the highest condition, were lying asleep, or foraging. The proprietor of this happy and luxuriant farm, in the middle age of life, driving a mule before him, whose panniers were brimful with the finest plumbs, came up to us, and telling us his name was Usabio della huerta del Capero, with great natural courtesy gave us a hearty welcome.'

In this and other stages of his excursion, especially when he reaches Catalonia, he finds occasion to say, that he has almost every where searched in vain for that Spanish gravity of which in England he had heard so much.' The lower orders in Spain,' he says, ' appeared to me much more merry and facetious than the same class in England.' Here Sir John might have recollected several circumstances accounting for part of the vivacity which he witnessed. As, first, the agitation of the country had shaken the people out of their mental stagnation;-they had got something new, something to talk and be interested about, something to feel their own consequence in;-and this stimulation into a livelier consciousness of existence and its faculties and interests, naturally produces animation of manners. Secondly, they had got a government (the Supreme Junta) which, spite of all penal enactments, they durst and indeed could not help turning into ridicule; and it is a capital stimulant to gaiety, that what assumes to be the highest order of human existence in a country, should yet expose itself as a thing that every man can break his joke upon. Thirdly, and akin to this, the French were probably about that time putting down the Inquisition. Fourthly, Sir John's modesty does not choose to seem aware, that a person who has such a fascinating vivacity in himself, is naturally the cause of vivacity in other men.

The adventurer and his companion got round again to Cadiz exactly against the day, the great the important day,' of the arrival of the Marquis Wellesley, who found, on landing, a French flag,' says Sir John, spread over the steps for his excellency to tread upon, and was drawn in the consul's carriage to his hotel, by the delighted and enthusiastic multitude.'-The next excursion was to 'Mount Calpe, one of the pillars of Hercules, the grand and classical impressions of which somewhat suffered on entering the town, which at first, in some of its objects, not a little resembled Portsmouth Point.' By the time that the latter part of the sentence has somewhat moderated the poetical emotion kindled by the former, we may venture to remark in behalf of the knight's general sobriety, that the ordinary name, Gibraltar, satisfies him in all his previous and subsequent references to the place. Along with a gratuitous and whimsical innovation on the etymology of the word

(well known to be corrupted from Gebel al Tarik, the mountain of Tarik, the Saracen general who invaded Spain at this point) he has some very reasonable moralizing on the mutability of national greatness, occasioned by seeing here the humiliated condition of a few of the posterity of the Moors, who are

of all their mighty conquest, permitted, by a condescending act of sufferance, to shew themselves only on this narrow spot of ground. The descendants of the mighty conquerors of Spain may be seen in the streets of this tiny peninsular extremity, plying for hire as porters, and frequently cursed, struck, spit upon, and treated with every indignity by their employers.' p. 117.

'than

He gives as spirited a description as most of his predecessors, of this majestic rock, and the magnificent views beheld from its summit, with notices of the fortifications, the state of trade, the deficiency of ladies, the motly appearance of the inhabitants, and the numbers and freaks of the monkies.-He next took a turn to Algeziras, had a conversation with General Castanos, and peeped at Gibraltar through the arches of a fine Roman Aqueduct. Whoever had hunted on his track would have found him soon after at Malaga, which is more opulent in vines,' he says, any other city in Spain, there being no less than seven thousand vineyards in its district, bearing no fewer than thirty-four different sorts of grapes.' The graces (which word the reader is not to mistake as synonymous with virtues) of the Malaga ladies enchant him into little less than heroic poetry; and we cannot perceive that he likes them ever the less for seeing some of them wearing the marks of penance, and others confessing to the priests, 'who sit in a sort of cupboard, and listen to the party confessing through a little thin board or plate perforated with holes.' The blame be on Sir John if we wrong the religious qualities of his brilliant demi-goddesses by exhibiting the following picture.

In the church of the convent of Victoire we heard some fine music, and, what was infinitely better, beheld some of the finest women in Spain. The disciplined languor and expression of their eyes, and the skill with which they managed the mantilla, sometimes drawing it under the chin, to give a beautiful oval to the face, at others tossing it open, and exhibiting a bewitching countenance and finely formed bosom, followed by an oblique and rapid glance to ascertain the effect of these enchanting coquetries, which receive additional interest from the graceful attitude, and adjusted drapery of the kneeling devotee, all united in making me think that the heart took but little interest in the prayer, which every now and then set two pretty lips bewitchingly in motion. Indeed so merely exterior is female devotion in Spain, that the most favourable places for making assignations in, are the churches. Nothing is more common than to see, in the shady part of the church, men kneeling by the side of women

and making violent love to them in whispers, without a omitting single ceremony prescribed by the catholic religion.' p. 140.

Sir John having betrayed that he reads the bible, we do not know that it would have done him any additional harm with that class of his readers, to whom so grave a practice will be but an indifferent recommendation, if he had indignantly reprobated that pernicious church that virtually teaches the people to exempt the heart from the cognizance of religion; and if he had seriously deplored the ceremonial mockery of piety which he saw these fine women performing, instead of being amused with it as hypocrisy, and pleased with it as assisting the evolution of their appearances and blandishments.

His having seen at Malaga an officer who had distinguished himself in Saragossa, during its second siege, gives him an occasion for relating some of the transactions in that hideous tragedy. We will transcribe only one short passage, describing a combat in one of the churches;

In

from which a party of the French was at first repulsed by the monks, who fought with all the fervour of zeal, and the fury of despair. The enemy, however, returned to the charge, and a scene such as had been seldom, if ever, beheld before, was exhibited. this sacred sanctuary, every inch of ground was disputed by its holy functionaries; the columns, the lateral chapels, and the altar, became so many ramparts, and were frequently stormed, taken, and retaken ; and the pavement was covered with the bleeding bodies of monks and soldiers. The battle raged in every part, till the roof, shattered by numerous bombs, at length gave way, and fell with a terrific crash on the combatants, when those who survived its fall, as soon as they had recovered the shock of so unexpected a disaster, rose upon the ruins, and, joined by others, continued to fight with unabated ferocity. p. 154.

Augustina was equally conspicuous in this as the former siege. It is added,

Numerous were the instances of female heroism. Women, many of them in the highest orders of life, and of elegant habits, without respect to rank, formed themselves into corps, to carry provisions, to bear away the wounded to the hospitals, and to fight in the streets in which they were frequently accompanied by the children, who with the pleasure displayed in their amusements, rashly and exultingly rushed into danger, and could not be prevailed on to stay in those places which the firing of the enemy had spared.'

Granada, on account of its noble scenery, its prodigious and desolate remains of Moorish magnificence, and the recollections which it awakens of a most romantic history, is one of the places in which we are willing to stay a good while with almost every traveller. Sir John, however, in consideration of his having been so often pre

ceded, constrains himself to an exemplary brevity in his celebration of the Alhambra, and the other interesting but well known objects. The energy that would else have glowed in description, flames off in generous invective against the Inquisition, (one of the prisons of which he saw in the city,) against the Supreme Junta, against the Junta of Granada, and against General Cuesta. He describes the provincial Junta as two thirds composed of clergymen and mouks remarkable for their ignorance, fat, and feasting.' It was whimsical enough,' says he, to see these cloister legislators frequently issuing from the palace of government, decorated with broad red ribbands drawn over their cossacks and cowls, and strutting through lines of soldiers with presented arms.'-In the opinion of the true patriots of Spain, he says, the members of the Supreme Junta were divided into four classes.

The first comprehended one or two able and upright men; the second those who, without actually corresponding with the enemy, did not hesitate, every opportunity within their power and to its full extent, to sacrifice the interests of their country to their own personal aggrandizement; the third those who were weak and easily in timidated; and the fourth those who looked on with perfect apathy, and sanctioned every measure without investigation.' p. 182.

This may be the one subject on which there is no great danger of material error in accepting assertions made in the most violent anger. But we must caution Sir John against talking on any other subject than the Supreme Junta, when he is very angry; and the propriety of this admonitory suggestion will appear, when we mention that, unfortunately quitting, for a moment, the infallible ground during this paroxysm, he has roundly asserted, in a tone equally assuming the oracular claims to confidence, that France 'owes all its power and renown to its tyranny, corruption, and numbers.' And such a thing he has uttered, (as he will, now that his "perturbed spirit" is calm again wonder to find,) after a variety of statements in which, as, for instance in his account of the siege of Saragossa, he has represented the French troops as rivalling in intrepidity and desperation, the most distinguished exploits of the Spanish male combatants;-to say not a word of the talents of the French chief and subordinate commanders.

When we get into the company of an entertaining traveller -meaning, of course, such a one as Sir John Carr-we are very apt to lose sight of the limits imposed on us by the nature of our journal, till we find ourselves, as in the present instance, pressing very hard against them, and so compelled to part from our adventurer, wishing him all good fortune

through the rest of his expedition. Our author went on to Valencia, to Tortosa, to Tarragona, to Gerona, to Montserrat, and to the Balearic Isles,' which is a much more dignified and classical denomination, to appear in an advertisement or a title-page, than Majorca and Minorca.The beauty and fertility of the region round Valencia appear to surpass every thing that our widely vagrant traveller has beheld in any other part of Europe. All this most prodigal beauty, however, is presented to us with an association which makes it look like that which might bloom on the groves and gardens around a temple of Moloch; the description of it being combined with a relation of a most horrible massacre, perpetrated in June, 1808, on the unoffending and naturalized French part of the inhabitants of Valencia, by a monk of the name of Calvo, and a gang of miscreants whom he was not prevented, by the police of a large city, from directing. He is represented, but not with a very satisfactory explanation of the purpose, as commiting this atrocity as the agent, and at the instigation, of Murat, then lieutenant of the kingdom.

means

The most curious part of the whole book is the account of the grand convent, the hermitages, and the romantic scenes and wide prospects, of Montserrat. We can believe our knight that the style of devotion is by no among the sublimest things belonging to the situation.In many places he represents the priests and monks as having lost some small part of their despotic power over the people's minds. Still, on the whole the superstition of the nation is infinitely gross,-a darkness that may be felt. He every where found a most decidedly favourable sentiment toward the English.

Art. A course of Lectures, containing a Description and Systematic Arr gement of the several Branches of Divinity: accompanied with an Account, both of the principal Authors, and of the progress which has been made, at different periods, in Theological Learning, By Herbert Marsh, D. D. F. R. S. Margaret Professor of Divinity. 'Part II. pp. 154 Price 3s. Cambridge, at the University Press, London, Rivingtons, 1811.

IN pursuance of his laudable intention*, Dr. Marsh has here presented to his auditors and to the public the continuation of his course, in the lectures which he delivered in the Easter Term of 1810. We are happy to find occasion to renew the approbation of the plan and execution of this work, which we expressed in our account of the

* See Ecl. Rev. Vol. VI. p. 713.