colonists in the East and West from their traffic with foreign coun tries. It tends materially to the augmentation of their capital, and of the sum which they vest annually in British manufactures.

SINGLE SERMON.

Art. 32. Our Lord's Prayer relating to the Union subsisting between God his Father, Himself, and his Disciples explained. Delivered at Taunton, July 14th 1813, before the Western Unitarian Society. By Thomas Howe. 12mo. Eaton.

That prayer of Christ to his Father, which the preacher here undertakes to explain, occurs in the Gospel of St. John, (chap. xvii. 20-23.) but not in any of the other Evangelists, and is of a pecuhar character. Mr. Howe's commentary is completely satisfactory; and, through the whole discourse, he manifests so much good sense, ingenuousness, and true liberality, that we recommend it as a pattern to those who preach or write on controverted doctrines.

CORRESPONDENCE.

Our fair friend Matilda thinks that the sixth line of the opening stanza in Lord Byron's Bride of Abydos, quoted in p. 62. of our Number for January, is deficient in perspicuity;

"Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine;" because the Sun, whose beams must be meant, has not been mentioned. The remark, however, strikes us as rather hypercritical, since the passage surely can never be mistaken. His Lordship's fair critic proposes this new reading,

"Know ye the land bearing Cedars and Vines,

Where the flowers ever blossom, the Sun ever shines :"

which we submit to the noble author's candid and galant consideration.

A very polite letter from C. C. H., author of the French Phraseology mentioned in our last Number, p. 213., irresistibly calls on us to withdraw some of the objections which we then made to a few of the phrases inserted in that work. On turning to the Dictionnaire de l'Académie, we certainly find that the contraction in the phrase Maître ès Arts is sanctioned by use in that particular denomination, and on very few other occasions; and amiable, which we regarded as a misprint for aimable, is given in that Dictionary as an allowable French adjective, though we believe it is more generally used adverbially, as s'arranger à l'amiable, traiter les choses à l'amiable, &c. -The Dictionary will also warrant C. C. H.'s explanation of Elle n'a point de naturel: but French gentlemen, whom we have consulted, rather incline to give it the sense of being affected, or recherché. With regard to contention d'Esprit, the author again relies on the Dictionary: but we have in like manner been told that it is rarely used in conversation. The Latin phrase is defended only because no English expression for it occurred to the author.' He might have said, to write as fast as the pen will run; as our correspondent A. F. T. suggests.

Mr. Macpherson is informed that the delay in the notice of his work has arisen from the long illness of one of our associates.

པ

THE

MONTHLY REVIEW,

For APRIL, 1814.

ART: I. Travels in Southern Africa, in the Years 1803, 1804, 1805, and 1806. By Henry Lichtenstein, Doctor in Medicine and Philosophy, and Professor of Natural History in the University of Berlin; Member of several learned Societies; and for merly in the Dutch Service at the Cape of Good Hope. Translated from the original German by Anne Plumptre. 4to. pp. 383. 11. 16s. Boards. Colburn.

Nu

UMEROUS volumes have been published in English, French, German, and Dutch, on the subject of the Cape of Good Hope yet Professor Lichtenstein is of opinion that room is still left for the labours of an additional traveller; and that much remains to be explained before the public can be enabled to form an accurate estimate of the nature of that part of Southern Africa. The object of former travellers has been, according to him, rather to afford entertainment than to promote utility; and not one of them, he alleges, has been sufficiently minute to render his narrative a guide to those who might venture, at a future season, to explore the same ground. Hence it has happened that almost every traveller in the Cape-territory has had occasion to find fault with his precursors; Le Caille and Menzel being severe on Kolbe, while Sparrman, in his turn, is not sparing of animadversions on those gentlemen. A more recent and better known traveller, Le Vaillant, fell under the lash of Mr. Barrow; and Professor L., on the other hand, is not slow in bringing charges against the narrative of our intelligent countryman. These accusations would have come with a better grace from the present author, had he not condescended to borrow largely from his predecessors, and particularly from him whom he has been most desirous of inculpating. Of matter, however, whether original or not, he was determined that his readers should have an ample share; and the writer who has laid down for himself the rule of confining lengthened description to important topics, and dismissing with the greatest dispatch those which are subordinate, cannot fail to be startled at the minute prolixity of this indefatigable compiler. A closely printed quarto would appear to most persons a sufficient space for the conveyance of such informaVOL. LXXIII.

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tion as his opportunities enabled him to collect: but no-Doctori aliter visum-the present is merely the precursor of a second volume, and even, as we learn from the preface, of a third. Amid all this accumulation of details, it is amusing to observe that the author feels no compunction for the tax imposed on the patience of the public. His only sollicitude is lest he should be deemed too concise, or be suspected of a design to misrepresent, and to escape detection by passing rapidly over his subject. Aware as he is of the expence which is attendant on a third quarto, it never occurs to him to compress his materials into smaller space, but he proposes to abstain altogether from printing those parts which he cannot be indulged in giving to the world in his favourite style of amplification.

Yet the author himself is or professes to be in great good humour with every circumstance relative to the composition and publication of his book. He declares that, from his earliest years, he had felt an ardent desire to visit new climes, and, above all, that part of the world which forms the subject of this volume: he went thither in the capacity of tutor to a son of General Janssens, the governor of the colony during the interval between 1802 and 1806, when it remained in the possession of the Dutch: he had an opportunity of making several excursions into the interior of the country: in the last of which he acted in the capacity of army-surgeon with the troops that were dispatched to oppose our expedition in the beginning of 1806; and he seems better pleased to dwell on these military arrangements, as fortunate occurrences for his personal observations, than to express concern at their political consequences to his friends and protectors. After all this display of opportunities of research, it will be found that his harvest of original information is very limited he is much indebted not only to printed authorities, but to the MS. vouchers of the Dutch governor and the commissary-general; and, though he is styled in his title-page, Professor of Natural History,' we look in vain throughout the book for any store of new and interesting particulars in that department.

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The volume opens with an account of a journey, in a northwest direction, performed with M. de Mist, the Dutch commissary-general; the object of which was to acquire a knowlege of the country, and to increase the popularity of the reinstated government among the mixed classes of the inhabitants. The Dutch have little idea of being contented with slender accommodation, or of setting out on a distant excursion without a multitude of precautions and arrangements. The retinue was consequently large, and Dr. L. enumerates the whole with all imaginable gravity, without forgetting the musician;

who, with the true precision of Hollanders, was confined to the specific duty of playing on the French horn for the purpose of rousing the travellers from their resting places, and of collecting the oxen from the pastures in which they stopped to feed. We perused with more satisfaction the author's account of the agreeable addition of female society in this long, and, in many respects, uncomfortable journey:

'Augusta de Mist, youngest daughter to the commissary-general, could not be restrained at his departure from Holland from following her father in his migration. This instance of true filial love, so delightful under every point of view, inspired her with fortitude to despise the dangers of the sea, and the inconveniences attending a long voyage, to leave her sisters and her friends, and readily to renounce the joys of a life of ease and social comfort, perhaps for many years. Many young women of nineteen, accustomed to live in the first circles in their own country, would have been staggered in their filial duty at the prospect of an interruption to these joys; but not so our traveller. Even the consolations which she found in the lively scenes of the Cape Town, which atoned to her in some measure for what she had abandoned, were equally given up to remain by the side of her father amid the sultry deserts of the interior of Africa. It seemed to her far preferable to share with him the dangers and difficulties inseparable from such a journey, than, at a distance, at home, to tremble for his life, to think of him in illness, perhaps, confided to the care of strange and mercenary hands.' It is not less incredible than true, that through the whole journey, which was extended to nearly six months, never was at any time the least delay occasioned either by her or her female attendants, never was the setting off in the morning postponed on her account, never was any regulation whatever broken in upon. One of her young friends from the Cape Town, Mademoiselle Versveld, had at her own particular desire been permitted to accompany her. With equal firmness did she support the toils, the hardships, and the inconveniences of the journey. Each was attended by a young European female servant.'

The whole company, with the exception of the men belonging to the waggons, travelled on horseback, and formed a cavalcade of twenty-five persons. The waggons were six in number, and contained an ample stock of rice, biscuit, dried fruits, coffee, candles, wine, medicines, cooking utensils, tents, and field-beds. The last two were requisite to guard against the danger from the bite of snakes and venomous insects, and to avoid the hazard of sleeping, even in the mild season, in the open air. October, which corresponds with our April, was the time of setting out, and is reckoned too late for beginning a journey, the middle of the day being intensely hot. One of the first inconveniences experienced by the travellers arose from the want of spring-water, the cause of which is very clearly explained in an extract from Mr. Barrow's travels given nine

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years ago in our review of that work. To avoid the effects of the heat on the cattle, the waggons set forwards in the evening, and arrived regularly at their halting stations about sun-rise. A halting station in the Cape-district consists of a house surrounded by a tract of ground, the property of the public, and appropriated as pasture for the cattle of travellers : but, though all persons on a journey are allowed access to these places, it is enacted, by way of preventing an abuse of this privilege, that no one shall be permitted to remain on the same spot more than two days. The distance between each station is half a day's journey. The dry and hot weather, and, above all, the ruggedness of the mountain-roads, render it necessary to make the Cape-waggons of very solid materials: in length they are not above fourteen feet, in breadth five. Carriages sent from Europe are found to last a very short time, and it is indispensable to have recourse to the hard wood of the country. We shall now give some account of the Cape-horses, and of the surprising dexterity of their drivers :

· People who have studied these matters, assert that an African horse is a third weaker in drawing than an European one, but the former have very much the advantage of the latter in climbing mountains and steep places. The Africans, besides, owing to their being accustomed from their youth to seek their nourishment upon dry mountains, are easily satisfied, and grow so hard in the hoofs that there is no occasion to shoe them. They do not bear very severe or long continued exertion, so that oxen are universally employed to draw heavy waggons destined to go any considerable distance from the Cape Town. Most of them go a sort of short gallop, very agreeable to the rider as well as to the horse, and they will hold it out for a long time, if not unreasonably pressed forwards.'—

All the address of our European waggon-drivers vanishes entirely before the very superior dexterity in this way shewn by the Africans. In a very brisk trot, or even in a gallop, they are perfect masters of eight horses, and if the road be indifferent they avoid with the utmost skill every hole and every stone. With horses, as with oxen, the long whip serves not only to regulate the pace of the animals, but to keep them all in a strait line; if any one inclines ever so little from it, à touch from the whip puts him immediately into his place again. One of our drivers gave us a singular proof of his dexterity in using his whip, for while we were in full trot he saw at a little distance from the road on a ploughed land a bird which had alighted upon the ground, when, giving the whip a flourish, he struck the bird instantly, and killed it upon the spot.'

The direction of Dr. L.'s journey would have been much better understood, had the publisher made a point of prefixing a map of the colony. The apology for the want of it (pref.

*M. R. Vol. xlv. p. 4.