He that mounts the precipices at Hawkestone wonders how he came thither, and doubts how he shall return. His walk is an adventure, and his departure an escape. He has not the tranquillity, but the horrors of solitude; a kind of turbulent pleasure between fright and admiration.

Ilam is the fit abode of pastoral virtue, and might properly diffuse its shades over nymphs and swains. Hawkestone can have no fitter inhabitants than giants of mighty bone and bold emprise, men of lawless courage and heroic violence. Hawkestone should be described by Milton, and Ilam by Parnell.'

Art. 19.

Costume of Portugal, designed by Mr. H. Levêque. 4to. l. Boards. Colnaghi and Co.

We have at several times mentioned the publication of works depicting, in coloured plates, the costume of our own and of different countries, accompanied by cursory descriptions of each engraving, in French and English. The present is a production of the same kind, and may be considered as adding one more to the series: but it is not sanctioned by any statement of the sources whence it has been formed; nor has it even the convenience of an index, or table of the plates. They are fifty in number, and represent persons exercising a variety of trades, the peasants of several parts of Portugal, begging monks, religious processions, female costume, &c. &c.: the generality of which will now be the more interesting in this country, on account of our late increased connection and communication with the people to which they refer.Among the differences of objects and manners which will strike an English eye, will be immediately noticed the custom of the Portuguese females sitting on the opposite side of a horse, mule, or ass, from that on which women ride in England; and the rude construction of the waggons and carts, especially of their wheels: except in the case of the Water-cart and Mud-cart, which seem to be the most elegant of these vehicles.

The first plate represents a female having an Audience of the Prince;' and in the description we are told that, though the etiquette of the Portuguese court is so extremely rigid that no subject, whatever be his rank or functions, ever sits down in the presence of his sovereign, or approaches his person. but with a reverence due but to the Almighty, yet the Prince is always accessible to all, and the prayers of the poor and the demands of the rich, the applications of weakness and the claims of power, reach him with equal facility.' The account proceeds, in flowery and diffuse language, to describe the audiences; in which the Prince receives all the petitions that are presented to him, listens with attention to all the complaints, all the requests of the petitioners; consoles some, cheers others, gives hopes, promises, encouragement to all. The coarseness of their manners, the familiarity oftheir address; the tautology of some, the prolixity of others, nothing wearies him; he seems to forget that he is their master, in order to remember that he is their friend!'- If this representation be correct, the people of Lisbon will lament the removal of the court to the New World; though perhaps they often found that the

soft

soft words and kind behaviour of their sovereign verified an English proverb, and " buttered no parsnips."

Plate 2. exhibits the conveyance of the Prisoner's Soup,' which is prepared by a holy brotherhood called Brethren of Charity, who procure alms, set up in one of the squares coppers filled with meat, vegetables, and rice, and, when these are sufficiently cooked, the coppers are placed on carts, adorned with boughs, and are conveyed to the prisons.' These repasts are repeated on the first Sunday at least of every month, and on the numerous principal festivals of the year. In this article, the absence of the Prince (now the King) is lamented:-' he who was accustomed to pardon, he who alone had the power and always the wish to do it, he will be sought in vain !'

Plate 8. represents a 'Peasant of the Neighbourhood of Lisbon,' in a costume which might be advantageously introduced among our country-people. He wears a straw great coat, connected and wove together as fringe; several borders of this fringe are placed one over the other aslant, which form an impenetrable defence against rain: the coats are extremely light, and several English officers who have adopted them have fully appreciated their utility.'

A peasant may be thus as securely thatched as his cottage-roof. In plate 21. Bestow your charity on a poor sick Man,' a friend of the invalid is depicted, soliciting aid for him; and here, as in other instances, the charity of the Portuguese is loudly praised: the writer asserting that nowhere is this virtue more frequently, more universally, and more constantly practised.'

The Maltese, or the Money-changer, (plate 35.) is an article. which might be worth quotation, on the subject of finance: but it is too long for us.

6

In art. 39. the Ballad-singers,' it is stated that charity is involuntarily awakened by the pleasing tones of these wandering minstrels; and that the Portuguese language, full of vowels, prominent as well as sonorous, affords rests to the singer, which enable him to display all the treasures of his voice, and draw out all the graces of his song."

The subject of the last plate is a Peasant Girl leading a Waggon;' that is, leading the oxen which draw it; and we have the pleasure of learning that the peasants of the province of Minho have a particular attachment to their oxen, and treat them as companions of their toil. A young girl leads them to pasture and attends them in the stall: she cleans and washes them, keeps their skins sleek and their horns bright; and, in order still more to set off the latter, she rubs them from time to time with a little grease.' Considerable information is conveyed in the descriptive part of this publication, and the whole will be acceptable to those who can afford to purchase it.

CORRESPONDENCE.

We have considered the letter signed Samuel Greatheed, and dated from Bishop's Hull, near Taunton, on the subject of the lamentable disease which afflicted the estimable poet Cowper, and

in reference to the remarks which we made respecting it in our Number for March last, pp. 296, &c.: but, as the letter is in itself long, and the observations which we must make on it cannot be expressed in a very few words, we must be excused from printing the former entire, and must curtail the latter. Mr. G. says:

The reviewer assumes, if I do not misunderstand his aim, that Cowper believed the Calvinistic doctrine of "irrespective and irreversible decrees;" and then assigns such a belief as the cause of his unhappy derangement.

If there be any passage in all Cowper's writings, that implies his belief of that doctrine, I am a stranger to it: but I do not apprehend that there can be; because, during ten years' familiar intercourse with him, at the period when he published most, I never heard any thing from him that indicated him to believe it.

Throughout that time, with very short intervals, (except while diverted from the subject,) he was apprehensive of falling into everlasting misery: but that he did not ascribe this to any irreversible decree, appeared to me, first, because he considered it (however irrationally) as a judgment for not performing what he thought to be a command of God; the performance of which, he always supposed, would have exempted him from the punishment; and secondly, because, although he imagined, that, in this state, his prayers could not be acceptable to God, yet he usually expressed some de gree of hope, that the prayers of his friends might be granted in his behalf. Mature reflection on these facts leads me to conclude, that he could not, even in his own case, entertain the opinion which the reviewer (I know not on what ground) has ascribed to him.

If, however, he had thought himself irreversibly deemed to misery, which in his worst paroxysms is possible (though I apprehend it to be without proof, even then), this would not have demonstrated his belief of the doctrine in question; because he always declared that he believed his own case to be singular. Nothing indeed could be more incompatible with CALVINISM, than his apprehensions for himself. It is the essential distinction of Calvinism, that no regenerate person CAN finally perish. Cowper never wavered in his persuasion, that he was (in the Calvinistic sense) regenerate; yet he was equally persuaded, that if he died in the state in which he was, he should perish for ever.

I cannot allege my reasons for regarding his derangement as hereditary, without indelicacy to his surviving relatives, who are mostly of a very respectable description. That it was constitutional, I was thoroughly convinced, by anecdotes of his youth, which he related to me without discovering any suspicion of the cause. This is the best excuse that can be assigned, for squandering fourteen years of the prime of his life in mere amusement. Hence, when necessitated to engage in business, he found himself wholly unprepared for it, and in desperation resolved to destroy himself. It brought on total insanity; from which, however, under the best treatment, he recovered in a few months. To have renewed his efforts at business would doubtless have rendered, if it would not have proved him, insane. He never was a religious character, till his recovery; and during more than eight years from that time, he enjoyed uninterrupted tranquillity. He then proposed marriage to Mrs. Unwin. The day was fixed; but before it came, the fatal delusion I have described overwhelmed him, for the first time; probably in consequence of agitation produced in his mind, by the intended change of his condition. From this shock, he never recovered; although, after a few years, he became able to divert his thoughts from their dismal object by poetical composition.'

* I explained this, in a sermon which I preached at Olney, in 1800, on occasion of Mr. C.'s recent deccase.'

It

It seems unnecessary to enter into any argument with Mr. G. as to the fact of Cowper's fears of everlasting condemnation. admits it when he says, During ten years, with very short intervals, he was apprehensive of falling into everlasting misery.'— He imagined that in this state his prayers could not be acceptable to God.' Now, after this admission, it appears to be of little consequence whether Cowper thought that his unhappy state was originally determined by an irreversible decree of the Deity, or whether he regarded it as a judgment inflicted on him for the non-performance of a divine command. In each case he considered the state itself as unalterably fixed, because he did not believe that his own prayers could be accepted. As to the salvo of his friend's prayers, Mr. Greatheed describes this as the casual expression of some degree of hope:' but, setting that aside, the thing itself (namely, that a man professing to depend on the atonement of our Saviour, as Cowper frequently does, should disbelieve the efficacy of prayer, unless preferred by a friend, and that friend an earthly one!) is much too unreasonable to be made the foundation of any argument. If Cowper really entertained such despair of being able to work out his own salvation, and such hope of the efficacious assistance of friendly human intercession, all that we can say is, that in his reasoning moments and in his unhappy paroxysms there seems to have been little real distinction. The cruelty, indeed, of pursuing this amiable and ill-starred being into the recesses of the grave becomes every moment more apparent. That he feared irremediable misery without the shadow of a reason for such a fear appears most certain; and if this be not the consequence of holding the doctrine of irreversible decrees, it amounted (as we have said before) to the same thing in the practical results of the opinion. In a sane man we should call it the very impiety of despair: in an insane man what can we reason about it?

That he could at the same time believe himself to be in a state of regeneration, and of liability to eternal punishment by falling from that state, is most certain: but that he should believe himself to be regenerate, and yet unacceptable,- that he should feel himself in the progress towards salvation, and still be persuaded of finally perishing if he died in the state in which he yet entertained that feeling,is a manifest contradiction in terms, and unworthy of any serious consideration.

We are sorry to say that a recent publication will soon recall us to this unpleasing topic.

is at

On account of the absence of one of our coadjutors, who present on the Continent, we can take no other notice of the remarks of Liberalis Cantab. than by assuring the writer that we have spoken according to the best judgment that we could for, and to the best intelligence which we could procure.

It is not in our power just now to give a precise answer to the inquiry of W. D. of Thornhaugh-street.

The APPENDIX to Vol. LXXX. of the M. R. was published on the 1st of October, with the Review for September.

THE

MONTHLY REVIEW,

For NOVEMBER, 1816.

Translated from Constable and Co.

ART. I. Memoirs of the Marchioness de Larochejaquelein. With a Map of the Theatre of War in La Vendée. the French. 8vo. pp. 541. 128. Boards. Edinburgh; and Longman and Co. London.

OF

the

1816.

the mass of publications relative to the events of the present age, a very small proportion has been derived from pen of an eye-witness, particularly in the case of operations of so dangerous and disastrous a nature as those which occupy the volume before us. We are thus induced to set a double value on the literary labours of this lady; who, for the sake of leaving with her children a permanent memorial of the heroism of her husband and his friends, did not scruple to go through the painful task of recording their extraordinary sufferings and their untimely end. Such, she says in her preface, was her motive; and we see no reason to doubt the truth of the assertion, since the book is in no respect decked out with pretensions to popularity in point of style, or with panegyrics on those who figure most prominently in its details. Every part of the narrative is plain, concise, and modest; not always clear, indeed, and not devoid of inaccuracies; yet containing sufficient evidence that the irregularities discoverable in it proceed not from any intention to misrepresent, but from the original want of notes, and from inexperience in literary composition.

The Marchioness was born in 1772, the only daughter of the Marquis de Donnessan; and, being the grand-daughter of the Duchess de Civrac, who was in the habit of frequenting court, she was from her infancy under the protection of the royal family of France. According to a plan very generally followed in that country, her matrimonial lot was fixed by her parents in her tender years, but it fortunately happened that her selected partner possessed other recommendations than those of rank or property; and M. de Lescure, her first husband, with less ease of manner than the French noblesse usually manifest, was a serious, religious, and moral young man. Their marriage took place in 1791, by which time the public affairs VOL. LXXXI. Q

of