is brighter than ever. The ambitious plans of Louis XIV. are remembered as a dream; his Condes and Turennes are forgotten, while his Corneille, his Racine and his Moliere, continue the pride of France. Marlborough and Blenheim are names sounded only at intervals; but those of Dryden, and Addison, and Pope, will be for ever repeated with increasing delight.

It sooths the observing mind to reflect on the gradual and general cultivation of letters, which has marked the progress of the United States, since the adoption of the federal constitution. Our men of learning were then rare; our booksellers few and poor; and our students were contented with the scanty doles of literature which chance or charity threw in their way. The volumes which we imported from Europe were found only in the libraries of a few men of wealth, and but one or two native periodical publications disseminated a few gleams of literature among the middling classes of society. A great alteration has occurred within a short period. The wealth which the troubles in Europe threw upon our shores, secured by the care of an established government, has been fortunately not exclusively confined to the purchase of the luxuries of commerce. A considerable portion of it has been appropria

ted to the cultivation of letters, and it is now rare to find a village without a circulating library, or a native American who has not been taught to read and to write.

We have not yet, however, attained that extent of population which is sufficient to supply us with our own writers. Our means of subsistence are of such easy acquisition, that the professed literary character, who lives by his pen, is scarcely known. There are, indeed, a few honourable individuals, whose exertions have been chiefly directed to the establishment of periodical journals. But they are unaided by that phalanx of literary combatants, which is indispensable to success, and whatever may have been their patronage from the purses of the publick, they have painfully experienced the want of literary contributions.

Journals, Magazines, and Reviews, have been established in Europe, and particularly in Great Britain, with the design of presenting a general and condensed view of the state of literature, and of directing the researches of those who have not leisure to be students. They have been conducted by associations of men of genius, who have found in their ranks Addison and Steele, Goldsmith and Johnson, Marmontel and Burke; and under the care of such men, publick journals have deservedly taken a high station in the republick of letters. Their successours are among the first literary characters of the age. They now stand as sentinels at all the avenues to literary fame; and although some of them are faithless to their duty and level their wea pons against those who have really the countersign of genius, while traitors are permitted to pass unnoticed, it is yet easy to collect from their reports the real state of the field of letters. They abound with the speculations of men of genius, which deserve to be separated from the wretched effusions which disgrace their pages.

The patronage which is afforded to the publick journals of Europe is evident from the numbers which now exist, and are incessantly multiplying. They have increased

until themselves would almost furnish a library, and until their importation into the United States can be made only by the man of wealth or by publick institutions. In addition to their expense, they have the misfortune of aiding the circulation of many unsound speculations, which corrupt the morals of youth, and many false criticisms which pervert the publick taste, and which can be prevented only by a careful revision and impartial selection by those, who, relying on the patronage of Americans, deem it worthy of their care.

The editors of the present compilation propose to extract from all foreign and American Journals, Magazines, and Reviews, such articles as, in their judgment, merit preservation. They hope, by such means, to present to their countrymen, a mass of sound literature, which, while it will aid the man of science in his researches, and the student in his closet, will enable the desultory reader to place in his parlour window a book that will cheat life of some of its cares. The middling class of society is, at present, almost wholly deprived of this pleasant and instructive kind of reading; for the price of any one foreign journal exceeds the price at which the present compilation will be offered. It is important that this class should possess the means of information; for their habits and their opinions stamp a permanent and controlling feature on the national character of a state, and eventually direct it to the fever of anarchy, the palsy of despotism, or the cheerful health of civil liberty.

The editors have made arrangements to carry their plan into execution. They ask the patronage of the publick. They promise to repay it by impartiality of selec tion, by diligence, and by labour, and they now offer the following

CONDITIONS.

I. The work will be handsomely printed at the Lorenzo Press, on superfine woven paper, and published in monthly numbers, each to contain seventy-two closely printed octavo pages, and will be delivered to subscribers in the city on the first day of every month, and forwarded to country subscribers without delay.

H. The price to be five dollars a year, to be paid on the delivery of the sixth number of every year.

III. The numbers will be so arranged as to form two volumes in each year, and a title page and index will be given with each volume.

IV. No subscription to be discontinued except at the end of a volume, and on pay: ment of what may then be due.

V. Those persons who may procure ten subscribers, and become accountable for the payment, will be entitled to one copy gratis.

The usual allowance will be made to booksellers.

N. B. Booksellers throughout the U. States are invited to communicate to E. Bronson, Philadelphia, post paid, the titles of such books as have been lately published by them, and such as they are about to publish, in which case an early opportunity will be taken to insert the best reviews of those works, together with a notice of the persons by whom they are publihsed.

PHILADELPHIA, SEPT. 1808.

SELECT REVIEWS

FOR JANUARY, 1809.

FROM AIKIN'S ANNUAL REVIEW.

Struggles through Life; exemplified in the various Travels and Adventures in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, of Lieutenant JOHN HARRIOTT, formerly of Rochefort, in Essex; now Resident Magistrate of the Thames Police. 2 vols. 12mo. pp. 375 and 347. London-This work is now in the press of James Humphreys, Philadelphia, and will speedily be published in two vols. 12 mo. price to subscribers $2 bound and lettered.

THERE is anecdote and adventure enough in these volumes to satisfy the keenest avidity; but many of them are related in so rough and vulgar a manner that we cannot venture to recommend them to ladies or gentlemen of very refined sensibilities or very delicate ears. Be it known, however, that ladies and gentlemen who can read Peregrine Pickle and Roderick Random, and who like to hear a sailor tell his story in his own way, may venture to accompany Mr. Harriott in his "Struggles through Life."

Mr. H." took his first bias for travelling or going to sea, from reading Robinson Crusoe." At the age of thirteen he sailed as a midshipman on board a ship of war for New York, and whilst lying there performed an act of humanity which did credit to his feelings. A poor girl, whose mother kept a tavern at St. John's Newfoundland, had been seduced by an officer, who brought her to England, and then deserted her. She passed over to Ireland, where she had some relations, but determined to return to America, and went in a brig filled with redemptioners; that is to say, persons who redeem the price of their passage by the sale of their services for a certain term of years. This poor girl came to market for sale when Mr. Harriott was there, and relating her unhappy tale, he purchased her of the captain, and sent her in a schooner to Newfoundland, where he afterwards went him`self and was welcomed with tears of gratitude by the mother and the daughter.

His captain had now orders to sail for Gibraltar. After a smart engagement he captured a French frigate, and cruised up the Mediterranean. At Leghorn our hero falls in love, and gives a whimsical account of his fair inamorata's prudence in the suppression of her passion.

On his return home, the vessel was wrecked within three miles of the Mewstone Rock, off Plymouth Sound, and as it had caught the plague a twelvemonth before, when cruising in the Levant, it was with great difficulty that any assistance was to be procured.

Mr. Harriott, however, is at last safely landed, and receives a very good offer of business from one of his relations; but the sedentary and monotonous routine of a counting house ill suits his rambling genius. He goes to sea again; is present at the attack of the Havanna, and at the re-taking of Newfoundland from the French. At the ensuing peace he is once more cast adrift on the world; gets employment in sundry merchant ships, but is so disgusted with the service that he retires from it. Having nothing else to do, Mr. Harriott now pays a visit to the savages in North America. He had made a promise of this sort to some Indian chiefs a twelve month before, and now fulfilled it. After a residence of four months among them, kiss

ing the squaws and hunting with the sachems, he re-crosses the Atlantick, and enters into the military service of the East India Company. His destination was Masulipatam, where Mr. Harriott received many hospitalities. Indeed, he had made himself so completely master of the new discipline which was then introduced into the army, that although a sailor, he was employed in drilling the adjutants, serjeants, &c. who again drilled the men of their respective companies under his inspection.

After having been thus employed for several months, Mr. Harriott was very unexpectedly appointed judge advocate for the Northern Circars, an office which he has the modesty to acknowledge he was entirely unqualified for. "Having accepted it, however," says he, "I seriously studied its very important duties, and by close attention, I trust that for several years, while I held the appointment, I discharged those duties faithfully and hōnourably."

Whilst in India, our hero had the misfortune to be so severely wounded in the leg as to render him incapable of future service. Once in three years the rajahs are convened together at some appointed place by one of the Company's civil servants, accompanied by a suitable parade of military, in order to settle the jemibunda, or rent to be paid by them for the tract of land, villages, &c. which they hold of the company as their lord paramount. The jemibunda for the ensuing three years is, probably, but little if at all increased; but the douceur to the chief who fixes it is squeezed to the utmost. The evil consequence of this system falls upon the husbandman, who to sup. port the diminished means of splendour in his Rajah, is compelled to give a half or perhaps two-thirds of his crop instead of one third. The husbandman, unwilling to leave his native fields, submits to this extortion as long as he can. At last nécessity drives him from home, and he flies beyond the company's territory. When at Condapillee in Golconda, Mr. Harriott was an eye witness of the difference between the prosperity and population of the 'country that did not belong to the Company on the western side of the hills on which the fort stood, and the once fertile plains of Golconda to the eastward belonging to the company. After he had been about twelve months in the fort of Condapillee, Mr. Harriott was ordered to join his battalion and march against a rajah who had declined meeting the chief at Rajahmundra, where the jemibunda was to have been settled, and who afterwards refused to pay the rent affixed to the territory he held. The rajah depended too much on the natural strength of his situation, amid hills, bamboo woods and jungles. He fell, and his country was taken possession of, but not before we had lost several officers and many men. It was in this expedition that Mr, Harriott received that wound which made it necessary for him to return to England.

Our adventurer having declined to practise as a lawyer in the courts of Madras, to which he was invited by a friend who was making a fortune in the profession, although as ignorant of it as himself, he took his pas sage for Bencoolen in a Bombay ship bound to Acheen, in the island of Sumatra. The object of the captain was to trade all along the coasts in the Malay as well as in the English and Dutch ports, and he was very anxious to have the company of Mr. Harriott, as he might considerably promote his interests in a manner which he could explain on the voyage. In crossing the Bay of Bengal several water spouts were seen.

"While we were making remarks upon them, and comparing their different appearances, our attention was suddenly called by a loud hissing noise; and, turning about, we observed the sea on our larboard bow in a strange commotion, bubbling and rising up in hundreds of little sharp pyramidical forms, to various heights, alternately falling and rising within an apparent circle, whose diameter might be about sixty feet.