therefore be on the alert with his arms in his hands; and, should these barbarians this night attempt our hill, I trust we shall convince them that they are dealing with Britons.'-p. 214.

This animated and truly characteristic speech was received, as might be expected, from a body of British seamen,—' perhaps,' says Mr. M'Leod, three jollier hurras were never given than at the conclusion of this short, but well-timed address.' The attack, however, did not take place; and the next day the long-expected relief from Batavia made its appearance, in the East India Company's cruizer, the Ternate, dispatched by Lord Amherst, who, after passing three days and four nights in an open boat, had reached that city.

The conduct of Captain Maxwell, on this trying occasion, justly endeared him to all on board the Alceste, from the ambassador to the lowest seaman. By his judicious arrangements,' says Mr. M'Leod, we were preserved from all the horrors of anarchy and confusion. His measures inspired confidence and hope; whilst his personal example, in the hour of danger, gave courage and animation to all around him.'

The Cæsar, a private ship, was hired at Batavia to bring home the embassy, and the officers and crew of the Alceste: besides them, it seems, she had two passengers of no ordinary descriptionthe one an Ourang-Outang; the other a Boa snake, of the species known by the name of Constrictor. The former arrived safely in England, and sees company at home' every day at his mansion in the Strand; the other died of a diseased stomach, between the Cape and St. Helena, having taken but two meals from the time of his embarkation. The first of these meals was witnessed by more than two hundred people; but there was something so horrid in the exhibition that very few felt any inclination to attend the second. The snake was about sixteen feet long and eighteen inches in circumference; he was confined in a large crib, or cage, but we must give the dreadful relation in Mr. M'Leod's own words.

'The sliding door being opened, one of the goats was thrust in, and the door of the cage shut. The poor goat, as if instantly aware of all the horrors of its perilous situation, immediately began to utter the most piercing and distressing cries, butting instinctively, at the same time, with its head towards the serpent, in self-defence.

'The snake, which at first appeared scarcely to notice the poor animal, soon began to stir a little, and, turning his head in the direction of the goat, it at length fixed a deadly and malignant eye on the trembling victim, whose agony and terror seemed to increase; for, previous to the snake seizing its prey, it shook in every limb, but still continuing its unavailing show of attack, by butting at the serpent, who now became sufficiently animated to prepare for the banquet. The first operation was that of darting out his forked tongue, and at the same time rearing a little his head; then suddenly seizing the goat by the fore leg with his mouth,

mouth, and throwing him down, he was encircled in an instant in his horrid folds. So quick, indeed, and so instantaneous was the act, that. it was impossible for the eye to follow the rapid convolution of his elongated body. It was not a regular screw-like turn that was formed, but resembling rather a knot, one part of the body overlaying the other, as if to add weight to the muscular pressure, the more effectually to crush his object. During this time he continued to grasp with his mouth, though it appeared an unnecessary precaution, that part of the animal which he had first seized. The poor goat, in the mean time, continued its feeble and half-stifled cries for some minutes, but they soon became more and more faint, and at last it expired. The snake, however, retained it for a considerable time in its grasp, after it was apparently motionless. He then began slowly and cautiously to unfold himself, till the goat fell dead from his monstrous embrace, when he began to prepare himself for the feast. Placing his mouth in the front of the head of the dead animal, he commenced by lubricating with his saliva that part of the goat; and then taking its muzzle into his mouth, which had, and indeed always has, the appearance of a raw lacerated wound, he sucked it in, as far as the horns would allow. These protuberances opposed some little difficulty, not so much from their extent as from their points; however, they also, in a very short time, disappeared; that is to say, externally; but their progress was still to be traced very distinctly on the outside, threatening every moment to protrude through the skin. The victim had now descended as far as the shoulders; and it was an astonishing sight to observe the extraordinary action of the snake's muscles when stretched to such an unnatural extent an extent which must have utterly destroyed all muscular power in any animal that was not, like itself, endowed with very peculiar, faculties of expansion and action at the same time. When his head and neck had no other appearance than that of a serpent's skin, stuffed almost to bursting, still the workings of the muscles were evident; and his power of suction, as it is erroneously called, unabated; it was, in fact, the effect of a contractile muscular power, assisted by two rows of strong hooked teeth. With all this he must be so formed as to be able to suspend, for a time, his respiration, for it is impossible to conceive that the process of breathing could be carried on while the mouth and throat were so completely stuffed and expanded by the body of the goat, and the lungs themselves(admitting the trachea to be ever so hard) compressed, as they must have been, by its passage downwards.

"The whole operation of completely gorging the goat occupied about two hours and twenty minutes at the end of which time, the tumefaction was confined to the middle part of the body, or stomach, the superior parts, which had been so much distended, having resumed their natural dimensions. He now coiled himself up again, and lay quietly in his usual torpid state for about three weeks or a month, when, his last meal appearing to be completely digested and dissolved, he was presented with another goat,' (not alive, we hope,) which he devoured with equal facility. pp. 257–261.

The Cæsar took fire, and had nearly been burnt on her passage, a fate which she escaped only by the exertions of Captain Maxwell

and

and his officers. She touched at the Cape of Good Hope, for refreshments and water;—and at St. Helena; where the ambassador and his suite, impelled by that laudable curiosity natural to inquisitive travellers, witnessed the exhibition of another Constrictor of a different species, of larger dimensions, and with a stomach far more capacious and destructive than that of the Boa which had just died on board the Cæsar;-for the particulars of the exhibition, however, which are by no means devoid of interest, we must refer our readers to Mr. Ellis and Mr. M'Leod, who were both present. Finally, the Cæsar reached England, and landed all her passengers in safety; after escaping the dangers of fire and water, of savage warfare, and imperial indignation.

Mr. M'Leod's little volume has a few plates as unpretending as the book which they are meant to illustrate; Mr. Ellis's more elaborate work is also furnished-we cannot say embellished-with a map, and a few plates. The former is a copy, and on too small a scale; and the latter are a sad falling off, both in accuracy and spirit, from those beautiful delineations of similar objects by the late Mr. Alexander. The mention of this most ingenious and amiable man tempts us to ask what is become of those characteristic drawings of Chinese costume which he is known to have prepared, previously to his last illness, for publication? They would have admirably served to illustrate the volume of Mr. Ellis, which is very deficient in this respect, and have consoled us in some measure for the reserve of Mr. Havell, who, it appears, was sent out in the character of Artist,' and who, with a degree of modesty for which we find it difficult to account, has withheld every specimen of his taste and skill from what may be termed the official account of the embassy."

ART. IX. Letters from the Cape of Good Hope, in Reply to Mr. Warden; with Extracts from the Great Work now compiling for publication under the inspection of Napoleon. Svo. pp. 206. London. 1817.

IT

T is just as we expected-and our readers will have been prepared by the Ninth Article of our Thirty-second Number for this publication. We have here another of the series of tricks with which Buonaparte endeavours to keep himself alive in the recollection of Europe. It is, like all the rest, fraudulent in its title, shape, and pretensions; false in its facts; and jacobinical in its object. But it has this claim to consideration beyond its predecessors, that it comes from a source so nearly connected with Buonaparte, as to give it in some degree the authority of being his own apology made by himself. It tells us, indeed, little or nothing in the way of fact that is not familiar to our readers, but it

speaks

speaks in a more decisive tone-it shews by the subjects on which it attempts its apologies, whereabout (to use a vulgar phrase) the shoe pinches; and it proves by the futility of them, that Buonaparte is just the miscreant which all the world has long be

lieved him to be.

We have said, that the very form of this publication is fraudulent-the author has, in this particular, closely imitated Mr. Warden-It pretends to be a series of Letters: no such letters were ever written—it is addressed to a Dear Lady C: the Dear Lady C is not in existence. It affects to have been originally written in English: it was written in French, and the pretended original is only a translation—and to crown the whole, the author assumes the character of an Englishman, while in fact he is a Frenchman; and no other, we are satisfied, than the notorious Count de las Cases, of whose veracity and honour our readers have already had some tolerable specimens.

We shall not waste much time in explaining the ear-marks by which (in addition to their own solemn and repeated assertions to the contrary) we recognize these Letters to be a translation from the French-the most careful and adroit translator cannot always escape the intrusive treachery of gallicisms: but every page of this work abounds with them; half a dozen out of as many hundreds will more than suffice to convince our readers.

'The civil ceremony (of the marriage) was performed at St. Cloud, and the spiritual in the Hall of the Museum Napoleon.'—p. 71.

La Salle du Musée, of which the above is a mis-translation, means the great gallery of the Louvre, the Museum itself. The Hall of the Museum is what the French would call the vestibule, and would be about as worthy of being the scene of such a ceremony as Buonaparte was of being the chief actor in it. The same mistake occurs as to the temporary salle, or ball-room, erected for Prince Schwartzenburg's famous and fatal fête ;-the translator calls it a hall-he might as well have called it a kitchen.

Again, it is stated that M. de Talleyrand 'incurred Napoleon's disgrace. This, in English, would mean, if it meant any thing, that Talleyrand had shared the fallen fortunes of Buonaparte. The French phrase, la disgrace de Napoléon, means, on the contrary, that he was in disgrace with Napoleon.-(p. 18.)-In the same kind of idiom Napoleon's alliance is substituted for Maria Louisa's alliance or marriage with Napoleon.-p. 71.

The French author had stated that an individual was reconnu, admitted, to be the contriver of a plot; it is translated, that he was recognized as the contriver of the plot; a very different thing.— (p. 146.)-When the translator wishes to say that the French intended to march into the heart of England, it is rendered with

VOL. XVII. NO. XXXIV.

L L

an

an affectation of English phraseology which betrays itself; Buonaparte manifested an intention to carry the scene of action into the bosom of old England.'—p. 88. But every page abounds with expressions and sentiments which no English man or woman, however ignorant of their own language, or corrupted in their principles, could have written; we have therefore no doubt that the work was originally composed in French, and nearly as little that the composer is Monsieur de las Cases.

Our only difficulty arises from the Letters being dated from the Cape of Good Hope-Las Cases is at the Cape, and we can hardly account for this solitary scintilla of truth finding its way into the production: but on the other hand, the view which is taken of particular events, nay the words in which they are related, are, to our own knowledge, the same in which Buonaparte has in conversation treated the transactions; and we think there is abundant reason to believe that the passages purporting to be Extracts from Buonaparte's History, written under his own direction by Las Cases, are genuine; for, not to insist on their agreement with Buonaparte's known sentiments, it is well understood that such a work was in progress, and that Las Cases was in possession of a considerable part of it. Besides, we knew, and informed our readers several months ago, that he was preparing a work for publication, and we very explicitly foretold the materials of which it would be composed. The facts, or rather the falsehoods, might indeed have been put together by Montholon, or any other of the clique; but the style of the pamphlet, and several circumstances connected with Las Cases, leave, as we have said, little doubt in our minds that he is, immediately or remotely, the author of it. But, whoever be the writer, it must be considered as coming from Buonaparte himself; and assured, as we are, that it is derived from him, and published, if not with his knowledge, at least in concurrence with his wishes, we shall persist in considering it as the apology of the ex-emperor dictated by himself.

a

Our readers will have observed, that the work is entitled ' Reply to Mr. Warden.' We find in the outset a complete substantiation of our charges against that person.

Not understanding the only two modern languages which Buonaparte speaks, he had no other opportunity of learning what he relates, but through the interpretation of Count Las Casas,* who speaks English very incorrectly, and with considerable hesitation—or of General Bertrand, who possesses the faculty of speaking it in a lesser degree than even the other.-This simple observation would, of itself, be sufficient to enable you to form a correct judgment as to the accuracy of Mr. Warden's relations.'—p. 2.

* The translator frequently makes the mistake of calling Las Cases, Las Casas.

Our