winter set in, drove the enemy out of the South River. The dragoons went into winter quarters at Burlington; the infantry attacked the garrison at Sandy Hook, took it by surprise, and brought off the prisoners, with a large quantity of continental bills to the amount of one million of dollars, and so well executed, that Mr. Smith, the loan officer at Philadelphia, could not discover the difference between them and the genuine bills. In April, 1780, M'Lane moved from Jersey, at the head of his dismounted troops, to Portsmouth in Virginia, to act on the British lines. In July, he was ordered to return to Jersey. He embarked his sick and baggage on board of a pilot-boat, at his own expense; the Governor of Virginia, (Mr. Jefferson,) refusing to risk any vessel on the bay, the refugees being there in their barges, in considerable force. The infantry able to march, moved by land under the command of Capt. Armstrong. On his passage to the head of the Elk, M'Lane was attacked by Capt. Thompson, in a refugee barge, but beat him, and made him and his crew prisoners. He joined the army in Jersey in August. Very active service till December. Lee, with the assistance of M'Lane, had the legion augmented by a resolution of Congress. Lee, the commanding officer, and M'Lane the next, of course. Lee prevailed on the legislature of Maryland to vote him sixty horses, and named M'Lane to purchase them. This was a trick of Lee's, to get rid of M'Lane, to make room for his friend Peyton. In January, 1781, Lee moved on with the legion to the Carolinas, leaving M'Lane in Philadelphia, purchasing horses, and recruiting the legion. The Pennsylvania and Jersey line mutinied in this month. A critical winter for America! An officer who had a family, was hard run to maintain it. It took a year's pay of a captain to purchase a cow, to give his family milk. In February, Lee organized his legion, and returned M'Lane to the Board of War as a retiring officer, under the resolution of October, 1780. M'Lane addressed Gen. Washington, and complained of Lee's trick. The General was at this time organizing the infantry under Lafayette, to move to Portsmouth, Virginia, to act with the detachment of the French fleet, expected from Rhode-Island, to act against Arnold, and M'Lane was provided for, brevetted a Major, and was ordered to join the Baron Steuben, which he did on the 6th March, in Williamsburg, Virginia. The Marquis's infantry was to follow in craft down the Chesapeake.

"

'On the 9th March, the Baron Steuben detached M'Lane with the charge of the signals at the light-house on Cape James. The British fleet appeared before the French, and a sloop-of-war in disguise, under French colors, stood up the bay, to intercept the Marquis's infantry coming down. Lieut. a naval officer of the French fleet, took Capt. Middleton's pilot-boat, and boarded the British fleet for the French, by mistake! Middleton was taken to England a prisoner. He refused to pilot the English fleet. Middleton was a good whig. Major M'Lane pulled ahead of the sloop-of-war, in a barge, and met the fleet in time to apprize them of their danger, for which he received the Marquis's thanks. On the 17th March, he joined Major M'Pherson, on the south side of James River, and acted with the light army under the command of the Marquis, till Arnold left Virginia. Then he was ordered by the Board of War to repair to Gen.

VOL. XI.

23

Washington's head-quarters in Jersey; from thence to the South River, near Shrewsbury, with instructions to watch the enemy's movements near Sandy Hook. During this tour of duty, M'Lane crossed in a barge to Long-Island, and there received the signals of the British fleet then assembling at Sandy Hook, to relieve Cornwallis. He returned to Gen. Washington, then on the lines near York, during the siege; and on the arrival of the British fleet off the Chesapeake, M'Lane proceeded to sea, to prove the signals, and reported to Gen. Washington. The General wished the Count De Grace to slip his cables, and pursue the British fleet. The Count excused himself; at the same time, they were five ships of the line inferior to that of De Grace's. M'Lane was disappointed. He expected to see an action between the fleets. After Cornwallis's troops had marched from York, as prisoners, to the interior of Virginia, Col. Laurens proposed to M'Lane to accompany him to South Carolina, to act with a regiment of blacks, which he would engage to raise as soon as he arrived there. M'Lane would have freely accepted the offer; but as the war appeared to be near a close, and his family required his attention, he requested Col. Laurens to mention his situation to Gen. Washington, which he did. The General wished Major M'Lane to attend to the embarkation of the troops, then about to pass up the bay in bay craft, and keep in the rear, in an armed boat, to prevent any of the refugees' boats from intercepting them, which he did. On the arrival of the army at Philadelphia, M'Lane was ordered into Delaware, to reconnoitre the British refugee cruisers as high as Port Penn, who were committing depredations on the shore, as well as in the bay. The Major was in Dover on the 31st January, 1782, when Gen. Dickinson was alarmed at the appearance of the Fox schooner of ten guns from New-York, said to be landing near Little Creek, within ten miles of the state-house. He reconnoitred the enemy, by direction of Gov. Dickinson; found the schooner was ashore, pressed on by the ice; closed on her with his friend Mr. John Vining, a gentleman of great spirit. Vining offered to board the schooner with the Major's flag. The captain, a refugee, immediately on Vining's presenting his flag, consulted his officers, and gave up the vessel a prize to the Major, on condition that the officers and crew should be escorted to New-York as prisoners of war to the army of the United States, and there remain till exchanged. The Major sent off Vining in the night to obtain the Governor's flag, and the militia guard. The Major had, before he closed on the schooner, ordered fires to be kindled in the woods, which had the appearance of an encampment. Vining did not return until the morning of the 1st of February, 1782-too late! The vessel floated, and the wind favoring her, she was presently in deep water; and the Major had to abandon his prize, and was in danger of being made prisoner himself. He returned to head-quarters, then in Philadelphia. Gen. Washington permitted him to retire on half pay for life, under the resolution of Congress, October 21, 1780.

Col. M'Lane commenced the commission business at Smyrna, (Delaware,) not having a dollar left of his patrimony and fortune. In March, 1783, he had two shallops laden with wheat, on the waters of Duck creek, Capt. Brooks, of the refugee barge Hookumsnivy,'

had, on the night of the 15th, taken both vessels, and was towing them down to his rendezvous at Bombay Hook. On the morning of the 17th, before day-break, Col. M'Lane attacked Brooks, at the head of a few of his neighbors and old soldiers, beat him, retook his shallops, and captured Brooks' barge. And thus ended an eight years' war, commenced as a volunteer militia-man, and ended as such.'

DREAMS.

"To sleep - perchance to dream! Thus I say, when, forgetting the toil and carking cares of the day, I lay my head upon my pillow, and presently journey free, in the land of visions.'

'SLEEP, A RHAPSODY.'

LITERARY NOTICES.

EMBASSY TO THE EASTERN COURTS OF COCHIN-CHINA, SIAM, AND MUSCAT, in the United
States' Sloop-of-war Peacock, DAVID GEISINGER, Commander, during the years
1832-3-4. By EDMUND ROBERTS. In one volume. pp. 432. New-York: HARPER AND
BROTHERS.

MR. ROBERTS has given us, in this work, the result of his observations during a visit to three oriental governments, in the capacity of commercial envoy from the United States. The special object of his mission was to establish such new relations with Cochin-China, Siam, and Muscat, as should place our commerce with those countries on a more equitable footing; and to obtain the repeal of a certain arbitrary law, under which the property and even the lives of our citizens were, in some instances, liable to be sacrificed at the caprice of the native merchant. With the courts of Siam and Muscat, our envoy entered into treaties, the provisions of which were highly favorable to our mercantile intercourse in those quarters. He obtained a reduction of fifteen per cent. on the import and export duties, at Muscat; and at Siam, the abrogation, so far as regarded his countrymen, of a tyrannical decree, which placed the life and estate of the foreign debtor at the absolute disposal of the native claimant. His attempts to negociate with the court of Cochin-China proved, however, abortive; for, declining to observe the foolish but degrading etiquette prescribed by the ministers of the emperor, he was refused an audience, and ordered to quit the celestial empire.

Our author appears to have been an accurate and minute observer; and he certainly possesses the faculty of recording the facts he collected, and the impressions he received, in a pleasing, though simple, style. There is nothing like effort in his diction; no attempt at 'fine writing,' as it is called. He has given us a vast fund of new and important information, enlivened by a variety of amusing anecdotes, illustrative of the character, manners, and habits of the people he visited; and he has done so in the plain, but by no means coarse language, which is best adapted to such a subject. It is the province of fiction to elaborate and embellish; but simplicity is usually the characteristic of truth; and there is an innate evidence of veracity, as well as careful investigation and research, in the volume before us. The details are, it is true, in some cases somewhat too minute. The descriptions too particular and formal, to suite the taste of the general reader; but this only renders the book more valuable as a guide to those who may hereafter visit the same regions. Mr. Roberts gives us a curious account of a race of barbarians called Semangs, inhabiting a portion of the Malay peninsula, but apparently distinct from the rest of its inhabitants. They reside principally in the interior, and subsist chiefly by hunting. Our author seems to have bestowed much pains in the endeavor to trace their origin, and has quoted specimens of their language, which bears but a slight generic resemblance to the common Malay.

The descriptions given by our author of the manners and customs of the Siamese, are extremely entertaining. The abject and disgusting homage offered to the King

of Siam, who

significantly styled the 'lord of heads and of lives,' must have been highly edifying. We would recommend all luke-warm republicans, all who recognise the 'right divine of kings,' to pay a visit to the Siamese court. Think of a nation of men who are so much in the habit of crawling, when in the presence of their superiors, that they pass half their lives in the position of beasts! From this picture of human degradation, we turn with pleasure to the statements of Mr. Roberts, relative to the state of education in China. We had no idea that intellectual cultivation had been carried to such an extent among a people whom we have been accustomed to consider only partially civilized. The internal regulation of their schools and colleges, the high order of learning necessary to obtain literary honors, and the strict examinations to which the students are subjected, might afford a useful lesson to the heads of many of our own public institutions.

We could extend our remarks on this subject, did space permit; but having already exceeded our intended limits, we must bring this review to a close. As affording an amusing picture of oriental manners, combined with much useful and novel information, respecting countries ever jealously guarded from the intrusion of strangers, we can heartily recommend this book to our readers.

THE NEW-YORK REVIEW. Number Three. pp. 252. New-York: GEORGE DearBoston: WEEKS, JORDAN AND COMPANY,

BORN.

NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. Number xcviii. pp. 314. Boston: OTIS, BROaders, AND COMPANY. New-York: G. AND C. CARVILL.

6

WE have placed these Reviews, as we believe, in the order of their merit. Sectional feeling aside, the first-named work has had, in our judgment, no superior in this country. Liberal in its spirit, decided and explicit in its decisions or opinions, various in its topics, and graceful and attractive, as well as strong and fervent, in its manner, the 'New-York Review' seems to us to combine all the requisite qualifications for a useful and popular work of its class. We regret that we have room for little else than an enumeration of its more prominent articles. The first is an able review of CAREY'S Essay on the Rate of Wages,' and collaterally, of an Address,' by ELY MOORE, before the New-York 'Trades Union Society;' the second, ‘Reproductive Criticism,' is from the text of HEINE'S 'Letters auxiliary to the History of Modern Polite Literature in Germany;' the third, ' Origin and Progress of Popular Liberty,' a review of an 'Address, delivered at Hartford, (Conn.,) on the close of the second Century from the first Settlement of the City,' by Dr. HAWES. The 'Literary Remains of COLERIDGE' forms the basis of the next paper, which is followed by a charming review of the 'Remains of that Sweet Singer of the Temple, George HERBERT.' 'German Biblical Criticism,' and 'ABBE DE LA MENNAIS on the Romish Church,' succeed in order; and these bring us to the gem of the number, a notice of DAVIS' Life of AARON BURR. We are pleased to see our expressed opinions of this work confirmed by so able a pen; and sure we are, that no American can rise from the perusal of this article, and not marvel at the public tolerance, which has favored so much as a difference of opinion in relation to the character of its notorious subject. We give the forcible conclusion of this admirable review:

"We have sketched the leading incidents in the life of Aaron Burr, not surely from any pleasure to be derived from dwelling on a career of profligacy; but as the professor of anatomy, in giving instruction to his class, is sometimes obliged to deal with subjects made offensive by decay; so, in our dissection of the characters of public men, (a duty which, with God's help, shall in these pages ever be honestly and fearlessly performed)