from this day. Go with Flora, who will give you some refreshment; in form her where you live, and she will talk to you of your salary and all particulars. Flora take care of this young man.' She then gently inclined her head to my bow, and the airy sylph who had conducted me to het Ladyship, making a slight and graceful curtsey, led the way."

Morland is received into this family, in which there is an end of his adventures, though he goes through many severe trials extremely interesting. The fourth volume begins with the Author's Friend's Tale; the beginning of which commences another conversation between them.

Friend.-(Producing his manuscript.) Here it is. Your piece. will undergo all the severity of criticism, while mine will be considered as an amusing bagatelle, and be spared.

"Author.-Nothing more likely begin.

"Friend.-You remember that your first chapter was the starting point for us both. We suppose our Morlands the same person at the time he leaves Devonshire, only I have chosen to take the story into my own hand, that is to say, to use the third person instead of the first: in every other respect I copied your beginning exactly. I find we were both of opinion he should be sent into a Baronet's family: there, however, all similarity ceases. I need not read the first chapter to you, I shall be. gin with the second.”

Of this last Volume, which, as we said before, forms a separate story, our limits will only permit us to make an Extract of the cha racter of the second Baronet and his Lady, into whose family Morland is hired as a servant, at its commencement. This story is carried on with much interest and address, and is really very surprising, and will certainly reward the reader for the time spent in its perusal.

"Sir Robert Wallingford of Cray-hill, was one of the richest baronets in England, about five-and-forty years old, and equally free from vice and virtue. He gave his money so willingly, that it was easy to see he would have been a generous man, if he had not been born a rich one; but having been surrounded in his youth by flatterers and sharpers, his know. ledge of mankind being gained only from them, he was convinced that men did not deserve beneficence on principle, and he might therefore be said rather to part with his money than to bestow it. He had too little resource in himself, and was too dependent upon others to be a misanthropist; and he mixed in society without enjoying it. With the gentlemen in his neighbourhood he exchanged dinners, but he never pushed the bottle, and he bore the fatigues of hunting because they did. At races no one seemed more delighted, or more eager; he laid large bets, but always covered them by hedging. When in London he frequented the fashionable Coffee-houses in the day-time, but without eating and drink. ing at night he was seen wherever there was gaming, and routs, seem, ingly very much interested in every thing, yet always without being really so. In public places he mixed with the people to make himself popular, and ogled all the pretty girls he met at Ranelagh or Vauxhall, in order to be thought a libertine, He appeared at court to be taken for a

man of quality, and pushed himself in among the nobility, courting their familiarity, in hopes of being looked upon, in time, as one of them: but, he was the only person who forgot the date of his creation. In the House of Commons he always voted with the ministry, of whomsoever composed. Such was Sir Robert's public character. In private he was of easy manners, and allowing for some fits of passion, good to his family. Governed by the pride of property, he valued every thing that belonged to him at double its worth. A horse bought for thirty guineas was estimated at sixty, after it had been a week in his stable. This pride extended to his estates, his family, his servants. Lady Wallingford alone, of all that belonged to him, received no colouring from it. Of her he always spoke impartially, and he lived with her on terms of cold civility.

"Her Ladyship, younger by some years than her husband, had become equally self-important. When young she was carried to Paris, where she was tired to death; every thing appeared to her insipid, and detestable : but, on her return, she wearied all her acquaintance in town and country with the delightful things she had seen in France. In her youth her person had been good; she still supported her pretensions to beauty, piqued herself on wit, and strove to attract attention by every means in her power; in which she succeeded in some degree by the unaccountable whim, of making every thing about her in London appear like the country, and by displaying in the country the forms of the town. She was of course a mighty housewife in London, was inexhaustible on rural subjects, and perpetually boasting of the delights of a country life. On the contrary, at Cray-hill, her whole conversation was of court, and town anecdotes, the theatres, fashionable people, and favourite novels. She treated the country gentlemen as ideots and brutes, and received their wives and daughters with overstrained politeness, mixed with a studied and insulting inattention. In other respects, Lady Wallingford was as well to live with as Sir Robert."

Morland is conducted to the general end of novels, marriage, through a variety of well contrived events.

In this tale the author has kept his word, of weaving a story where the marvellous is introduced, and great interest maintained throughout the whole. It may be pronounced a really pleasant and romantic story, and is calculated to shew the great versatility of the author's genius.

Yet, we cannot dismiss these volumes without observing that, it is very bad economy to remind us in the outset that his PIECE, as he calls it, or pieces, are mere fictions. He talks again of his fictitious piece, at the beginning of volume iv. where he tells us that this was the same Morland, of which in the three preceding volumes he tells quite another story. This is against all the laws, or rather the process or conduct, of poetry, which aims, by hurrying us into the contemplation of affecting scenes, to raise such a cloud of emotion and passion as shall excite a temporary belief of their real existence. The author, we mean, in his teigned character of the Morlands, talks a great deal too much of himself as of his pieces-of his own beauty, accomplishments, virtues, and feelings-his teclings in all circumstances,

Gil

Gil Blas speaks of himself, as every one must do, who is the hero of his own tale. But he is, for the most part, carried altogether out of himself to other characters that interest him. He describes his selfish and weak propensities and habits, as well as his virtues, of which indeed he makes no great boast; in short, he is not such an overweening egotist as any one of the two Morlands; there was something bizarre, and wrong, he added, in writing two different and inconsistent stories about the same men, and announcing this absurdity to the reader. There was no necessity for this. It would have been sufficient to give the second Morland another name. Yet, though we are too often reminded by our poet, for a novelist is a kind of poet, that all he tells us is mere fiction, such is the power of the imagination, that it quickly recovers from those rude and ill-judged shocks, and we peruse both the Morlands on the whole with interest and amusement.

England's Egis: or the Military Energies of the Constitution. By John Cartwright, Esq. the Third Edition. 2 vols. 8vo. PP. 323, with a Map of Great Britain, parted into Military Districts or Divisions. gs. Johnson. 1806.

IT is noticed in the title page, that the first edition of this work made one part of an Appeal, Civil and Military, on the Subject of the English Constitution. The general design of the work is also hinted in the title page, in a quotation from the Bible by way of a motto. "There were in Israel eight hundred thousand valiant inen that drew the sword; and the men of Judah were five hundred thousand."— Samuel.

Every reader of English history knows that a regular militia, or miHitary force, was first established in England, for the defence of the kingdom by the great King Alfred: who ordained that all his people should be armed and registered; assigned them a regular rotation of duty and to assemble at stated places of rendezvous on occasions of any alarm. And King Henry II. having for good reasons demolished all the fortresses in his kingdom, fixed an assize of arms, by which alt bis subjects were obliged to put themselves in a situation for defending themselves and the realin. This universal military force was in the course of events, exchanged for the feudal system, a train of subordina tion of vassalage from the King to the meanest gentleman, and military services in return for landed possessions. But this system was never able to fix the state in a proper warlike posture, or give it the fall exertion of its power for defence, and still less for offence against a publié enemy. And a standing army was at last established in this, as in all the states and kingdoms of Europe. It is the object of the publication before us, to bring back things to the first principles of cur English Constitution under Alfred and his successors, of me-Anglơ

NO KCVI. VOL. XXIV.

M

Saxon

Saxon line, interrupted by the Norman Conqueror, restored by Henry II. but again subver.ed.

The first volume is dedicated to Mr. Fox, who, the author says, "has the most comprehensive knowledge, and holds the purest principles of the English Constitution." After an epistolary address to the volunteers, we have a preface, in which the design of this work is more fully unfolded. From this pretace the following is an extract.

Much has been said on offensive operations being the best defensive system; and there is, indeed, mixed with the danger of the experiment, so much military wisdom in the principle, that we ought to be guarded against the misapplication of it in practice. The two principal arguments in favour of invading the enemy, who threatens you with inva ion, are these: first, that you are thereby to make a diversion of his forces, and find him ample employ ment at home; and secondly, that it is in the nature of attack to raise the spirits of your own troops and nation, and has a tendency to depress those of the enemy. But when you set about invading the invader, you ought to be certain that he is somewhere vulnerable in a degree to give scope to your operations; and you ought to be able to act upon such a scale as to oblige him to employ a very material part of his force in opposing you, or hazard some considerable part of his dominions. And there are other very material considerations to be attended to. Now that all continental alliance is at an end, all ideas of invading the invader must also be at an end.

With regard to the effects to be respectively produced on the spirits of the opposite parties, by elevating those of England and depressing those of France, if those very effects can be better produced by a defensive system, carrying infallibility on its forehead, then, in that particular case, it is, for many very powerful reasons, to be preferred. You cannot make a better diversion of the enemy's force than by effectually deterring it from attempting to execute its purpose.. And how can you more effectually elevate the spirits of your people, than by placing them in a condition to laugh at the impotence of their enemy?

"Restore but the military energies of the English Constitution, and then, from that instant, without any figure of speech, you make successful invasion an impossibility; and the enemy, unable to annoy you either abroad or at home, will probably be brought to reasonable terms of peace; for he will scarcely continue a commercial war, when a military war can no longer avail him. But should he still persevere, then will be your time to become yourselves the invaders. Having laid the solid foundations of your own security, your whole regular force might be employed to strike some stroke that should still more than at present deprive him of" ships, colonics, and commerce," and extort from him a peace glorious to our country."

Were any thing farther necessary, in order to convey to our readers a just idea of the design of the Ægis, we might extract Mr. Cartwright's quotation, from Sir William Jones's "Inquiry into the Legal Means of suppressing Riots, with a Constitutional Plan of future Defence." Sir William, Mr. C. thinks, has clearly demonstrated" that the common and statute laws of the realm, in force at this day, give.the civil

state,

state, in every country, a power, which, if it were perfectly understood, and continually prepared, would effectually queil any riot or insurrec tion, without assistance from the military, &c. &c." Were the law and constitution to operate according to the doctrine of Sir William Jones, we should have an army for defence of full 1,200,000 completely armed.

The second volume is dedicated to Mr. Windham :

"I have much satisfaction in dedicating this volume (of the work) to a minister, from whose manly mind the nation may justly expect that he will revive that grand military system, first organized by the heroic Alfred, and afterwards cherished by our conquering Etwards and Henries, in which the martial spirit of an English people and the military energies of an English Constitution shall constitute an Ægis of Defence, on sight of which the spear of invasion shall assuredly fall from the hand of France's ambitious lord, whose hostile thoughts shall not till then be turned to peace and amity.

"On the first introduction of a different military system by the Normans, this Egis of England's Defence--the power of the collective counties,seemed for a while to be lost; but being an essential part of the constitution, it soon again appeared, and the best of the Norman line, as well as some of the Tudors, watched over it with considerable care. And although under the Stuarts it was wholly neglected, yet it never ceased for one moment to have a real existence; while the unnatural system of the feudal polity, pregnant with turbulence and civil war, lived but for a period, and then perished for ever."

Although our author retains the true spirit and principle of Alfred's military system, yet he has endeavoured to accommodate it, in a some what more complete form, to our future defence.

It is not a little surprising, that Mr. Cartwright, in his chapter containing the opinions of statesmen, historians and philosophers, on standing armies, takes not any notice of the political works of Mr. Fletcher of Saltoun, and particularly his " Discourse of Government with relation to Militias," so very much to his purpose.

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The doctrine contained, and the plan proposed in the Ægis, has our hearty approbation; and, what is of more consequence, it seems to have that of Mr. Windham and His Majesty's other members. It is explored, and recommended by Mr. Cartwright, with great candour, sense, and ability.

An Inquiry into the State of the Nation, at the Commencement of the present Administration. Fourth Edition, with Additions. 8vo. Pr. 236. 5s. Longman and Co. 1806.

THIS pamphlet may be considered as a kind of manifesto of one of the parties of which the present administration is formed. It has,