gave him particular satisfaction, and was also the occasion of confident prediction: He thus writes :

The last accounts I have make me think that the whole of your plan is likely to be upset by the Tories and the class interests. But, never mind. The seed is sown-and the flag of commercial reform is at last unfurled, and sooner or later it must triumph. The debate of the 18th May (my latest news) tells me nothing of what your course will be; but I trust, for your own sakes and that of the cause, that you will not have abandoned the helm to the Tories upon the mere defeat upon the Sugar Duties, which was of course inevitable. It seems to me that, having once entered upon this new contest, you are bound to proceed with it. If they beat you on Sugar, give them Timber; if they beat you on that, give them Corn. The discussions must benefit you, and must injure them. And when beaten on all, and your course of policy fairly before the country, test it with a dissolution, which though it can scarcely be expected to give you a majority, or render resignation unnecessary, will at least have ranged parties under the new banners, both on one side and the other, and enable you to force your measures on another government, should your own not get back.

The following are some of Lord Sydenham's views on emigration: I have sent home [a long Report on Emigration, which some of you won't like because it tells the truth, and declares that to throw starving and diseased paupers under the rock at Quebec ought to be punishable as murder. Send me out good stout English peasants who know what work is; give them the means of getting up the country 600 or 700 mlies where it is to be had; and I will take as many as you can get, and promise them independence. Or give me some yeomen with a few hundred pounds each, and let them take prudent advice-buy cleared farms—not throw themselves into the bush, where they are as helpless as they would be in the Great Desert; and I will secure them comfort and perfect independence at the end of a couple of years-but not money. That is a thing never to be mentioned. Pigs, pork, flour, potatoes, horses to ride, cows to milk; but you must eat all you produce, for devil a purchaser is to be found. However, the man's chief wants are supplied, and those of his family; he has no rent or taxes to pay, and he ought to be satisfied. But send me no Irish paupers; nor young gentlemen with 500l, or 600l., who fancy that upon that they may be idle, and are hardly used because they cannot get 2001. or 300l. a year income in return for it. The province absolutely teems with persons of this character-lawyers, broken-down merchants, clerks, soldiers who have come out here to farm; lost their money through their ignorance of the business; or have been unable to brook plenty without the enjoyments of civilised life-the lot of those who succeed best; and all these are applicants for places, of which there is one perhaps to one hundred candidates. So you see competition is nearly as rife here as in the

mother country.

His lordship's views of Yankee politics and government, as well as of Yankee manners, may be just, but they are far from flattering. He says,

It is the corruption of Walpole's House of Commons extended over a whole people. Peculation and jobbing, the only objects; delusion and the basest flattery of the people, the means. The joke is, that we in Europe are apt to fancy the Government is a cheap one, the patronage little, the means of corruption small, and the people careful of their own interests as opposed to the attempts of their rulers: this, all because we find the President getting only 5,000l. a year! The reverse of all this is the fact. I will venture to say that there is more jobbing and dirty work in one State of the Union, that in all Downing-street and Whitehall. Every place is the object of party contest, and they are innumerable in each little Government of each State. The people being the direct bestowers of all, if not immediately, at least indirectly, are adulated in the most disgusting and degrading way; and the trash from which an educated minister or boroughmonger in England would turn with disgust, is greedily swallowed by them. The result, of course, is general debasement. Those who aim at place and power are corrupt and corrupters. The masses who bestow them are ignorant, prejudiced, dishonest, and utterly immoral. You will naturally say, under such circumstances, how is it that they advance so rapidly and so steadily? It is the millions of acres of good land alone that does this. Exhaust the means by which all their unquiet spirits and ruined speculators now find a fresh field, and the bubble will burst at once. If they drive us into a war, which, however, I do not think likely, the blacks in the South will soon settle all that part of the Union; and in the North I feel sure that we can lick them to their heart's content.

Again,

We have a host of Yankees, either in the house, or arriving daily from the opposite shore, a gun-shot off, to see Mr. Governor Thomson. You never saw, or can imagine such a set of people; but they are great fun. I gave them a review yesterday of the 93rd, a Highland regiment in kilts, which delighted them not a little I guess. I overheard one of them say, "I guess these Britishers do it a'most as handsome as the Buffalo Citizen Militia!" Another said to me to-day, meaning, I presume, to pay me the highest compliment, "I opinionate that you are very like our old Hickory" (Jackson)" you downs them everlasting locusts of place-goers, and won't stand no up but your own; "-pretty true, by-the-bye. Yesterday on the balcony a Yankee lady was walking with her little girl; the child said, "Mamma, I can't bear this." Upon which mamma looked daggers at her, and said, "How can you talk so before the Governor? You should say, I can't tolerate this." Such is their delicacy of language. What it is, practically, you may imagine from the circumstance of my bed-room's opening on a balcony that is common to the house; and there is not a young lady in the hotel who does not walk up and down staring into the window of the room, which is about 8 feet square, every morning whilst I am going through all the processes of my toilet.

Lord Sydenham does not appear to have been blessed with a robust constitution; and his bodily as well as mental exertions in Canada completely wore him out. The account which he gives of his daily routine of work, besides his long and late dinner hours, when

he had company, "which is about three times a week," show that his was no idle sphere. "The excitement and worry are more than I can stand in the present state of my health." He longed for September, after which he would not stay though they were to make him Duke of Canada. The hoped-for month arrived; he was recovering and preparing to return to England. But by the fall of his horse his leg was fractured. And now for the close:

In the night between Friday and Saturday the 18th a change took place, which for the first time thoroughly aroused his family to his imminent danger, and showed that his sufferings were fast approaching to a fatal termination: all his symptoms were in those few short hours fearfully aggravated,— the spasms by which for several days he had been tortured became more frequent and intense, and his strength was evidently fast failing. Those who had hoped most were now forced to allow that hope was no longer reasonable; and the only question was, how many hours he might still linger in agony.

He became very soon aware of his own state; yet even in those trying moments, when all worldly prospects were fast fading from his sight-when the reward of success and the discredit of failure were becoming alike indifferent, his sense of duty still kept alive his interest in public matters. With a calmness and tranquillity most astonishing to those who witnessed it, he continued between the paroxysms of pain to devote his attention to such public matters as required immediate decision. His faculties remained unimpaired; and early in the day he executed his will, in which, among other legacies, was one "in token of his friendship and esteem" to Lord John Russell. When this part of his will was subsequently read over to him, he repeated twice in a firm and emphatic tone, "He was the noblest man it was ever my good fortune to know." Among the many testimonies which during his public life Lord John Russell may have received, none can have borne more deeply the stamp of sincere attachment and admiration than these few words from the dying lips of his friend and fellow-statesman.

In the afternoon Lord Sydenham invited all the members of his family to unite with him in receiving the Holy Sacrament. After the administration of that sacred ordinance he took leave of them individually, addressing to each some words of kind remembrance, accompanied by some token of his regard. He then desired to be left alone with his chaplain; and during the night he continued constant and fervent in prayer, and in preparation for the awful change about to take plaće. No murmur at his untimely fate ever escaped his lips, but in his death he evinced the same firmness and strength of mind which in life had been his distinguishing characteristic. Throughout the night his sufferings continued unabated, and repeatedly those who watched thought that his last moment was come; but it was not until seven o'clock of Sunday the 19th that he breathed his last.

We shall go back to his childhood, in order to cite a pleasant anecdote in which he, George the Third, and another great man were parties concerned. The scene was Brighton, and the narrator is the author of the Memoir before us:

"The King became so partial to Charles, the youngest, then not quite four years old, that he insisted on a daily visit from him, often watched at the window for his arrival, ran down himself to open the door to let him in, and carried him about in his arms to show all that could amuse the child, in the very ordinary lodging-house then occupied by the royal party, and especially the suppers laid out for the children's balls, which their majesties frequently gave for the amusement of their young favourites. On one occasion, the King being on the pier-head, about to embark in the royal yacht upon one of his sailing trips, and having the child in his arms, he turned round to Mr. Pitt, who was in attendance at his elbow, having probably hurried down from London for an audience on important business, and exclaimed, "Is not this a fine boy, Pitt? Fine boy, isn't he? Take him in your arms, Pitt; take him in your arms: charming child, isn't he?" Then suiting the action to the word, he made the stiff and solemn premier, weighed down as he seemed to be with cares of state, dandle and kiss the pretty boy, and carry him some minutes in his arms, albeit strange and unused to such a burden. The circumstance, though trivial, had so comical an effect, from the awkwardness and apparent reluctance with which the formal minister performed his compelled part of nurse, as to make an impression on the writer, who stood by, though but seven years old himself, which time has never effaced.

ART. XV.-Narrative of a Journey from Heraut to Khiva, Moscow, and St. Petersburgh. By Capt. JAMES ABBOT. 2 vols. Allen and Co.

THIS is a singularly unsatisfactory narrative. It is almost entirely destitute of interest and value in a diplomatic point of view, and even of facts of any importance. The Captain himself says, "I feel sensible that some apology is necessary for the incompleteness of the materials and defectiveness of the execution. I departed for Khiva ignorant of every particular, whether of fact or curiosity, connected with Toorkestaun, had to learn the Persian tongue (itself a foreign language in Khaurism) on my hurried march thither, and was closely guarded whilst there from intercourse with the natives." Similar difficulties were encountered in Russia; "ignorance of the language, restricted leisure, and a mind utterly unprepared by previous reading for the subject before it." Neither does the Captain appear to be in possession of a temperament well adapted for political negotiation between civilized and uncivilized nations. He draws too frequently upon his imagination; he is a bundle of sensations and emotions; nor does he prove himself to have had the discreetness to refrain from the disclosure of feelings and opinions which could benefit no one, and at the best could only result in self-portraiture and uninteresting egotism. He does not seem to have met with bad usage at Khiva, however suspicious and timid he may have been; and it is equally certain from his own showing that he was the reserve of being com

petent to forward any delicate arrangement which required promptitude of decision together with composure of action.

The Captain entertained an exaggerated sense of the magnitude and the difficulties of the mission upon which he went, just as he did of his ability to deal with what he describes as desperate circumstances. He arrives at Khiva, and says,

My present position was one of interest and deep anxiety. I had been sent to execute what might well appear an impossibility, and my fame, as well as life, was staked upon the venture. When I considered my imperfect knowledge of even the Persian tongue, my utter ignorance of that of the court and people, as well as of their manners and temper; my entire want of instruments suited to my need: that my sole instrument of intercourse with the natives was Ali Muhummed, a ransomed slave, new to my service, and of whose capacity or fidelity I knew nothing; when I considered the lightness of my purse; the impossibility of recruiting it at Khiva; the poverty of the presents to be offered. the Khaun Huzurut, contrasted with the lavish gifts, which, it was well known, had been bestowed upon the government of Heraut; my want of suite to give dignity to my mission; that the Vuzeer Yar Muhummud Khaun had agents at Khiva, secretly engaged in thwarting my endeavours, and throwing the most dangerous suspicions upon my motives; that the Persian ambassador had just preceded me, at the head of a hundred horse, and laden with handsome presents; that it must be his object to hinder the meditated alliance; that Doost Muhummud Khaun, the Ex-Ummeer of Cabul, had also agents at Khiva, who would naturally, if possible, poison the Khaun's mind against the English,--a nation whose very existence was a recent discovery at Khiva. When I considered, that in demanding the confidence of the Khaun, I was empowered to promise him nothing, but rather to make excuses for non-compliance with every request he had made,-I confess, the case appeared to me as desperate as possible.

Captain Abbot's mission was a sort of nondescript affair,—at best a semi-official undertaking. Tidings of the Russian invasion of Central Asia reach Major Todd, the British envoy at Heraut. An intercourse is then sought for by him with the Khan or king of Khiva, and during its formation a report reaches the envoy that the Russian invading forces amount to 100,000. The Khan was, urgent to receive aid and supplies from the British, which, however, Major Todd had neither the authority nor the means to supply; deputing our author to the court of the Khan to smooth the bonds of amity, of course, in the best way that could be done, and no doubt to furnish the British agent at Herat with the earliest and most accurate accounts respecting the movements and intentions of the Russians that could be obtained at Khiva, so as that the Indian government might without delay be put into possession of the real and entire facts connected with the invasion.

Captain Abbot, in the capacity of Major Todd's messenger, started for Khiva towards the latter end of December, 1839, although he