The English government, having determined to clear the sea of these ruffians, directed some ships of war to effect that purpose in the early part of last century. Black Beard at that time was lurking in a small vessel, in the creeks and shallows of an inlet hear Cape Hatteras, in North Carolina. But the chief magistrate of that province having long connived at his robberies, the sufferers gave information to the governor of Virginia, and the naval force on that station was directed to assist in the extermination of the pirates. The intrepidity displayed in this service by a lieutenant of the name of Maynard, at least equal to that of the rover, and in a better cause, deserves a circumstantial relation. "From the nature of Black Beard's position, in a sloop of little draught of water, on a coast abounding with creeks, and remarkable for the number and intricacy of its shoals, with which he had made himself intimately acquainted, it was deemed impossible to approach him in vessels of any force. Two hired sloops were therefore manned from the Pearl and Lime frigates, in the Chesapeak, and put under the command of the gallant officer before named, with instructions to hunt down and destroy this pirate wherever he should be found. On the 17th of November, in the year 1718, this force sailed from James River, and in the evening of the 21st came to an inlet in North Carolina, where Black Beard was discovered at a distance lying in wait for his prey. The sudden appearance of an enemy preparing to attack him occasioned some surprise; but his sloop mounting several guns, and being manned with twenty-five of his desperate followers, he determined to make a resolute defence; and, having prepared his vessel over night for action, sat down to his bottle, stimulating his spirits to that pitch of phrenzy by which only he could rescue himself in a contest for his life. The navigation of the inlet was so difficult that Maynard's sloops were repeatedly grounded in the approach; and the pirate, with his experience of the soundings, possessed considerable advantage in manuvring, which enabled him for some time to maintain a running fight. His vessel, how ever, in her turn having at length grounded, and the close engagement becoming now in evitable, he reserved her guns to pour in a destructive fire on the sloops as they advanced to board him. This he so successfully exccuted, that twenty-nine men of Maynard's small number were either killed or wounded by the first broadside, and one of the sicope for a time disabled. But notwithstanding this severe loss, the lieutenant persevered in his resolution to grapple with his enemy, or perish in the attempt. Observing that his own sloop, which was still fit for action. drew more water than the pirate's, he ordered all her ballast to be thrown out, and directing his men to conceal themselves between decks, took the helm in person; and steered directly aboard of his antagonist, who continued inextricably fixed on the shoal. This desperate wretch, previously aware of his danger, and determined never to expiate his crimes in the hands of justice, had posted one of his banditti with a lighted match over his powder magazine, to blow up his vessel in the last extremity. Luckily in this design he was disappointed by his own ardour and want of circumspection: for, as Maynard approached, having begun the encounter at close quarters by throwing upon his antago nist a number of hand-grenadoes of his own composition, which produced only a thick smoke, and conceiving that from their destructive agency the sloop's deck had been completely cleared, he leaped over her bows, followed by twelve of his men, and advanced upon the lieutenant, who was the only person then in view. But the men instantly springing up to the relief of their connnander, who was now furiously beset, and in imminent danger of his life, a violent contest ensued. Black Beard, after seeing the greater part of his men destroyed at his side, and receiving himself repeated wounds, at length, stepping back to cock a pistol, fainted with the loss of blood, and expired on the spot. Maynard completed his victory by securing the remainder of these desperate wretches, who were compelled to sue for mercy, and a short respite from a less honourable death at the hands of the executioner." From hence Mr. McKinnen sailed for Charlestown, and here he concludes his tour, hoping that the originality of its principal subject, which gave rise to the undertaking, will be admitted with the candid as some apology for his errors! It is a plain and sensible volume, aiming rather to inform than to amuse, and therefore communicating information which a more lively traveller might not have taken the trouble to collect. ART. X. Travels from Hamburg, through Westphalia, Hlland, and the Netherlands, to Paris. By THOMAS HOLCROFT. 2 vols. 4to. pp. about 1100. THE fortunes of this book have been long decided. It has lain for exhibition on the parlour-table of all our polished families. All are agreed with the author in being tired at his Parisian festivals; all have acknowledged that, among the English books concerning Paris in 1802, this supplies the greatest mass of various and minute intelligence. The hate of John Bull for a French metropolis is welcomely corroborated by Mr. Helcroft; he confers the sanction of, an observer on the prejudices of untravelled patriotism. This account of Paris. however, is too depretiatory-et in Arcadia ego-it may be alike remote from an heroic likeness and a caricature: but, with the perverse fidelity of a Dutch painter, the ordinary and disgusting objects are so frequent and prominent in the foreground, while the miracles of art and the monuments of magnificence are only seen from afar in dim perspective, that a strong and undeniable resemblance is made to operate as an unfavourable likeness. Mr. Holcroft had visited France in 1783, and falls into his old route at A miens, whose cathedral deserved his admiration. He dwells on the subsequent prospects about Clermont; then the rich view of the vale of Montmorenci, and notices the harlequin appearance of landscape in French cultivated country. There are no hedges; so that vast sweeps of crop meet the eye at once; and as the number of small proprietors is great, the plots of field are often parcelled out like dole-lands in petty compartments, where the crimson sanfoin, the blue flax, the yellow radish, the green barley, and the brown vineyard, form a ludicrous salmagundi, a gaudy chequered patch work, put together by utility in derision of the picturesque. The land lost in hedges and ditches is immense in Great Britain; but the labour saved in watching cattle is probably more than equivalent; besides, the ditches serve as drains, and the hedges grow fuel. This conspicuous difference in our rural economy is not so much the result of opposite inference in the farmers, as of the different state of the laws about trespass. Mr. Holcroft heaves a sigh over the crumbling magnificence of Chantilly. Is it not bad taste to build and inhabit such vast palaces? When filled with guests, the master leads the life of an innkeeper: when empty, that of a ghost in a mausoleum. Personal happiness is better consulted by accommodations more modest; and personal glory is better consulted by erecting public works, a bridge, a church, a museum, a temple of merit, a colossal statue, or a college. In Mercier's year 24-40 there is a good chapter, entitled Le Prince Aubergiste; suppose the state of society refined to the utmost, what would be the fittest destination of these giants, who cover so many acres? to exercise gratuitous hos pitality is his answer, to keep a caravan- Paris is approached through St. Denis, or, as it is called in the revolutionary road-books, through Franciade. It narrowly escaped a shorter name. A man of letters, suspected of invicism, was summoned before the police-officers of Robespierre. Ou demeurez vous ?—A Saint Denis.-Fi dane, il n'y a plus de saints---Bien, à Denis-Eh! il n'y a plus de DeA Nis done. It was worth while to have stopped at Saint Denis, and to have visited the very beautiful Gothic church, in which the former dynasties of French sovereigns lay interred. Their graves have been rifled, their mould dispersed, and their tombs, if remarkable for the costume or excellence of their sculpture, transferred to the paltry conservatory of Gothic art at the Petits-Augustins in Paris. Forsaken of its august tenants, the church itself seems careless of existence; its vaulted roof is broken in; the rains of heaven water the mossy rubbish of its altar; owls flit through the fretwork of its windows: but the stately magnificence of this empty echoing ruin far transcends, in solemnity of impres sion, the Grecian elegance of the pantheon. Had the kings suffered, as in our Westminster-abbey, the ashes of poets and philosophers to repose by their side. the tombs of Voltaire, Helvetius, and Rousseau would, during the revo lutionary fanaticism,have preserved from profanation the royal dead. The proud spirit of exclusion generates a rival in tolerance; and both parties miss ho nours and gratifications, which both might have enjoyed in concert and in peace. The statue of James II. still stands as quietly behind Whitehall, as if the model had never been expelled from a throne. An engraved inside view of the church of Saint Denis would have been valua ble to the artist, and the opportunity of delineation may not long exist; for it is plainly the interest of the intruded dy. nasty, never to recal the attention and imagination of the French to their antient line of kings. At entering the streets of Paris Mr. Holcroft is struck with their cavernous appearance. This is a just remark. The houses are too high for the intervening width. Architects should lay down rules for the proportion of streets. A narrow street should be bounded by low houses, a broad street by tall ones. The precise proportion of height covered by the eye might nearly be ascertained. In many parts of Oxford-street the houses are too low. The finest street in Europe is the high street of Edinburg; its proportions are so just and so colossal. The width of a square is there compressed between gigantic houses almost into the likeness of a lane. Portland-place is too short for a street, and too long for a square: but if the more regular and symmetric portion were detached and bounded by two tall obelisks, the space so separated would become a well-proportioned area. Mr. Holcroft complains that, although he arrived in a diligence at the inn, no one seemed to expect its arrival. Why this want of punctuality in the public conveyances? It is a grievance which, for our own sakes, the French should be taught to correct. Because government manages the diligences. Give liberty to individual competition, and travelling will soon become on the continent what it is in Great Britain. The French are always publishing plans and invoking government for the organization of the posts, of the schools, of the hospitals, of the water works; let them all be abandoned wholly and resolutely to the voluntary association of individuals; they will then have as good travelling, as good schools, as good hospitals, and as ready a supply of water, as their stage of intercourse, of civilization, of benevolence, and of cleanliness can require. Our endowed free schools in England do no good, but harm: they keep down the price of education, which if better rewarded would be better conducted; and they hitch into genteel life a number of young men, who are lost to industry, and difficult to station for want of capital to subsist on, while in waiting for professional employ. We should lose, it is thought, without them some evolutions of genius. No. Genius is not so much adapted for the purposes of practical life, as for those of national illustration; and we lose more genius by making it drudge in later life for subsistence, than if it had been early trained to earn its living, and left to educate itself a little later. A common cause of the shipwreck of genius is the dissipation of its attention: this is best resisted by uncongenial employment during youth. Mr. Holcroft takes his first breakfast at a coffee-house, and finds fault with it. He chose ill; for surely the coffee-houses of Paris are more splendid, as neat, and not less attentively served than the coffee-houses in London. He is pleased with the waiter for accepting the perquisite without any remark, and prefers this to the London practice of receiving too little with insolence, and too much with servility. How is the traveller to learn at Paris what he ought to give? It is instructive to incur insolence for one's meanness, and consolatory to obtain gratitude for one's prodigality. The cause of this difference does not depend on the character of the two nations, so much as on the French practice of flinging whatever is received by a waiter into a common box, whose contents are divided in certain proportions among all the waiters. The individual is little affected by an act of liberality or of niggardliness, and has no personal interest in pleasing or displeasing. The dress of the French is stated to be slovenly. In the wealthier classes certainly not. But these form a comparatively thin class in French society. The laundress is a costly dropper in ; yet clean linen is become very general; but the habit of passing evening after evening at the spectacles or public places, may tend to destroy that personal responsibility for one's appearance, which the habit of family and friendly parties so much contributes to evolve. Call on a Frenchman, or meet him, and he is in dishabille; but he never presents himself so. An Englishman has to present himself at breakfast before the ladies, and must begin the day at the toilet; but in a French family each breakfasts alone, the hour of shaving is late in the forenoon. The time of dressing once arrived, few traces of slovenliness are to be detected, in those who dine at the coffee-house, who attend the public walks, or the higher order of theatres. Both the women and the men bathe very frequently at all seasons. Their slovenliness rather respects the apartment than the person: they use their rooms as if they were in hired lodgings, and were not responsible for any dirt they make or endure. This arises from the military education of their exemplary classes, who pass their youth in hired lodgings, and preserve the habits there generated. Until the late revolution in our manners produced by volunteering, the working order of the people have never affected to be gentlemen; their clothes were whole and good, but had not the fashionable cut; the distinction was obvious in the street. But among the French, not only the tailor, but the mason, the carpenter, the glazier, assumes the exterior of the gentleman; as soon as these artisans are included in the estimate of national manners, the average degree of slovenliness and imperfection must be found lower, than while observation was fired on a more select class. This inclusion of the vulgar Mr. Holcroft makes in many of his delineations; he depicts a class below the middle, and describes le peuple as the people. Plato idealizes, Lucian characterizes, Aristophanes satirizes the Athenians; and all borrow features from what they saw and knew. But to take the nature which sited the purpose of the comic poet, and to describe it with the gravity of the philosopher Nigrinus, would mislead, and would render incredible the sketches of Plato. Mr. Holcroft appears to have been first struck with Paris on entering it from the barrière de Chaillot, a toll-gate in the Versailles road. And surely it might well be taken for the entrance of fairyland; for the worthy portal of an enchanted paradise. Its situation commands a prospect feebly pictured in the words of Milton. On each side an imperial city stood, The structure, skill of noblest architects, Many a fair edifice besides, more like Mr. Holcroft next undertakes to groupe and to detail this assemblage of hewn stone; he begins with the quays, or kays, for the French, like ourselves, owe the word to the Dutch kaaye, which is a derivative of kaayen, to hawl. If the terras of Somerset-house and the terras of the Adelphi-buildings were connected by other similar terrasses, skirting edi fices of equal majesty, so as to form one long street open to the Thames, and walled with palaces, this street would rival the kays of Paris. Half a mile of such orderly building as the Louvre on one side of the river; on the other the beautifully colonnaded mint, the college of four nations, the passport office; and in front, the fork of the Seine opening over the Pont-neuf two interminable vistas of building, between which aspire the turrets of Notre Dame, and beside which peers, on the flat shore, the dome of the corn hall, and, on the hilly side, the dome of the Pantheon-form a picturesque assemblage of architectural beauty, no where to be surpassed. Let others admire alpine scenery, whitening cataracts, and pyramidal mountains hiding in the clouds their useless magnitude; give me stones which mind has moved, and shapen into habitations for myriads of men; give me rivers which bridges have yoked, and navigation beswims. I like the view of large cities. The ages which have been necessary to nurse and rear them into their present immensity; the quantity of human labour which has been employed to produce this vast convenient tenantable arrangement; the study, the refinement, the art, the intellect, which were required to impress so tasteful an exterior form, where the sculpture of every capital carries back the imagination to Athens and to Rome; the thousand roads and water-courses, the extensive cultivation and commerce, which the habitations of so condensed and thronging a population imply; the great events of which these cities have been the nest and the seat; the imperial authority which they exercise over distant men and distant ages, both as to opinions, laws and institutions,-all crowd on the soul, and become associated with the walls and roofs, the pin. nacles and spires, the domes and columns and bridges, above, about, and under neath. This sort of prospect, far the most delightful which the surface of the earth can supply, is enjoyed on a grander seale, from Blackfriars bridge; but the view in London is too vast to admit of any attention to beauties of detail; works of sculpture and architecture, even, form a more subordinate portion of the whole; hence that train of ideas which carries back the imagination to classical antiquity, is less necessarily and less powerfully excited; but the immeasurably wider extent of builded space, houses rising above houses, streets stretch ing beyond streets, palaces, theatres, temples climbing from among the endless mass of edifice, further than the eye can trace in any direction; and more than all, the majestic Thames, with the ideas of world-encompassing commerce and empire which that winding forest of masts is adapted to excite, give it on the whole a more stimulant effect. The view of Paris is the most beautiful, that of London the most sublime. Mr. Holcroft quits the architectural monuments of Paris with too little notice, to dissert on the moral monuments of its ignorance. The street inscriptions and shop boards display much false spelling and bad grammar. A less equivocal mark of general ineducation is the number of writing stalls, where notes and private letters are indited for those who have occasion to correspond, and have not learnt the use of the pen. This is a notorious and degrading feature of French culture. The Sunday schools and evening schools, so common in this country for the instruction of the lowest of the poor, have not been introduced in France. The lines of commercial industry being there less numerous, the necessity of learning to read, write, and cypher is less felt. The public religion, not being conducted in the vernacular dialect, and not exacting from the congregation any loud reading of responses and choral doxologies, offers no weekly motive to the young for endeavouring to take a part in it. Surely it would be rational to lay a tax on children for the support of parish-schools, and to exempt those from it who at eight can read, who at nine can write, who at ten can cypher. The ignorance of the multitude is of all political grievances the greatest; no reformations are possible where the voice of the printing press is unintelligible. The excessive rage for theatres, spectacles, shows, lectures, results from this diffusive ignorance, which can only profit by speeches and exhibitions; they are forms of instruction for the illiterate. London could not be governed by its debating societies during the ferment of any revolution; the masters of printed eloquence would be the inspirers of its populace; and this form of influence has a slower and more enduring action. It is safer for governments, which have time, to devise replies and counterac tion; and it is safer for the people, be cause it survives the apostacy of leaders, and leaves a cause as strong as before the champions had deserted. Much of the failure of the French revolution is to be attributed to this local accident; its conductors indeed were bound to know how ignorant a people they had to serve; but many of the intended benefits could have been conferred elsewhere by ana logous proceedings to those of the constituting assembly. The Parisian populace cared about what was passing, merely because it tended to elevate and surprise. The quackery of every de scription of pretenders to notice in France is another consequence and symptom of this pitiable ignorance: there is a sort of low puffing which as certainly ruins a popular author in England, as it makes him in France; yet even in this country discrimination has much to learn, and often confounds notoriety with celebrity, Of the higher order of intellectual me, rit, which the croud does not attempt to appreciate, the French are quick in judging skilfully; quicker than the English. Mr. Holcroft justly censures, as troublesome and disgusting, the number of street stalls in Paris, both on the Boulevards and the kays. Persons bring their wares in the morning, spread them on the ground or on tressels, so as to interrupt the foot way; and at night carry them home, to be exposed another day somewhere else. This practice deserves severe animadversion, and ought to be resisted by the magistrate. All hawkers, foggers, and pedlars, not expecting the same customer twice, dispose of damaged wares at the full price, and exact an undue profit. Such shops, therefore, favour fraudulent contracts. The opportunity of selling without paying rent for a shop, defers and resists a rise of rental throughout Paris; and thus intercepts a demand for ground floors, and for additional streets of building. The fixed shopkeeper is not only less extortionary to his customer, but he is more taxable to the state, and more punctual to his creditor. Thus, every |