inches, which the carpenter ground sharp. These were our most valuable commodity in the eyes of the natives. I was stationed in the hold of the vessel, and the ladders were removed to prevent the natives from coming down to the treasury. The King of Owyhee looked to my occupation with a wistful eye; he thought me the happiest man on board, to be among such vast heaps of treasure. Captain Portlock called to me to place the ladder, and allow the King to come down, and give him a good long piece. When the King descended he held up his hands, and looked astonishment personified. When I gave him the piece of hoop of twenty inches long,he retired a little from below the hatch into the shade, undid his girdle, and bent the iron to his body, and, adjusting his belt in the greatest haste, concealed it. I suppose he thought I had stole it. I could not but laugh to see the king concealing what he took to be stolen goods. "We were much in want of oil for lamps. The sharks abounding, we baited a hook with a piece of salt pork, and caught the largest I ever saw in any sea it was a female, nineteen feet long; it took all hands to hoist her on board; her weight made the vessel heel. When she was cut up we took forty-eight young ones out of her belly, eighteen inches long; we saw them go into her mouth after she was hooked. The hook was fixed to a chain attached to our main brace, or we never should have kept her. It was evening when she snapped the bait; we hauled the head just above the surface, the swell washing over it. We let her remain thus all night, and she was quite dead in the morning. There were in her stomach four hogs, four full grown turtle, besides the young ones. Her liver, the only part we wanted, filled a tierce "They are the worst people to pronounce the English of any I ever was among. Captain Portlock they called Potipoti. The nearest approach they could make to my name was Nittie; yet they would make the greatest efforts, and look so angry at themselves, and vexed at their vain efforts. 61 ATHENEUM VOL. 12. "We had a merry facetious fellow on board, called Dickson. He sung pretty well. He squinted, and the natives mimicked him. Abenoue, King of Atooi, could cock his eye like Dickson better than any of his subjects. Abenoue, called him Billicany, from his often singing Rule Britannia. Abenoue learned the air, and the words as near as he could pronounce them. It was an amusing thing to hear the king and Dickson sing. Abenoue loved him better than any man in the ship, and always embraced him every time they met on shore, or in the ship, and began to sing Tule Billicany, Billicany tule,' &c. "We had the chief on board who killed Captain Cook for more than 3 weeks. He was in bad health, and had a smelling-bottle, with a few drops in it, which he used to smell at; we filled it for him. There were a good many bayonets in possession of the natives, which they had obtained at the murder of Cook." Our author's next remarkable trip was in the Lady Julian, Captain Aitken, a vessel which carried out 245 female convicts to New South Wales. His account of the voyages would throw Mrs. Fry and all the Newgate Committee into fits, and make Mr. Grey Bennet rave, and fill every philanthropical heart with a horrible delight that such things were, and are not. "There were not (say our authority) a great many very bad characters; the greater number were for petty crimes, and a great proportion for only being disorderly, that is, street walkers; the colony at the time being in great want of women. "One, a Scottish girl, broke her heart, and died in the river; she was buried at Dartford. Four were pardoned on account of his Majesty's recovery. The poor young Scottish girl I have never yet got out of my mind ; she was young and beautiful, even in the convict dress, but pale as death, and her eyes red with weeping. never spoke to any of the other women or came on deck. She was constantly seen sitting in the same corner from morning to night; even the time of meals roused her not. My heart bled She for her, she was a countrywoman in misfortune. I offered her consolation, but her hopes and heart had sunk. When I spoke she heeded me not, or only answered with sighs and tears; if I spoke of Scotland she would ring her hands and sob, until I thought her heart would burst. I endeavoured to get her sad story from her lips, but she was silent as the grave to which she hastened. I lent her my Bible to comfort her, but she read it not; she laid it on her lap after kissing it, and only bedewed it with her tears. At length she sunk into the grave, of no disease, but a broken heart. After her death we had only two Scottish women on board, one of them a Shetlander. "I went every day to the town to buy fresh provisions and other necessaries for them. As their friends were allowed to come on board to see them, they brought money, and numbers had it of their own, particularly a Mrs. Barnsley, a noted sharper and shoplifter. She herself told me her family for one hundred years back, had been swindlers and highwaymen. She had a brother a highwayman, who often came to see her, as well dressed and genteel in his appearance as any gen tleman. "Those from the country came all on board in irons; and I was paid half a crown a head by the country jailors, in many cases, for striking them off upon my anvil, as they were not locked but rivetted. There was a Mrs. Davis a noted swindler, who had obtained great quantities of goods under false names, and other equally base means. We had one Mary Williams, transported for receiving stolen goods. She and other eight had been a long time in Newgate, where Lord George Gordon had supported them. I went once a week to him, and got their allowance from his own haud all the time we lay in the river.— "Some of our convicts I have heard even to boast of the crimes and marders committed by them and their accomplices; but the far greater number were harmless unfortunate creatures, the victims of the basest seduction. "When we were fairly out at sea, every man on board took a wife from among the convicts, they nothing loath. The girl with whom I lived, for I was as bad in this point as the others, was named Sarah Whitelam. She was a native of Lincoln, a girl of modest reserved turn, as kind and true a creature as ever lived. I courted her for a week and upwards, and would have married her upon the spot, had there been a clergyman on board. She had been banished for a mantle she had borrowed from an acquaintance Her friend prosecuted her for stealing it, and she was transported for seven years. I had fixed my fancy upon her from the moment I knocked the rivet out of her irons upon my anvil, and as firmly resolved to bring her back to England, when her time was out, my lawful wife, as ever I did intend any thing in my life. She bore me a son in our voyage out. What is become of her, whether I do not, is no fault of mine, as my narshe is dead or alive, I know not. That rative will show. "At length almost to our sorrow, we made the land upon the 3d of June 1799, just one year all but one day from our leaving the river. We landed all our convicts safe." Without returning to the Pacific, detailing all the love fancies of Master Nicol, and his disappointments in regard to his fair convicts, his marriage and settlement in his native land, and the natural causes which have plunged him into an old age of distress, we shall now take our leave of his brief but interesting volume.* The battle of Cape One of his anecdotes of a pressed man at his ex amination is worth preserving. "A curious scene happened at my entry. There were a few more impressed on the same day, one an old tar. When asked by Captain Rogers in his examnation, how they hauled the mam tack aboard? he replied, I can't tell, your honour, but I can show." He clapped his foot into Captain Rogers' poeket, at coat to the skirts, saying, Thus we haul it aboard. the same instant leaped on his shoulders. tore his Captain Barefoot, of the Nottingham, and the other captains, laughed heartily, as well as Rogers, who said, rather peevishly, You might have shown, wi hout tearing my coat.'-How could I, your honour?' was the reply," St. Vincent, on the 14th February, he very happily describes as giving the enemy, "their Valentines in style ;" and that of the Nile has also some truly sailor-like touches. We have but to repeat our regret that after all, poverty is the lot of this man of many strange sights, vicissitudes, and perils. His tale is quite afflicting. "At one time, he says, after I came home, I little thought I should ever require to apply for a pension; and, therefore made no application until I really stood in need of it. "I eke my subsistence out in the best manner I can. Coffee made from the raspings of bread, (which I obtain from the bakers,) twice a day is my chief diet. A few potatoes, or any thing I can obtain with a few pence, constitutes my dinner. My only luxury is tobacco, which I have used these forty five years. To beg I never will submit. Could I have obtained a small pension for my services, I should then have reached my utmost earthly wish, and the approach of utter helplessness would not haunt me as it at present does in my solitary home. Should I be forced to sell it, all I would obtain could not keep me, and pay for lodgings for one year; then I must go to the poor's-house which God forbid. I can look to my death-bed with resignation; but to the poor's-house I cannot look with composure. "I have been a wanderer, and the child of chance all my days; and now only look for the time when I shall enter my last ship, and be anchored with a green turf upon my breast; and I care not how soon the command is given." Sincerely do we trust, and almost assured do we feel, that this notice will. do something towards lightening the old man's load; his story has excited much of our sympathy,and we shall take means to render it not a barren feeling. D'ISRAELI'S NEW SERIES OF CURIOSITIES OF LITERATURE.* A Reviewer may be compared to a traveller in Africa. There is a great deal of arid ground to go over, long deserts, siroccos from displeased authors, mirages of miserable disappointment, and, ever and anon, districts of surpassing tropical beauty, fertile plains, delicious rivers, palm-trees in the middle-waste, with their concomitant wells to refresh the weary wanderer to these precious Oases. Or, to make a comparison nearer home, he may be likened to a traveller in England. The dusty and uninteresting road, the uncertain climate, now rain, now sunshine, the wearisome hill, the barren tract, the stunted vegetation, the poor entertainment at poorer houses, and the cruel baulks to appetite at showy hotels with bad fare and worse attendance, have their compensations in the picturesque view, the delightful valley, the sublime mountain, the pleasant route, A Second Series of Curiosities of Literature; consisting of Researches in Literary, Biographical, and Secret History, &c. &e. By I. D'Israeli. London, 1823. 3 vols. the romantic ramble, and the comforts of the snug inn, where welcome and all the pleasures of repose and restoration await the visitor. To which of the classes, the agreeable or the disagreeable, these volumes might be expected to belong, no one acquainted with their precursors, (and who of literary taste has not read them with entire gratification?) can fail to anticipate. They are in truth the Oasis of our first simile, or the refreshing resort of our second. So many of the dishes are to our palate, that like an epicure at a feast, we hardly know where to begin: we shall almost at hazard take a portion nearest to us. In the second volume there is a curious paper called The Book of Death, founded on a privately printed volume so titled; from this the following is a brief extract : "My ingenious friend Dr. Sherwen has furnished me with the following anecdotes of death. In one of the bloody battles fought by the Duke of Enghien, two French noblemen were left wounded among the dead on the field of battle. One complained loudly of his pains, the other after long silence thos offered him consolation. My friend, whomever you are, remember that our God died on the cross, our king on the scaffold; and if you have strength to look at him who now speaks to you, you will see that both his legs are shot away.' "At the murder of the Duke D'Enghien, the royal victim looking at the soldiers who had pointed their fusees, said, Grenadiers! lower your arms, otherwise you will miss, or only wound me! To two of them who proposed to tie a handkerchief over his eyes, he said, 'A loyal soldier who has been so often exposed to fire and sword, can see the approach of death with naked eyes, and without fear.' "After a similar caution on the part of Sir George Lisle, or Sir Charles Lucas, when murdered nearly in the same manner at Colchester, by the soldiers of Fairfax, the loyal hero in answer to their assertions and assurances that they would take care not to miss him, nobly replied, You have often missed me when I have been nearer to you in the field of battle.' 6 character predominates even in death, and its habitual associations exist to its last moments. Many religious persons may have died without showing in their last moments any of those exterior acts, or employing those fervent expressions, which the collector of "The Book of Death' would only deign to chronicle; their hope is not gathered in their last hour. -- "It may be a question whether those who by their preparatory conduct have appeared to show the greatest indifference for death, have not rather betrayed the most curious art to extinguish its terrors. Some have invented a mode of escaping from life in the midst of convivial enjoyment. A mortuary preparation of this kind has been recorded of an amiable man, Moncriff, the author of Histoire des Chats' and 'L'Art de Plaire,' by his literary friend La Place, who was an actor in, as well as the historian of the singular narrative. One morning La Place received a note from Moncriff, requesting that he would immediately select for him a dozen volumes most likely to amuse and of a nature to withdraw the reader from being occupied by melancholy thoughts.' La Place was startled at the unusual request, and flew to his old "When the governor of Cadiz, the friend, whom he found deeply engaged Marquis de Solano, was murdered by in being measured for a new peruke, the enraged and mistaken citizens, to and a taffety robe de chambre, earnestone of his murderers, who had run a ly enjoining the utmost expedition. pike through his back, he calmly turn-Shut the door!'-said Moncriff, obed round and said, Coward to strike serving the surprise of his friend. ‘And there! Come round, if you dare-face, now that we are alone, I confide my and destroy me !' secret: on rising this morning, my va"Mr. Abernethy in his Physiologi- let in dressing me showed me on this cal Lectures had ingeniously observed, leg this dark spot-from that moment that Shakspeare has represented I knew I was condemned to death;' Mercutio continuing to jest, though conscious that he was mortally wounded; the expiring Hotspur thinking of nothing but honour; and the dying Falstaff still cracking his jests upon Bardolph's nose. If such facts were duly attended to, they would prompt us to make a more liberal allowance for each other's conduct under certain circumstances than we are accustomed to do.' The truth seems to be, that whenever the functions of the mind are not disturbed by the nervous functions of the digestive organs,' the personal but I had presence of mind enough not to betray myself. Can a head so well organized as yours imagine that such a trifle is a sentence of death?'-' Don't speak so loud, my friend !—or rather deign to listen a moment. At my age it is fatal! The system from which I have derived the felicity of a long life has been, that whenever any evil, moral or physical, happens to us, if there is a remedy, all must be sacrificed to deliver us from it-but in a contrary case, I do not choose to wrestle with destiny and to begin complaints, end "An anecdote of these monkish times has been preserved by old Gerard Leigh; and as old stories are best set off by old words, Gerard speaketh! "The great Maximilian the emperor came to a monastery in high Almaine (Germany,) the monks whereof had caused to be curiously painted the charnel of a man, which they termed-DEATH! When that well-learned emperor had beholden it awhile, he called unto him his painter, commanding to blot the skeleton out, and paint therein the image of-A FOOL. Wherewith the abbot, humbly beseeching him to the contrary, said, 'It was a good remembrance !" less as useless! All that I request of you, my friend, is to assist me to pass away the few days that remain for me, free from all cares, of which otherwise they might be too susceptible. But do not think,' he added with warmth, 'that I mean to elude the religious duties of a citizen, which so many of late affect to contemn. The good and virtuous curate of my parish is coming here under a pretext of an annual contribution, and I have even ordered my physician, on whose confidence I can rely. Here is a list of ten or twelve persons, friends beloved! who are mostly known to you. I shall write to them this evening, to tell them of my condemnation; but if they wish me to live, they will do Nay,' quoth the emperor, as verme the favour to assemble here at five in the evening, where they may be certain of finding all those objects of amusement, which I shall study to discover suitable to their tastes. And you, my old friend, with my doctor, are two on whom I most depend.' "La Place was strongly affected by this appeal-neither Socrates, nor Cato, nor Seneca looked more serenely on the approach of death. "Familiarize yourself early with death!' said the good old man with a smile-It is only dreadful for those who dread it!' "During ten days after this singular conversation, the whole of Moncriff's remaining life, his apartment was open to his friends, of whom several were ladies; all kinds of games were played till nine o'clock, and that the sorrows of the host might not disturb his guests, he played the chouette at his favourite game of picquet: a supper, seasoned by the wit of the master, concluded at eleven. On the tenth night, in taking leave of his friend, Moncriff whispered to him, Adieu my friend! to-morrow morning I shall return your books!' He died, as he foresaw, the following day." 6 The next paper is connected with that whence the foregoing passages are taken, and entitled "History of the Skeleton of Death." After animadverting on the raw head and bloody bones, horrors founded on the tender mercies of our religion, the author says, min that annoyeth man's body cometh unlooked for, so doth death, which here is but a fained image, and life is a certain thing, if we know to deserve it.'" The original mind of Maximilian the Great is characterised by this curious story of converting our emblem of death into a party-coloured fool; and such satiricial allusions to the folly of those who persisted in their notion of the skeleton were not unusual with the artists of those times; we find the figure of a fool sitting with some drollery between the legs of one of these skele tons. "This story is associated with an important fact. After they had successfully terrified the people with their charnelhouse figure, a reaction in the public feelings occurred, for the skeleton was now employed as a medium to convey the most facetious, satirical, and burlesque notions of human life. Death, which had so long harassed their im aginations, suddenly changed into a theme fertile in coarse humour. The Italians were too long accustomed to the study of the beautiful to allow their pencil to sport with deformity; but the Gothic taste of the German artists, who could only copy their own homely nature, delighted to give human passions to the hideous physiognomy of a noseless skull; to put an eye of mock ery or malignity into its hollow socket, and to stretch out the gaunt anatomy into the postures of a Hogarth ; and that the ludicrous might be carried to its extreme, this imaginary being, ta |