If any difference be perceived in the style of the several parts of the translation, it is partly to be attributed to the unavoidable necessity, occasioned by competition, of bringing the work before the public with the least possible delay, in consequence of which, more than one gentleman has been employed: as, however, in the original work, the narrative and the various political and scientific documents, are written by the respective persons embarked in the expedition who were entrusted with the care of the various departments, the variety in the style of the translation may be principally ascribed to the want of uniformity in the style of the original. A few occasional and immaterial errors and irregularites may very possibly have escaped the strictest attention; but especial care has been taken to ensure the accuracy of the nautical parts, and of the scientific memoirs on subjects of natural history and geography.' We have compared the plates in the translation of which we have made use, in the present article, with those of the French edition, and we find in them great resemblance. The translation is in that easy and natural language which generally accompanies a clear comprehension of the original, but bears marks of the haste with which it was executed. [To be continued.] ART. X. Der Freistaat von Nordamerika, &c. i. e. The Free State of North America described by D. von Bülow. 8vo. 2 Vols. 300 Pages in each. Berlin. 1797. SOME OME account of a foreign work concerning N. America, which tended to encourage emigration, was given in our 19th vol. p. 575. The publication before us undertakes to reverse the picture, and gives the most unfavourable and (we believe) exaggerated representation of the United States that we have yet received from any European traveller. The author indeed attacks, with a sort of ecclesiastical hatred, the praisers of America, treating them as men systematically perverse and deceitful; of misanthropic hearts or insane minds; and as a designing sect of deluders rather than as dupes. Ther Americo-mania he seems to consider as a criminal heresy, which it is a duty to expose and to combat.-He has visited the transatlantic republic twice, and stayed there from September 1791 to July 1792, and from September 1795 to October 1796. He speaks of the German Travels of Doctor Schopf, as distinguished for fidelity; of those of Brissot, as a superficial, embellished, dexterous portrait, intended to impassion the French for the epuration of morals and the republicanization of governments; and of those of Chastellux+ as the work of a man illinformed and ill-circumstanced for observation. Bartram and See the 3d vol. of our General Index, p. 29. + Ibid. Capt. B....y. Imlay he attacks for a gaudy tropical style, worthy only of the unwholesome wildernesses of which they boast. Even Cooper t is commended with reluctance. From these preliminary depreciations of his predecessors, he passes on to consider the importance of descent; of being wellbred, in the sense of horse-dealers. He thinks that the Ame ricans are derived from a bad stock ;-from the dupes of puritanic cant; from stupid, sour, tasteless ascetics, whose tempers desired anarchy while at home, and practised intolerance when abroad. He seems to think the religious spirit an innatę traditional evil. Yet these are the best of the progenitors of the Americans. He speaks of the posterity of the wild Irish as more idle, more cruel, and more intemperate in their new than in their old country;-of the Swabian boors, he says, a question must be asked of them both in German and in English before they understand it in either tongue, and whose unmeaning answers are returned with the sloth of a remote echo; -and the transported felons, who contributed to people Virginia with its drunken, gambling, lewd, rapacious, spendthrift, keen, quick, courageous, hospitable inhabitants, are commemorated with equal respect. It is allowed (5), however, that industry and frugality are to be found in America; and that wealth is pursued there with very general success:-but this has given rise to a tricking commercial spirit; and to an intolerable meanness of character, which repines at every bargain in which it has not overreached, establishes unfairness as the order of the market-day, and renders the habitual practice of injustice essential to selfapprobation. A consequence of this spirit is a deference to cunning, and a servility to wealth, of which even the traders of Holland, to say nothing of other countries, would be ashamed. Many historical traits are selected, in order to prove the low ebb of morality among the people, and the absence of elevated sentiment and disinterested virtue among the rulers. The paper-money system, the buying-in of the army-certificates, the contrivances of the land-jobbers,-every thing is made, as in the hands of Mandeville, to grow out of the lowest selfish passions. This practice of deteriorating motives, and of imputing, on all occasions, the principles of conduct least favourable to the dignity of human nature, is not, as Hume justly observes, conducive to the improvement of our species. It is both a proof and a cause of depravation. Hence (exclaims our author p. 85) naturally results, in a thinking mind, the question; "Is it well to have left the See Rev. N. S. vol. viii. p. 390. + Rev. vol. xvii. p. 312. Americans Americans thus long to their selfishness, or would it have been better by force to seize, for a time, on despotic power; and by well-adapted institutions to ennoble the nation and render it happy? The author plainly inclines to the affirmative : "Institutions (says he) form the character of a nation. By means of them, the legislators of antiquity fashioned the people into correspondence with the constitution. The moderns occupy themselves with constitutions merely, (which are the forms of governments,) but have no idea of institutions, and even consider them as in our times impracticable. Yet no constitution can answer its end without analogous institution: the latter is the soul and the former the body. A legislator should be animated by a fixed spirit of arrangement: there are men of ta lents who verge on this highest step without attaining it.' We have no hesitation in denying the wisdom and benevo lence of those ends which require despotic power as an instrument. Let us admit, for a moment, that the Americans have the vices of early society, of thinly-peopled countries, of a young nation; that rare intercourse has less called forth the sympathetic feelings among them; that they have less benevolence, less sensibility to the praise and blame of others, and a less acute sense of the laudable and the blame-worthy will institutions alone remove this? Certainly not. population, multiply the intercourse, refine the taste by exhibiting specimens of what is morally beautiful in conduct, and by circulating them in description;-in a word, await the na tural progress of unsophisticated society, and the virtues of a more advanced civilization will in due time arise. Increase the The thirty-first section satirizes the more superstitious sects of the Americans, not, like the benevolent author of the Spiritual Quixote*, so as to rub off the grimace without eroding the substance, but with the rash ridicule of a French philosophist, who does not enough hesitate to extinguish hope, to withdraw consolation, or to abolish restraint. To this censure, the second section is also exposed. As the general result of this set of observations, the author states (p. 239) that the Americans are precisely the natural result of their unfortunate descent, of their unwholesome country, and of their unfavourable circumstances; that they are not that regenerated, simple, innocent, virtuous nation of republicans, which in Europe they are by many deemed; and that they may best be considered under the image of a youth prematurely enervated by luxury and sensuality, whose corrupted constitution tends to untimely old age, whom palliatives cannot effectually See a character of this work, M. R. vol. xlviii. p. 384. APP. REV. VOL. XXVI. relieve, relieve, but to whom tonic doses of the most active medicines are necessary, if he be to recover the glow of vigor, and to throb with the elastic pulse of health. A second part of the work is occupied by philosophic observations, not of the moral but of the physical kind; very few of which will instruct the natural philosopher. The sixth disquisition supposes the West-Indian islands to be remnants of an antient continent swallowed by the sea, and relates Plato's well-known story of an Atlantic island, in corroboration of the hypothesis. We are informed that the observations of mariners uniformly testify a decrease of depth in the shoals of the West-Indies. These islands seem therefore to be mountainsummits of a rising continent, not pinnacles of a submerged country. There is no part of the inhabited world on which the sea has made any considerable inroad: but the districts from which it has sensibly withdrawn are innumerable; and the beachy shore of North America is plainly one of the more recent desertions. Were we to seek in nature for the possibly romantic island of Plato, we should fix on Spain; the observations of naturalists having rendered it highly probable that the Bay of Biscay once joined the Mediterranean, by a streight nearly commensurate with the canal of Languedoc. M. VON Bülow asserts (vol. ii. p. 49) the declension of the price of land in America. Mr. Cooper (says he, p. 62) had purchased a plantation near Northumberland: but, finding the labourers, to whom he had immense wages to pay, for ever at play and in liquor, he gave up the enterprize, and will attempt no more agricultural projects in America. Dr. Priestley is said to have written to his friends that Northumberland is a terrestrial paradise. This is putting a good face on a bad bargain. Northumberland is pleasantly situated, and the land is good but it is no paradise. Neither the climate nor the sottish barbarians who inhabit it breathe the gales of Eden.' P. 112. Preachers in America enjoy the privilege of being gra tuitously received in all the inns. Hence every strolling adventurer calls himself a preacher, and performs occasionally to the crowd in the course of his journey.' P. 141. It is astonishing that Congress should never yet have sent out any persons at the public cost, to examine the north-west country. It is truly humiliating for them that the English govern ment should have to patronize travels of discovery in their immediate neighbourhood, while Congress minds nothing but the customs and the excise. This government has all the character of the people. To whatever does not bring instantaneous profit, they are wholly indifferent. Nothing noble characterizes their measures. If the modern Jews were to set up a republic, it would be such an one as the American.' As As the general result of this set of observations, the author states that the lower and poorer any European emigrant is, the more will he find his condition bettered in America. He should not merely be poor: meanness of education should accompany his poverty. Has he been used to those rude manual labours which form the basis of every society; has he been accustomed to the narrow gratifications and unmerited contempt in which this whole class is doomed to starve in Europe;-let him wander to America. The absence of competition there confers on his toil a higher recompence; and he may exchange his absolute nullity for a certain degree of independence and civil existence. A man with the talents of a cultivated mind will more easily make his way in Europe than in America, where these qualifications are not sufficiently valued. A merchant may gain in America: but he is far more likely to lose, if he has not served a long apprenticeship to the arts of the country under native tuition; and he will find himself involved in some of those periodical earthquakes which are so often overthrowing, in hundreds, the commercial houses of the country. Least of all is America the country for a farmer, of education and property, who aspires to realize agricultural projects. The high price of labour, its scarceness, its aukwardness, the dearness of cattle, of furniture, of clothing, and every thing else, are against him; and the wretchedness of every neighbourhood renders rural society there insupportable. The third part of this work discusses the probable future state of this country, and prophesies a decrease of the American commerce; and a thence-resulting declension of English greatness. On every topic, the satirizing author studies the language of despondence, of alarm, and of reproach: his remarks, however, are those of a keen-sighted though not of a good-humoured observer. He was not born with a rose. coloured imagination, but gazes on the dingy hues of things: still his vision is sharp and distinct; and if he uses a smoked, it is nevertheless a polished glass. ART. XI. Bruder Moritz der Sonderling, &c. i. e. Brother Maurice WE 002 another Tay |