FOREIGN LITERATURE, may still be retained, and more effectually cultivated, Three sheets will be added to the Seven, which at present compose the Monthly Number. This addition of space will enable us to do justice to the foreign publications, immediately after they are imported, and also to give a page or two of Literary News, as well as a Monthly List of new Books, English and Foreign; both of which are naturally looked for in a Literary Journal. As the description of matter, therefore, hitherto confined to the Appendix, will be considerably augmented, and distributed in equal proportions through each of the Monthly Numbers, in addition to the quantity of matter hitherto prescribed for those numbers, it is but equitable that the price of the Appendix should also be divided and appropriated in a similar manner. At present, a subscriber pays Twelve shillings and sixpence for each volume, unbound, and Thirteen shillings and sixpence, if not something more, for it, in boards. Under the new arrangement, it will cost him Fourteen shillings, thereby requiring an addition, obviously of no consequence, and which will be much more than remunerated by the great convenience the alteration will afford to all parties. N. B. Four numbers will, in future, form a volume; and a Title, Table of Contents, and Index, will be given three times a year, in order to enable subscribers to complete their sets. Those subscribers who have not yet received the last Appendix, which was published on the 1st of April, are requested to send their orders to Messrs. THOMAS HURST & Co., 65, St. Paul's Church-yard. Art. I. A Winter in Lapland and Sweden, with various Observations relating to Finmark and its Inhabitants. By Arthur de II. Observations on the Impropriety of Men being employed in 2. The Art of French Cooking. By A. B. Beauvilliers. 4. Domestic Cookery. By a Lady. 5. Domestic Economy and Cookery. By a Lady. V. Reminiscences of Charles Butler, Esq. Vol. 2. VI. Voyage of H. M. S. Blonde to the Sandwich Islands, in the VII. Servian Popular Poetry. Translated by John Bowring. VIII. Baron's Life of Dr. Jenner, with Illustrations of his Doc- 2. The Library of Useful Knowledge. XIII. Villemain's new Historical and Literary Miscellanies XIV. Tudományos Guytemény, or The Magiar Almanack XV. Personal Narrative of Adventures in the Peninsula, during THE MONTHLY REVIEW. MAY, 1827. A Winter in Lapland and Sweden, with various Observations relating to Finmark and its Inhabitants; made during a residence at Hammerfest, near the North Cape. By Arthur de Capell Brooke, M.A., &c. 4to. pp. 612. 31. 3s. London: Murray. 1827. Mr. BROOKE is already known to the public as the author of a pleasant volume of travels through Sweden, Norway, and Finmark, to the North Cape. In the work now before us, which may be considered as the sequel of his former production, we have a valuable mass of observations made by him during his residence at Hammerfest, on the peculiar manners and usages of the Laplanders; and also a highly interesting account of his return to Stockholm from the neighbourhood of the North Cape, in the depth of winter. Considering the bleak and ungenial nature of the field to which his survey was limited, we must do Mr. Brooke the justice to say, that he has clothed it in as many and diversified colours as it was possible to do. He leaves no spot worth attending to, undescribed; and where language fails, as it often must fail, to convey the whole picture, he has recourse to his pencil, and by a few masterly touches, makes us at once acquainted with the scene. So also with respect to the personal appearance of the Laplanders: he enters into all the minutiæ of their costume, their pursuits, enjoyments, and social and industrious habits; and though he speaks more favourably of them than some of his predecessors, yet he does not overlook the few, though unhappily increasing, vices, by which, added, perhaps, to the unimproveable character of the territory over which they wander, they are kept in a condition little removed from that of the Indian savage. When we compare the account presented to us by Mr. Brooke, of the present state of the Laplanders, with those published nearly thirty years ago, by Dr. Smith and M. Von Buch, we lament to observe how little that people have advanced towards the refinements of civilised life. On the contrary, they would appear rather to have retrograded, in proportion as their increased commerce with foreign countries has enabled them to obtain larger supplies of those pestilential liquors, which carry in their train all the vices of Europe, without any of its virtues. They are still a nomade people, their huts and their tents are still as wretched as ever they have been; they preserve, indeed, their phlegmatic, benevolent, and inoffensive dispositions, as well as that purity of morals among their females, for which they have been always distinguished. But it cannot be concealed, that the taste for ardent spirits has of late gained an ascendancy over them, and that its effects have not only interposed a serious obstacle to their improvement in religion, and in all the relations of social life, but have, moreover, corrupted the natural innocence of manners which had formerly been their stay and their ornament. Mr. Brooke is careful in distinguishing throughout his work, between the Laplanders and the Finlanders, and shews that, in many respects, there is a marked difference between them, greatly in favour of the latter, although several travellers have confounded the two nations. The name of Finmark, however, properly belongs to the country which we call Lapland. Qualoen, or Whale Island, where he fixed his residence after his return from the North Cape, is about sixty miles in circumference, and less than a degree distant* from that extreme point. Its principal town is Hammerfest, and like all the Finmark isles, it is desolate and barren; its surface is broken and indented in the most fantastic manner, and the only wood which it produces, consists of a dwarf birch, which rises to about the height of a man. In such a country, this scarcity of fuel is most sensibly felt, and it is the more remarkable, as it is said that in former ages wood was generally abundant in the northern parts of Europe. It is attributed by some of the natives to the increasing severity of the climate, and apparently not without reason, as every year adds to the magnitude of the glaciers, even in the more southern districts of Nor way. Mr. Brooke describes the bay of Hammerfest as not only well sheltered, but sufficiently capacious to contain the whole British navy. The harbour is small, but so completely land locked, that even when a gale is raging on the outside, it is as unruffled as a lake. Both the bay and harbour are much frequented by Russian, Norwegian, and English vessels, which trade with the island for stockfish. The principal British merchant established at Hammerfest, is Mr. Crowe, to whose hospitality and kindness our author expresses himself on all occasions greatly indebted. That gentleman appears to be the great medium of barter between the natives of Finmark and England: he is the admired dispenser of jewels, bonnets, gowns, shawls, and all the artillery of the toilet among the ladies of Qualoen; in return for which he obtains 70° 38′ 34′′. |