DOMESTIC LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. The Antiquary. By the author of " Waverly," and " Guy Manmering."-In three vols.-Edinburgh printed:-New York: reprinted by Van Winkle and Wiley. There is nothing to damp one's joy over these volumes, except a declaration in the preface," that the author is not likely again to solicit the favour of the public." The word likely' leaves the door of hope a little open; and it would be strange indeed, if a writer, who is distinguished in almost every other particular from the generality of modern authors, should now proceed to complete the exception, by laying aside his pen. If he perseveres in the resolution set forth in his manifesto, we shall only remark, that as • increase of appetite grows from what it feeds on,' we shall be more inclined to censure him for discontinuing to write, than thank him for what he has already written. The genius of the author has soared higher and crept lower in the Antiquary than in either of his preceding works: he sometimes aspires almost to the sublimity of Homer, and occasionally descends even to the vulgarity of Hudibras. These opposite characteristics are very well exhibited in the first and seventh chapters, two parts of the work, which, if perused in immediate succession, would hardly appear to be effusions of the same pen. The story of the Antiquary is by no means a novelty; but it is not too intricate for the most superficial reader, and is developed to the last with the ease and skill of a master. The second vo lume is by far the heaviest: precision seems to have been sacrificed to the necessity of completing the requisite number of pages; and, it accordingly contains some details which are quite too episodical for the chief story, and quite too voluminous for an episode. If we were to consider Lovel as the hero of the piece, toowe should certainly censure his disappearance in the commencement of the second volume, and his absence thenceforward to the catastrophe:--but we are reminded in the title page, that Oldenbuck is the burden of the story; and indeed we seldom lose sight of the Antiquary; who travels on to the last, like an elephant, with the persons and fortunes of a whole village and its posterity on his back: "Attollens humero famam et fata nepotum." But it was not so much the object of these volumes (as the author himself tells us) to exhibit a regular and complete narrative, as to delineate the characteristics of the various personages whom he has chosen to represent;--and, excepting one or two poetical works whose names will immediately suggest themselves to our readers, we have seldom seen any book, in which the appropriate part of each individual is more happily selected or more uniformly sustained. The author, whoever he is, possesses more than any other recent writer, the faculty of noticing the minutest outward indications of internal feeling, and of observing the most tardy as well as the most rapid motions of nature. There is in the Antiquary one character which to us at least is entirely original: we allude to Edie Ocheltrec, the mendicant. "To beg from the public at large, he considers as independence, in comparison to drawing his whole support from the bounty of an individual. He is so far a true philosopher as to be a contemner of all ordinary rules of hours and times. When he is hungry he eats; when thirsty he drinks; when weary he sleeps; and with such indifference with respect to the means and appliances about which we make a fuss, that I suppose, he was never ill dined or ill lodged in his life. Then he is, to a certain extent, the oracle of the district through which he travels-their genealogist, their newsman, their master of the revels, their doctor, at a pinch, or their divine.-"I promise you (says the Antiquarian, vol. iii. p. 160-) he has too many duties, and is too zealous in performing them, to be easily bribed to abandon his calling." He was also an old soldier and had served in America:—but all this gives a meagre account of his omnigenous character, which can only be learned by a perusal of the whole work. The author of it, we are informed, is a Mr. Greenfield, a Scotch clergyman. The Poet's Pilgrimage to Waterloo: Southey's last poem, republished in New York, by W. B. Gillies. We hardly know how to dispraise this poem; for Mr. Southey, is self-complacent enough to tell us, that he has been " from good to better persevering still;" and surely, if he has passed through the positive and comparative in his former productions, he will claim to have arrived at the superlative in this. As the Pilgrimage, however, is a mere travelling journal in versification, it will be impossible to compare it with the former poems of the same writer. Poetry, in the most exalted acceptation of the word, is hardly to be expected in a work of this sort; and if Mr. S. had not indulged himself in his favourite petitesse of narration, perhaps his work would stand among the first of the numberless poems which the same occasion has produced. If he had not said so much of himself, too, the work would have been less bulky and more readable. But it seems that Robert Southey, esq. "most of all men" had occasion to raise the "strain of triumph for the victory of Waterloo;" and when he got into the canal boat at Ostend, every thing along the way seemed to know that the poet-laureat of England was on board: "Huge-timbered bridges o'er the passage lay Which wheeled aside and gave US easy way."-p. 17. Yet it must be confessed that Mr. S. occasionally produces a vigorous and lively stanza upon the scenes of which he was a spectator; as in the following description of the wharf whence the boat set off: "Beside the busy wharf the Trekschuit rides, French, Flemish, English, each confusing each." An Exposition of the Commerce of Spanish America; with some observations upon its importance to the United States. To which are added a correct analysis of the monies, weights, and measures of Spain, France, and the United States; and the new weights and measures of England; with tables of their reciprocal reductions; and of the exchange between the United States, England, France, Holland, Hamburg; and between England, Spain, France, and the several states of the union.-By Manuel Torres.--Philadelphia-G. Palmer--1816. The numerous and accurate tables which this work contains render it very useful to those who carry on commerce with Spain or her colonies; and the correct views it presents of the state of South America, make it interesting to readers in general, especially to those who are anxious that the whole American continent should be independent and free. Researches on America; being an attempt to settle some points relative to the aborigines of America, &c. By an officer of the U. S. army.-Baltimore; Coale & Maxwell-1816. This writer thinks there is sufficient reason to believe that America was formerly connected to the old world by land, in the place of which the Atlantic and Pacific oceans now roll, and over which men and inferior animals passed. In support of this hypothesis he displays considerable ingenuity and learning. John Mellish, of Philadelphia, has published Darby's map of Louisiana; accompanied by a geographical description of the state of Louisiana, presenting a view of its soil, climate and productions, with an account of the character and manners of its inhabitants. H. Whipple, of Salem, has issued proposals for publishing an Universal Gazetteer and Dictionary of Geography, ancient and modern: by J. E. Worcester, A. M.-The prospectus states that "The Gazetteer now proposed will, so far as it respects the modern geography of the eastern continent, be founded upon the basis of that of Cruttwell, with additions and corrections. On the subject of ancient geography, the work of the celebrated D'Anville, will be made the principal basis. With respect to America, materials have been collected from a great variety of sources: and the work will be found far more complete, with regard to this continent, than any that has yet been published. It will comprise in two large volumes, and in one alphabetical series, more than four times as many articles of Geography, as are contained in the Gazetteers which have been published in America." The volumes are to contain from 800 to 900 pages each, large 8vo. price in boards, four dollars and fifty cents a volume. We learn that Mr. Ogilvie, so well known by his oratorical exhibitions, is preparing for the press, a volume which will contain three essays; one on "the nature, extent, and limits of human knowledge" one on "the importance of the study of mathematical science, as a branch of liberal education, and as connected with the attainment of oratorical excellence;" and the third on " moral fiction," in which the author endeavours to analise the nature of moral fiction, as contradistinguished from history, biography, and moral disquisition; to ascertain the rank it is entitled to claim as a means of amusement and instruction; to draw the line between fictions which are salutary, and such as are noxious, and to expose the pernicious effects of that insatiable avidity for novel reading, which among a large class of readers has become epidemical. Mador of the Moor, a new poem by the Ettricke shepherd has been republished by M. Thomas, of this city. Those who were delighted with the wild, original, unearthly strains of the Pilgrims of the Sun will find a rich poetical treat in Mador of the Moor. The British journals complain that a great trade is carried on in America in the reprint of English books; which our booksellers, they say, are enabled to do to the prejudice of the original authors and publishers, since they have neither so much to pay for paper nor for print, nor are they at any cost for copy-rightThe same complaint might be made with equal justice against many of the booksellers of France and Switzerland, and formerly against those of Ireland: but we trust the time is not very far distant when the literature of the United States will enable the publishers of Great Britain to take their revenge. FOREIGN LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS. [From late British Publications.] THE ELGIN MARBLES.-It is known that the select committee of the house of commons, appointed to inquire into the value of the Elgin collection of marbles, has reported that 35,000l. will be a sufficient price for them: we now proceed to give some interesting details from this report. From the testimony of various persons, it appears that if lord Elgin had not brought those glorious works away from Greece, they would have been in time utterly lost, not only from the apathy of the Turks, but from their barbarous violence, and the waste committed by travellers and even admirers of the arts, who carried off fragments of these marbles on every possible occasion. Lord Elgin's estimate of the charges he had incurred in making the collection, (including interest) amounts to 74,000/-The valuation made by Mr. Hamilton, 60,8007.; the earl of Aberdeen's, 35,000.; and Mr. Payne Knight's, 25,000l.-The Townley collection, which was purchased for the British museum, cost, in 1805, 20,000/-The marbles of Phygalia, in Arcadia, lately purchased for the same museum, were valued at 15,000/., which sum was increased to 19,000l. by the unfavourable rate of exchange.Mr. Perceval had proposed 30,000l. for the present collection, which lord Elgin then refused. Since that, considerable additions had been made to the collection.-The low estimate made by Mr. Payne Knight appears to have been caused by that gentleman's imagining that an indifferent work of art, if in good preservation, was of more value than a first rate performance, if corroded or mutilated. Thus, for instance, he valued a perfect Sarcophagus, of very inferior workmanship, and of little value to art, at 5001, while the celebrated Horse's Head, considered by the best judges as the finest thing in the world, and of infinite service to art, he considers worth half that sum only!-This one fact supplies a tolerable illustration of the soundness of Mr. P. Knight's opinions on works of art. Indeed the committee seems to have thought very little of them. The committee state, that "the great works with which Pericles adorned and strengthened Athens, were all carried on under the direction and superintendence of Phidias: but Plutarch distinctly asserts, that Callicrates and Ictinus executed the work of the Parthenon."-The report thus concludes:-"Your committee cannot conclude this interesting subject, without submitting to the attentive reflection of the house, how highly the cultivation of the fine arts has contributed to the reputation, character, and dignity of every government by which they have been encouraged, and how intimately they are connected with the advancement of every thing valuable in science, literature, and philosophy. In contemplating the importance and splendour to which so small a republic as Athens rose, by the genius and energy of her citizens, exerted in the path of such studies, it is impossible to overlook how transient the memory and fame of extended empires and of mighty conquerors are, in comparison of those who have rendered inconsiderable states eminent, and immortalized their own names by these pursuits. But if it be true, as we learn from history and experience, that free governments afford a soil most suitable to the production of native talent, to the maturing of the powers of the human mind, and to the growth of every species of excellence, by opening to merit the prospect of reward and distinction, no country can be better adapted than our own to afford an honourable asylum to these monuments of the school of Phidias and of the administration of Pericles; where, secure from further injury and degradation, they may receive that admiration and homage to which they are entitled, and serve in return as models and examples to those, who by knowing how to revere and appreciate them, may learn first to imitate, and ultimately to rival them." |