well-regulated under tone, as to be perfectly inaudible to any but themselves.”—(pp. 92— 99.) The bustling importance of Sir Thomas Jermyn, the fat duke and his right hand man, the blunt toad-eater, Mr. Charlecote, a loud noisy sportsman, and Lady Jermyn's worldly prudence, are all displayed and managed with considerable skill and great power of amusing. One little sin against good taste, our author sometimes commits-an error from which Sir Walter Scott is not exempt. We mean the humour of giving characteristic names to persons and places; for instance, Sir Thomas Jermyn is Member of Parliament for the town of Rottenborough. This very easy and appellative jocularity seems to us, we confess, to savour a little of vulgarity; and is therefore quite as unworthy of Mr. Lister, as Dr. Dryasdust is of Sir Walter Scott. The plainest names which can be found (Smith, Thomson, Johnson, and Simson, always excepted) are the best for novels. Lord Chesterton we have often met with; and suffered a good deal from his lordship: a heavy, pompous, meddling peer, occupying a great share of the conversation-saying things in ten words which required only two, and evidently convinced that he is making a great impression; a large man, with a large head, and very landed manner; knowing enough to torment his fellow-creatures, not to instruct them-the ridicule of young ladies, and the natural butt and target of wit. It is easy to talk of carnivorous animals and beasts of prey; but does such a man, who lays waste a whole party of civilized beings by prosing, reflect upon the joy he spoils, and the misery he creates, in the course of his life? and that any one who listens to him through politeness, would prefer toothache or earache to his conversation? Does he consider the extreme uneasiness which ensues, when the company have discovered a man to be an extremely absurd person, at the same time that it is absolutely impossible to convey, by words or manner, the most distant suspicion of the discovery? And then, who punishes this bore? What sessions and what assizes for him? What bill is found against him? Who indicts him? When the judges have gone their vernal and autumnal rounds -the sheep-stealer disappears-the swindler gets ready for the Bay-the solid parts of the murderer are preserved in anatomical collections. But, after twenty years of crime, the bore is discovered in the same house, in the same attitude, eating the same soup,-unpunished, untried, undissected-no scaffold, no skeleton-no mob of gentlemen and ladies to gape over his last dying speech and confes sion. The scene of quizzing the country neighbours is well imagined, and not ill executed; though there are many more fortunate passages in the book. The elderly widows of the metropolis beg, through us, to return their thanks to Mr. Lister for the following agreeable portrait of Mrs. Dormer. "It would be difficult to find a more pleasing example than Mrs. Dormer, of that much helled class of elderly ladies of the world, who are presumed to be happy only at the card table; to grow in bitterness as they advanced in years, and to haunt, like restless ghosts, those busy circles which they no longer either enliven or adorn. Such there may be; but of these she was not one. She was the frequenter of society, but not its slave. She had great natural benevolence of disposi tion; a friendly vivacity of manners, which endeared her to the young, and a steady good sense, which commanded the respect of her contemporaries; and many, who did not agree with her on particular points, were willing to allow that there was a good deal of reason in Mrs. Dormer's prejudices. She was, perhaps, a little blind to the faults of her friends; a defect of which the world could not cure her; but she was very kind to their virtues. She was fond of young people, and had an unimpaired gaiety about her, which seemed to expand in the contact with them; and she was anxious to promote, for their sake, even those amusements for which she had lost all taste herself. She was-but after all, she will be best described by negatives. She was not a matchmaker, or mischief-maker; nor did she plume herself upon her charity, in implicitly believing only just half of what the world says. She was no retailer of scandalous 'on dits. She did not combat wrinkles with rouge; nor did she labour to render years less respected by a miserable affectation of girlish fashions. She did not stickle for the inviolable exclusiveness of certain sects; nor was she afraid of being known tc visit a friend in an unfashionable quarter of the town. She was no worshipper of mere rank. She did not patronize oddities; nor sanction those who delight in braving the rules of common decency. She did not evince her sense of propriety, by shaking hands with the recent defendant in a crim. con. cause; nor exhale her devotion in Sunday routs."—(pp. 243, 244.) Mrs. Clotworthy, we are afraid, will not be quite so well pleased with the description of her rout. Mrs. Clotworthy is one of those ladies who have ices, fiddlers, and fine rooms, but no fine friends. But fine friends may always be had, where there are ices, fiddlers, and fine rooms: and so, with ten or a dozen stars and an Oonalaska chief; and, followed by all vicious and salient London, Mrs. Clotworthy takes the field. "The poor woman seemed half dead with fatigue already; and we cannot venture to say whether the prospect of five hours more of this high-wrought enjoyment tended much to brace her to the task. It was a brilliant sight. and an interesting one, if it could have been viewed from some fair vantage ground, with ample space, in coolness and in quiet. Rank, beauty, and splendour, were richly blended. The gay attire; the glittering jewels; the more resplendent features they adorned, and too frequently the rouged cheek of the sexage narian; the vigilant chaperon; the fair but languid form which she conducted; well curled heads, well propped with starch; well whis kered guardsmen; and here and there fat, good. humoured, elderly gentlemen, with stars upon heir coats;-all these united in one close | the busy din, the flowing tide of human exist. medley-a curious piece of living mosaic. ence, were all wanting to complete the similiMost of them came to see and be seen; some tude. All was hushed and silent; and this of the most youthful professedly to dance; mighty receptacle of human beings, which a yet how could they? at any rate they tried. few short hours would wake into active energy They stood, if they could, with their vis-à-vis and motion, seemed like a city of the dead. facing them, and sidled across-and back again, and made one step-or two if there was room, to the right or left, and joined hands, and set-perhaps, and turned their partners, or dispensed with it if necessary-and so on to the end of 'La Finale;' and then comes a waltz for the few who choose it-and then another squeezy quadrille-and so on-and on, till the weary many 'leave ample room and verge enough' for the persevering few to figure in with greater freedom. "There was little to break this solemn illusion. Around were the monuments of human exertion, but the hands which formed them were no longer there. Few, if any, were the symptoms of life. No sounds were heard bu: the heavy creaking of a solitary wagon; the twittering of an occasional sparrow; the mo notonous tone of the drowsy watchman; and the distant rattle of the retiring carriage, fading on the ear till it melted into silence: and the eye that searched for living objects fell on "But then they talk; oh! ay! true, we must nothing but the grim great-coated guardian of not forget the charms of conversation. And the night, muffled up into an appearance of what passes between nine-tenths of them! | doubtful character between bear and man, and Remarks on the heat of the room; the state scarcely distinguishable, by the colour of his of the crowd; the impossibility of dancing, dress, from the brown flags along which he and the propriety nevertheless of attempting sauntered."-(pp. 297-299.) it; that on last Wednesday was a bad Almack's, and on Thursday a worse Opera; that the new ballet is supposed to be good; mutual inquiries how they like Pasta, or Catalani, or whoever the syren of the day may be; whether they have been at Lady A.'s, and whether they are going to Mrs. B.'s; whether they think Miss Such-a-one handsome! and what is the name of the gentleman talking to her; whether Rossini's music makes the best quadrilles, and whether Collinet's band are the best to play them. There are many who pay in better coin; but the small change is much of this description."-(I. 249–251.) We consider the following description of London, as it appears to a person walking home after a rout, at four or five o'clock in the morning, to be as poetical as any thing written on the forests of Guiana, or the falls of Niagara :— "Granby followed them with his eyes; and now, too full of happiness to be accessible to any feelings of jealousy or repining, after a short reverie of the purest satisfaction, he left the ball, and sallied out into the fresh cool air of a summer morning-suddenly passing from the red glare of lamp-light, to the clear sober brightness of returning day. He walked cheerfully onward, refreshed and exhilarated by the air of morning, and interested with the scene around him. It was broad day-light, and he viewed the town under an aspect in which it is alike presented to the late retiring votary of pleasure, and to the early rising sons of business. He stopped on the pavement of Oxford street, to contemplate the effect. The whole extent of that long vista, unclouded by the mid-day smoke, was distinctly visible to his eye at once. The houses shrunk to half their span, while the few visible spires of the adjacent churches seemed to rise less distant than before, gaily tipped with early sunshine, and much diminished in apparent size, but heightened in distinctness and in beauty. Had it not been for the cool gray tint which slightly mingled with every object, the brightness was almost that of noon. But the life, the bustle One of the most prominent characters of the book, and the best drawn, is that of Tyrrel, son of Lord Malton, a noble blackleg, a titled gamester, and a profound plotting villain-a man, in comparison of whom, nine-tenths of the persons hung in Newgate are pure and perfect. The profound dissimulation and wicked artifices of this diabolical person are painted with great energy and power of description. The party at whist made to take in Granby is very good, and that part of the story where Granby compels Tyrrel to refund what he has won of Courtenay is of first-rate dramatic excellence; and if any one wishes for a short and convincing proof of the powers of the writer of this novel-to that scene we refer him. It shall be the taster of the cheese, and we are convinced it will sell the whole article. We are so much struck with it, that we advise the author to consider seriously whether he could rot write a good play. It is many years since a good play has been written. It is about time, judging from the common economy of nature, that a good dramatic writer should appear. We promise Mr. Lister sincerely, that the Edinburgh Review shall rapidly undeceive him if he mistakes his talents; and that his delusion shall not last beyond the first tragedy or comedy. The picture at the exhibition is extremely well managed, and all the various love-tricks of attempting to appear indifferent, are, as But it is thirty or forty years since we have can remember, from the life. well as we been in love. The horror of an affectionate and dexterous mamma is a handsome young man without money: and the following lecture deserves to be committed to memory by all managing mothers, and repeated at proper intervals to the female progeny. "True, my love, but understand me. I don' wish you positively to avoid him. I would not go away, for instance, if I saw him coming, or even turn my head that I might not see him as he passed. That would be too broad and marked. People might notice it. It would must allow her to be fascinating. Place a perfect stranger in a crowded assembly, and she would first attract his eye; correcter beau ties would pass unnoticed, and his first attention would be riveted by her. She was all brilliancy and effect; but it were hard to say she studied it; so little did her spontaneous, airy graces convey the impression of premedi tated practice. She was a sparkling tissue of little affectations, which, however, appeared so interwoven with herself, that their seeming artlessness disarmed one's censure. Strip them away, and you destroyed at once the brilliant being that so much attracted you; and it thus became difficult to condemn what you felt unable, and, indeed, unwilling, to remove With positive affectation, malevolence itself could rarely charge her; and prudish censure seldom exceeded the guarded limits of a dry remark, that Miss Darrell had 'a good deal of manner.' look particular. We should never do any thing | pronounce her beautiful; at any rate they that looks particular. No, I would answer him civilly and composedly whenever he spoke to me, and then pass on, just as you might in the case of any body else. But I leave all this to your own tact and discretion, of which nobody has more for her age. I am sure you can enter into all these niceties, and that my observations will not be lost upon you. And now, my love, let me mention another thing. You must get over that little embarrassment which I see you show whenever you meet him. It was very natural and excusable the first time, considering our long acquaintance with him and the General: but we must make our conduct conform to circumstances; so try to get the better of this little flutter: it does not look well, and might be observed. There is no quality more valuable in a young person than self-possession. So you must keep down these blushes,' said she, patting her on the cheek, or I believe I must rouge you:-though it would be a thousand pities, with the pretty natural colour "Eclat she sought and gained. Indeed, she you have. But you must remember what I was both formed to gain it, and disposed to have been saying. Be more composed in your desire it. But she required an extensive sphere. behaviour. Try to adopt the manner which IA ball-room was her true arena; for she waltzdo. It may be difficult; but you see I con-ed 'à ravir,' and could talk enchantingly about trive it, and I have known Mr. Granby a great nothing. She was devoted to fashion, and all deal longer than you have, Caroline."-(pp. 21, 22.) These principles are of the highest practical importance in an age when the art of marrying daughters is carried to the highest pitch of excellence, when love must be made to the young men of fortune, not only by the young lady, who must appear to be dying for him, but by the father, mother, aunts, cousins, tutor, gamekeeper, and stable-boy-assisted by the Farson of the parish, and the churchwardens. If any of these fail, Dives pouts, and the match is off. The merit of this writer is, that he catches delicate portraits, which a less skilful artist would pass over, from not thinking the features sufficiently marked. We are struck, however, with the resemblance, and are pleased with the conquest of difficulties-we remember to have seen such faces, and are sensible that they form an agreeable variety to the expression of more marked and decided character. Nobody, for instance, can deny that he is acquainted with Miss Darrell. "Miss Darrell was not strictly a beauty. She had not, as was frequently observed by her female friends, and unwillingly admitted by her male admirers, a single truly good feature in her face. But who could quarrel with the tout ensemble? who but must be dazzled with the graceful animation with which those features were lighted up? Let critics hesitate to its fickleness, and went to the extreme when. ever she could do so consistently with grace. But she aspired to be a leader as well as a follower; seldom, if ever, adopted a mode that was unbecoming to herself, and dressed to suit the genius of her face."-(pp. 28, 29.) Tremendous is the power of a novelist! I! four or five men are in a room, and show a disposition to break the peace, no human magistrate (not even Mr. Justice Bayley) could do more than bind them over to keep the peace, and commit them if they refused. But the writer of the novel stands with a pen in his hand, and can run any of them through the body, can knock down any one individual, and keep the others upon their legs; or, like the last scene in the first tragedy written by a young man of genius, can put them all to death. Now, an author possessing such extraordinary privileges, should not have allowed Mr. Tyrrel to strike Granby. This is ill-managed; particularly as Granby does not return the blow, or turn him out of the house. Nobody should suffer his hero to have a black eye, or to be pulled by the nose. The Iliad would never have come down to these times if Agamemnon had given Achilles a box on the ear. We should have trembled for the Eneid, if any Tyrian nobleman had kicked the pious Eneas in the 4th book. Æneas may have deserved it; but he could not have founded the Roman empire after so distressing an accident ISLAND OF CEYLON.* [EDINBURGH Review, 1803.] Ir is now little more than half a century since the English first began to establish themselves in any force upon the peninsula of India; and we at present possess in that country a more extensive territory, and a more numerous population, than any European power can boast of at home. In no instance has the genius of the English, and their courage, shone forth more conspicuously than in their contest with the French for the empire of India. The numbers on both sides were always inconsiderable; but the two nations were fairly matched against each other, in the cabinet and in the field; the struggle was long and obstinate; and, at the conclusion, the French remained masters of a dismantled town, and the English of the grandest and most extensive colony that the world has ever seen. To attribute this success to the superior genius of Clive, is not to diminish the reputation it confers on his country, which reputation must of course be elevated by the number of great men to which it gives birth. But the French were by no means deficient in casualties of genius at that period, unless Bussy is to be considered as a man of common stature of mind, or Dupleix to be classed with the vulgar herd of politicians. Neither was Clive (though he clearly stands forward as the most prominent figure in the group) without the aid of some military men of very considerable talents. Clive extended our Indian empire; but General Lawrence preserved it to be extended; and the former caught, perhaps, from the latter, that military spirit by which he soon became a greater soldier than him, without whom he never would have been a soldier at all. harbour. For it is a very singular fact, tha in the whole peninsula of India, Bombay is alone capable of affording a safe retreat w ships during the period of the monsoons. The geographical figure of our possessions in Ceylon is whimsical enough: we possess the whole of the sea-coast, and enclose in a periphery the unfortunate King of Candia, whose rugged and mountainous dominions may be compared to a coarse mass of iron, set in a circle of silver. The Popilian ring, in which this votary of Buddha has been so long held by the Portuguese and Dutch, has infused the most vigilant jealousy into the government, and rendered it as difficult to enter the kingdom of Candia, as if it were Paradise or China; and yet, once there, always there; for the dif ficulty of departing is just as great as the difficulty of arriving; and his Candian excellency, who has used every device in his power to keep them out, is seized with such an affection for those who baffle his defensive artifices, that he can on no account suffer them to depart. He has been known to detain a string of four or five Dutch embassies, till various members of the legation died of old age at his court, while they were expecting an answer to their questions, and a return to their presents:* and his majesty once exasperated a little French ambassador to such a degree, by the various pretences under which he kept him at his court, that this lively member of the corps diplomatique, one day, in a furious passion, attacked six or seven of his majesty's largest elephants sword in hand, and would, in all probability, have reduced them to mince-meat, if the poor beasts had not been saved from the unequal combat Gratifying as these reflections upon our prowess in India are to national pride, they The best and most ample account of Ceylon bring with them the painful reflection, that so is contained in the narrative of Robert Knox, considerable a portion of our strength and who, in the middle of the 17th century, was wealth is vested upon such precarious founda- taken prisoner there (while refitting his ship) tions, and at such an immense distance from at the age of nineteen, and remained nineteen the parent country. The glittering fragments years on the island, in slavery to the King of of the Portuguese empire, scattered up and Candia. During this period, he learnt the down the East, should teach us the instability language, and acquired a thorough knowledge of such dominion. We are (it is true) better of the people. The account he has given of capable of preserving what we have obtained, them is extremely entertaining, and written in han any other nation which has ever colonized a very simple and unaffected style; so much in Southern Asia: but the object of ambition | so, indeed, that he presents his reader with a is so tempting, and the perils to which it is exposed so numerous, that no calculating mind can found any durable conclusions upon this branch of our commerce, and this source of our strength. In the acquisition of Ceylon, we have obtained the greatest of all our wants-a good • An Account of the Island of Ceylon. By ROBERT PERCIVAL, Esq., of his Majesty's Nineteenth Regiment of Foot London, C. and R. Baldwin. very grave account of the noise the devil makes in the woods of Candia, and of the fre quent opportunities he has had of hearing him. Mr. Percival does not pretend to deal with the devil; but appears to have used the fair and natural resources of observation and good sense, to put together an interesting description of Ceylon. There is nothing in the book very animated, or very profound, but it is without * Knox's Ceylon. pretensions; and if it does not excite attention | the world they are Europeans and Christians. by any unusual powers of description, it never Unfortunately, their ideas of Christianity are so disgusts by credulity, wearies by prolixity, or imperfect, that the only mode they can hit upon offends by affectation. It is such an account of displaying their faith, is by wearing hats and as a plain military man of diligence and com- breeches, and by these habiliments they con mon sense might be expected to compose; and sider themselves as showing a proper degree narratives like these we must not despise. To of contempt, on various parts of the body, to military men we have been, and must be, in- wards Mahomet and Buddha. They are lazy debted for our first acquaintance with the inte- treacherous, effeminate, and passionate to ex rior of many countries. Conquest has explored cess; and are, in fact, a locomotive and animore than ever curiosity has done; and the mated farrago of the bad qualities of all path for science has been commonly opened tongues, people, and nations, on the face of by the sword. the earth. We shall proceed to give a very summary abstract of the principal contents of Mr. Percival's book. The immense accessions of territory which the English have acquired in the East Indies since the American war, rendered it absolutely necessary, that some effort should be made to obtain possession of a station where ships might remain in safety during the violent storms incidental to that climate. As the whole of that large tract which we possess along the Coromandel coast presents nothing but open roads, all vessels are obliged, on the approach of the monsoons, to stand out in the open seas; and there are many parts of the coast that can be approached only during a few months of the year. As the harbour of Trincomalee, which is equally secure at all seasons, afforded the means of obviating these disadvantages, it is evident that, on the first rupture with the Dutch, our countrymen would attempt to gain possession of it. A body of troops was, in consequence, detached in the year 1795, for the conquest of Ceylon, which (in consequence of the indiscipline which political dissension had introduced among the Dutch troops) was effected almost without opposition. Ceylon is now inhabited by the English; the remains of the Dutch, and Portuguese, the Cinglese or natives, subject to the dominion | of the Europeans; the Candians, subject to the king of their own name; and the Vaddahs, or wild men, subject to no power. A Ceylonese Dutchman is a course, grotesque species of animal, whose native apathy and phlegm is animated only by the insolence of a colonial tyrant: his principal amusement appears to consist in smoking; but his pipe, according to Mr. Percival's account, is so seldom out of his mouth, that his smoking appears to be almost as much a necessary function of animal life as his breathing. His day is eked out with gin, ceremonious visits, and prodigious quantities of gross food, dripping with oil and butter; his mind, just able to reach from one meal to another, is incapable of farther exertion; and, after the panting and deglutition of a long protracted dinner, reposes on the sweet expectation that, in a few hours, the carnivorous toil will be renewed. He lives only to digest, and, while the organs of gluttony perform their office, he has not a wish beyond; and is the happy man which Horace describes: in seipso totus, teres, atque rotundus. The descendants of the Portuguese differ materially from the Moors, Malabars, and other Mahometans. Their great object is to show The Malays, whom we forgot before to enu merate, form a very considerable portion of the inhabitants of Ceylon. Their original empire lies in the peninsula of Malacca, from whence they have extended themselves over Java, Sumatra, the Moluccas, and a vast number of other islands in the peninsula of India. It has been many years customary for the Dutch to bring them to Ceylon, for the purpose of carrying on various branches of trade and manufacture, and in order also to employ them as soldiers and servants. The Malays are the most vindictive and ferocious of living beings. They set little or no value on their own existence, in the prosecution of their odious passions; and having thus broken the great tie which renders man a being capable of being governed, and fit for society, they are a constant source of terror to all those who have any kind of connection or relation with them. A Malay servant, from the apprehension excited by his vindictive disposition, often becomes the master of his master. It is as dangerous to dismiss him as to punish him; and the rightful despot, in order to avoid assassination, is almost compelled to exchange characters with his slave. It is singular, however, that the Malay, incapable of submission on any other occasion, and ever ready to avenge insult with death, submits to the severest military discipline with the utmost resignation and meekness. The truth is, obedience to his officers forms part of his religious creed; and the same man who would repay the most insignificant insult with death, will submit to be lacerated at the halbert with the patience of a martyr. This is truly a tremendous people' When assassins and blood-hounds will fall in rank and file, and the most furious savages submit (with no diminution of their ferocity) to the science and discipline of war, they only want a Malay Bonaparte to lead them to the conquest of the world. Our curiosity has always been very highly excited by the accounts of this singular people; and we cannot help thinking, that, one day or another, when they are more full of opium than usual, they will run a muck from Cape Comorin to the Caspian. Mr. Percival does not consider the Ceylonese as descended from the continentals of the peninsula, but rather from the inhabitants of the Maldive Islands, whom they very much resemble in complexion, features, language, and manners. "The Ceylonese (says Mr. Percival) are courteous and polite in their demeanour, even to a degree far exceeding their civilization. In several qualities they are greatly superior to |