-witnesses of undoubted veracity. And in doing so, it is quite unnecessary to pledge myself scrupulously to avoid all exaggeration; for no imaginative descriptions of cruelty can well exceed this living exhibition of it."pp. 3-5. After describing the preparations-the Sunday evening preparations--for the great market of the Monday, this humane and scribe the effects of the goad, an energetic writer goes on to de instrument of torture as unnecessary as it is painful, and the wantonness with which it is used. "Early in the day, before the animals are quite exhausted with fatigue and spring forward and kick, upon the appliworn down with pain, I have seen them cation of these goads. I have heard them bellow, and have seen their eyeballs roll, as in intense anguish from violent blows upon their horns, (which, I am told, are exquisitely sensitive.) But, during the last two hours of the market, they generally exhibit the most patient endurance of every kind of persecution, giving few outward indications of suffering; except from the constant method of forcing them out of the circles or lines, when sold, which is effected by striking them violently upon the head and horns, and repeating the infliction until the object is accomplished. At first, they shake and toss their heads; then try to force them through the thick, clustered branches of their neighbours' horns, and dive their battered foreheads to the ground for protection. The battering then gives place to the application of the goad, struck with reiterated violence into their face, and even eyes, the lids of which I have seen them, after this treatment, unable to open. At length, the poor animals seem to comprehend the meaning of their tormentors, and withdraw themselves from the circle or lines, and rush in search of securer shelter; sometimes plunging their heads under carriages, and sometimes forcing their way through the close ranks of their confined companions. I was once passing close to the spot, where one of these wretched animals was thus circumstanced. Its perfect stillness under the infuriated passion of its tormentor, who had been battering its head with the most violent blows, in every direction, till it was evidently stunned and knew not which way to move, arrested my attention; but I am quite unconscious of using any verbal remonstrance, aware that it would be the extreme of folly to attempt it. But the remonstrance conveyed in the pleading of my countenance, caught the eye of a drover, who stood idly by, and who instantly lifted his weapon against me with "It deducts nothing from the shame, disgust, and anguish, which only a casual glance at this scene must excite in every unfamiliarized observer, to reflect that the sufferers are brute animals, not our own species. The consideration of their inferiority and entire subjection to man ; --of their harmless, unresisting, uncomplaining nature; are so many aggravations of the depravity and turpitude of wantonly or unnecessarily tormenting them. Could they advocate their own cause, complain of their injuries, turn again upon their tormentors, and retaliate on them the torments they inflict, the scene would, in that case, be less revolting and disgraceful: it would be savage and disgusting, but would lose its most atrocious character--the baseness and cowardliness of tormenting where there is no provocation--of wantonly inflicting suffering and anguish on the most unoffending and patient submission."—p. 10. But if it were possible to remedy these enormous abuses, and we fully agree with the pious author of this tract that much, very much, might be done, both in the way of prevention and of cure, not only by those in authority, but by private individuals; still there will remain a large field for the pleadings and the prayers of the christian philanthropist. The drudgery and ill-usage of the horse are extreme, and the impatience of modern travelling is continually adding to the sufferings of that noble animal. But if we were to pursue this subject through all its ramifications, we might fill page after page, to the exclusion of every other topic. We cannot, however, conclude, without a strong appeal to the compassionate feelings of those who profess themselves the servants of Him whose tender mercies are over all his works. A great work presents itself to their consideration. The late act against cruelty, which we have no doubt is a much more efficient measure than the writer before us seems to think it, has armed them with the strength of the law; and we should hope that a milder ap peal than that to power and pu nishment, might, sometimes, find access even to the hardened heart of a Smithfield drover. We again tender our cordial thanks to the author of this admirable and seasonable pamphlet, to which we wish an extensive and influential circulation. ་་་་་་་་་་ Memoirs of the Rev. Joseph Ben son. By the Rev. James Macdonald. 8vo. 10s. 6d. London: Blanshard, 1822. THOUGH we have been highly interested by these memoirs, yet we must confess that they have, in some respects, disappointed us. Mr. Macdonald has been at great pains to give a complete view of Mr. Benson's history; he has taken him up at the commencement of the journey of life, traced him through all its various routes, halted with him at every stage, and faithfully recorded the events and vicissitudes of his course until its happy termination. We cannot, however, think this the most efficient way of writing biography ; least of all the biography of such a man as Joseph Benson. In common cases this straight-forward method may answer well enough; a series of dates and transactions will generally satisfy curiosity where it is but lightly stimulated, or where nothing more than occurrences and circumstantial illusstrations are in question. But when the subject lies deeper than this, when an important and leading character requires to be fairly brought out, we look for something more than this superficial kind of statement: keeping, to borrow the language of artists, is requisite ; light and shade, prominent points, and subordination of details, must be judiciously blended and harmo |