Societies, Literary and Scientific, of Edinburgh, 24, 38, 54, 79, 93, The German Muse. From the German of Schiller

104, 121, 133, 146, 167, 180, 192, 234, 262, 317

THE

EDINBURGH LITERARY JOURNAL;

OR,

WEEKLY REGISTER OF CRITICISM AND BELLES LETTRES,

No. 60.

TO OUR READERS.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 2, 1830.

Ix commencing the Third Volume of the EDINBURGH LITERARY JOURNAL, we feel ourselves called upon to acknowledge the extraordinary success which has all along rewarded our labours. The hopes which we entertained at the outset, arising partly from perceiving the evident desideratum in this country of a purely literary weekly periodical, and partly from the very extensive literary connexions which we enjoyed, have been much more than fulfilled. So steady and extensive is the patronage we have received, that we now feel entitled to consider ourselves the weekly literary periodical of Seatland, the more especially as any opposition which may have been attempted has proved so entirely abortive.

which will at once evince the increased nature of our resources, and

PRICE 6d.

in 1768. The captain and mate of the vessel in which
he took his passage, however, both died during the voy-
age of a fever, upon which he assumed the command, and
brought the vessel safely into port.
The owners ap-
pointed him, for this piece of service, master and super-
cargo, in which situation he continued till the ship was
sold in the year 1771. His course of life for the next
four years cannot be so accurately traced. At one time
he was in command of a West India ship sailing from the
port of London. He seems also to have carried on com-
mercial speculations on his own account in Grenada and
Tobago. In 1773 we find him in Virginia, arranging
the affairs of his brother, who had died intestate. In 1775
he was living inactively in America. His habits of bu-

For the future, we have to promise that we shall not only go on as
we have begun, but that, vires acquirens eundo, we shall intro-
duce into our Third Volume many improvements and novelties,
afford a perpetually fresh fund of amusement, and, we hope, infor-siness must have been good, for though he began the world
with nothing, we find him possessed, at the time he em-
mation, to the reading public. We had at one time intended to spe-
cify a few of these improvements; but, on second thoughts, we think barked in the American service, of nearly £1200 in Eng-
it better to show, than to say, what we can do. We therefore refer land, besides considerable property in the island of Tobago.
our readers to the contents of the LITERARY JOURNAL for the next
The fair profits of the West India trade at that period are
six months, and if they do not find our Third Volume still more en-
sufficient to account for this wealth, without the suspi-
titled to their favour than either of its predecessors, we shall most
cion of any more lax undertakings than intercourse with
magnanimously absolve them from all obligations to continue to
the Spanish main. His nautical skill must, in like man-
subscribe for the Fourth.
ner, have been increased by his experience in commanding
a ship of considerable burden. Paul's, too, was a well
cultivated mind; besides his merely professional studies,
which subsequent events showed him to have pursued to

LITERARY CRITICISM.

Memoirs of Rear-Admiral Paul Jones, Chevalier of the Military Order of Merit, and of the Russian Order of St Anne, &c. &c. Now first compiled from his original journals and correspondence; including an account of his services under Prince Potemkin, prepared for publication by himself. Two vols. post 8vo. Pp. 331, 341. Edinburgh. Oliver and Boyd. 1830.

THE history of Paul Jones is now, for the first time, presented to the public in an authentic and satisfactory form. The book is written in a candid and generous spirit, and we are inclined to look upon it as a valuable addition to biography.

John Paul Jones was born in July 1747, near Arbigland, in the stewartry of Kirkcudbright. His father was the son of a mail-gardener in Leith; and was himself employed by Mr Craik of Arbigland, one of the earliest and most judicious improvers of agriculture in the south of Scotland. Arbigland is situated at the embouchure of the Nith into the Solway, and a great proportion of the surrounding inhabitants are engaged either in the fishery or the coasting trade. Young Paul showed early a deeided predilection for the sea, and was bound apprentice, in his twelfth year, to a respectable Whitehaven merchant trading to Virginia, where he had a brother in thriving circumstances, in whose house he resided as long s the vessel remained in port. His master's affairs becoming embarrassed, his indentures were given up to him, and at a very early age he was appointed third mate of the King George, a Whitehaven vessel employed in the slave trade. In his nineteenth year, he went as chief mate into the Two Friends, a Jamaica vessel engaged in the same traffic. He quitted it, according to the statement of his relations, from disgust at its enormities,

good purpose, his letters evince a mastery of expression On the whole, his ardent and persevering disposition, taken in conjunction with the school of active life through which he had passed, justify the confidence reposed in him by the leaders of the American Revolution.

which could only be acquired by considerable practice.

The second period of his history commences in his 29th year. He had his choice to be made first-lieutenant of a frigate, or captain of a sloop of war, and preferred the former. In this post he had for a while no other opportunity of showing his zeal and energy, than what was afforded by the necessity of keeping a strict look-out to prevent desertion while the fleet was frozen in during the winter. The American arms were first tried at sea in the affair of the Glasgow, off Block Island. For their behaviour on this occasion, two of the American captains were immediately after brought to a court-martial; but the inferior officers were declared to have done their duty. In 1777, Jones was appointed by Congress to the command of a squadron of five vessels, destined for the attack of Pensacola. This projected expedition came to nought, through the jealousy of the commander-in-chief; and shortly after, Jones was dispatched to France on board the Ranger, with instructions to the American Commissioners at Paris to procure him a good vessel, and employ him in Europe, should any thing offer there likely to prove conducive to the interests of the republic. After magnificent promises, with tardy and petty performance, Jones was sent with the Ranger to cruise off the coasts of Britain. In this expedition he took several merchant vessels, effected a landing at Whitehaven and St Mary's Isle, encountered and took the Drake ship of war, and returned to Brest, in May, 1778, after exciting the apprehensions of the whole British coast, and obtaining a num

ring, but nothing more. The jealousies and heart-burnings of the commander prevented any thing of importance from being effected. He was recalled to St Petersburg, where the cabals of his enemies raised dark accusations against him, from which, however, he successfully vindicated himself. The Empress, who was by this time tired of him, granted him leave of absence-a polite method of removing him from court. He visited Paris, where his whole energies were directed to regaining his situation under a government which had cheeked and thwarted him when in its service, and then coolly and ungratefully thrown him aside. In the midst of his projects, death overtook him on the 18th of July, 1792, shortly after he had completed his forty-fifth year.

ber of prisoners, which obliged England to agree to an exchange. A long interval of inaction followed, during which Jones was busy attempting to spur on the tardy French ministry to make some exertion. At last, on the 14th of August, 1779, he again set sail with a squadron of five vessels. He first endeavoured to effect a landing at Leith, in which he was frustrated by the weather. On the 23d of September, he encountered and captured the Serapis and Countess of Scarborough, his own vessel sinking immediately after the action. He afterwards carried his squadron into the Texel, where he arrived on the 3d of October. The English fleet were lying off the mouth of the Zuyder-Zee, and the Dutch, inclined to temporize a little longer, would not recognise Jones; so he found considerable difficulty in making his way to a French port. Being high in popular favour, he was received with empressement at court, and had conferred on him by Louis the military order of merit, and a splendid sword. After and admired him, that his habits were finical in the exmuch unsatisfactory negotiation, he sailed for America, His apartments were splendidly furnished; and, where he arrived in February, 1781. He received the although he was accessible to all, yet his servants had pothanks of Congress; but his active career in the American sitive orders not to admit any pedestrian visitor, whose navy was now closed. He was promised the command boots or shoes were not free from all taint of mud or dust. of a large ship then building; but as the vessel was after- His correspondence at that period, too, shows that his wards presented to the King of France, his expectations female acquaintances were chiefly secondary imitators of were disappointed. He next solicited and obtained per- high life, and his letters to them are deeply marked with mission from Congress to go on board the French fleet a mawkish sentimentality and fade gallantry. His taste cruising on the American seas, for improvement in his was not sufficient to guide him aright, and, instead of a profession. The peace, which almost immediately follow-gallant gentleman, he became a maudlin fop. ed, put an end to his studies in this school.

The portion of Paul Jones's history of which we have now given a short abstract, was the most brilliant of his life. His cool, though reckless courage, his skill in manœuvring a vessel, the number and ingenuity of his projects, the perseverance with which he continued to urge on the cold and the fickle, but, more than all, the true and comprehensive view he took of the state of the American marine, his incessant warnings of the dangers impending from its want of discipline, and its disorganized state, and the modesty with which he always acknowledged his deficiency in the tactics of combined fleets, and anxiety to remedy it, prove that he had within him all the materials of a great commander. In regard to his embracing the cause of America, he had lived as much in that country as in Britain, and the combatants on either side being thoroughbred Englishmen, it would be childish at this time of day to maintain that there was any thing unnatural in his adhering to the Transatlantic party. His conduct to his family was throughout most praiseworthy; and towards such English as the chance of war threw in his power, it was totally free from any taint of the mean and malignant renegade. At the same time, it cannot be denied that his motives may well have been of a mixed and doubtful kind.

The last nine years of his life contrast painfully with the vigour and energy which characterise his earlier career. We know, from the report of one who knew Jones,

treme.

The fate of John Paul Jones reads a lesson to all future time. Naturally endowed with an aspiring mind, generous sentiments, great talents, without any overwhelming passions, he sacrificed the ties of kindred, and the prospect of humble usefulness, to love of distinction. Introduced into the splendid circle of a court, he saw there yet richer food for his vanity, and to it he sacrificed his political principles. The two best guides of human nature thus rudely eradicated, his heart withered and his arm grew weak. His close of life was a fruitless struggle to attain what, if possessed, could have afforded him no enjoyment. His epitaph may well be-" One of God's creatures lies here, wrecked by his inordinate self-will."

Life of Hernan Cortes. By Don Telesforo de Trueba y
Cosio, Author of "Gomez Arias," "The Castilian,"
&c. Being Constable's Miscellany, Vol. XLIX.
Edinburgh. Pp. 344.

THE author of this interesting and romantic biography justly demands that his hero's character be judged by the standard of the age in which he lived. The enlightened tolerance which characterises every truly great man of the nineteenth century, was unattainable by a native of Spain On the 1st of November, 1783, Jones was appointed by at the period when that nation, in the flush of its newly Congress, at his own earnest solicitation, "agent for all concentrated energies, fondly deemed the discovery of Ameprizes taken in Europe under his own command." In rica, happening, as it did, at the very moment of the final discharging the duties of this office, he spent three years expulsion of the Moors from Spain, a proof of its Divine in Paris, during which time he figured in the gay world mission to root out infidelity from the earth. It is suffithere, greatly to the satisfaction of his personal feelings. cient if, taking his whole life into review, we find that In the year 1787, he paid a short visit to America. On Cortes's employment of the high talents with which he his return to Europe, he proceeded to Copenhagen, osten- was endowed by nature, did not materially swerve from sibly on a mission regarding some of his prizes which had those principles of justice which had been discovered and been carried into Danish ports, but in reality to be near established in his time. A recapitulation of the most St Petersburg, where negotiations had already been set striking events in his conquest of Mexico will afford the on foot for his entrance into the service of the Empress best solution of this problem. Catherine. At the first beck of that jolly despot, he hastened to her court, where he was flatteringly received, and invested with the rank of Rear-Admiral. His transformation into the courtier, which had been partially effected at Paris, was now completed. He was inflamed with a chivalrous devotion to his liege lady, and spoke in a most patronising tone of the infant state of America. He was soon summoned by Potemkin to take a share in the campaign of the Liman. The operations of this war afforded Jones an opportunity of showing his native da

Mexico, or New Spain, rises abruptly from the coasts both of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans; and the lofty plateau subsides into a capacious basin, nearly in the centre of which is the lake of Mexico, the climate of which ap proximates to that of the more favoured countries of the temperate zones. The inhabitants, and in particular those who occupied the islands and margin of the central fresh-water sea, had advanced in civilisation, when Mexico was first discovered, far before the surrounding tribes. The mechanical, and even the ornamental arts, had made