intellectual gratification, availed himself of Handel's instructions on the harpsichord, and practised and listened to the best compositions, till he formed his taste, and imbibed such correct notions of the principles of the art, as to be qualified to compose. Among the many pleasing offsprings of his Majesty's imagination, is the melody applied to the song " In love, should we meet a fond pair," in the opera of Love in a Village, which is both original and interesting, and manifests an easy and elegant conception. Throughout a long reign, this sovereign continued to cultivate his musical: taste and judgment, and acquired as accurate and nice a discrimination in regard of some of the greatest composers, and the respective compositions of each, as compared with themselves, as could be boasted by the first masters of his time. A stronger proof of these facts the compiler of this work could not receive, than that afforded him by the observations of his friend the late Sir William Parsons, on the subject of his Majesty's critical knowledge of the beauties of our best ecclesiastical composers.'

The origin of oratorios is thus related:

What is called the cantata spirituale, or oratorio, is generally believed to have been indebted for its origin to San Filippo Neri, a priest, who, about the middle of the sixteenth century, was accustomed, after the sermons, to assemble such of his congregation as had musical voices, in the oratory of his chapel, for the purpose of singing various pieces of devotional and other sacred music. Regularly composed oratorios were not, however, in use till nearly a century afterwards. These, at their commencement, consisted of a mixture of dramatic and narrative parts, in which neither change of place nor unity of time were observed. They consisted of monologues, dialogues, duetts, trios, and recitatives of four voices. The subject of one of them was the Conversation of Christ with the Samaritan Woman; of another, the Prodigal Son received into his Father's House; of a third, Tobias with the Angel, his Father, and Wife; and of a fourth, the Angel Gabriel with the Virgin Mary.'

There are several laughable anecdotes scattered through this collection: the following will serve as a specimen :

'Droy, a Genevan mechanic, once constructed a clock, which was capable of the following surprising movements:-There were seen on it a Negro, a dog, and a shepherd: when the clock struck, the shepherd played six tunes on his flute; and the dog, as if delighted with the music, jumped up and fawned upon him. This musical machine was exhibited to the King of Spain, who was greatly struck with its wonderful powers. The playful gentleness of my dog," said Droy," is his least merit; if your Majesty will be pleased to touch one of the apples which are in the shepherd's basket, you will admire his fidelity." The King took an apple, and the dog, in a musical tone, barked so loud, that the King's dog in the room began also to bark. At this, the attendant courtiers, not doubting that the whole was a musical witchcraft, REV. SEPT. 1825.

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immediately left the room, crossing themselves as they hurried out.'

With respect to the general merits of the work, save a little carelessness in correcting the press, and a few unimportant repetitions, it has been produced with considerable taste. Its portraits and embellishments are occasionally well executed; and, altogether, it is a book, with the perusal of which no person can fail being amused.

ART. X. 1. Wanderings in South America, the North-West of the United States, and the Antilles, in the Years 1812, 1816, 1820, and 1824. With original Instructions for the perfect Preservation of Birds, &c. for Cabinets of Natural History. By Charles Waterton, Esq. 4to. pp. 326. 17. 11s. 6d. Boards. don. Mawman. 1825.

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2. A Historical and Descriptive Narrative of Twenty Years Residence in South America; containing Travels in Arauco, Chile, Peru, and Colombia; with an Account of the Revolution, its Rise, Progress, and Results. By W. B. Stevenson, formerly Private Secretary to the President and Captain-General of Quito, and late Secretary to the Vice-Admiral of Chile, his Excellency the Right Honourable Lord Cochrane, &c. &c. 3 Vols. 8vo. 21. 2s. Boards. Hurst, Robinson, and Co. 1825. E have been led to couple these two works under the same head, more from the similarity of their titles than from any resemblance either in the pursuits of the authors or the contents of their volumes. South America was the common theatre of their 'wanderings' and residence: but, on that vast continent, the researches of the one traveller were confined to the shores of the Atlantic, while the other traversed all the maritime provinces on the Pacific Ocean. The former writer is merely an adventurous naturalist, full of an eccentric mixture of enthusiasm, sentiment, and lively humor: the latter is a shrewd observer of men and manners, who resided for twenty years in the now emancipated colonies of Spain, studied the character of the people and the various productions and resources of their country, watched the dawn of their independence, and mingled in the busy vicissitudes of their revalutionary struggles. Yet, much as these works differ in the importance and the divisions of their subjects, there is a community of interest in them. The extraordinary events of the last years have attracted eager attention to the whole of the southern continent of the New World; and our curiosity is equally alive to all the peculiarities of nature and society, which the intelligent observer can glean from any of its interesting regions. We shall analyze successively the amount and qua

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lity of the information which the travellers before us have thus respectively been enabled to add to our general stores.

The first of these writers, Mr. Waterton, who is a gentleman of fortune residing at Walton Hall, near Sheffield, appears to have had no other object in his travels than the indulgence of a restless but laudable spirit of inquiry into natural history. He is quite the knight-errant of the science, and goes in quest of adventures with the gallant spirit of a preux chevalier. To this end we find him plunging into the dark forests of Guiana, riding a tilt upon the back of an alligator, engaging in mortal combat with the Boa-constrictor and the venomous Coulacanara, and exposing his great toe- pendant from the extremity of a hammock-to be "tapped" by the blood-sucking vampire. As he is his own chronicler, he revels in the story of his hair-breadth 'scapes and perilous encounters: he enumerates, with becoming pride, the quantity and value of his accumulated spoils; and, in devoting them all to science, the goddess of his idolatry, he emulates the fervor with which a true knight might deposit his hard-earned trophies at the feet of his mistress. He is, moreover, as imaginative and quaint in his humor as a worthy of the olden time and something more fond of a classical quotation. His book itself rivals a black-letter chronicle in its dimensions; and his "lively prolixity" has expanded into an imposing and goodly quarto, a narrative which might have contented the languid readers of these days in the humbler form of a hot-pressed

octavo.

In sober truth, however, Mr. Waterton's quarto will be found to offer much amusement, and some instruction, for the student of natural history. His work contains the relation of four different journies, occupied almost exclusively with scientific researches. In the first, in the year 1812, setting out from the coast of Demerara, he explored the wilds of that colony, and of the neighbouring settlement of Essequibo. By following the course of the rivers, he penetrated through about 500 miles of the most tangled forests in the world, as far as the frontier-posts of the back country of Portuguese Guiana. In this arduous enterprize his only direct object, besides the general excitement of the adventure, seems to have been to collect a quantity of the famous Wourali poison, in which the Indian hunters of these wilds are accustomed to dip their arrows. Mr. Waterton succeeded in obtaining from the natives a considerable store of this deadly vegetable composition; and his account of its preparation, and of its effects in several experiments, is highly curious. We may remark, as an interesting proof of the prevalence of the same customs among

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the Indian tribes across the whole breadth of the great southern continent, that Mr. Stevenson found the blow-pipe of reed and the poisoned arrow in use among the Indians in Peru, exactly as Mr. Waterton observed them in Guiana, though under different names; and the report of the Peruvian traveller confirms the almost incredible accounts which Mr. Waterton has given, of the instantaneous and fatal effects of the poison upon animal life, while it permits the flesh of the victim to be eaten with perfect safety.

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Returning to England with his Wourali poison, Mr. Waterton made with it, in London, several experiments upon animals; in which, we confess, he appears to us to have gratified the rage of scientific curiosity at some expence to more humane feelings. Afterwards, for three revolving autumns, the ague-beaten wanderer,' as he calls himself, was detained in England by disease, which he had probably contracted in the swamps of Demerara. In 1816, however, he had suffciently recovered to make his second journey. He sailed from Liverpool to Pernambuco, with the intention of passing from thence to Para, ascending the river of Amazons as high as the junction of the Rio Negro, and following the course of the latter river, to penetrate into the interior of Guiana from the rear: then, directing his search towards the sources of the Essequibo river, he would have examined the chrystal mountains, looked once more for the lake Parima, or White Sea, or El Dorado,' and finally descended the Essequibo to the coast. Circumstances frustrated this adventurous scheme,; and after visiting Cayenne, Surinam, and Berbice, our naturalist, aware that the season for procuring birds in fine plumage had already set in,' hastened to Demerara, and buried himself again in its forests, to examine the beauties of its feathered tribes, and increase his cabinet of natural history. Here he spent six months of eager attention to his favorite pursuits, and collected above two hundred specimens of the finest birds before he returned to England. In the particulars of this second journey the reader will find much that is really new and interesting.

The plan of Mr. Waterton's third journey, which was undertaken, after another interval of between three and four years, in 1820, deserves little explanation, since it was directed to the same quarter of the world, and the same pursuits, as his last expedition. He proceeded at once to Demerara, and fixed his residence again in the forests. But his narrative, though describing only the continuation of his former researches, increases very much in interest. There is a good deal of vivacity

and

and humor in the account of his process of taking a cayman, or alligator, alive.

In this journey our naturalist had many occasions of observing the habits and anatomy of that singular animal the sloth. The result of his observations has quite contradicted Buffon's supposition, that the sloth is doomed to a life of inconvenience and pain. Mr. Waterton has satisfactorily proved that the extraordinary formation of this animal, considering the peculiar and curious habits to which it is adapted, is as much calculated for the enjoyment of life as that of any other species. Our inquirer has taught himself to view the works of Omnipotence with far other eyes than the celebrated French naturalist; and, with pretensions and powers of mind however inferior, the simple piety of his reflections might put to shame the hopeless and heartless creed which debases all the speculations of Buffon. Why should not some animals be created for misery," says the French sceptic, "since in the human species the greatest number of individuals are doomed to pain from the first moment of their existence?" That the sloth, at least, has not been so created, Mr. Waterton abundantly proves from its anatomy; and from a better argument he deduces his belief that the beneficence of Providence has foredoomed no living creature to an existence of misery.

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We would point also to Mr. Waterton's watchful observation of the vampire as abounding in curiosity; and all hist notes on the serpent-tribe are really exceedingly interesting. The story of his own adventures with these venomous foes is given with so much naïveté and appearance of truth, that we cannot doubt its authenticity; and it gives us a high idea of his intrepidity and enthusiasm in the pursuit of natural history. He makes no difficulty of taking a poisonous snake alive, seizes the deadly reptile by the neck to avoid its bite, and gravely assures us that to hold it thus with security and effect requires only a little resolution and coolness!

Mr. Waterton's fourth journey is almost wholly devoid of matter and interest. We expected to have found that he had explored the depths of some of the North American forests, and brought to light the numerous and yet unexamined treasures of natural history, in which they abound. But we discover that he merely travelled through some of the cultivated parts of the United States and Canada; and then, after visiting a few of the West Indian islands, he once more made his way to his favorite haunts in Guiana, where he was able to add little to his former researches. Indeed, the narrative of this whole journey is merely made up of repetitions from the most common-place writers upon common-place topics, such as the

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people,