was mad, or that there were robbers in the house; every one seized something by way of weapon, one a poker, another a candlestick, another a knife or fire-shovel, and up stairs we rushed. Only one could conveniently go abreast, and I was among the first who entered. The candles had been forgotten, but the moon was rising; and we certainly saw, what, in the opinion of some present, corroborated the statement of Mary. Two or three instantly drew back in horror; but others pressed behind. And lights being at length produced, an exhibition of the most ludicrous kind presented itself. In a far corner of the room stood, stark naked, as a ghost should be, John Philpot Curran, trembling as if in the ague, and scarcely able to utter a syllable in the combination of cold and terror. Three or four paces in front Jay Diver, stretching out his immense shaggy carcase, his long paws extended their full length, and his great head lying on them, with his nose pointed towards the ghost, true as the needle to the pole. His hind legs were gathered up like those of a wild beast ready to spring upon his prey. He took an angry notice of the first of us that came near him, growled, and seemed disposed to resent our intrusion. But the moment his master appeared, his temper changed, he jumped up, licked the parson's hand, cast a scowling look at Curran, and a wistful one at his master, as much as to say, 'I have done my duty, now do yours.' He looked, indeed, as if he waited only the word of command, to seize the Counsellor. A blanket was now considerately thrown over Curran, by one of the company, and he was put to bed with half a dozen more heaped upon him; a tumbler of hot punch was advantageously administered, a second worked wonders, the natural heat began to circulate, and he was in a little time enabled to rise and tell us a story, which no hermit even telling his last beads could help laughing at. "The fact was, that a little while previous to dinner time, Curran, who had omitted his customary ablution in the morning, went to our allotted bedchamber to perform the ceremony, and, having stripped, had just begun to apply the sponge, when

Diver, strolling about his master's premises to see that all was right, placed by chance his huge paw upon the door, which, not being fastened, flew open, and he entered unceremoniously. Observing what he conceived to be an extraordinary and suspicious figure, he of course concluded that it was somebody with no very honest intentions, and stopped to reconnoitre. Curran, unaccustomed to so strange a valet, retreated, while Diver advanced, and very significantly shewed a design to seize him by the naked throat, which operation, as Diver's tusks were a full inch in length, would have been of a sufficiently alarming nature. He therefore crept as close into the corner as he could, and had the equivocal satisfaction of seeing his adversary advance, and turn the meditated assault into a complete blockade, stretching out and maintaining his position with scarcely the slightest motion till the siege was raised. Curran had been in hopes, that, when Diver had satisfied his curiosity, he would retire, and with this impression spoke kindly to him, but was answered only by a growl. If Curran repeated his blandishments, Diver shewed only his long tusks; if he moved, the dog's hindlegs were in motion. Once or twice Curran raised his hand; but Diver considering this as a sort of challenge, rose instantly, and with a long growl looked expressively at Curran's windpipe. Curran, therefore, stood like a model, if not much like a marble divinity. In truth, though somewhat less comely, his features were more significant than those of the Apollo Belvidere. Had the circumstance occurred at Athens in the days of Phidias, it is probable my friend and Diver would have been at this day exhibited, in virgin marble, at Florence or the Vatican. However, the peril was now over, and the anxiety along with it. We may suppose that the dinner had not been so utterly dissolved away, as to be incapable of furnishing out a gay supper; and we may give full credence to the narrator in saying, that this protracted day finished with one of the most amusing evenings that he had ever known."

"THE best book about us and our country" said an American gentleman in our hearing-" is Stuart's Three Years." "Do you say so," asked we, "because it eulogizes you and your country-or because it libels us and ours?" Nor was there any rudeness in that question; for our Transatlantic friend must have known, that the volumes he had volunteered to praise are pervaded by a glaring spirit of hostility to our institutions, of discontent with the order of things subsisting among us, and of contempt for that bundle of prejudices and bigotries which old Christopher North bears on his stooping shoulders, and loves to call by the name of Patriotism.

We are not going to review "Three Years in North America." Perhaps we ought to have done so before now; but we wished not to impede its sale-and think it desirable that all sorts of opinions should be circulated in this country about the United States. We admire much in America, and in the character of the Americans. Let all men who have visited them, Tories, Whigs, and Radicals, speak out, that we may have a many-sided view of Jonathan and the New World.

Our wonder is why Mr Stuart limited his stay in North America to three years. For it is, in his opinion, a country so far superior, in all things, to Great Britain, that one would naturally have thought he would have there pitched his tent, and on that sacred soil chosen a

spot for his grave. The form of government is far better than ours; education is far more widely diffused; religion far purer and higher; and far greater happiness, under all such genial influences, enjoyed by the free, cultivated, instructed, and pious people.

In Great Britain the profession of Christianity is very generally hypocritical; in America it is sincere; while the Deists there are far more numerous and respectable than with us, and the disciples of Thomas Paine far more highly respected there, than are here those of Richard Carlile,

Thus we are assured, "that the United States being free from any religious establishment, every one is not only tolerated in the exercise of the religion he believes, but is at full liberty, without the fear, except in very few and peculiar cases, of his temporal concerns being at all affected by his religious profession (whatever it may be) to embrace those religious doctrines which he conceives, on due consideration, are true. It follows from this state of things, that there is much less hypocrisy in this than in other countries. Those in this country, who voluntarily go to a Protestant Church, and who voluntarily pay for the ministration of a Christian clergyman, may be generally (I do not mean universally) held to have made the necessary examination, and to be real believers of the doctrines of the Christian religion; whereas those from other countries, who have travelled in the United States, and who have put forth sneering and ill. founded statements on the subject of revivals, camp-meetings, &c., are generally Christians professing that religion, merely because their parents did so, or because Christianity is the religion of their country, and not because they ever investigated its truth." Mr Stuart having pronounced this high encomium on the free-and-easy religion of the United States, and this severe sentence on the misnamed Christianity so prevalent in Britain, soon afterwards observes, "this is not the place for attempting to prove or disprove the truth of the Christian religion.” It certainly is not; and it may be even doubted, though it were, if he be the person best fitted in all the world to perform either the one duty or the other. But declining to" soar to the height of that great argument," he illustrates his views of the blessed effects of Christianity in the United States, by the humbler means of anecdote. "Nothing," says this enlightened divine," is more astounding in the stage-coach intercourse with the people of this country, as well as in the bar-rooms where travellers meet, than the freedom and apparent sin

cerity of their remarks, and the perfect feeling of equality with which the conversation is maintained, especially on religious matters. I have heard the most opposite creeds maintained without any thing like acrimonious discussion or sarcastic remark, by persons in the same stage, professing themselves undisguisedly Calvinists, Episcopalians, Methodists, and Unitarians. On one occasion, I recollect the father of a family unhesitatingly avow, in a considerable party of people in his house, that he was a free-thinker, and never went to church; while at the same time his daughters, who were young women, had brought my wife for perusal Calvinistical religious tracts, of which she understood them to express their approval. It would perhaps be quite as well, if hypocrisy in religious matters were an unfashionable vice in other countries. Lord Byron would have found, if he had been here, that it does not always require to be chanted by a forty-parson power." A stage-coach full(how many does it carry ?) of Calvinists, Episcopalians, Methodists, Unitarians, and Mr James Stuart, must be indeed a heavenly vehicle; the Free-thinker Father and his Calvinistic daughters, the fair distributors of unstamped religious tracts, present a perfect picture of domestic bliss; and there is "a dim religious light" over the mysterious close of the paragraph where it seems to be said that Lord Byron would have found, had he ever been there, that in America hypocrisy does not require to be chanted by a "forty-parson power." It must be in a much more flourishing condition than in this country, where it cannot be kept alive without the fostering warmth of a Church Establishment.

Mr Stuart is so orthodox a theologian, that it is much to be lamented that he does not dwell longer on the doctrines he occasionally avows, nor elucidate them by richer illustrations. "There certainly," he says, "is not any express warrant in the Scriptures for sponsors at baptism, or for parents being called on to come under promise how they are to bring up their children, far less for the refusal which clergymen in Scotland often think themselves entitled to give to

persons applying for the baptism of their children, on the ground of their having been guilty of immorality, in which, surely, the subject of baptism could not have participated. But this is rather a ticklish subject to touch on, for it may, I know, be said, that clergymen are as well entitled to alter the original form of this ceremony, as to perform it on infants at all-there being unquestionably, at least so far as I can find, after reading every word written on the subject in the New Testament (in the original, we presume), no authority whatever to shew that sprinkling on the face is baptism, or that children are the subject of baptism."

This is too concise, we fear, to be very convincing; and we must have a few folios from Mr James Stuart, before it can be hoped that the people of this benighted country will come universally to disbelieve "that sprinkling on the face is baptism." Yet the prospect is not altogether hopeless; for even now there are many who think that something more is essential to the due performance of that rite, and to the obligation which it imposes on parents (absurdly, in Mr James Stuart's opinion) to teach religion to their children.

There seemed to Mr Stuart "nowhere any essential difference in the forms of worship between this country and Great Britain." The difference lies in the clergy. Thus-at New York, "the doctrine preached seemed to me more Calvinistic or orthodox, and the clergy not more zealous, certainly, than very many clergymen in all parts of the British Islands; but as a body, far more zealous and earnest, and devoting far more time to their religious duties "than the clergy in Great Britain, especially the regular clergy, do." This must relate to Scotland, for of the regular clergy in England Mr Stuart can from experience know little or nothing, as he has not yet resided Three Years among them; and as for "the regular clergy of Scotland," we do not think they will be made unhappy by the unfavourable opinion of a person who thinks on the whole rather favourably of Tom Paine." The Author of Common Sense, a pamphlet of no ordinary ability, and which contributed essentially to make the people of the Uni

Though all their thoughts are engrossed by this one noble passion, they are at the same time all devoted to respect and consideration of talent alone, and also to high office, which can only be obtained by money, it would appear, thus justly valued as the means of reaching an end. We lately gave some "Hints to the Aristocracy," and we agree with Mr Stuart in condemning the hauteur of the higher classes. But we disapprove of his illustrating his opinion by names. "Haughtiness to their inferiors," says he, "although implging conduct very different from that of a gentleman, must, I fear, be attributed as a fault more to individuals of rank and riches in Great Britain than in any other country. The Newcastles and Kenyons, or the Neelds of England, could not fail to find the United States, and especially the western countries, a horrible country to live in." We can well believe they would so find them, especially the Newcastles and Kenyons. But pray, what right has Mr James Stuart to select the Duke of Newcastle and Lord Kenyon as representatives of all those of the aristocracy, to whom must be "attributed as a fault," that "haughtiness to inferiors implying conduct very different from that of a gentleman ?" He should have specified some of his own noble acquaintances, if he has any, and if any such be among them; but it is insolently, foolishly, and falsely libellous thus to characterise two as affable, amiable, and in all respects Christian noblemen as in all England.

But if we go on in this way, we shall be betrayed into a reviewal of "Three Years in North America;" and all we wish is to set before the public our view of a controversy that has been lately carried on between Mr Stuart and Major Pringle, respecting some assertions made in that work, thought by that gallant officer to be unjust to the character of the British army. Major Pringle animadverted on those assertions, in a letter in the Edinburgh Evening Courant, addressed to the excellent Editor of that paper. Mr Stuart, on reading that letter, instantly addressed one to the Editor, telling him that "no part of the book

was written with so much caution, nor after so much deliberation, as that which relates to the British and American armies and their discipline. I am, therefore, most culpable, if even a single material error in this part of my work can be pointed out." He concluded with requesting the Editor" to caution the Public not to decide between us till I have brought forward the evidence for the statements which you and Major Pringle impugn." The Editor, probably not considering it to be any duty of his to give the Public such caution, declined putting it on its guard, but offered most readily to insert Mr Stuart's reply. Months passed on, and "Maga saddened at the long delay," while Major Pringle continued to keep up a brisk and well-directed fire on the Stuart lines, which appeared to convert the ill-constructed, yet laboriously thrown-up intrenchments, into so much mere rubbish. The Major ceased firing on the 29th November, 1833; and-we are sorry we cannot name the day-about the middle of January, 1834, Mr Stuart, like the "great American traveller" that he is, all at once opened a masked battery of some of the heaviest guns we ever heard, upon the enemy, whom, in his Despatch, he declares he routed, with the loss of the grenadier company, and the light bobs of the 21st regiment, hors de combat. Major Pringle, who, along with Whitaker, led the Saucy Twenty-first to the attack of the lines before New Orleans at daybreak of January the 8th, 1814, tells a very different story; and Christopher North requests permission from the Public, whom it would be in vain either for him or Mr Stuart to caution "not to decide" between the combatants, respectfully to lay before her his account of the engagement and of its issue.

Is Mr Stuart, or is he not, a libeller of the British army? That is the question. Let us be with him at Washington.

"I heard many anecdotes of this much-to-be-regretted incursion. The commanders directed private property to be respected, but it was impossible to restrain the soldiery. Much private property was destroyed. Mr Elliot was with the army; his house was sacked. The destruction of Mr Gales' printing