by the number of their hogsheads." And some of them have seventy, and even a hundred thousand of these peasants. These are, in the strictest sense, property, as they may be sold whenever the proprietor pleases. And when his extravagant expenditure reduces him, as is often the case, to adopt this expedient, it is probable the slaves are, for the most part, very indifferent about a transfer so little likely to make their condition worse. Instances, however, have been known, it seems, in which they have earnestly deprecated such an event:—

"When the father of Count Golovkin was reduced to the necessity of selling a portion of his peasants, in consequence of debts contracted in the service of the crown, deputies from the number of his slaves came to Moscow, beseeching an audience of their lord. One venerable man, the oldest of the number advertised for sale, begged to know why they were to be so dismissed. Because,' said the Count, I am in want of money, and must absolutely pay the debts I have contracted.' 'How much?' exclaimed at once all the deputies. About thirty thousand roubles,' rejoined the Count. God help us! do not sell us; we will bring the money.'

6

An instance like this is enough to show that even Russian boors have the affections, on which a generous master, and an enlightened and benign government co-operating with such generous masters, might take effectual hold to lead them gradually out of that wretched barbarism in which they have remained, unaltered, through so many ages. But, instead of any imperial or aristocratical plans or wishes directed toward such an object, we see, among the greater and smaller Russian holders of power, a general contempt for everything that could really tend to the respectability and happiness of a people, and for every faculty and feeling in human nature that is best adapted to be appealed to for the purpose of attracting human creatures into improvement. Indeed, there is no desire to lead them into improvement. They are of no known value or use, but to make soldiers for his Imperial Majesty, and labourers for the nobles; and, as ignorance and cudgels have thus far been found sufficient to train them for these uses, why should not the same discipline be sufficient still? Accordingly, a Russian statesman or noble is perfectly content that the thickest darkness should rest perpetually on this vast empire—a darkness as profound as if all the shades and mists that have been

cleared away from all the rest of Europe, by civilization, science, and religion, had rolled on this northern region, and there become accumulated into a preternatural midnight.

RUSSIA ESSENTIALLY DESPOTIC.

A despotic monarchy is clearly the doom of this immense country for an indefinite length of time. And, even supposing that once more, for the third or fourth time since the creation, the moral economy of human nature would be so far set aside as to permit a despot to possess consummate benevolence, as well as wisdom, it would still be difficult to conceive what he could do alone to raise the condition of the people. The expedient first presenting itself would be a plan for educating, civilizing, better supporting, more lightly tasking, and ultimately emancipating the peasants of the crown. But, how long would the monarch be suffered to live, that should thus venture to make himself such a contrast to the whole body of his nobles, as to excite universal discontent, and, perhaps, symptoms of approaching rebellion among their slaves?

ON EPIC POETRY.*

OUR times are unfavourable, to the last degree, to the writers of that kind of poetry commonly called Epic; a denomination about which there has been, among critics, a vast deal of superstition-a denomination as fairly applicable, for what any of them can show to the contrary, to any poetical narration of the great military transactions that have decided the destiny of a state, as to the Iliad-a denomination, therefore, which might, with perfect propriety, have appeared in the title-page of this work, had the author deemed it worth while to be tenacious of so trifling a point of rank. The present times, we observe, are unfavourable, because a great part of the impressive power of the heroic poem obviously depends on the contrast between such transactions as it narrates and the ordinary course of human events. We have

The Fall of Cambria, a Poem. By Joseph Cottle. 12mo. Two vols. 1810.

very naturally been accustomed to calculate the effect of this sort of poem, on an assumption that the fall of great states and monarchs, the extinction and creation of imperial dynasties, the exploits of great heroes, and such conflicts of armies as transfer whole nations to a new dominion, are things of so rare occurrence as to be of themselves adapted to take possession of the utmost faculty of attention and wonder, and, therefore, to need nothing but the eloquence of poetry to give them an overpowering magnificence. In their plainest mode of representation they must rise before our view, it is presumed, with somewhat of the aspect of sublime mountains: the effect of their appearing in poetry, will be as when those mountains are seen in the state of volcanoes. But this high advantage of the epic poemits having the province of celebrating a class of events which, in even the humblest style of recital, would be exceedingly striking to the imagination-is, along with so many other high and prescriptive things, totally abolished in the present age. The fall of monarchs-the end of a royal race-the catastrophe of empires-what solemn phrases these used to be, in the lessons of moralists, and the declamation of orators! How many pensive and awful reflections were they expected to awaken! To what a remote, and lofty, and tragical order of ideas were we suppose to be aspiring when we uttered them! But the time is at length come for such ambitious phrases to express but the ordinary events taking place within our sight. We are now become accustomed to reckon with great confidence, at the beginning of the year, that if we live to the end of it, we shall outlive some one or other ancient kingdom that is co-existing with us on the first of January. We take not the smallest credit for any unusual foresight in the prognostication; and when the event accordingly takes place, it seems so much a matter of course that it should have happened, that it is not till after a considerable interval of reflection that the mind admits any very grave impression of its importance. The impression is not so much made by the event itself directly, as by our reflective wonder that it has impressed us so little. But both our direct and our reflective ideas of the magnitude of such an event are soon swept away by that incessant rapid progress of revolution, which is overturning another and still another throne-destroying the boundaries of states-either reducing

those states to the condition of provinces of one vast rapacious empire, or supplanting their ancient institutions by new forms and names of government-and consigning the hereditary monarchs and their courts to obscurity and captivity, or driving them to the extremities and islands of Europe, or even to the other hemisphere. In this career of revolution, war has unfolded all its splendid and terrible forms, in such a crowded succession of enterprises and battles, with every imaginable circumstance of valour, skill, and destruction, that its grandest exhibitions are become familiar to us, almost to insipidity. We read or talk, over our wine or our coffee, of some great battle that has recently decided the fate of a kingdom, with an emotion nearly as transient as of an old bridge, carried away in our neighbourhood by a flood, or a tree overthrown by the wind, or struck with lightning. It is, even after every allowance for the natural effect of iteration and familiarity, perfectly astonishing to observe what a degree of indifference has come to prevail in the general mind, at the view of events, the most awful in their immediate exhibition, and the most portentous as to their

consequences.

Now it is very evident that this state of the public mind must be unfriendly in the extreme, as we began by asserting, to the labours and hopes of epic poets. It is the chief object of their unfortunate task to excite the sentiments of awe and astonishment by the representation of events, for the most part, of greatly inferior magnitude to those (of the very same class) which are just sufficing to keep up our newspapers and annual registers to the competent pitch for amusing us. It is true that the poets, by going back several ages for their subjects, have the advantage of exhibiting their heroes and great transactions with that venerable aspect of antiquity which is strangely imposing to the imagination; but this is more than counterbalanced in favour of the newspapers by the momentous and direct relation of the present events to our own interests. The facts, too, of the epic narative, instead of occupying the mind so as to withdraw its attention from the present events, have a quite contrary operation, tending rather to reflect its thoughts back to these nearer and greater objects And this reflected attention involves comparison; which we shall

be sure to make with a considerable degree of disposition to find the transactions of our own more magnificent than those of former ages. We shall thus be made to contemplate with more attention, and, though a kind of reacting pride, with more admiration, the events of the last year or month, in consequence of the poet's challenging us with a pompous display of the battles and revolutions of remote periodsso that not only we are likely to behave ill to contemporary epic poets, but even Homer himself has need of all the sanctity of antiquity, and all the surrounding throngs of devotees of every time and nation, to protect him against the pert profaneness with which we might be tempted to ask, "What are all your conflicts on the Phrygian plain, and what is the fall of Troy, compared with what is taking place in our times, about once every six months?"

GRAMMATICAL CRITICISM.*

Ir is unquestionably on Dr. Collyer's uncommon talent for illustration, by means of ideal painting, that he will wish chiefly to rest his reputation. We came to the present work prepared to receive a great deal of entertainment from this prominent characteristic of his writings. We were resolved

to practise the utmost courtesy if we should find, as we could not be surprised to find, that in the same manner as magicians used to be constantly tempted to employ the enchanted wand, even on occasions where an ordinary implement would have answered the purpose, the orator had recourse rather too often to the favourite expedient, the efficacy of which had been so well proved,-if we should find find metaphors, personifications, and highly coloured scenes here and there somewhat unseasonably, as we might think, interrupting and suspending the succession of thoughts simply instructive. It was an exercise of this benevolent feeling that repressed any sentiment of dissatisfaction which might arise at seeing the Intro

Lectures on Scripture Prophecy. By William Bengo Collyer, D.D. 8vo. 1809.