additional legislation, or more vigorous executive measures. The Annual Reports of the Institution have sent out a fund of information, which has equally enlightened the public mind, and given a tone to public sentiment. The attention of the Colonization Society may be profitably turned into similar channels.

Another object, which may prove beneficial to the plan of colonization, is that of promoting travels and discoveries in the interior of Africa. Thirty six years ago the African Association was organized in London for this purpose, and almost all the knowledge of interior Africa, which has since come to light, has been derived through the agency of this Association. Our enterprising countryman, John Ledyard, was the first person employed in its service. He embarked in the undertaking with an enthusiasm and perseverance peculiar to himself alone, and which had previously carried him through many perils and sufferings to every quarter of the globe; but he found an untimely grave in Egypt, when he was on the point of starting in a caravan for Nubia. The interesting and valuable discoveries of Hornemann and Park were made under the authority of the same Association. Let our Society send persons to explore the Mesurado river, or to engage in any other expeditions of discovery, from which the colony can be benefited, or the cause of African eivilization advanced.

Schools ought also to be established, both in this country and in Africa, for the instruction of free persons of color, recaptured negroes, and natives. It is desirable, that there should be at least one institution in the United States, designed exclusively for an African education, where youths may be taught with the express view of going to Africa, and where young natives, whom their parents may suffer to come away, shall be looked after and educated. The auxiliary societies, scattered over the country, will be enabled to select the best subjects for such a school from among the families of those, who may be inclined to emigrate, and each auxiliary society may engage to support such persons as it shall

send.

To the common elementary branches of knowledge, might be added the history and geography of Africa, the laws and customs of the people, accounts of the climate, soil, and New Series, No. 17.

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trade, and whatever else should qualify the pupil for entering on his new sphere to the best advantage to himself and the community, in the capacity in which he shall be destined to act. Schools of the same kind may be set up in the colony, with a course of instruction adapted to circumstances. The humbler and more useful arts of life may be taught to the natives, who may be induced to attend the schools. The most promising of the colonists may learn some of the languages of the interior, which shall fit them for greater influence and usefulness. Religious instruction may be inculcated, churches built, and preachers supported. In short, the Colonization Society will never want employment for its means and strength, nor meet with any obstructions to the fullest exercise of its benevolence and activity, although it shall relinquish the arduous and embarrassing task of holding supreme direction over the colony.

While writing the above, we have been gratified to see accounts of new auxiliary societies springing up in different parts of the country, and especially one at Richmond, Virginia, with the venerable Chief Justice Marshall at its head. The sanction of such a name may well confirm the confidence of the steady advocates for colonization, and communicate a quickening power to the tardy zeal of the wavering. When, in addition to this, we reflect on the unqualified approbation with which the present Chief Magistrate of the nation has uniformly regarded the designs of the Colonization Society, the number of distinguished persons found among its active patrons, and the progress it has made under an accumulation of discouraging circumstances, we can hardly desire a stronger testimony to the importance of its objects. or a more auspicious presage of its ultimate success.

ART. IV.-Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. London, 1822. pp. 206.

Ir is the lot of men to suffer, as we have all read in the school books and elsewhere. The fine structure, which gives vivacity to the senses, and makes us capable of plea

surable sensations, renders us liable to a thousand annoyances. Great excitability, or a system naturally sluggish, may make the air and food we live upon, poisonous; and condemn us to ache under the processes of breathing and digestion. And then, the best physical organization is made to be worn out, and, what by use and abuse, misfortune and imprudence, too early becomes feeble and hardly able to maintain the unequal contest with the elements. The mind is thus incessantly harrassed and pressed, like the garrison of a weak citadel besieged by a strong foe, to which it must finally surrender. Sympathy inflicts on us the sufferings of others, and makes misery contagious. Or if nothing external to the mind gives it trouble, it may possess within itself sufficient materials of misery; its regrets of the past, or forebodings and despair of the future, may settle upon it like a cloud, through which it can look at the world only as an undesirable place. Or mere vacancy, the pain of not being excited, is in itself an evil, that puts nimble and impatient spirits upon the pursuit of sensation.

Pain is, according to the doctrine of some wise men, the only motive to action; and in their opinion, therefore, all this throng of men that we see crowding and justling each other in the world, and crossing each others' paths in all directions, is made up of so many patients, each in the eager search of some particular remedy for the evil he feels or fears. But of all the modes of assuaging present pain, or seeking present pleasure, the most preposterous is that of sacrificing the means of future comfort; and the habits least worthy of a thinking being, are those which make the mind depend for its solaces and enjoyments, on physical sensations and affections. The impulse of excited passion or appetite is allowed by the world to be some apology for many acts, that would not otherwise be excusable; but it should seem incredible, that any person would cooly, and with deliberate purpose, choose a substance to put into his stomach, which, though it may dispel present anxiety, or call up a train of agreeable images and sensations, is yet certain to remain in his system a future poison, inducing pain, weakness, melancholy, and early decrepitude. This is however done, more or less frequently, by many persons, and most flagrantly of all, by those who resort to opium as a luxury. A case of this

description makes the subject of the book, of which we are treating, and which the author professes to write to illustrate the moral and physical decay and destruction consequent upon such a practice. We believe that very few persons, if any, in this country, abandon themselves to the use of opium as a luxury; nor does there appear to be any great danger of the introduction of this species of intemperance. The history of a case is, therefore, the less important, as an illustration of the fatal effects of this habit; and we accordingly notice this work, more as an object of taste and literary curiosity, than by way of warning persons against a pernicious practice.

The book is made up, in part, of the dreams and fancies, pleasures and sufferings, whether real or supposed, of the writer. It abounds in fantastical and splendid images, and is interspersed with descriptions of great beauty and magnificence, and with detached thoughts and expressions of singular force and felicity-all strung together in a sort of biographical story, comprising but few incidents, and told in a manner not the most interesting. The writer makes too much display of his superb intellect,' as he seems to consider it ; and though occasionally, and indeed, in many instances, he reaches a strain of original and philosophical thinking, at other times he sinks into an obscure sort of metaphysical and mystical prosing, and becomes very formally dull and dry, in the detail of trifling circumstances and common thoughts, These faults of the piece are owing, in a great measure, to the exceeding partiality and satisfaction with which he contemplates his own conceptions and speculations. On the other hand, the reader is conciliated and won, by the tone of philanthrophy prevailing through the work.

He begins with an account of his life, previously to the time of his addicting himself to opium, for the purpose, as he says, of creating some interest of a personal sort, in the confessing subject.' While he was a boy at school, he acquired the art of conversing fluently in Greek, by the practice of making extempore translations of newspaper paragraphs, into that language. He at length, and as his guardians thought prematurely, entertained a desire to be entered at college, which they were firmly resolved not to gratify, and this inspired him with the counter resolution of

quitting his school, without leave or ceremony, and being no longer a school boy. Accordingly, having one evening heard the service in the school room for the last time, and sorrowingly taken the last look at his venerable schoolmaster, with tears in his eyes he decamped in the night, taking a place in the stage-coach for Wales, with ten guineas in his pocket, and the world all before him where to choose his place of rest or action. Being arrived in Wales, he soon found his finances exhausted, and was reduced to live upon 'blackberries, hips, and haws, &c.' His only means of gaining a better subsistence was by writing love letters for the Welsh peasants. His practice in this vocation, together with his Greek Sapphics and Alcaics, procured him comfortable quarters in the family of a Welsh Methodist, where he was a great favorite with the young people, whose parents were absent at a quarterly meeting. But the good man and his wife, holding in much less admiration, than did the young folks, both love letters and Greek, on their return, greeted their visitor with a cold welcome; whereupon he says, ' Mr Shelly is right in his notions about old age, that, unless counteracted by opposite tendencies, it is a miserable corrupter and blighter of the genial charities of the human heart;' and as he observed no sign of any such opposite tendencies in this instance, he could do no other than take leave of his young friends and temporary comforts.

He proceeded to London, where for two months he passed his days and nights in the streets, in extremity of hunger and wretchedness; and then bettered his condition very little by taking, but not hiring, lodgings, in a large desolate mansion, in or near Oxford Street, the only other tenants of which were a starved attorney, and a female child, who dusted his apartment, and did such other offices of house keeping, as his style of living required. The forlorn little girl seemed to shift for subsistence as she could, and lived, the new tenant knew not how. The said attorney seems to have carried on a knavish kind of business, whatever it was, which compelled him to lay down his conscience for the time,' and though the confessing subject' had but limited opportunities of observing what went on, he saw scenes of intrigue and complex chicanery, cycle and epicycle;' of which, however, no distinct notion is given; and the whole