sagacity, and doubtless appreciated these new-born professions at their proper value; but the slight has sunk barbed into the nature that never forgives, where it will fester and rankle until time shall give its poison an opportunity of being infectious. It gives one, however, but a poor opinion of humanity to see the very same persons who, without having done her any service, persecuted the Queen for her official favours, bellowing, before her corpse was cold, in the train of her antagonists. Such were the parties who alternately misgoverned and disturbed Ireland at the moment of his Majesty's arrival; and it requires but little skill to foresee that their suspension of hostilities, or rather their sudden and miraculous unanimity, is not to be calculated on for any great duration. The interests of some, and the personal affection of others, for the King, produced the demonstration; but it is at best only the "mala sarta amicitia." If a stranger to Ireland requires any proof of this, he will find it in the hollow and heartless acclamations which have hailed the arrival of some of the King's attendants. If there ever was a measure which before temporarily united the opposing factions, it was the measure of the UNION. They poured upon it their unanimous execration, denounced it as a calamity which laid their independence in the dust, and through each succeeding year have held it up as the bane of their prosperity, and the annihilation of their name. And yet, in twenty years after it passed-even in that very city which it had chiefly prostrated, whose mansions it had untenanted, whose merchants it had impoverished, whose streets it had depopulated, and whose splendour, as the seat of legislation, it had eclipsed for ever-even there, the reviled author of that measure was so hailed by the plaudits of radical consistency, that if he did not altogether supersede the Sovereign, he may, at least, now with truth exclaim— "Divisum imperium cum Jove-habui !-" It is scarcely possible to conceive this adulation to be sincere, and its offering is an omen of no auspicious import. When a people become either so desperate, or so shameless, as to fling off the principles of which they have been violent in the profession, and transform all at once the object of their denunciations into the god of their idolatry; however it may expose themselves, it most assuredly cannot impose upon the world. It manifestly reduces them to this dilemma, either that their clamour has been ill founded, or that their devotion is insincere; and in either case, their claim upon respect or credulity is the same. Such violent conversions in politics are seldom pure, and quite as seldom permanent. It is scarcely possible to believe, that the men who are bending the pliant knee upon the pier at Dunleary, are the same men who, in 1812, made Clarendon Street Chapel ring with the "witchery resolutions." Yet their personal identity is certainbut the object of their caprices is transformed: power has touched it with an Ithuriel spear, and deformity has become divine. However, Sir, even confiding in, which I do not, the superlative raptures which have arisen from the royal visit, it appears to me impossible that all their prospective visions can be realized. Ireland may have been flattered by the King's attention, but the King cannot have been informed by such a journey. It is not amid the parade of a triumphal entry, or at corporation shows and college dinners, that the wants and interests of such a country are to be learned. Dublin, all beauty without, and all poverty within-like the statue in Lucian, with its polished surface of Parian splendour and its interior filled with rags and wretchedness, is but a deceitful specimen of the state of Ireland, particularly when she is blazing in the transient rays of an imported Court, and peopled with the train of foreign Ambassadors. To know Ireland, the monarch should have gone unattended through its provinces --he should have seen its "deserted villages"-its roofless manufactories-its shipless harbours-its ragged, dispirited, discouraged peasantry, surrendering to the agent of some absentee landlord the worthless pittance which the tithe-proctor had spared, and taking refuge from thought in eternal intoxication;-he should have seen the adverse bigots, waging their impious battle over the polluted altars of a common faith-he should have gone into the crowded prisons and into the continual barracks, and cursed the instruments, and wept over the victims of coercion - he should have asked whether the stations under him, from the highest to the lowest, were distributed according to merit, or interest, or corruption--he should have inquired why it was, that all the names of which the country can be proud--the Burkes, the Goldsmiths, the Moores, with a long train of etceteras in arts, and arms, and politics, have been obliged to migrate into distant lands, leaving the honours and emoluments of their own to those who have less spirit and more subserviency. He should have done this to know even something of Ireland-and, when all this knowledge was acquired, amply sufficient would then remain behind to satisfy curiosity during the next promised triennial visitation. If the royal affection for Ireland is as sincere as it appears to be, and indeed there can be no reason to doubt it, these inquiries once acted on would produce to the country results the most beneficial, and to the King himself reflections the most delightful. EUDOXUS. TO THE TURQUOISE. IN sunny hours, long flown! how oft my eyes VOL. II. NO. X. L. THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE.* In this book-making age, when every traveller's tour is ingeniously expanded into a goodly quarto, of which the mite belonging really to the author himself is completely hid in the mass of compilation and transcription in which it is enveloped, we hail with pleasure the appearance of a modest unpretending little volume, like that which is the subject of the present article. The author of Notes on the Cape has been content to give us the wheat without the usual make-weight of chaff; and we wish all travellers would follow his example. He tells us what he saw, what he heard, and what he thought, and all this in a very lively and entertaining manner; so that while we are collecting a considerable stock of information respecting the country which he visited, we are amused with the spirit and vivacity of his sketches, and delighted with the originality of thought and the poetical feeling which often distinguish his descriptions. The charm of a book of travels is, when it records the first impressions made upon a man of feeling and intelligence, who has the power of describing what he sees, and expressing what he feels, in a lively and unaffected style; and much of this charm will be found in the work before us. We have been too much entertained with it to object very seriously to an occasional pruriency of phrase which a revisal might easily correct, or to the too general prevalence of a tone of sarcastic bantering, which still more requires to be softened and subdued. If, however, the author is sometimes flippant, he is never dull; and the faults of flippancy generally carry their own excuse along with them. The volume commences with the author's arrival at the Cape : "On the morning of the 1st of January, 1820, we arrived at this new Land of Promise; a date too memorable to be easily forgotten, as being the first day of a new year dawning upon me in a new quarter of the globe. After a long and protracted voyage, where the eye has been accustomed to range at large over the blue expanse of waters, without one object to diversify and break the sameness of the view, the first appearance of the land is really dazzling. Its outline, shape, and colour, are more vivid and distinct, more intensely present to us than at any other moment of our lives; and we gaze at it with an ardour that those only can conceive, who have experienced this long and unnatural separation. The sea, after all, is not our element; we are intruders upon the secrets of the mighty deep, and we feel that our arrival at the shores of mother earth, though in a foreign and unknown clime, is, as it were, a return to home. At day-break the land of the Cape of Good Hope was a speck upon the horizon, that, slowly rising from its bed of waters, gracefully unfolded its dusky form, and stood at length displayed in wild and naked majesty. The Table Mountain, with its fleecy canopy of clouds, is the most remarkable feature in the scene; but it would be vain to attempt a picture of the whole of this lofty promontory, which stretches its rugged arms into the sea, and, frowning like a mighty giant upon the sons of other climates, that pour in upon his Cyclopæan dominions, seems an appropriate introduction to the wilds of Southern Africa." *Notes on the Cape of Good Hope, made during an excursion in that colony in the year 1820. The country round Cape Town is described as a flat, unprofitable, and sandy waste, stripped of the wood which once clothed it, by the improvidence of the first settlers, who were too anxious to supply their own wants to pay any regard to the interests of futurity. Such a scene must be little calculated to excite the hopes of an agricultural adventurer; and the gaudy flowers which are scattered profusely over this sandy isthmus, however pleasing to the eye of the botanist, afford no consolation to him, who is by no means satisfied with such painted sterility. The village of Wynberg, however, at six miles distance, affords a rural retreat to the rich merchants of Cape Town, and is well studded with oak and fir-trees, and adorned with myrtlegroves and orange-bowers in the greatest profusion. Our author, who was there during the summer season, says, that his thermometer stood at about 80 Fahrenheit, in a large flagged hall at Cape Town, and that there is a difference of temperature between town and country of about ten degrees in favour of the latter. The mornings and evenings are delightfully pleasant, being generally tempered by a breeze from the S. E. After several excursions in the immediate neighbourhood, and a visit to Koeberg, or the corn country, about 40 miles to the north of Cape Town, the author resolved to prosecute his enquiries further in the interior. "The tract of country lying along the southern coast had been recommended to me as the most fertile part of the colony; and to this I directed my principal attention. I was fortunate in meeting a very intelligent companion, with whom, having provided myself with a stout Cape hack, and a servant, I set forward upon my excursion. We preferred horseback as being the most independent mode of conveyance, though not affording the convenience and accommodation of a waggon; and we had no reason to repent our choice. I should recommend this mode of travelling to all others who are desirous of seeing the country: but a servant accustomed to take care of horses, is an indispensable requisite, as the Africanos (by which name are distinguished all persons born in the Colony, excepting Hottentots,) think any attention to horses beyond feeding and watering superfluous trouble." The effect produced on the mind by traversing the dreary wilds of Africa, is well described : "The traveller in Southern Africa soon becomes sensible how much the delight of travelling depends upon adventitious circumstances, not necessarily connected with the ground he traverses; and that the contemplation of mere terrestrial nature, unstamped with any images of departed greatness, awakening no historical recollections, but harbouring in its bosom only ignorance and barbarity, becomes even an humiliating occupation. It is not the soil we tread on, but the deeds that have been done in the clime,' that speak like living voices, and awaken correspondent emotions within us.-The imperishable fate of the mighty dead, Quod non imber edax, non Aquilo impotens has never flung the witchery of its enchantment over this dreary region: its inhabitants have rotted away like the grass of the field; or if a village Hampden, or a bosom pregnant with celestial fire,' ever felt the glow of patriotism, or the inspiration of genius, no stone has arisen to tell the tale: the deserts are without pyramids, and the towns without a trophy. Man is here to be found but one step removed from the baboons that surround him, possessing all the barbarity without the dignified independence of the savage. By the side of his wretched hut, the Hottentot may be seen seated in passive indolence, or per haps regaling himself with the undressed entrails and blood of a sheep, while the partner of his life is picking a bone of carrion at his side." As there are no inns, the traveller has no dependance but upon the hospitality of the Dutch boors, and his chief difficulty lies in so timing his stages as to hit the different houses, which look as if newly dropped from the clouds in the midst of a naked waste; nor does their interior arrangement seem more congenial to our domestic taste. Master and mistress-children without number-slave boys, slave girls, and Hottentots, are seen running about, higgledy-piggledy, in all directions. Of the Hottentot women the author speaks, as all other travellers have spoken, as most disgusting objects. The great and inherent defect of Southern Africa is its want of water. The soil is constituted of materials which, like blottingpaper, will not hold liquids. The rivers scarcely deserve the name, being half-dried purling streams in summer, and swollen torrents in winter. Another defect, almost equally remarkable, is the want of trees. Whatever may be the reason, it is singular that so large a portion of the colony should be destitute of timber; for excepting within the range of the violent south-east winds (which are not much felt beyond the Cape district) they appear to thrive remarkably well. There are no traces of recent destruction; and though the Dutch are said to have destroyed the wood in the neighbourhood of Cape Town, this will not apply to the interior of the colony. There are, however, some favoured spots which furnish an exception to this dreary nakedness. "Between Mossel Bay and George Town," says the Author, "I saw the first forest-trees; till then we had met with nothing but dwarf shrubs, which occasionally relieved the wide and desolate prospect of uncultivated nature. But here, in the chasms of rocks and deep ravines, the yellow, the iron, and the stink-wood tree, displayed their rich luxuriance of leaf, and waved their arms like the monarchs of the wilderness. It is impossible to describe the dreary effect occasioned by the continued absence of trees, which form the principal ornament of every landscape, and as impossible to give an idea of the delight with which you hail their return. Though the summer was far advanced, the foliage had lost none of its freshness and lustre ; it was of a deeper, darker, more decided tint than the suns of the north could produce; but there was also the liveliness and freshness of leaves just called forth at the touch of spring: it was the dark-haired melting beauty of Spain, compared with the blue eyes and golden tresses of the north." Nothing can be worse than the Dutch system of agriculture, which savours of primitive barbarity. Their plough is a couple of heavy boards nailed together, and armed with a clumsy share, which it requires a dozen oxen to work. Their harrow, if they use any at all, is a few brambles. A slight scattering of manure is sometimes used, but more frequently none at all; and it is astonishing to see the crops this soil, even the lightest sands, will produce, with so little artificial stimulus. The author tells us that he saw a field which had thus borne seventeen successive crops of wheat without any manure. When the soil is exhausted, they break up fresh ground, and the old is suffered to lie fallow, as they term it, for many years; that is, it is permitted to throw up plentiful crops of bushes and heath, till in |
