art, or as ministering largely to public utility. Our system of canal navigation, with all its great works of reservoirs, tunnels, aqueducts, locks, and embankments, might alone form the subject of long and interesting study; and has, in fact, been made so by M. Dupin, whose writings have done so much to illustrate the superiority of England in this and all other modes of internal intercourse. If called upon to propose any summer's journey for a young English traveller, (and it is a call often made with reference to continental tours,) we might reasonably suggest the coasts of Great Britain, as affording every kind of various interest which can by possibility be desired. Such a scheme would include the ports and vast commercial establishments of Liverpool, Bristol, Greenock, Leith, Newcastle, and Hull; the great naval stations of Plymouth, Portsmouth, Chatham, and Milford; the magnificent æstuaries of the Clyde and Forth, and of the Bristol Channel, not surpassed by any in Europe; the wild and romantic coasts of the Hebrides and Western Highlands; the bold shore of North Wales; the Menai, Conway, and Sunderland bridges; the gigantic works of the Caledonian Canal and Plymouth Breakwater; and numerous other objects, which it is beyond our purpose and power to enumerate. It cannot surely be too much to advise, that Englishmen, who have only slightly and partially seen these things, should subtract something from the length or frequency of their continental journies, and give the time so gained to a survey of their own country's wonders of nature and art.

To the agriculturist, and to the lover of rural scenery, England offers much that is remarkable. The rich alluvial plains of continents may throw out a more profuse exuberance and succession of crops; but we doubt whether agriculture, as an art, has anywhere (except in Flanders and Tuscany alone) reached the same perfection as in the less fertile soils of the Lothians, Northumberland, and Norfolk. Still more peculiar is the rural scenery of England, in the various and beautiful landscape it affordsin the undulating surface-the greenness of the inclosures-the hamlets and country churches-and the farm-houses and cottages dispersed over the face of the country, instead of being congregated into villages, as in France and Italy. We might select Devonshire, Somersetshire, Herefordshire, and others of the midland counties, as pre-eminent in this character of beauty, which, however, is too familiar to our daily observation to make it needful to expatiate upon it.

Nor will our limits allow us to dwell upon that bolder form of natural scenery which we possess in the Highlands of Scotland, in Wales, Cumberland, and Derbyshire, and which entitles us to speak of this island as rich in landscape of the higher class. In the scale of objects, it is true that no comparison can exist be

tween

tween the mountain scenery of Britain, and that of many parts of the continent of Europe. But it must be remembered, that magnitude is not essential to beauty; and that even sublimity is not always to be measured by yards and feet. A mountain may be loftier, or a lake longer and wider, without any gain to that picturesque effect, which mainly depends on form, combination, and colouring. Still we do not mean to claim in these points any sort of equality with the Alps, Apennines, or Pyrenees; or to do more than assert that, with the exception of these, the more magnificent memorials of nature's workings on the globe, our own country possesses as large a proportion of fine scenery as any part of the continent of Europe.

We have entered thus far into detail on these subjects, because we feel solicitous to revive the taste for travelling in our own country; and to call back from the continent that excess of time which is so often idly and superfluously spent there. We might, however, be fairly charged with neglect on our own part, were we to omit including Ireland in the recommendation we have been earnest to give. It is unhappily true, that many of the arguments we have used, in reference to England, are not equally applicable to that country; but other and not less powerful reasons might be given why Ireland ought not to be so much neglected, as it actually is, by the English traveller. In a country so important as an integral part of the British empire, presenting such striking peculiarities, physical and moral, in the condition of its people, and offering at this moment so many difficult and disputed questions in legislation, it is the duty of every man actually engaged in, or rising into public life, to become himself a personal observer, as far as circumstances make it possible. The direct good that might accrue to Ireland from such more intimate intercourse, would stand in some account. The indirect results of a more general and correct knowledge of this country may be estimated as of much higher value. Nor is it on public considerations merely, that we strenuously urge the fitness of including Ireland among the various schemes of travel, which the fashion of the time is calling forth. The island, in almost every part of its circumference, abounds in objects of natural grandeur or beauty; and though the interior is comparatively tame and uninviting in landscape, the peculiar character and situation of the people in these districts must deeply excite the interest of an intelligent observer. It is true, that various inconveniences attend the present state of Irish travelling. These, however, are such, for the most part, as would be lessened or removed, were the country more habitually visited by strangers, and better tenanted by its own native proprietors; and that time may eventually produce such changes, is our fervent desire, and, we trust, not unreasonable hope.

We

We must now hasten to bring this article to a close. The subject on which we have been engaged, might have been handled with ridicule, had we thought fit to do so. But we have designedly preferred, at the risk of being more tedious, to treat it with seriousness and candour, on the fair presumption that we should in this way gain more effectually upon those whom it is our object to persuade. Our intent has been, to point out and reprehend certain abuses of a custom, in itself laudable. It has been our especial object to show, that the man who makes his native soil his chief home, brings to himself more dignity and respect to his family more peace and virtue-to his dependents more happiness-and to his country more usefulness, than he who, with his family, becomes an absentee on a foreign soil, and squanders in a vague and idle life elsewhere the time and the talents which might have been employed well and honourably here. • Plus habet hic vitæ, plus habet ille viæ.'

ART. VII.-Historical Outline of the Establishment of the Turks in Europe. London. 8vo., 1828.

THIS Outline, which is clearly and elegantly written, and which is commonly ascribed to the pen of Lord John Russell, may be recommended to the attention of readers who want leisure or opportunity for referring to the bulky works from which the author has drawn his statements. The subject is one, we need not say, of special interest at the present moment.

Fifteen years have nearly elapsed since the great conflict which terminated the struggles of the revolutionary war, and the federal interests of Europe are yet in a condition in which it is impossible that they should continue, destitute of any orderly combination, and, in many particulars, portending considerable changes. For an orderly combination of federal interests, which should afford security to the independence of the several states, it would be necessary that alliances should have been formed, the distinct object of which should be the protection of that independence against some specific danger, and that these alliances should be strengthened by a community of concern in some common arrangement. In the federative system which has perished, the Barrier Treaty constituted such a combination; and the situation of the Netherlands, as determined by that treaty, afforded the common concern, which connected the Empire with the two maritime governments of Great Britain and the Dutch provinces, in opposition to the ambition of France. In the present state of Europe no arrangement of this kind is discoverable; the several states are connected

connected by treaties, but in these treaties there is not any combination directed to the attainment of a common object. Every man, moreover, may see, that the Spanish peninsula must shortly pay the grievous penalty of despotism and bigotry in suffering all the calamities of revolution. The Turkish empire, too, is tottering to its base, and cannot long maintain itself against the pressure of a superior civilization, to which it will not, and cannot, assimilate itself. The situation, also, of Germany, no longer an empire, but a loose and scarcely connected confederacy, cannot be considered as ascertained; and Italy, pressed as it is by the power of Austria, and destitute of strength and combination, presents an ample sub ject of contemplation to the speculative politician.

In such a state of things, a subject of the British government is naturally prompted to meditate on the probable tendencies towards an orderly arrangement of political interests; and, with this view, to consider what has hitherto been done for effecting such an adjustment, since the former system of balanced policy was destroyed. England is too powerful to be a timorous spectator of passing events; too deeply interested in the general concerns of the world to be indifferent to their issues.

Almost forty years have elapsed since the monarchy of France, the mother-government of the principal states of Europe, yielded to the agency of causes which had long been undermining its institutions, and at length accomplished their overthrow. Such a revolution could not be effected without the aid of a wild spirit of democracy which, when encouraged by its own success, menaced with subversion and ruin the establishments of other governments, though in themselves not ill accommodated to the interests of nations, and not fitted, by the grossness of prevailing abuses, to provoke the spirit of innovation by which they were assailed. To the violence of French democracy the British empire became, almost necessarily, an object of early hostility. The ancient rivalry of the two countries, inflamed in the struggle of the separation of America, generated animosity. The very freedom of the British government which, by satisfying every reasonable desire of liberty, should have protected it against a mischievous desire of change, exposed it to the dangerous influence of a democratic revolution; because, under a free government there must always be found persons, disposed to push to excess the principles of freedom, and such persons cannot, under such a government, be debarred from opportunities of propagating their opinions. It became, therefore, indispensably necessary, that England should oppose herself early and perseveringly to the revolutionary frenzy of France, as to a principle of disorder and ruin, which could not otherwise be restrained from extending its operation over Europe,

and,

and, especially, from breaking down and destroying the very asylum of interior liberty, and of free and independent policy.

Long and desperate was the contest thus waged by a government of regulated freedom against a great people convulsed by internal agitations, and eager to spread among other nations the misery of their own disorders. The spirit of democracy was, indeed, after a few years, subdued by its own excesses. A military despotism, however, the natural progeny of an unrestrained licentiousness of liberty, while it suppressed the interior struggles of the revolution, poured upon other countries, in a more concentrated and potent form, the malignant violence which was no longer directed to the excitement of domestic disturbance. The rage of conquest, accordingly, succeeded in the minds of the French to the fury of democracy; the glare of military triumph so dazzled a vain people, that the miseries by which it was purchased were not regarded; and, strange to say, there were still persons to be found, even among ourselves, who could imagine that the despot of France might be a useful ally to the friends of freedom.

While the British empire continued to maintain, with unshaken constancy, the sacred cause of independence, the states of the continent yielded, one after another, to the violence of France. The day of retribution, however, at length arrived. The thirst of dominion, rendered insatiable by gratification, provoked the independent spirit of the Spanish peninsula on the one part, and, on the other, would compel the nobles of Russia to sacrifice their own revenues, by entering into a combination for excluding Great Britain from the commerce of the continent. Aided by the popular feeling in the south, the Duke of Wellington taught the ablest of Buonaparte's lieutenants, that they were no longer, as they had vainly imagined, invincible: assisted by the severities of an inhospitable climate, Russia utterly ruined a most formidable army, led on to their destruction by Napoleon himself; and the field of Waterloo, in which at length the British general encountered our great adversary, finally decided the contest, and reduced France to the humiliation of submitting to be occupied for years by the armies of her enemies.

In this manner was concluded the struggle, immediately preceding the period of time which is the subject of our inquiry. In this struggle, all the efforts of our government were necessarily hostile; our confederacies were coalitions for combining military operations, not adjustments of the interfering interests of states for the maintenance of security and peace. It was followed by a period of adjustment, in the commencement of which were concluded the treaties of Vienna and of Paris.

When the great struggle had reached its termination, it became

the