an admirable market to the industry of a new settlement. The only mode, we believe, of encountering this evil, is by deriving from it such a revenue as will not admit of smuggling. Beyond this it is almost invincible by authority; and is probably to be cured only by the progressive refinement of manners.

To evince the increasing commerce of the settlement, a list is subjoined of 140 ships, which have arrived there since its first foundation, forty only of which were from England. The colony at Norfolk Island is represented to be in a very deplorable situation, and will most probably be abandoned for one about to be formed on Van Diemen's Land, though the capital defect of the former settlement has been partly obviated, by a discovery of the harbour for small craft.

*

The most important and curious information contained in this volume, is the discovery of straits which separate Van Diemen's Land (hitherto considered as its southern extremity) from New Holland. For this discovery we are indebted to Mr. Bass, a surgeon, after whom the straits have been named, and who was led to a suspicion of their existence by a prodigious swell which he observed to set in from the westward, at the mouth of the opening which he had reached on a voyage of discovery, prosecuted in a common whale-boat. To verify this suspicion, he proceeded afterwards in a vessel of 25 tons, accompanied by Mr. Flanders, a naval gentleman; and, entering the straits between the latitudes of 39° and 40° south, actually circumnavigated Van Diemen's Land. Mr. Bass's ideas of the importance of this discovery, we shall give from his narrative, as reported by Mr. Collins.

"The most prominent advantage which seemed likely to accrue to the settlement from this discovery was, the expediting of the passage from the Cape of Good Hope to Port Jackson: for, although a line drawn from the Cape to 44° of south latitude, and to the longitude of the South Cape of Van Diemen's Land, would not sensibly differ from one drawn to the latitude of 40° to the same longitude; yet it must be allowed, that a ship will be four degrees nearer to Port Jackson in the latter situation than it would be in the former. But there is, perhaps, a greater advantage to be gained by making a passage through the strait, than the mere saving of four degrees of latitude along the coast

It is singular that Governments are not more desirous of pushing their settlements rather to the north than the south of Port Jackson. The soil and climate would probably improve, in the latitude nearer the equator; and settlements in that position would be more contiguous to our Indian colonies.

The major part of the ships that have arrived at Port Jackson have met with N. E. winds, on opening the sea round the South Cape and Cape Pillar; and have been so much retarded by them, that a fourteen days' passage to the port is reckoned to be a fair one, although the difference of latitude is but ten degrees, and the most prevailing winds at the latter place are from S. E. to S. in summer, and from W. S. W. to S. in winter. If, by going through Bass Strait, these N. E. winds can be avoided, which in many cases would probably be the case, there is no doubt but a week or more would be gained by it; and the expense, with the wear and tear of a ship for one week, are objects to most owners, more especially when freighted with convicts by the

run.

"This strait likewise presents another advantage. From the prevalence of the N. E. and easterly winds off the South Cape, many suppose that a passage may be made from thence to the westward, either to the Cape of Good Hope, or to India; but the fear of the great unknown bight between the South Cape and the S. W. Cape of Lewen's Land, lying in about 35° south and 113o east, has hitherto prevented the trial being made. Now, the strait removes a part of this danger, by presenting a certain place of retreat, should a gale oppose itself to the ship in the first part of the essay: and should the wind come at S. W. she need not fear making a good stretch to the W. N. W. which course, if made good, is within a few degrees of going clear of all. There is, besides, King George the Third's Sound, discovered by Captain Vancouver, situate in the latitude of 35° 30′ south, and longitude 118° 12' east; and it is to be hoped, that a few years will disclose many others upon the coast, as well as the confirmation or futility of the conjecture that a still larger than Bass Strait dismembers New Holland.'-(p. 192, 193.)

We learn from a note subjoined to this passage, that, in order to verify or refute this conjecture, of the existence of other important inlets on the west coast of New Holland, Captain Flinders has sailed with two ships under his command, and is said to be accompanied by several professional men of considerable ability.

Such are the most important contents of Mr. Collins's book, the style of which we very much approve, because it appears to be written by himself; and we must repeat again, that nothing can be more injurious to the opinion the public will form of the authenticity of a book of this kind, than the suspicion that it has been tricked out and embellished by other hands. Such men, to be sure, have existed as Julius Cæsar; but, in general, a correct and elegant style is hardly attainable by those who have passed their lives in action: and no one has such a pedantic love of good writing, as to prefer mendacious finery to rough and ungrammatical truth. The events which

Mr. Collins's book records, we have read with great interest. There is a charm in thus seeing villages, and churches, and farms, rising from a wilderness, where civilized man has never set his foot since the creation of the world. The contrast between fertility and barrenness, population and solitude, activity and indolence, fills the mind with the pleasing images of happiness and increase. Man seems to move in his proper sphere, while he is thus dedicating the powers of his mind and body to reap those rewards which the bountiful Author of all things has assigned to his industry. Neither is it any common enjoyment, to turn for a while from the memory of those distractions which have so recently agitated the Old World, and to reflect that its very horrors and crimes may have thus prepared a long era of opulence and peace for a people yet involved in the womb of time.

J. FIEVEE. (EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1809.)

Lettres sur l'Angleterre. Par J. Fievée. 1802.

Of all the species of travels, that which has moral observation for its object is the most liable to error, and has the greatest difficulties to overcome, before it can arrive at excellence. Stones, and roots, and leaves, are subjects which may exercise the understanding without rousing the passions. A mineralogical traveller will hardly fall fouler upon the granite and the feldspar of other countries than his own; a botanist will not conceal its non-descripts; and an agricultural tourist will faithfully detail the average crop per acre; but the traveller who observes on the manners, habits, and institutions of other countries, must have emancipated his mind from the extensive and powerful dominion of association, must have extinguished the agreeable and deceitful feelings of national vanity, and cultivated that patient humility which builds general inferences only upon the repetition of individual facts. Every thing he sees shocks some passion or flatters it; and he is perpetually seduced to distort facts, so as to render them agreeable to his system and his feelings! Books of travels are now published in such vast abundance, that it may not be useless, perhaps, to state a few of the reasons why their value so commonly happens to be in the inverse ratio of their number.

1st, Travels are bad, from a want of opportunity for observation in those who write them. If the sides of a building are to be measured, and the number of its windows to be counted, a very short space of time may suffice for these operations; but to gain such a knowledge of their prevalent opinions and propensities, as will enable a stranger to comprehend (what is commonly called) the genius of people, requires a long residence among them, a familiar acquaintance with their language, and an easy circulation among their various societies. The society into which a transient stranger gains the most easy access in any country, is not often that which ought to stamp the national character; and no criterion can be more fallible,

in a people so reserved and inaccessible as the British, who (even when they open their doors to letters of introduction) cannot for years overcome the awkward timidity of their nature. The same expressions are of so different a value in different countries, the same actions proceed from such different causes, and produce such different effects, that a judgment of foreign nations, founded on rapid observation, is almost certainly a mere tissue of ludicrous and disgraceful mistakes; and yet a residence of a month or two seems to entitle a traveller to present the world with a picture of manners in London, Paris, or Vienna, and even to dogmatize upon the political, religious, and legal institutions, as if it were one and the same thing to speak of abstract effects of such institutions, and of their effects combined with all the peculiar circumstances in which any nation may be placed.

2dly, An affectation of quickness in observation, an intuitive glance that requires only a moment, and a part, to judge of a perpetuity, and a whole. The late Mr. Petion, who was sent over into this country to acquire a knowledge of our criminal law, is said to have declared himself thoroughly informed upon the subject, after remaining precisely two and thirty minutes in the Old Bailey.

3dly, The tendency to found observation on a system, rather than a system upon observation. The fact is, there are very few original eyes and ears. The great mass see and hear as they are directed by others, and bring back from a residence in foreign countries nothing but the vague and customary notions concerning it, which are carried and brought back for half a century, without verification or change. The most ordinary shape in which this tendency to prejudge makes its appearance among travellers, is by a disposition to exalt, or, a still more absurd disposition, to depreciate their native country. They are incapable of considering a foreign people but under one single point of view-the relation in which they stand to their own; and the whole narrative is frequently nothing more than a mere triumph of national vanity, or the ostentation of superiority to so common a failing.

But we are wasting our time in giving a theory of the faults of travellers, when we have such ample means of exemplifying them all from the publication now before us, in which Mr. Jacob Fievée, with the most surprising talents for doing wrong, has contrived to condense and agglomerate every species of absurd