object of paramount importance. The hill on which the Old Town of Edin burgh is built, was naturally surrounded by marshes, and presented a perpendicular front, to the west, capable of being crowned with a castle. It was appropri ated with avidity, and the metropolis of Scotland founded there, obviously and undeniably under the inspiration purely of the animal faculties. It was fenced round and ramparts built to exclude the fierce warriors who then lived south of the Tweed, and also to protect the inhabitants from the feudal banditti who infested their own soil. The space within the walls, however, was limited and narrow; the attractions of the spot were numerous, and to make the most of it, our ancestors erected the enormous masses of high, confused, and crowded buildings which now compose the High Street of the city, and the wynds, or alleys, on its two sides. These abodes, moreover, were constructed to a great extent, of timber, for not only the joists and floors, but the partitions between the rooms, were of massive wood. Our ancestors did all this in the perfect knowledge of the physical law, that wood ignited by fire is not only consumed itself, but envelopes in inevitable destruction every combustible object within its influence. Further; their successors, even when the necessity had ceased, persevered in the original error, and in the perfect knowledge that every year added to the age of such fabrics increased their liability to burn, they allowed them to be occupied not only as shops filled with paper, spirits, and other highly combustible materials, but introduced gas-lights, and let off the upper floors for brothels, introducing thereby into the heart of this magazine of conflagration, the most reckless and immoral of mankind. The consummation was the tremendous fires of November, 1824, the one originating in a whiskey-cellar, and the other in a garret brothel, which consumed the whole Parliament Square and a part of the High Street, destroying property to the extent of many thousands of pounds, and spreading misery and ruin over a considerable portion of the population of Edinburgh. Wonder, consternation, and awe were forcibly excited at the vastness of this calamity; and in the sermons that were preached, and the dissertations that were written upon it, much was said of the inscrutable ways of Providence, that sent such visitations upon the people, enveloping the innocent and the guilty in one common sentence of destruction.

'According to the exposition of the ways of Providence which I have ventured to give, there is nothing wonderful, nothing vengeful, nothing arbitrary, in the whole occurrence. The surprising thing was, that it did not take place generations before.'

During a French war, an English fleet was returning up the channel, in a thick fog. Some of the commanders advised lying to by night. The commodore was exceedingly attached to his wife and family, and insisted, that he would spend the Christmas holidays with them. Two ships of the line were dashed in pieces, and every soul on board perished.Another, drawing less water, went over the bank, and the crew were made captives, and so detained for years. The commodore sought his individual and selfish gratification, without thinking of the physical laws and the welfare of the men under his charge. This selfishness blinded him even to the danger to which he exposed his own life, and the happiness of his wife and children, whom he professed so much to love.

Very recently, an East Indiaman was offered a pilot in coming up the Vol. III.-No. 8.

4

channel. The captain, in proud reliance upon his own skill, refused. In a few hours the ship ran aground, and every human being perished. There was nothing strange, or unnatural in this striking of the ship. The real cause of the disaster was the immoderate self-confidence of the captain.— In this connexion, the author relates an impressive anecdote of a contrary character, and of a ship saved in a tempest by the foresight and cool selfpossession of the captain, while the ship lay for four hours on her beam ends.

He concludes with a narrative still more impressive, than which we hardly remember to have read a more interesting one. It is that of Capt. Lyon, in an unsuccessful attempt to reach Repulse Bay, towards the north pole, 1824. Though so short, and of such extreme interest, it is too long for us to give entire. He sailed with two vessels. One was discovered, early in the voyage, to be a bad one, and required to be towed. After various disasters, he arrived in the polar seas, and was visited by a storm. They were drifting on a bank, and could not see ahead. They had shoaled to seven fathoms, and parted most of their anchors. The ship pitched bows under, and a tremendous sea was bursting upon them. The tide was falling, and its fall was known to be fifteen feet. A situation more terrible can hardly be imagined. The boats were hoisted out, and the officers and crew drew lots for their respective points of exposure. The long-boat was the only one, which had the slightest chance of living; but the officers and crew, that fell to the other boats, took their chances with the most perfect composure, though two of the boats would have swamped, the instant they were lowered. Yet, such was the noble feeling, that the crew would have entered them without a murmur.

In the afternoon the weather cleared a little. A low beach appeared astern, on which the surf was running to an awful height, and it appeared evident, that no human power could save them. At six the ship, lifted by a tremendous sea, struck with great violence, and continued to strike every few minutes. The breakers burst over them. The hands had not been below for twenty-four hours, and the captain had rested none for three nights. All ideas of surviving were abandoned. Every man brought his bag on deck, and dressed himself; and the captain says, 'In the fine athletic forms, which stood before me, I saw not a muscle quiver, nor the slightest sign of alarm.' All hands were called aft to prayers. The captain thanked every one for his good conduct, and reminded them of the tempers, in which they ought to prepare to appear before their Maker. The officers sat down, wherever they could find the best shelter from the sea, and the men lay down, conversing with each other with the most perfect calmness. 'Each,' says the captain, was in peace with his neighbor and all the world, and I am firmly persuaded, that the resignation, which was then shown to the will of the Almighty, was the means of obtaining his mercy. The last severe blow loosened the rudder, and otherwise damaged the ship. But after all, the ship made no water, and, as the dark came on, the water deepened and the gale fell. They offered up thanks to God, and called the place, The bay of God's mercy.'

The ship experienced another gale, and was placed in another predicament, where destruction seemed still more inevitable, than before. The ship pitched terribly. It was feared that every wave would carry away

the windlass and forecastle, or that she would go down at her anchors. After two overwhelming seas, both the cables parted. All the anchors were lost, and the shore was expected to be right astern. The captain had the satisfaction of seeing the same calmness, as before. Every thing was managed with as much composure, as if they had been entering a friendly port. 'Here again,' says the captain, that Almighty power, which had before so inercifully preserved us, granted us his protection.'

Here we see the moral and intellectual triumphing over the physical laws; and there can be no doubt, that religion was the means of their preservation, not by any miracle, but precisely by inspiring them with that calmness, self-possession, and capability of exercising all their bodily and mental powers, in the right direction to save the ship; and it was the unchangeable law of the Deity, that such calmness and such measures could alone preserve them. But, if we examine a little farther, we shall find no mystery, no necessity for the supposition of a miraculous interposition to place them in the danger, or to effectuate their deliverance.

Though a pious man, the captain was a proud man too. He had been assigned to the command of the two ships, and, probably, had been flattered by assurances of reliance upon his good management and capacity. He knew from the first, that his ships were badly built for their purpose, that one would not sail, and that the other was so built, and loaded, as to draw six feet too much water. He was too proud, and he wanted moral courage to complain to his admiral, and have things redressed; in which case, he would not have been delayed, too late in the season by having to tow one ship; and the other, if she had drawn six feet less water, would have been in no comparative danger. Thus, by infringing the organic and physical laws, he may be considered to have been the author of his own danger; and by his piety, courage and discipline, of drawing his ship and crew, by the settled laws of the Deity, from the tremendous perils, into which his previous infringement of the laws of his being had been instrumental in bringing them.

The general views of this book are summed up in the closing paragraphs with great precision and force. The 'conclusion' is a direct recommendation of phrenology, as the medium, through which, the author deems the blessings of a right education, and a more general acquaintance with the laws of our being will flow to us.

We are aware, that many will be ready to say, that life would not be worth possessing, if we were obliged to act upon principle and calculation, and live by rule in every thing. What a monstrous error! It is notorious, that the labor of the lazy is more painful, than that of the industrious; that the accurate accountant takes not half the pains, to keep his accounts, as the merchant, who leaves every thing at loose ends. And we may confi dently affirm, that the only way, in which to pass through life with the least pain of labor, bodily and mental, is to live by rule and by calculation in every thing. One thing is certain, believe it as we may, that in just the same proportion, as we understand the laws of our being, and conform to them, in just so far we are happy, and the reverse. This world is justly called, from the pulpit, a 'vale of tears,' precisely because the million neither know, nor care about these laws, and live at random, as the customa ry text says, 'as the beasts, that perish."

But one most refreshing and heart-cheering proof, that the world is every day advancing in the knowledge of these laws, and conformity to them, though it may be in slow and small degrees, is at hand. It contradicts the flat and false and vapid prosing, that we hear from the pulpit and the croakers, that the age is deteriorating, and growing more irreligious and abandoned. It has not yet been said, or sung to our knowledge, on any fourth of July, though it is the most palpable scale, on which the improvement of this generation in true philosophy can be graduated. The mean duration of human life in all civilized countries is prolonging. This may be fairly considered as a standing scale of proportion, by which the real advancement of the age may be measured. We have recently seen this fact so often affirmed, and so unanswerably demonstrated by tables of mortality, that we have not a doubt of its truth. We have not room to refer to the tables at length. We can only quote a few results in proof. In 1780 the annual amount of deaths in England was one fortieth of the population. In 1821 the proportion was one in 58. Thus about two deaths now take place for three no longer ago than 1780. It is a curious fact, that these European tables of mortality are taken from England, NewYork, Ohio, Sweden and France. It appears, that the annual mortality among one thousand persons is less in Ohio, than it is in France. In all civilized countries, in the course of the last half century, human life has increased in a ratio, which diminishes the annual mortality from one in forty to one in fifty-two and a half. Vaccination is undoubtedly one of Philanthe great elements in this amelioration of the human condition. thropy will hope, that the diminution of intemperance will shortly add one infinitely greater. The single fact, which we have spread before the reader, is worth whole volumes of declamation upon the actual progress of knowledge, education and morality. It ought to encourage the philosopher and philanthropist to learn, that the obstacles of human ignorance and prejudice are not wholly invincible, and that a gradual amelioration of the Who will not utter human condition is silently, but irresistibly going on.

the aspiration of the poet, 'Swift fly the years,' when this darkling dawn of incipient twilight shall kindle in radiance to a more full and luminous view of the laws of our being. If all the countless millions of our fellowsufferers in human nature knew all, that is knowable of these laws, and observed them, what a different world would this be! The universal lament that earth now sends up to heaven, would give place to a hymn as universal of content and gladness. Life would be a feast. The decay of age would steal imperceptibly upon us, like the creeping, and almost pleasant languor of him, who reposes from the exhaustion of toil; and the inhabitants of a new golden age, in the beautiful phrase of Hesiod, would leave the pleasant shining of the sun, sinking, as in sleep.

The History of North Carolina, from the earliest period. By FRANCOIS XAVIER MARTIN. 2 vols. 8vo. pp. 824. A. T. Penniman & Co. New-Orleans, 1829..

Our readers will remember, that no long period has elapsed, since we had the pleasure to notice Judge Martin's history of Louisiana, a work, like the present, offering a fairer claim to the title "annals,' than that, which they bear. In that book, with amusing peculiarities of style, and perhaps the want of a severe and exact method, a great mass of facts was collected, which will be inestimable to the future historian; and withal, there was a naivete, a simplicity, smacking of other times, and of the golden age, which to us was more interesting, and led us along the details from point to point, with more unsated curiosity, than has been elicited by books of the same class, written with high pretensions and the show of ornament, and the elaboration, that defies criticism. We are not disposed to defend, or recommend to imitation many of his phrases. His English is often whimsically idiomatic, as might be expected from a scholar, whose early studies and training had been in the French language. Correctness and elegance have a certain value; but they are not every thing in writing; and every reader's thoughts will supply him with cases, when he has yawned over an elegant and correct book, and closed it in weariness, uninformed and in disgust, while a book, laying no claim to such attainments, has led him on to a sustained perusal with fruit and profit. Originality, information, simplicity and truth, these are the grand points in a book; and if elegance and correctness can be super-added, so much the better. But nothing is more common in these days, than to take up books, tame, correct, elegantly harmless of meaning, and stupidly labored by the mechanical rules of fine writing.

We have been informed, that the valuable and interesting book, to which we refer, passed a rather harsh ordeal of the wits of the lower country.— We do not say, that we are bound to be blind to the defects of the writers of our own western and southern country. But we affirm, that no man deserves the name of citizen among us, who has not the heart and desire to find merit in our own writers, if he can-and an eye more keen to discover excellencies than defects. For us, with a full heart we affirm, that we think this gentleman worthy of all praise, who, under the infirmities of seventy winters, a large integral portion of which has been passed in traversing a country proverbial for insalubrity, and under the pressure of the duties of a most laborious and responsible office, is still able to find leisure and strength for four volumes of collections of materials for the future history of Louisiana and North Carolina. These annals will be priceless to those,. who come after us. Even now, the history of these rude beginnings in the forests, of these struggles and darings, of these disappointments, and hopes kindling from the ashes of demolished projects, these strong sketches of brawny and bold adventurers, these views of the ascending smokes of the first cabins, these annals of the yet inexperienced inter.course of the first settlers with the Indians, these drawings of the natives, before they had become sophisticated by communication with the whites, these outlines of the men, customs and improvements of a century past, have to us a freshness and a charm, like that which springs from reading