fortunate among us, is wisdom and deep philosophy. The noble author doubtless reflected, whenever he raised that curious goblet to his lips, that, as he drank out of a skull that had once been the tenement of reason and intelligence, so his own -the "dome" of brightest thoughts,-the "palace" of a lofty soul, might one day be put to a yet viler use. But in following this train of reflection, we have been led insensibly very far from our present subject; and the only excuse we have to offer our hero and the reader must be a candid confession, that the recollection of that writer never comes across our mind without exercising a magnetic influence on our thoughts, and drawing them in long succession after it. But ceasing to contemplate the strange incongruities of one, in whose page a thousand "Dalilahs" lie ambushed, to surprise the hearts of the coldest and most rigid, and break through all the guards with which sanctity and decorum can fence us round, we return with thankfulness to the consideration of a story of innocence and purity. The unknown author, as we have elsewhere remarked, does not appear to us to have drawn the scene, he has so forcibly pourtrayed, from the recollections of his own experience, but rather, like the writer of whom we have been speaking, to have conceived it by a strong imagination, aided by the study of such disastrous chances as are recorded in the authentic narratives of maritime suffering. In pursuing, indeed, the study of nautical adventures and distress, it is possible that the latter may have become familiar even with the present obscure and anonymous work; for he is clearly a wide and excursive reader, and elsewhere in our researches we fancy we have beheld the print of his footsteps, and found him, by the right royal prerogative of genius, to have been levying contributions in the most secret and lonely recesses of our literature *. But * Witness the following singular appropriation of the idea and even words of a passage, conceived by one dramatic writer in prose, and transferred by the other into verse: the noble poet's impress is not sufficiently deep to prevent our plainly discerning underneath, the hand and seal of the original maker. 66 as yet 'tis but a chaos Of deeply-brooding thought: my fancy is Doge of Venice. "When it was only a confused mass of thoughts, tumbling over one another in the dark: when the fancy was yet in its first work, moving the sleeping images of things towards the light, there to be distinguished, and then either chosen or rejected by the judgment." Dryden's Dedication to the " Rival Ladies." supposing, as is much more likely, the coincidence to be accidental, we cannot but regard this general resemblance as a strong and conclusive testimony of the accuracy and success with which each writer has copied from one great original, Nature herself. But to resume the thread of our hero's narrative. He had no sooner arrived safe in port, than he was despatched by the captain who had taken him on board, along with nine others, on a secret expedition down the coast; when on the tenth day, just at sun-rise, they fell in with a fleet of boats, which had way-laid them, and were made prisoners. Wherefore or by whom this was brought about, as Peter appears to have been ignorant himself, we are not concerned to discover; he only knows that they were imprisoned three months, and nearly starved; but afterwards sent with a guard to Angola, and set to work in removing the rubbish of an old fortress, destroyed by lightning; where so many men of different nations were employed, that he often fancied himself at the tower of Babel, each labourer almost speaking a language of his own." Here having continued about five months, very sparingly dieted, and locked up every night, he contrived to effect his escape, in company with a native African, but of a different kingdom from the one they were in. They prosecute their journey very successfully for several days, considering that the interior of Africa does not present any extraordinary facility to travellers; and that having to carry their provisions on their backs, "every pound in the morning weighed ten before night." This inconvenience, however, they remedy by plundering an Angolan hovel, "worse contrived," says our hero," than an English hog-stye,""-which Glanlipze pronounces, with right African morality, to be "no hurt;" but which makes Peter, as he honestly confesses, for fear of the consequences, have his eyes, for the remainder of that day," the best part of the way behind him." Their disputes with the natural proprietors and lords of the soil are not more numerous than might be expected :only once at dinner, they are scared by the approach of a lioness and her cubs, in a couchant posture, who seize upon the ribs of the goat they are dining upon, grumbling all the time, and cracking them "like so many rotten twigs." Peter's own adventure with a crocodile, deserves more particular mention: travelling one day with great glee, about noon, their progress was impeded, on the sudden, by a broad and deep river, over which Peter, not being a swimmer, despaired of ever being able to get. "I told him, if he could get over, I would not desire to prevent his meeting with his family; but, as for my share, I had rather take my chance in the woods on this side, than plunge myself into such a stream only for the sake of drowning.-Oh! says Glanlipze, then you can't swim?—No, says I, there's my misfortune.-Well, says the kind Glanlipze, be of good heart, I'll have you over. He then bade me go cut an armful of the tallest of the reeds that grew there near the shore, whilst he pulled up another where he then was, and bring them to him. The side of the river sloped for a good way with an easy descent, so that it was very shallow where the reeds grew, and they stood very close together upon a large compass of ground. I had no sooner entered the reeds a few yards, to cut some of the longest, but (being about knee-deep in the water and mud, and every step raising my feet very high to keep them clear of the roots, which were matted together) I thought I had trod upon a trunk of one of the trees, of which, as I said, there was such plenty thereabouts; and, raising my other foot to get that also upon the tree, as I fancied it, I found it move along with me: upon which I roared out, when Glanlipze, who was not far from me, imagining what was the matter, cried out, Leap off, and run to shore to the right !-I knew not yet what was the case, but did as I was bid, and gained the shore. Looking back, I perceived the reeds shake and rustle all the way to the shore, by degrees, after me. I was terribly frightened, and ran to Glanlipze, who then told me the danger I had escaped, and that what I took for a tree was certainly a large alligator or crocodile. 66 My blood ran chill within me, at hearing the name of such a dangerous creature; but he had no sooner told me what it was, than out came the most hideous monster I had ever seen." The human wit of the African proves too much for the brutal strength of the crocodile, in the contest that ensues between them; at the end of which he comes running back :"So, Peter, says he, I have done the business.-Aye! business enough, I think, says I, and more than I would have done to have been king of Congo.-Why, Peter, says he, there is nothing but a man may compass by resolution, if he takes both ends of a thing in his view at once, and fairly deliberates on both sides what may be given and taken from end to end." This morsel of African wisdom makes deep impression on our hero's mind: we find him, at various periods of his life, recalling it to remembrance, and, finally, inscribing it on the walls of his solitary dwelling. The full force of the sentiment we have probably missed, by looking for too much meaning, or too far below the surface; so we leave it to the reader to extract that deep moral from it, which Peter found, but which we ourselves have been unable to discover. With the exception of a cut that our hero's guide and companion received, by a rugged stone, in his foot, they arrived,. without any further misadventure, at Quamis, a small place on a river of that name, in Loango, where Glanlipze had left a wife and five children when he set out to the wars. The day had just closed in previous to their arrival, and, as it is soon dark there after sun-set, you could but just see your hand before you, when Peter, by his guide's direction, goes straight to the door of a neat dwelling enough, and strikes two or three strokes against it with his stick. On this there comes to it a woman in the dress of the country, deep black: "I asked her, in her own language, if she knew one Glanlipze. She told me, with a deep sigh, that once she did. I asked then, where he was? She said, with their ancestors, she hoped, for he was the greatest warrior in the world; but, if he was not dead, he was in slavery." Now you must know that Glanlipze, with the provident caution of an Ulysses, had a mind to hear how his wife took his supposed death, or slavery, before he discovered himself. On Peter's telling her that he brought news of her husband, she, in the first instance, well nigh smothers him with caresses; and then on ringing for a light (a slip this, no doubt, of Peter's tongue) is in the utmost confusion at being discovered, by a white man, so thinly clad. However, being given to understand that her husband wanted a ransom to redeem himself, she assures Peter, that though she had nothing in the world to sell or make money of but her five children, yet, "as this was the time for the slaving-trade, she would see what she could raise by them; and if that would not do, she would sell herself," rather than her husband should remain in slavery. The conclusion of this scene of black felicity shews the native of Loango in the light of an African Dandie Dinmont. "The bustle we made had by this time awakened the children : who, stark-naked as they were born, both boys and girls, came crawling out, black as jet, from behind a curtain at the further end of the room, which was very long. The father, as yet, had only inquired after them; but upon sight of them, he fell into an extacy, kissing one, stroaking another, dandling a third, for the eldest was scarce fourteen; but not one of them knew him, for seven years makes a great chasm in young memories." The sight of this sport brings to Peter's remembrance the wife and children he had himself left far behind-those dear. images, which his own distresses had almost effaced from his mind. After admiring the love and constancy of the sable couple he had just left to themselves, he thus thinks to himself, with a sigh:-Heavens! how happy has this return made Glanlipze and his wife; and what is the occasion?" Is it that he has brought home great treasures from the wars? Nothing like it; he is come naked. Is it that, having escaped slavery and poverty, he is returned to an opulent wife, abounding with the good things of life? No such thing." Then why could not he and Patty have been as happy with each other?—Why, it was his pride that interposed, and prevented it. He could not, forsooth, labour for a living where he was known; but is he any better for labouring here, where he is not known, and has nobody to console and befriend him? "I have been deceived then, and have travelled so many thousand miles, and undergone so many dangers, only to know, at last, I had been happier at home; and have doubled my misery for want of consideration, that very consideration which, impartially taken, would have convinced me I ought to have made the best of my bad circumstances, and to have laid hold of every commendable method of improving them. Did I come hitherto avoid daily labour or voluntary servitude at home? I have had it in abundance. Did I come hither to avoid poverty or contempt? Here I have met with them ten-fold. And now, after all, was I to return home empty and naked, as Glanlipze has done, should I meet a wife, as bare as myself, so ready to die in my embraces, and to be a slave herself, with her children, for my sake only? I fear not!” of With these kind-hearted blacks he passed two years of sufficient bodily quiet, employed in cultivating the ground, and occasionally relieving that occupation by fishing, and hunting for venison. But "as for excursions for slaves, the practise many of those countries, and that by which the natives make money, "it was what neither he nor his black friend could endure, for the best of all reasons-they had been slaves themselves. But his "mind hankering after England made his life still unhappy;" an infelicity which daily increased, in proportion as the probability of his ever getting back grew less and less. This impatience of spirit at length stimulated him to risk his fortune, along with some of his own countrymen, who were confined in a Portuguese fort not far off, in an attempt to seize the ship Del Cruz, belonging to that people, by which their own had been captured. Having executed this bold design cleverly and successfully, they crowd all the sail they can, and push southward very briskly before the wind for many days, in order to be quite out of the fear of pursuit. The want of wood and water reduced them to some perplexity, as they were determined, on no account, to get in with the African shore; and not exactly knowing whereabouts to look for land elsewhere, under the guidance of different opinions" for they were all captains"-they sometimes steered eastward, and sometimes westward. Continuing this erratic course, they one day espied a little bluish, cloud-like appearance to the southward, which, on nearer approach, proved to be an island; and casting anchor about two miles from it, they sent their boat to shore, with part of the crew, to get wood and water. The boat repeated this trip five days successively, till at length on the |