strengthened by projecting buttresses. In the upright, the vestibule (that is the round part) consists of two stories, the upper one being about half the diameter of the lower story, which measures fifty-eight feet across the area. The lower part of the upper story is surrounded by a series of semicircular arches, intersecting each other, and forming a blank arcade; behind which, and over the circular aisle (if it may be so termed), there is a continued passage. The staircase leading to the latter is on the north-west side; and about half way up, in the substance of the wall, is a small dark cell, most probably intended as a place of confinement. Over the arcade are six semicircular headed windows. The clustered columns which support the roof are each formed by four distinct shafts, which are surrounded, near the middle, by a triplicated band, and have squareheaded capitals ornamented in the Norman style. The principal entrance is directly from the west, but there is a smaller one on the south-west side: the former opens from an arched porch, and consists of a receding semicircular archway, having four columns on each side supporting archivolt mouldings, which, as well as the capitals and jambs, are ornamented with sculptured foliage, busts, and lozenges." The Temple Church contains many sepulchral monuments; but the most remarkable are a number of figures in stone, disposed in two groups of five each. Five of these figures are cross-legged, from which it has been usual to consider them as the effigies of warriors who had fought with the infidels in the holy land. It does not appear, however, that the attitude in question really has that import; it being usual so to represent persons on their tombs who had merely formed the design or made a vow of performing a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, whether they had fulfilled it or not. The figures of the knights in the Temple Church are supposed to have been collected from various places, and to have been laid together in their present position long after the deaths of the persons whom they represent. Antiquaries have formed various conjectures with regard to the individuals for whom these figures are intended; but they have not been able to offer anything on the subject beyond conjecture, and in reference to several of the monuments not even tha : Rubens, | JUNE 28.-The birth-day of the celebrated Peter Paul Rubens, who, although far from being the greatest may be fitly described as the cleverest of painters. Rubens, whose family was noble, was born at Antwerp in 1577. His father died when he was only ten years old, leaving hin the youngest of seven children. The profession chosen for him by his mother was that of the law; and, having been sent to the grammar school with this view, he evinced the quickness of his parts by the extraordinary progress which he made in classical learning, soon acquiring such familiarity with the Latin as to be able to write and speak it as fluently as his native tongue. The talents of Rubens, indeed, there can be no doubt, were such as would have enabled him to make a distinguished figure in any line of exertion to which he had devoted himself. But nature had appointed him another destination than that contemplated by his mother. While yet very young the genius of the future painter declared itself in an importunately urged desire to be allowed to dedicate himself to the art in which he afterwards acquired so illustrious a name. He was accordingly placed under the charge of Adam Van-ort, one of the ablest masters who then resided in Antwerp, but whose school he soon after left for that of Otto Vaenius. Four years of study sufficed to render him superior to both his teachers; and indeed to promise for him so distinguished a reputation in his own country that, being yet only in his twenty-third year, he proceeded to Italy, furnished with the warmest recommendations from the Archduke Albert, the governor of the Netherlands. In Italy he spent seven years, visiting in the course of that time Venice, Mantua, Rome, Florence, Bologna, Milan, and Genoa, and everywhere both improving his taste and knowledge by the study of the great works of his predecessors, and leaving proofs of his own skill and genius in numerous pictures which he executed for the sovereigns and wealthy inhabitants of the different states through which he passed. After this, returning to his native country, he was received there with the greatest distinction, and the Archduke having bestowed upon him an honourable and lucrative appointment, he took up his residence at Antwerp. Here the salary of his office and the sums which he received for the productions of his rapid and unwearied pencil enabled him to live in great splendour. The remainder of the history of Rubens presents him as sustaining the twofold character both of an illustrious painter and of an important political personage. It was in the latter of these capacities that he visited England in 1630, his object being, as commissioned by the Court of Madrid, to facilitate the negotiation of a peace between this country and Spain. As usual, however, he availed himself of the opportunities which he derived from his reputation, and the exercise of his profession as an artist, to introduce himself to the confidence of the King and the other persons whom he wished to influence; nor was he, during the whole period of his visit, less busy with his pencil than if painting had been his sole occupation. Besides various works which he executed for the King and several of the nobility, he painted, by command of Charles I., the ceiling of the banqueting-house of Whitehall, for which he received 3000l. This painting was repaired in the reign of George II. by the English artist William Kent, and again about half a century ago by the much superior skill of Cipriani, who is said to have received 2000l. for his trouble. It represents, in a series of nine compartments, the principal events of the reign of James I. Notwithstanding both a very active and a very temperate life, Rubens was visited in his fiftyseventh year by so sharp an attack of gout as to be disabled from ever again handling his pencil. He lived however for four years longer, when his death took place at Antwerp on the 30th of May, 1640. A life of brighter and more unshaded prosperity than that of Rubens has rarely fallen to the lot of man. To say nothing of the political importance and honours to which he attained, he had the glory of raising himself, in the general estimation of his contemporaries, to the first rank among the practitioners of his art, and indeed of seeing his name acquire a celebrity over all Europe unrivalled by any other existing painter. In one respect at least, as has been already intimated, Rubens must be considered as the most extraordinary painter that ever lived-in the miraculous ease and rapidity with which he executed his performances. Many of Rubens's greatest works were actually finished in a few days; and, although in his later years, and after the establish ment of his reputation, there is no doubt that he often employed his pupils to fill up his designs and to do the more mechanical parts of the picture, while he contented himself with giving the finishing touches by his own hand, still not even in this way could he have completed the number of compositions he has left behind him without the most remarkable industry as well as fertility. His works are reckoned to amount to about fifteen hundred in all, of which about thirteen hundred have been engraved. Besides a good many which are to be found in private collections in England, the National Gallery in Pall Mall contains four or five, among which are his Rape of the Sabines, considered one of his greatest performances, a Landscape of exquisite beauty, and a fine allegorical composition on the subject of Peace and War, which was painted by the artist, while in England, for Charles I., and which he has rendered peculiarly interesting by the introduction of his own head and those of his wife and children. All these pictures display in a very striking manner the luxuriance of this artist's style, and the splendour of his colouring, and evince as distinctly his extremely imperfect conception of ideal beauty. With great activity and richness of fancy, in truth, Rubens had little or no imagination; nor would it perhaps be possible to find any better or more popularly intelligible exemplification of the distinction between these two faculties than might be drawn from a comparison of his works with those of some of the greater masters. The general acquirements of Rubens, we ought to add, were very diversified, as might be expected from the character of his mental powers; and, as a man, he was very estimable for his freedom from envy, his generosity, his devotion to his wife and children, and his delight in simple and domestic enjoyments. THE LIBRARY. THE WEALTH OF NATIONS; BY ADAM SMITH. This is the celebrated work which is usually referred to as the grand fundamental text-book of the science of Political Economy. That name, though introduced before his time and commonly employed since, has not been adopted by Dr. Smith. He designates the subject of his treatise the Wealth of Nations. But this is really the matter about which the science of Political Economy is conversant. Its object is to expound the principles of the creation and most profitable distribution of national wealth. It is in this way distinguished from the science of politics, which embraces the consideration of national institutions and measures of government generally, whether they have reference to the best modes of augmenting the public wealth, or to the effecting of any other end of public importance. It is necessary, however, to understand exactly what is meant by the term wealth as used by political economists. In former times wealth had nearly the same signification with weal or welfare; as when in the Litany God is besought to hear us " in all time of our tribulation, in all time of our wealth." But this is not the meaning of the word in the phrase "the wealth of nations," as employed in the science of political economy. Neither does it mean, on the other hand, what in popular language is now almost exclusively denominated wealth, that is, money. Money is considered in political economy as only one species of wealth or of riches, as it evidently is in reality. A man who possesses large stores of grain, or numerous herds of cattle, or warehouses filled with cloth, or hardware, or any other articles of manufacture, is as rich or wealthy as another man who has in his pocket or in the bank the gold or silver or bills which would purchase these commodities; and it is the same with nations. Excluding therefore those thing's which nature gives in unlimited quantities to all, such as air for example, and which therefore cannot be regarded as making a man rich though he should possess ever so much of them, the political economists consider every thing to be wealth, which, being subservient to human use or enjoyment, is capable at the same time of being appropriated, or made the property of an individual. At first sight it may seem that this is no very dignified or important subject of scientific inquiry. But the wealth of nations, even in this restricted sense, will upon consideration be found to comprehend much of what most nearly concerns not only national happiness, but national greatness and national virtue. The com mon prejudice has arisen chiefly from the natural but fallacious comparison we are apt to make between the case of a community and the case of an individual. In the latter we often see great riches produce neither superior virtue, nor superior happiness, and sometimes the very reverse of both. Hence the dangers and posi tive evils of wealth, rather than its advantages and desirableness, have formed one of the favourite themes of moralists in all ages. But let us just consider one thing Against what is it that these warnings and exhortations both of morality and religion have really been directed, and whose corrupting effects upon human character are taught by our own observation? Is it not what we may call superfluous wealth merely, or such a degree of affluence as exempts its possessor at least from the necessity of employing the faculties either of his body or his mind in acquiring a subsistence? But has any community ever been placed in this state, or in anything approaching to this state? Nay, is it possible in the nature of things that any community ever should attain to this degree of wealth? The ut most prosperity in this respect to which a whole nation ever can be elevated by the most skilful management of all the means and resources at its command, is nothing more than a state in which the constant activity of the great body of the people will still be absolutely necessary even to prevent themselves and the few who do not work from dying of want. It may be a condition of adequately rewarded industry, but certainly not one of general idleness. The case of what we call a wealthy nation, therefore, is in this way essentially distinguished from that of a wealthy individual. In the nation, indeed, there may be a particular class or order of persons whose condition is exactly that of the individual; and which may be corrupted and vitiated by its excessive wealth just as the individual often is. But such an order may exist in a poor nation just as well as in a rich one;-in a state where the business of creating public wealth is least understood and worst managed, as well as in one where it is practised in the most scientific and perfect manner. Nay more, it is in a country where the mass of the people are poor that wealth is certain to exert the most blighting influence upon any particular class which may happen to be exclusively in the possession of it. The curse (for in such a case it generally is so) separates its unhappy victims too far from their fellow men, deadens them to all those kindly sympathies which in a better order of things link one class in brotherly affection to another, and offers them, in the helplessness of all around them, the strongest temptation to oppression. A community of which all the members are in the enjoyment of comparative independence and comfort, can, like a man in vigorous health, bear with impunity a fulness of blood, the tension of which would be insupportable to one in a state of general debility, and will even find its strength in what would be the other's destruction. (and if it be the one it must be the other) presents a picture in all respects the contrast of this. There the people are not engaged either in breaking the laws or in wasting their time and their health in sensual and debasing pleasures; for they have other pursuits to occupy their thoughts and their energies, pursuits that tend to make them better and happier, instead of more degraded and miserable. Every man, down even to the humblest labourer, is striving with his best activity to improve the condition of himself and his family, in obedience to one of the strongest instincts of our nature, and with hope shining over his heart like sun-light. All elegant enjoyments are widely diffused, made cheap by the universal taste which exists for them, and improved at the same time in their quality by the liberal encouragement which they hence receive. Even the most expensive of those pleasures which admit of participation (and all the most humanizing and exalting pleasures are of that character) are in this way rendered accessible to all. All certainly cannot have fine houses, or gorgeous furniture, or gay equipages; but they may have much better things than these. The most costly books which are printed may be purchased by the small contributions of many readers, and placed in a common library; the most splendid dramatic shows may be witnessed by congregated thousands for the outlay of a trifle by each; all the charms of the divinest music may be enjoyed in a similar manner by multitudes at once; successive crowds may, at the like insignificant cost to every individual, feast on the beauties of the noblest painting-or a portion of the public wealth may be devoted to form a collection of the great masters of the pictorial art, which may then be thrown open to all; other collections, galleries of statuary, museums of antiquities, or of specimens of natural history, zoological gardens, in which are brought together the living natives of every clime of the earth, may be established on the same principle at the public charge, or even created by private associations; nor is there any reason why extensive and magnificent parks, or other domains, replete with all the attractions of natural scenery and the means of rural enjoyment, should not be purchased for their common use by large bodies of men, who might otherwise be shut out from such gratifications. Now, all these are things which cannot exist in any country without both informing and elevating the minds, and most materially improving the character and habits of the people. In whatever field of enterprise it may be thought glorious for a nation to distinguish itself, the nation which is raised by its wealth to this pitch of civilization will be sure to beat its less happily circumstanced rivals; and whether it be for the victories of war or the nobler victories of peace that its annals may be searched, it will be found to have asserted the superiority of its genius by achievements of no doubtful import. So far is the science of the wealth of nations from having for its object the production of any such visionary and impossible scheme as an order of things in which all should be rich enough to subsist in idleness, that it looks to no other means, save universal industry, for the accomplishment of any of its expectations. The condition which it contemplates, as that in which the ends it aims at shall be most perfectly realized, is that in which the power of labour that exists in the community shall be most effectually exerted and most completely taken advantage of. Now instead of this being a condition unfavourable either to national virtue or to national greatness, it is in fact the only condition in which there can be much either of the one or of the other. A country where the mass of the people are idle and poor, is a hot-bed in which vices and crimes grow as rank as wretchedness, in which the general indolence inclines the minds of all to low and brutalizing indulgences, and ignorance and suffering combine to prompt to acts of We have thought it better to sketch in this general Such are the fruits of national wealth of which, be it remembered, the only producing seed recognized by political economists is labour, and its most congenial air that of liberty. Industry left free-this is indeed the whole lesson which political economy teaches. It is a lesson than which it would be scarcely possible to point out another of more importance to all the highest earthly interests of mankind. For industry is the most formidable enemy of vice and crime and the best friend of virtue-political freedom is the mother and sustaining nurse of all true national happiness and greatness-and commercial freedom is the sovereign healer of national jealousies, the extinguisher of wars, and the grand diffuser of civilization. manner the nature and objects of the science which the work before us professes to teach, than to attempt to present our readers with a minute analysis of the multi outrage and wickedness-in which literature cannot flourish, nor any of the arts exist that tend either to embekish life, or to soften, refine, and ennoble the human character. But an industrious and wealthy country | farious contents of the work. Such an analysis, confined within our brief limits, would be necessarily little better | of their utter inefficiency to accomplish the purpose for than a mere transcript of Dr. Smith's own table of con- which they are designed that of protecting domestic tents. With regard to the 'Inquiry into the Wealth of Nations' itself, we may observe that, after having been for more than half a century before the world, it still continues to keep its place as the standard work on the subject of which it treats. But during the period that has elapsed since its first publication, the science of political economy has, as might be expected, made considerable advances; and several of the principles laid down by Dr. Smith have been discovered to be erroneous, or at least to require correction and modification. An edition of the work, therefore, was wanted, in which the light of these subsequent investigations should be brought to illustrate the text, so that it should still present a view of the science in its most modern and improved state. Such an edition is that before us*. In the notes and supplementary dissertations which Mr. Macculloch has appended to Dr. Smith's original statements, he has noticed whatever contributions of importance have been made to the science since the time of that writer; and explained with great ability the views which at present prevail wherever they differ from those offered in the body of the work. A very learned preliminary discourse also presents an account of the rise and progress of the science up to the era of the publication of the • Wealth of Nations,' followed by a brief but comprehensive statement of the improvements which it has since received. To the whole work is added an index of unusual fulness, and apparently drawn up with great care. So that in these four volumes we have really a complete encyclopedia of the science of political economy, embracing its history from its rise to the present day, and detailing all the successive changes which its doctrines have undergone till they have been brought to the state in which they now are. The price of the book is two guineas and a half. manufactures. In Spain articles of foreign fabric are either charged with excessive duties, or subject to positive prohibition. Cotton goods are classed in the latter alternative; and yet any Englishman who has resided in Madrid, or any other great town (I had almost said village) in Spain, well knows that he can always meet with any Manchester article which he may want. The price, of course, is much enhanced, but the thing is to be had. Immense bodies of smugglers are perpetually travelling from Portugal and from Bilboa to supply the northern and inland parts; while Gibraltar, by means of small coasting vessels, attends to the demands on the shores of the Mediterranean. Smugglers, of course, are occasionally detected, and after suffering the punishment of working on the roads. with their legs confined in irons, for a few years, they are again let loose upon society, and not unfrequently become robbers. As to the dealers in prohibited articles, they are always prepared with a defence, in case of a suit being commenced against them by the Exchequer. They either produce vouchers from the manufacturers at Barcelona, to make it appear that the denounced articles are of Spanish fabric, or endeavour to prove that they have purchased the merchandize at an authorized sale of goods condemned as contraband. As you may suppose, such practices give rise to forgery, perjury, a hatred of the laws, and, by consequence, an incessant study to evade them. Tristram Shandy.-M. Eusebe Salverte, in his learned work on the Origin of Names and Places, gives "a local habitation and a name" to Mr. Tristram, and cites Shandy of Shandy Hall as an instance of a local designation becomof Greenwich being asked if she was any relation to the famous Captain Lemuel Gulliver? replied she believed she was, for her father had a portrait of the Captain in the parlour, and always used to call him "my uncle." This was very well in Mrs. Gulliver, who might never have read Swift -but the learned M. Salverte to consider 'Tristram Shandy' a true history! ing the surname of an individual! The late Mrs. Gulliver Use of Tobacco by the Hottentots. Mr. Barrow, in his Travels, speaks of the use made by the Hottentots of this plant, for the purpose of destroying snakes: "A Hotfentot," says he, "applied some of it from the short end of his wooden tobacco-pipe to the mouth of a snake while darting out his tongue. The effect was as instantaneous as an electric shock: with a convulsive motion that was momentary, the snake half untwisted itself, and never stirred more, and the muscles were so contracted that the whole animal felt hard and rigid, as if dried in the sun." Hope in the bounty of God, and a perfect resignation to his divine will, are deeply implanted in the Arab's breast; but this resignation does not paralyze his exertions so much as it does those of the Turks. I have heard Arabs reproach Turks for their apathy and stupidity, in ascribing to the will of God what was merely the result of their own. faults or folly, quoting a proverb which says, " He bared his back to the stings of mosquitos, and then exclaimed, God has decreed that I should be stung."-Burckhardt. The Office of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge is at 59, Lincoln's Inn Fields. ONE of we earliest monuments of India that attracted the notice of Europeans was the excavation of Elephanta, situated in a beautiful island of the same name, called by the natives Goripura, or Mountain City. This island is in the bay of Bombay, seven miles from Bombay castle; it is about six miles in circumference, and composed of two long hills with a narrow valley between them. The island has taken its familiar name from a colossal statue of an elephant, cut out of a detached mass of blackish rock unconnected with any stratum below. This figure has had another on its back, which the old travellers call a young elephant, but which, as far as we can judge from the drawing of what remains of it, has much more probably been a tiger. The head and neck of this elephant dropped off about 1814, owing to a large fissure that ran up through its back. The length of this colossal figure, from the forehead to the root of the tail, was 13 feet 2 inches; and the height at the head 7 feet 4 inches. The remains of this colossus stand about 250 yards to the right of the usual landingplace, which is towards the southern part of the island. After proceeding up the valley till the two mountains unite, we come to a narrow path, after ascending which there is a beautiful prospect of the northern part of the island, and the opposite shores of Salsette. "Advancing forward and keeping to the left along the bend of the hill, we gradually mount to an open space, and come suddenly on the grand entrance of a magnificent temple, whose huge massy columns seem to give support to the whole mountain which rises above it. "The entrance into this temple, which is entirely hewn out of a stone resembling porphyry, is by a spacious front supported by two massy pillars and two pilasters forming three openings, under a thick and steep rock overhung by brushwood and wild shrubs. The long ranges of columns that appear closing in perspective on every side; the flat roof of solid rock that seems to be prevented from falling only by the massy pillars, whose capitals are pressed down and flattened as if by the superincumbent weight; the darkness that obscures the interior of the temple, which is dimly lighted only by the entrances; and the gloomy VOL. I appearance of the gigantic stone figures ranged along the wall, and hewn, like the whole temple, out of the living rock, -joined to the strange uncertainty that hangs over the history of this place, carry the mind back to distant periods, and impress it with that kind of uncertain and religious awe with which the grander works of ages of darkness are generally contemplated. "The whole excavation consists of three principal parts: the great temple itself, which is in the centre, and two smaller chapels, one on each side of the great temple. These two chapels do not come forward into a straight line with the front of the chief temple, are not perceived on approaching the temple, and are considerably in recess, being approached by two narrow passes in the hill, one on each side of the grand entrance, but at some distance from it. After advancing to some distance up these confined passes, we find each of them conduct to another front of the grand excavation, exactly like the principal front which is first seen; all the three fronts being hollowed out of the solid rock, and each consisting of two huge pillars with two pilasters. The two side fronts are precisely opposite to each other on the east and west, the grand entrance facing the north. The two wings of the temple are at the upper end of these passages, and are close by the grand excavation, but have no covered passage to connect them with it *." From the northern entrance to the extremity of this cave is about 130 feet, and from the eastern to the western side 133. Twenty-six pillars, of which eight are broken, and sixteen pilasters, support the roof. Neither the floor nor the roof is in the same plane, and consequently the height varies, being in some parts 171, in others 15 feet. Two rows of pillars run parallel to one another from the northern entrance and at right angles to it, to the extremity of the cave; and the pilasters, one of which stands on each side of the two front pillars, are followed by other pilasters and pillars also, forming on each side of the two rows already described, another row, running parallel to them up to the southern extremity of the cave. The pillars on the eastern and western front, which are like those on the northern side, are also * Mr. W. Erskine, in the Bombay Literary Transactions. R |