brethren are in respect of the company they meet abroad. It may be partly owing to their air, which Lord Chesterfield avers to be, in the case of his young noble countrymen at foreign courts, that of "a man about to steal a tankard;" but from whatever cause it arises, it is certain that your true British traveller uniformly succeeds in finding the worst company to be had. Those who have done us the honour to come to the United States are quite a case in point. The very best circles might have been open to receive them, from our fondness for our ancestry, and the community of language; but it is very remarkable that their researches seem to have extended simply to the locale, which no American gentleman ever sullied himself by entering; and their communications to have been carried on in language which an American gentleman never heard. It may be a propensity of the travelling English, we are sure our late illustrious German and Italian visitors will be ready witnesses to the fact, that it is not the misfortune of British tourists that they have had no more agreeable receptions.

But with all this, Mr Howison is an amusing writer, and describes with Flemish minuteness, his various scenes and sights. In the miscellaneous form in which these tracts are thrown together, a pretty close imitation of the Sketch Book, an East Indian scene comes next to the last we have alluded to. The following is certainly a lively picture of an Oriental bazaar, and proves its own accuracy in part, by the close resemblance it bears to similar scenes in the "Arabian Nights," that delightful work, which possesses almost all the value of history with the charming grace of fiction.

A stranger should visit the Bombay bazaar in the evening. It is a street about half a mile long, with shops on each side throughout its whole extent. These are brilliantly lighted up at night, and one in strolling along may observe distinctly every thing that goes on in them. He will here see a range of cloth-shops, full of native women examining the goods, disputing about their value, and urging the seller to lower his price. Then his attention will be drawn to the shed of a brass-manufacturer, where highly-polished jars of all sizes stand glittering in rows, and where the incessant hammering of the artificers drowns the voices of the crowds in their vicinity. On advancing a little further, he will see a confectioner's shop hung with festoons of dried fruits and sweetmeats, and environed by crowds of children longing for the luxuries that are displayed before them. The next shed will be that of a vegetable merchant, who offers for sale the various edible productions of the east, from the pine-apple down to the common

yam; opposite him perhaps is the office of a shroff, or native banker, who sits at a table covered with gold, silver, and copper coins, and changes money at a small per centage. His scales and weights stand beside him, and he subjects to their test every piece of metal that is presented to him for negociatoin. A dealer in grain next attracts the attention; the back part of his shop is crowded with bags of rice, grain, maize, &c. and in front, samples of the different articles are exhibited in large baskets, from which he measures out the quantities required by his customers. A little way off will be a barber's shop full of people, and resounding with their voices and merriment. Its bustling possessor talks with volubility, and the pleased and attentive countenances of his auditors testify that he is a humourist and a story-teller. Meanwhile the street is crowded with men, women, and children, of different casts and complexions, and with donkies, oxen, and Paria dogs, the noise of whose united voices is deafening and incessant. Sometimes a Parsee drives furiously through the bazaar in a gig, and disturbs the loitering throng, and makes it open its ranks with sudden haste and alarm; or a European in a palanquin, surrounded with panting himmauls, will force his way amidst the motley assemblage. The tumult of the whole scene not unfrequently receives some addition from the meeting and intermingling of two herds of bullocks, carrying bells upon their necks, and groaning under the blows inflicted by their irritated drivers; and at this crisis, perhaps a marriage-procession passes down the bazaar, accompanied by hosts of people bearing torches, and by a party of native musicians singing, and beating large drums and blowing horns. Things now reach an extremity which is insupportable to a European, and he must immediately take flight if he wishes to retain his senses and to preserve his hearing.

In the course of an excursion, made in company with some officers of the British army, a regular boar-hunt took place. "A remarkably large, swift, ferocious hog," on this occasion, it seems, charged some of the company, among others His Britannic Majesty's (the best cavalry officer in Europe) aid-de-camp and the author, and seems to have made some impression on his foes. His Majesty's aid received the boar on the point of his spear, which, however, broke against his teeth, and, to use the author's words, he "contrived to escape." We imagine the escape, considering "the serious apprehensions" the foe caused, was far from disagreeable to the other party. Our traveller, it seems, made also soon after an attempt to penetrate the recesses of a pagoda during the celebration of a deep religious festival, "when two Bramins waved him back with impatient gestures," stating he could not be admitted to the "presence of the god." Had a set of East

Indians, in full costume, made an effort to come inside the rails of the altar at St Paul's, during communion, we presume the reception would have been nearly the same, though perhaps not without the Bow street gentlemen being requested to assist them in their subsequent visits to other parts of London.

In a succeeding number, Mr Howison enters into a discussion on West Indian piracy, where his old prejudice against our United States seamen breaks out, and he states that the accounts in our papers of the enormities committed by these savages are highly exaggerated. We must be permitted to express surprise at this, for the author, in his visits to the West Iudies, really must have had an opportunity of becoming acquainted with facts, which we learn only from official evidence and the public conflicts and executions of these desperate men. He states, that "the private captains uniformly behaved with politeness and moderation, and never offered violence or insult, provided their requisitions were readily complied with." On the other hand, we can hardly believe him to be ignorant that their outrages have exceeded in really unnatural brutality the worst on the long records of civilized or savage cruelty. We perfectly remember the testimony of the mate of an American schooner, whose name is not now known to us, respecting the coldblooded and facetious torture, mutilation, and massacre of the whole crew but himself— one only of these instances of desperate barbarity. By the gallant and generous co-operation of the English and American squadrons, however, it is fortunate that these "polite and moderate" gentlemen have been sent to their Chesterfields to take another lesson.

There is, however, in both these volumes a great deal of amusing, if trifling matter. The author is good-humoured enough, except at the thought of an American, who is a sore enemy, in the Indian seas, to a gentleman in the service of the East India Company, seeing that his unfettered trade, his enterprising crews, and light, fast sailing vessels are rather against the profits of the lumbering two thousand ton weight of the great Company's castles. The vast Roman galley, which the commentators have been so much puzzled with to know how her banks could be placed and her seamen stowed, had about the same chance with a Carthaginian barge, that one of these huge civil men of war has against a Baltimore pilot-boat schooner.

MISCELLANY.

THE FINE ARTS.

THE sensations of interest excited by the phrase at the head of this article, are not confined to the professed artist, nor to those who have had opportunity for a regular study of the arts. There are others, who have no remembrance of the time, when they did not derive pleasure from the contemplation of specimens or possibilities in some one or more of the departments included in the appellation; and if they have ever desired to pass the boundaries of their native country, and to roam through the territories of more ancient nations, it has been for the sake of feasting on those productions of genius, which exist only where ages have rolled over man in a civilized state, and poured into his lap an abundance of superfluous wealth. Not that one should, or would be likely to be satisfied with the merely selfish enjoyment to be derived from such contemplations, for it seems hardly supposable that there should not exist the desire to be instrumental in transferring something to one's native land, which should aid in her progress to the same state of refinement. The traveller for such a purpose, although he might not have the ability to furnish himself with productions of the pencil or the chisel, from the hands of eminent masters, might store his mind with ideas in that more useful art, which provides habitations for man; edifices for the purposes of legislation, the administration of justice, the pursuit of learning, the transaction of business; and temples for the worship of the Most High. In the construction of all these, even if nothing more be aimed at than simple comfort, convenience, and an inoffensive adjustment of the component parts, some other power is requisite than the hand or head of the mere mechanic. The details of the building art, in its adaptation to the numberless purposes connected with the employments and the enjoyments of civilized society, afford ample scope for the exercise of the most fertile invention and cultivated taste, without embracing those conceptions of grandeur and embellishment, which may be said to belong peculiarly to the poetry of the art, and to an advanced stage of wealth and refinement. A young republic is not deserving of reproach that she does not exhibit many specimens of the magnificent and splendid; but she is so, if she does not apply the means she possesses to the truest purposes of utility, and according to the principles of good taste. To do this, she must call into her service minds capable of serving her-minds of such a mould and of such a sort of cultivation, as I will venture to denominate practical geniuses;

such as, exclusively, neither float in the regions of ether, nor crawl on the surface of grosser matter; such as know how to use their wings or their feet, as occasion may require; such as have power over the hidden sparks which give life to forms, and can command the invisible chain which binds component parts in one harmonious whole,-yet such, as are willing and able to trace the progress of the lifeless form from its rudest state, and of each component part from its most disjointed condition; such as are acquainted with all the details of the art, and are not above the labour of following them through their endless ramifications for the direction of the mechanic.

I have been led to these remarks by the belief, that the combination of these qualities is not common in this country, or at least in this part of it, and without them no one can justly be denominated an architect. On the one hand, we have men of education, who have read on the general principles of the art, or travelled in foreign lands, delighting their eyes and improving their taste by beholding the fine specimens which they passed in review, who yet have not pursued the subject so far into detail, or made so close an inspection, as to enable them either to imitate or to form new combinations. On the other, there are some of our practical mechanics in this department, who have done themselves much credit by the ingenuity and fidelity with which they have executed their work, and have shown an aptness in transferring from books, and even in forming new arrangements for the comfort and convenience, and perhaps appearance of our dwellings, which would lead to higher anticipations, had their early education been liberal. But neither of these is all we want, and the two have not affinity enough for amalgamation.

We are told, however, that we are improving in the art. I am willing to believe it to be so, in some degree, and wish it were in a greater. That this will be the case ere long, there is reason to hope, from the visible marks of increased attention, and the natural progress of every thing in this time of peace and prosperity. As omens, we see now and then a scrap in a newspaper touching the subject; it was embraced in a late eloquent Commencement oration; and the learned Rumford Professor treats of it in his comprehensive course of lectures. It is undoubtedly true, that considerable improvements have been made in the construction of our private dwellings and places of business, and that many of them embrace nearly all that is requisite in buildings of these classes. But it is in public edifices that correct specimens of the art are to be looked for, and it is by them that we shall be judged. Have we done as well as we might in this respect? Do our modern houses for worship exemplify the solemn grandeur appropriate to buildings erected for that use? Are the modern halls of our most