practice for promoting or rather ensuring digestion, directly the reverse of that medical operation which old fablers have said was borrowed from the stork.

In the winter of 1797, a plague prevailed among the cats in Feroe. There was a very general mortality among them about the same time in England, and that it should have prevailed in these remote islands, when it could not possibly have been communicated by contagion, is a remarkable fact. Sea bathing was tried with little effect; emeticks were administered successfully, but the cases were not sufficiently numerous to establish the remedy. The life of a domestick cat is of some value there; for rats are very numerous; they will destroy a corn field in the course of two nights, and when they can get at the sea fowl, they commit such havock among them, that they leave little to be done by the fowlers. They have, however, since their introduction, nearly rid the islands of mice. The Hanover rat made his appearance there in 1768, arriving upon the wreck of a Norway ship, which was lost on the island of Lewis. and drifted to Suderoe. It is observed that he will not touch any thing that is poisoned. Sagacious as the rat is, this must be owing to the want of skill in disguising the poison; for in England, of which these vermin have made a more complete conquest than any former invader (ha ving literally extirpated the original rat of the country) poison is the most common method of destroying

them.

Hay tea, though in England regarded as a new discovery in feeding, is given to the cows in Feroe. It seems to have been long in use in other countries. Fifty years ago, the Dublin Society printed instructions for rearing calves with a portion of this food, according, as they say, to the method practised in divers countries. Kine are subject

there to white swellings in the corners of the mouth, which prevent the animal from eating or ruminating, but are easily cut out. If a cow loses its appetite from any other cause, the remedy is a superstitious one. All the churches are covered with living turf; two or three handfuils of grass plucked from that part of the roof which is directly over the choir, the altar, or the pulpit, are supposed to be a specifick. Whitelocke, in his journal (a book every way interesting) describes the sheep and goats as clambering up the Swedish country houses to graze upon the turf with which they are covered; the buildings being very low, and the roof just sloping sufficiently for the wet to run off. This mode of covering houses is common in Feroe. In one part of Stromoe, which is surrounded on all sides by steep hills (except toward the sea) every bull, which is either bred or brought there, becomes excecdingly ferocious and dangerous. The same fact is observed in Borrodale, at the head of Derwentwater, and for the same reason; they are made furious by the echo of their own bellowing.

There is a curious section in this volume under the head of Amphibia. "In Feroe there are no frogs, toads, lizards, snakes, or serpents; and no amphibious animal of any kind, a circumstance which is worthy of remark." Certes; but not worthy of a whole section; for this is the whole. This, however, seems to be a Danish way of making chapters. In Horrebow's Natural History of Iceland there are two such; chap. 42. "Concerning owls. There are no owls in the whole island." And chapter 72. “Concerning snakes.. No snakes of any kind are to be met with throughout the whole island." Would that our book makers were equally honest, and when they came to a subject upon which they had no information to communicate, would frankly tell us so, instead of

covering the shallowness of their meaning with the froth of their discourse! In the Danes this is not a trick of book making; it proceeds from their love of method.

One melancholy reflection arises upon perusing this interesting volume. The Feroese, inhabiting a group of rocky islands in a bleak and ungenial climate, and earning great part of their food by the perilous occupations of fishing and fowling, are an inoffensive and good people. In the happier regions of Polynesia and of the sugar islands, where earth almost spontaneously gives its fruit, and man has no other business than that of enjoyment, we behold vices and atrocities disgraceful to human nature. Let it not be supposed that we impute this difference to the effect of climate. God forbid Of all sophists, those who pretend to regulate morality by degrees of latitude, are the most pernicious. The crimes of the Polynesians are easily accounted for, without arraigning Providence. They are savages; instruct them and convert them, establish among them a

good government and a good church discipline, and their depravity will be remedied. The crimes of the Creoles are of a deeper die, for ignorance cannot be pleaded in extenuation. The cause is to be found in the existence of slavery; and the inevitable demoralization which this accursed practice produces, is not checked by any due system of religious instruction. Let those who doubt the efficacy of education and religion, look at what Scotland is, and recollect what it was two centuries ago. At present the Scotch are, beyond all doubt, a peaceable, orderly, and moral nation; two centuries ago they were as turbulent, ferocious, and brutal as the wild Irish are now. The Feroe islands. also invite us to a nearer comparison. There are no feudal oppressions; no sore grievances, and sorer vexations to deaden the hopes, check the industry, and prevent the improvement of the people. Can we say this of the Scotch islands? This is a question which we shall soon take occasion to examine.

LITTLE did we imagine, when, on a recent occasion,* we were enumerating the many, and almost insurmountable difficulties, which opposed themselves to the student of the Chinese language, that our at tention would so speedily be recalled to the subject, by the appearance of the translation of another Chinese work; small, indeed, in point of bulk, and trifling in comparative im

portance, but more difficult, inasmuch as poetry, in proportion as it becomes more concise and conden sed, is more intricate and obscure, than plain prose. Such, however, is the fact. Mr. Weston, a gentleman not altogether unskilled in Asiatick lore, nor wholly untried, it seems, in Chinese literature,† has boldly soared into the metaphorical regions of oriental poetry, and visited the

unfrequented abode of the Chinese muses. Nay more, with a hardihood which evinces a consciousness of his own powers, he has even ventured to leap at once into the poetical saddle of the great Kien-Lung, Tawhang-tee, Tien-sha; the Son of Heaven, and the invincible ruler of all that is great and valuable under heaven.

"He who mounts a tiger," says a Chinese proverb, "will find it no easy matter to alight." But what is a tiger, when compared with the animal which Mr. Weston has ventured to bestride! "a scaly dragon of cerulean hue," [p. 51] a monster with five claws, and a fiery tail, more dreadful to behold than that celestial scorpion which so fatally alarmed the adventurous son of Merops. Our author has luckily, however, dismounted in safety from his dragon; but, after having thus excited our fears, he must pardon us, if we caution him strongly against relying too much on his good fortune, and trusting himself again to the doubtful docility of a creature, to whose motions and paces he has not been accustomed, and with whose spirit and temper he cannot possibly be acquainted.-Nate, cave! To be serious; we do not think that Mr. Weston has exercised much judgmeut in the choice of a subject for the employment of his talents; or that the result of his labours will prove eminently useful to the general cause of literature, At the same time, we rejoice that so extraordinary, but apparently repul sive, a language, has attracted the notice of this ingenious and persevering soholar; though we cannot recommend him, in the very outset of his studies, to engage with Chinese poetry, still less with poetry which bears the credit of being the production of an imperial brain. Great monarchs may be expected

to take great liberties, and not always readily to submit to those fixed and ordinary rules by which the mass of mankind is governed, as well in literary as in political communities.

In our review of the "Leu-Lee," we entered pretty fully into the singular nature and construction of the written character of the Chinese language, and took occasion, at the same time, to give a slight sketch of Chinese literature. Mr. Weston's poem affords us the opportunity of saying a few words on that particular species of arrangement and choice of characters, which, by analogy, may be denominated Chinese poetry. We say, by analogy, because, strictly speaking, according to our received notions of poetry, the Chinese language can scarcely be said to admit of any. The compositions to which Europeans have attached the name of poetry, are distinguished by the Chinese under the character shee, a compound of yen, a word, and shee, a temple-the words of the temple; by which they probably intend to signify, that these kinds of composition are of divine origin, or designed for sacred uses; or, as yen is also to speak, the character may allude, perhaps, to the mode of speaking in temples; poetry having originally constituted no inconsiderable portion of publick instruction, as well as religious worship, among eastern nations. In China, the little that is still practised of the latter, by the priests of Fo, consists wholly of poetry, aided by musick; of short sentences chaunted with an accompaniment of bells, drums, and sono

rous stones.

There are two kinds of composition in the Chinese language, which may be brought under the head of poetry; the one written, the other oral; the former addressed solely to the eye, without regard to sound,

measure, or rhyme; the latter to the eye, or to the ear, or to both. The chief excellence of painted or eye poetry, consists in the selection of such characters, as are either capable of conveying to the mind some agreeable allusion to ancient events, some figurative or metaphorical signification, or, such as, from their component parts, may easily be traced in the history of the idea which they are employed to represent. Such characters, indeed, to a person deprived of sight, are so many dead letters; but, on the other hand, they are capable of conveying as much pleasure to the deaf and dumb, as to others in the full possession of their faculties. Although the excellence of eye poetry, whatever it may be, depends not in any degree either on the measure of syllables, or the consonance of sounds, yet it may possess both measure and rhyme; neither of them, however, is essential to it. To reach the sublime in composition, it is required, that every character should be an allegory, including some complete and perfect idea. Thus, instead of the plain and common character for the eyes, a poet would employ another signifying living pearls, or perhaps would call them the stars of the forehead; for the head he would probably say, the sanctuary of reason, &c. Other allusions are employed of more obscure signification; thus the peaceful solitude of the sage is represented by a single character, composed of a spring of water and a peach tree, in allusion to some Chinese worthy, who, flying from the persecution of his enemies, subsisted for some time on peaches and water. Thus, also, from a story recorded of some beautiful widow having disfigured her nose to avoid a second marriage, a gay widow is designated poetically, as a lady who will not cut off her nose; and sometimes, as a lady who will not scruple to cut off her dead husband's nose, It is not impossible that Voltaire,

being strongly infected with the Chinese mania, and well acquainted with the communications of the Jesuit missionaries, may have engrafted this figure upon the well known story of the Ephesian matron, when he sends Azora to her husband's tomb-" pour couper le nez à Zadig." But having, in a former number, entered fully into the nature of compound Chinese characters, we deem it unnecessary to extend our observations now on this part of the subject.

The second kind of Chinese po etry, that which is meant to be "sung or said," has not only a regulated measure, but the verses sometimes rhyme to each other, though this may be considered rather as a circumstance of accident than the result of any settled rule. Indeed an oral language, consisting entirely, as that of China does, of meagre, paronymous monosyllables (from which many letters of our alphabet are excluded) whose terminations arc limited either to the vowels, the liquid l, the n, or ng, can afford but little variety of sounds, and must sometimes unavoidably run into a jingle of rhyme; while, on the other hand, it would scarcely be possible to adjust the harmonical consonance of its syllables, by any settled rules. The Chinese, however, say, and probably with truth, that, in ancient times, their verses were short and frequently in rhyme; they are so, in fact, among all nations in the dawn of civilisation. With them, metre and rhyme, or both, afford the easiest and best means of fixing events in the memory. To give more interest to verses of this kind, they were recited in a tone different from that of common conversation. Even at this day, poetry and recitative are with the Chinese inseparable. The verses of the Shee-king, collected by Confucius more than 400 years before the Christian era, are repeated in musical cadences, and, in many of the editions, the tone or note

is affixed to each character, in order to show in what manner it ought to be enunciated. Without this tone, for the gratification of the ear, or a due regard to the composition of the characters, to please the eye, the spirit of Chinese poetry must entirely evaporate, and what remains exhibit only a succession of unintelligible monosyllabick sounds. This may be sufficiently illustrated, by writing the sounds of Chinese cha racters in the letters of our alphabet, which, in fact, is the only way left us, to exhibit a few specimens of Chinese oral poetry. In such a shape, it is almost unnecessary to add, it is not only stripped of all its embellishments, but exposed in a state of perfect nudity.

The following is part of the record of an eclipse of the sun, taken from the Shee-King:

"Ché yue, tehć kiao
Chou ge sin-mao
Ge yeou ché tché

Ye koung tché tcheou

Pei yué cul wei
Tsé gé eul wei
Kin tsé shin min
Ye koung tcho ngai."

Of which, the following may be taken as a pretty literal translation:

"Tenth moon's conjunction, first day sin-mao, sun had eclipse. All portend bad. Whether sun covered or moon covered, people in general fear bad.”

We shall add but a single verse of one of their most popular songs:

"Hau ye to si-en wha

Yeu tchau yeu jie to tsai yo kia
Go pun tai poo tchoo mun

Twee tcho si-en wha ullo."' "How delightful this fresh flower! one day morning found it in my house. Being mine I wear it not out of doors, but keep fresh flower and am content!"

All this an European will be very apt to pronounce sad stuff; yet we are assured by the French missionaries that it is très superbe; that, ac

cording to one (who seems to have read his breviary to a good pur pose) if it has not exactly the fire of Pindar, and the sublimity of Homer, it may at least be classed with the psalms of David! Another tells us that the Chinese poets study nature, and may, therefore, be compared with Boileau and Horace; and a third, with great naïveté, asserts, that none of those passages of Homer, wherein the sound is meant to be "an echo to the sense," are surpassed by tang-tang, as an imitation of the sound of the gong. One thing at least is certain; the study of Chinese poetry, by a European, is not likely to compensate the labour which he must necessarily bestow, to acquire even a very imperfect knowledge of the plainest compositions of this kind. Among these, the imperial poems of Kien Lung are not to be classed, if we may credit the account which Pére Amiot has given of them; namely, that, after more than thirty years application to the study of the Chinese language, in which he wrote and conversed daily, he would have found it utterly impossible to put the "Praise of Moukden" into an intelligible shape, had he not also

been conversant with the Mantchoo Tartar language, by which he was enabled to compare the corresponding passages. Yet this poem, as he calls it, has neither metre nor rhyme. The Ode on Tea, from the same imperial pen, is fit only, in our plebeian judgments, to occupy a place in the Almanack des Gourmands, or Mrs. Glass's Art of Cookery; and as neither of those valuable compilations possesses the emperour's receipt for making tea, we shall insert a translation of this culinary ode:

"Set an old three-legged teapot over a slow fire; fill it with water of melted snow; boil it just as long as is necessary to turn fish white, or lobsters red; pour it on the leaves of choice in a cup of youé. Let