was captured by us in 1807, our army was amused by a sign over the house of a schoolmaster-American taught here!'

It is, however, in a not dissimilar spirit from the Copenhagen schoolmaster, that Mr. Rush quotes, as American, some things which we have hitherto considered as European. He is talking of English dinners-which, considering our morning occupations, he very justly considers as the rallying point of our society:

'They are,' he says, ' seldom large-from twelve to fourteen seem the favourite number. Mr. Jefferson's rule was not fewer than the Graces, nor more than the Muses.'-p. 259.

We confess that we should not have been more surprised, if he had told us that Mr. Jefferson had written the Iliad.

Sometimes he is not quite certain as to our customs-but guesses at them by analogies-when one word of inquiry would have cleared up the doubt. The privilege of the entrée at court is given,' he says very truly, to cabinet ministers-the diplomatic corps-persons in chief employment about the court, and a few others, the privilege being in high esteem; knights of the garter appeared to have it, for I observed the insignia round the knee of several.'-p. 82. But this, we beg leave to inform Mr. Rush, is an instance that the argumentum à particulari ad universale is not good logic. It might be very proper, that knights of the garter should have the entrée, but they have not, unless they belong to the classes before enumerated; and because some cabinet ministers and household officers, who happened to have the blue ribbon, enjoyed the privilege of the entrée, it was erroneous to infer that all knights of the garter had it-particularly when Mr. Rush himself subsequently observed knights of the garter in the crowd of the general levée. All these are very venial and trifling mistakes, and are only worth notice, because an envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary makes them. It is one of the inferior duties, but still a duty of that class of persons, to understand the etiquette of the courts to which they are accredited; or if the minister of a republic should despise, and, to use his own expression, pretermit' such matters, we should have nothing to say; but when he chooses to record them he ought to do so correctly.

It may amuse Mr. Burke's countrymen to know that every dinner in England begins with soup followed by fish, but he need not have represented turbot as the only fish ever produced.' p. 146. It was hardly necessary to tell us, that—

'Austrian connoisseurs do not prize hock so much on account of its age, as of its original quality.'-p. 146.

We suppose even American connoisseurs know that a sour wine is not likely to be made good by keeping,

He

He heard, he tells us, a physician call the parks the lungs of London.' Very likely; but it must have been a quotation-the phrase was for years current in society, and attributed, we believe justly, to Mr. Windham.

Mr. Rush was much interested by the case of wager of battle which occurred (Ashford v. Thornton) in 1818, and thinks, seusibly enough, that the desuetude might have been taken as an abrogation of that old form; but he does not seem to have understood the exact case; he says

'By the ancient law of England, when a person was murdered, the nearest relative of the deceased might bring what was called an appeal of death, against the party accused of the murder. Under this proceeding, the accuser and accused fought.'-p. 178. In this he has omitted the chief point of the case. The appeal was not, as he seems to think, a mode of trial for the murder at the option of the nearest relative-but, after a trial and acquittal by the usual processes of the law, if the nearest relative were still dissatisfied with the verdict, to such a degree, as induced him to risk his own safety in avenging his murdered kinsman, he had then a right of appeal from the verdict which he considered erroneous, to what was called the wager of battle. This was no doubt a proceeding little suited to our times-and since there was any doubt as to the effect of desuetude, Sir Samuel Shepherd did well to put an end to all chance of its recurrence, by an act of parliament, but it was not so entirely absurd as Mr. Rush supposed.

We are very much obliged to Mr. Rush for one piece of information which he gives us about our own court, and by which we hope our government will profit. He states that, after foreign ministers have been presented, they are waited upon by some classes of the king's servants-the king's music the king's waits—and so on, who demand certain fees, to which they prove themselves entitled by the production of their book,' as they call it, in which they keep a register of the donations they receive; and of course, the foreigners, under the authority of the book,' cannot resist this, as it seems to us, scandalous extortion. Mr. Rush is so good-natured as to make no complaint about it-nay, he tries to excuse it, for he says, that he finds that whenever a foreign minister leaves this country, he is presented with a sum of moneyif an ambassador, 1000l.; and if an envoy, 500l.: which he kindly and ingeniously supposes may be intended to cover the before-mentioned contributions: if that were the case, we hope the compensation would be ample, for surely those fees cannot amount to anything like such sums. But we fear, that the excuse he makes for us is not well founded-there is, we understand, no

connexion

connexion at all between the two circumstances; and the contributions are levied, or attempted to be levied, from every one who is presented at court, whether he may belong to the fortunate class so remunerated or not. We suppose the sums given to foreign ministers may be a commutation of the old presents of snuff-boxes, usual at courts; but we have heard, in answer to the inquiries which Mr. Rush's statement induced us to make, of another still more objectionable circumstance connected with these money payments ;-it is stated, that the officer who is charged with making them, informs the foreign minister that he expects to receive ten per cent. for his trouble, and does actually receive that amount.

We have heard that, four or five years ago, something of this kind was brought to the knowledge of the Lord Chamberlain, who forthwith corrected the irregularity in the special instance; whether the abuse was reformed altogether,' or whether it has since revived or not, we have no means of knowing; but after this authentic disclosure of so shameful a fact, we trust that a full inquiry will be made into all such practices, and that if any of them still subsist, they may be extinguished without a week's delay. We learn from Mr. Rush, not without some mortification, that though the American ministers acquiesce in these demands for fees, they invariably decline receiving the snuff-boxes, or the still grosser douceur in money; about which it seems the envoys of other powers are not so scrupulous. We should have no objection to the bona fide present of a snuff-box, of a moderate value-it is a trifle which a gentleman might prize individually, and feel gratification in leaving to his family, as a memorial of his having filled a great public station; but we fear these snuff-boxes have been made an article of traffic; and we have heard, that the royal goldsmith, who charges his majesty 1000l. or 500l. for the box, is in the habit of purchasing it, next day, from the donee for about half or at most two-thirds of the nominal value; and that the same box is again supplied, and again re-purchased, and continues to circulate in this way till some foreigner, not liking the practice or the price, puts the box in his pocket. We know that this matter, as far as related to exchange of snuff-boxes on the signatures of treaties, was regulated in the time of that high-minded gentleman Lord Castlereagh; but we believe that the other practices to which Mr. Rush alludes, are not within the jurisdiction of the Foreign Office, but in that of the court-functionaries. In whatever department it may be, we trust that it either has been regulated since Mr. Rush wrote, or will be so immediately and again, we heartily thank Mr. Rush for having mentioned, with so much good nature, so scandalous a practice.

• Lord

'Lord Castlereagh gives an official dinner to-day, to the members of the cabinet and privy council, amounting in all to between thirty and forty. The object is, to agree finally upon the Prince Regent's speech to parliament.'-p. 413.

Here is a trifling error, which would not be worth noticing in an ordinary foreigner, but the minister of a representative government might have been expected to be more accurately informed of our proceedings: the king's speech is not read by the leader of the house of commons only-it is read by the leaders of both houses; and of course not to the same audience, the cabinet and privy council-but respectively to such of the cabinet and privy council as happen to be peers or commoners, to whom are added all the official members of either house.

But Mr. Rush had another informant, who gave him, it seems, more important intelligence-no less than of a plot against the dignity and character of his country, in which we find, to our infinite surprise, that we ourselves were implicated :

July 21. Mr. **** called upon me. He said that there would appear in the next Quarterly Review, an article on the life and character of Franklin. It was to be the medium of an attack upon the United States. It would disparage the people, and underrate the resources of the nation. It would particularly examine the claims of the United States as a naval power, and strip them of importance. It would state their tonnage at less than nine hundred thousand, and as decreasing; endeavouring to show from this and other things, that their maritime resources were not only inconsiderable at present, but not formidable in prospect. The object of the publication was to lower the reputation of the United States in Europe. To this end, it would be translated into French, republished in Paris, and thence widely circulated. Finally, that the article was already known to persons who stood high in England, and countenanced by them. The last part of what my informant communicated may or may not be true.'-pp. 275, 276.

But all the former part is, of course, gospel. Unfortunately, the Number of our Review, published shortly after the time he refers to, happens-which is rather unusual-to contain nothing whatsoever concerning America; and up to this day we have never produced this formidable article on the Life and Writings of Franklin.' We are really surprised that Mr. Rush should have known so little of our government, and of our literature, as to have thought such an absurdity worth recording in his diary, but still more so that he should have now published it, when, if he had turned to the Number in question, he would have seen that the story was a fiction. We are personally flattered, no doubt, at the European influence which he ascribes to us, and not less so at perceiving how sensitive this soberminded and kindhearted man is

of

of our observations; but we had rather that he had paid us these compliments on some occasion in which there was a colour for believing that we might have deserved them. The whole,' he adds, with an air of proud indifference, is of small concern certainly; a mere nonentity, the vision of his officious informant's brain, was of small concern-but, somehow, his observations upon this small concern will be found to spread themselves over five pages of his book. By any rule of proportion, if such an article had really appeared, it must have occupied a whole volume.

Amidst all this bald unjointed chat' Mr. Rush interposes the accounts we have already alluded to of his official conversations and negociations, into which we have neither space nor wish to follow him. The greater part, as he truly says, relates to matters since arranged, and no longer of any immediate interest: their greatest merit is that they give shortly and clearly the American view of the several negociations,-for that purpose they may be worth consulting; but, as we have already hinted, such unilateral statements must be of very small authority, however we may personally respect the narrator. On one of the principal questions, and one which is not yet settled, we must take the liberty of entering our protest against some of Mr. Rush's statements,—we mean the subject of impressment. Mr. Rush states,

Britain disavows, unequivocally, all claim to impress, from American ships, any other seamen than her own. Her sense of justice would not allow her to set up any pretence of claim to take Americans; yet these she unavoidably does take, and in numbers sufficient to surprise those not informed upon the subject.

From a report made to Congress, by the Secretary of State in April, 1816, it appeared, that the impressed American seamen on board of British armed ships at the commencement of the war of 1812, a war occasioned chiefly by this cause, amounted to one thousand four hundred and twenty-two. Here is no exaggeration. The fact comes from the archives of Britain. It is taken from official lists, furnished by functionaries of the British government to the American agent for prisoners of war in London. These men had been transferred from English ships to English prisons, on the breaking out of the war, or during its progress.'-pp. 162, 163.

Now this, instead of being no exaggeration,' is, in our opinion, an exaggeration so gross of the fact, and so entire a mis-statement of the principle, that we beg leave to say a word or two on the subject. We are confident that no such list was ever furnished by British functionaries, and there is evidence that the British archives furnish results toto cœlo different. We have before us a most convincing pamphlet, published (by Mr. Murray) in 1814, entitled The Right and Practice of Impressment as concerning Great Britain and America, considered' and drawn up, as we