they should refuse their assistance to a clergyman, who, having performed due praises to Jehovah and Jesus Christ on a Sunday, is so delighted to join the work of Ganesa, Bhavani, &c., on the Monday. "Honour to thee, Ganesa, sapient lord- These are the first lines of the poem, and will certainly excuse us from any further quotation. To us, we will confess, it is not less astonishing than it is melancholy, to see a preacher of Christianity, who may be presumed to study the Bible with solemn attention,-who has reverently subscribed the religious articles of an institution expressly designed to preserve the authority and purity of Christian worship and doctrine, and who is in the specific charge of the souls of a considerable number of his fellow-mortals, thus formally and publicly bending at the altars of heathenism, and seriously uttering a language of adoration so explicit, that it would be impossible for a Brahmin to doubt whether the person uttering it meant to join him in his devotions. And on what ground, it may very fairly be asked, can it be doubted, whether a person who will write such language would join in the devotions of an Indian temple? Indeed why should he decline to do so? As far as the verbal ritual is concerned, what would he need to say more than such words as those we have quoted, to which we might have made many additions, from the poem ? And what material difference, therefore, is there between uttering such ascriptions within certain walls, or without them-or on this side of the Indian ocean or the other? How could such explicit phrases have any different meaning from that which they now expressly bear, if, being in India, our author were to utter them as the vocal service, added to finish those more substantial aids which Major Scott Waring has applauded our Indian government for granting to the pagan abominations? In fixing this censure so seriously on Mr. Dudley, it would be unjust to decline noticing that the example was set him by a very distinguished culprit. We can yield to no man in the degree of our admiration of Sir W. Jones; and it is HINDOO MYTHOLOGY. 127 therefore the more painful to behold the splendour of his character and attainments suffering on one side an eternal eclipse. We can never deem it otherwise than a most eminently criminal violation of the laws inseparable from the true religion, to write hymns to Ganga, Bhavani, Durga, and a number more of the pagan divinities. As to the effect, however, the consolation is that the mischief is small. Very few persons, probably, ever did, or ever will read through these compositions, except such as were formally in quest of mere knowledge; and nobody will read, with the slightest interest, Mr. Dudley's poem. SURINAM.* THE author left Madeira in January. 1805, in an English merchantman called the Jason, sailing in company with another vessel, for the sake of a double show of wooden cannon for the distant amusement of any French or Spanish privateers that might be tired of seeing nothing but porpoises or dolphins. But to avoid rendering this formidable show too common and vulgar, they make a circuitous route to keep out of sight of some inquisitive Spaniards, and thus denied. our author the gratification of seeing the Peak of Teneriffe. They got into the trade winds, had delightful weather, which left the sailors at leisure for mechanical employments, and were entertained with the sight of water-spouts, flying fishes, and sharks. In mentioning the last, he very reasonably dissents from Mr. Pennant's belief, that one species of them defends its young by taking them down its throat. The dolphins, in their brilliant colours of green, gold, and purple," must have been a most beautiful sight-and never had a worthier spectator, if we may judge from the rich rays of sentiment and poetry in which that beauty is reflected by our author's imagination. MARTINIQUE. The island of Martinique is so frightfully infested with venomous reptiles, especially vipers, that it appears to be a Narrative of a Voyage to Surinam, and of a Residence there during 1805, 1806, and 1807. By Baron Albert Von Sack. 4to. 1810. matter of danger to stroll half a mile in the country, to turn out the children to play round the house, or even to go about the house itself without some degree of caution. It often happens to children, he says, that playing near the dwellinghouses in perfect health, they are the next moment "brought home to their parents in the most tormenting agonies of inevitable death;" that the people of Martinique have so long endured these venomous companions, as to have acquired a kind of feeling as if the vipers came on the authority of invincible fate, with as good a right to bite the people as the people have to inhabit the country. The Baron, however, wants to inspirit the good people to contest this claim; and proposes, as one expedient, the offer of considerable rewards to induce a number of the free negroes to employ themselves in searching out and destroying the reptiles, and as another, the introduction of some of the ichneumon tribe from Egypt. If we recollect, the ichneumon eats the serpent. PARAMARIBO. Our author next describes the size, site, streets, squares, remarkable buildings, and variegated sorts of inhabitants, of the capital of Surinam, Paramaribo, which contains twenty thousand people, consisting of about two thousand Dutch, German, English, and French-three thousand German and Portuguese Jews-four thousand free negroes and people of colour-and eleven thousand slaves. He tells us of the canals in the streets, where the Indians come in their canoes, exhibiting many curious articles for sale; of the rows of tamarind and orange trees in front of the houses; of the Goda bird, a kind of nightingale, which often enters voluntarily into the house to sing, in notes of exquisite sweetness; and of the gardens and public walks. As he always carries with him a good share of the spirit of a reformist and projector, it is not long before he finds out what a commodious thing it would be for the inhabitants to have some grand asylum from the "intense rays of the sun, where they might pleasantly keep their vital systems in order by gentle exercise;" and proposes a plantation of palm-trees, so disposed as to form a grand hall or temple. The condition of things at Paramaribo is somewhat less that the very best possible, so much less as may be deducted by the neighbourhood and the habitual dread of the revolted or bush negroes; by the necessity, in one district, of drinking brackish water, which produces " ulcers and scorbutic complaints;" by the ague arising from the low marshy land in another plantation, by the difficulty, on another, of raising the kind of vegetables most serviceable for the sustenance of the negroes; by the rude construction of the cotton mills, which occasion to the negroes a needless measure of painful labour; by a voracious insect which sometimes causes a failure in the crop of cotton; and by the more ambitious voracity of the sea, which is taking advantage of the numerous canals opening into it, to demolish the basis of all plantation, the land itself. He never beholds a grievance, however, without looking about for a remedy. With the destructive insect he is prepared to deal equally by fair means or foul; offering, as appears, to the enemy's choice, either to be attracted from the cotton bud to some still more delicious vegetable (recommended to be planted close by the cotton for this purpose), or to be sent into nonexistence by a pair of bellows, of which the tube is to pass through, and communicate with a small hollow globe, containing burning coals and tobacco. Our author furnishes us with a short but entertaining account of the mode of celebrating, at Paramaribo, the two great festival days, the first of the year, and the fourth of June. There is on the latter of these days, a grand ball, for the better sort. The free negroes have their ball, too, at which the musicians themselves are almost as much in motion as the dancers, while "those negroes who cannot get partners, will dance round a tree, or even to their own shadow." A dance is also given to the negro slaves; and the ladies are fond of seeing the females well dressed at this assembly. The males make a motley and grotesque appearance in the cast-off clothes of their masters, of all the dif ferent fashions of half a century. DUTCH COLONIAL POLICY, Some retrospective observations are next' made on the line of policy which has been pursued with regard to this colony by its late Dutch masters. And it is stated, that the imposition of injudicious taxes and commercial restrictions, K and the opening of a kind of banks to afford the temporary means of rash and extravagant speculation, had so powerfully countervailed the fertility of the soil and the industry of the colonists, as to keep the interests of the settlement in a very dubious condition, previously to the revolt of the negroes, which threatened the total ruin of the colony, and actually reduced it to a state from which it has not even yet recovered to anything like that very moderate pitch of prosperity which it had at one time attained. The form of government, the Baron says, has not been materially altered since the English obtained possession of the country. SEA COW AND OTHER NORTH AMERICAN LUXURIES. In glancing back from Paramaribo on the agreeable circumstances of this entertaining excursion, the Baron adverts briefly to a subject, for some formal notice of which several of the graver part of his readers will have been waiting with much impatience, and will wonder exceedingly to find him making a kind of apology to his correspondent for adverting to it at all. But they will soon forget to marvel at his philosophical or affected indifference to such a subject, in the eager interest which will absorb them while he is recounting, what-if they had been happy enough to share with him the plantation hospitalities - they might have eaten; sea-cow, which is "neither flesh nor fish;" tapir, an animal partly resembling a hog and partly a rhinoceros; fricasees and pies made of the equanna, a beautiful kind of "lizard" which lives solely on flowers and blossoms; "palmworrow, a caterpillar about a finger's length, and of the same thickness; parrot broth, Muscovy ducks, pine apples which grow in the hedges, sapadilla apple," &c., &c. It may, however, somewhat soothe the vexation of such readers to find, that several of these delicacies are not the every-day regale of even the luxurious planters themselves; who really condescend to use beef, goat's meat, and the like for their ordinary course of fattening, and exhibit such refined varieties as we have mentioned, on the high occasions when they have to saturate their genteel high-fed friends, or such respectable strangers as our author. LONGEVITY OF THE LADIES IN SURINAM. In laudable gratitude to a climate which contributed so |