lady had shot two of her children to prevent their being carried away from her to colonies in Russia or Siberia, a thing commonly practised by Russia in the countries she subjugates (of which it is difficult to say, whether the stupid folly of the measure in respect to adaptation to the end, colonization, is not as great as its cruelty); but we were hardly prepared for all the well-authenticated statements this work unfolds, proving that Nicolas is an equal monster to his brother Constantine, only that the latter was a little more honest,- he did not dissimulate in his atrocities. - We recommend this work to all honest Englishmen of every party. The following are two or three facts which concern the Czar's conduct: 1. The Poles, who surrendered on the promise of an amnesty, have been condemned to fifteen years' slavery in Siberia ! 2. Infants have been torn away from their mothers to be sent into Russia, to acquire a foreign tongue, religion, and manners, before they can have a knowledge of their parents, and ultimately to supply the lavish waste of life among the Russian military, under the notion of losing the Pole in the Russian! Two thousand children were thus torn from their mothers in Warsaw alone. Sir Robert Peel has vindicated the Czar: he ought to know that this is an old Russian practice, and, perhaps, as ancient usages" are so much valued by the honorable Baronet, they may justify Catherine's obliging seventy-five thousand Christians of the Krimea to leave their country and people that of the Nogai Tartars, where nearly all perished; or the pious Alexander, whom Napoleon always characterized as the double dealer; he whom the fashion was to consider the religious, kind, moral Czar (indeed for Russia he was so), he made twenty-five thousand Poles leave their country, to inhabit that of the Tchernemoski Cossacks, whose numbers had been reduced by being forced to emigrate into the country they then inhabited. Thousands perished from the inclemency of the season, when they were compelled to move, it being the commencement of winter. Lastly, every one has heard of Sebastopol, the once increasing Russian port on the Black Sea. The cholera appeared there in 1829 and 1830. A sanitary cordon was ordered, and the town was to be victualled by the military commanders. It is well known such an order would be equivalent to starvation, for the emoluments of office are so bad in Russia, that every rank plunders out of what is confided to it. In the streets lay the dead bodies of the starved people under the noses of the commissioners who were to supply them with food! Despair seized the living; they rose at last upon the officers, and put them to death. persons were sentenced to be knouted in consequence; the town was now quiet. The sentence awaited confirmation from the Emperor Nicolas, who wrote with his own hand, "The six convicts "must be hanged; thirty-six others must be found out and knouted, "and those who survive are to be sent to Siberia for life; finally, the "town of Sebastopol is to be razed to the ground!" The officers to Six whom the order was sent remonstrated on the destruction to trade and navigation, and on the cost to the nation. The tyrant then wrote, that the town should not be razed, but all the inhabitants, "without distinction," should be carried to the Krimea, and dispersed there, to work as peasants, and that the Bulgarian refugees from Turkey should be conducted to the place, and settled there. This was done to the letter! These savage acts show why Russia is so unpopular in every country she annexes to herself, that she is obliged to keep up immense garrisons in them, and her disposable force is consequently the smaller. Thus we may foretell the breaking asunder, ere long, of an empire which, governed by the rules of civilization, might direct the world. Let Sir Robert Peel justify Nicolas now. As to his urbanity, Byron says Ali Pacha was one of the mildest looking and most courteous of mankind! [The Second Number of this work is thus noticed in the 18th Number of "The Metropolitan."] This is the Second Number of a little work, to which we have already referred. It contains a very interesting memoir of Claudia Potocka, with an introductory sketch on female education in Poland, the destinies of Sclavonic nations, Polish translation by Niemcewiez of de la Mannais' hymn to Poland, - home intelligence relative to that interesting and unfortunate country, eign intelligence, &c. &c. Every friend to Poland and humanity will read this interesting publication. -for NOTICES OF EMINENT INDIVIDUALS [SIR WALTER SCOTT DIED AT ABBOTSFORD ON THE 21st of SEPTEMBER, AGED 62.There is perhaps little to be added to the feelings which these few simple words suggest. In the death of one to whom we have been indebted for so much enjoyment, whose name is so associated with our domestic and fire-side pleasures, and whose works have soothed us in sickness, weariness, and sorrow, we can hardly help feeling as if a long-known personal friend were taken away. It is something to have been the contemporary of such an individual, the intense and diffusive brilliancy of whose genius always shone with so benign and genial a light; who, with nothing of the poetical hyperbole with which the words were first applied, แ ran "Through each mode of the lyre, and was master of all." We have lived during the same period with one of those highly gifted men, whom the world has yet produced only at intervals of centuries. Nor is there any thing to mar our pleasure in the contemplation of his character. To have spent a few hours in his company is a privilege to be remembered through life, not merely or principally from the gratification of our natural curiosity to see the countenance and hear the voice of an eminent man, but because the urbanity, the kindness, the simplicity, and the dignity of his manners, left behind a most agreeable remembrance of him; and heightened the pleasure of his writings, by connecting with them the image of their author. Separated from others by his undisputed and universal fame, and raised above them by his transcendent powers, he had lost nothing of the general sympathy of the most benevolent and forbearing. Notwithstanding the constant demands upon his time and attention, - for who did not desire to see him? he received a stranger, almost as if that stranger were conferring an obligation. We are unable fully to estimate the value of the favors, which, as an author, he has rendered to his fellow men. We may think of the amount of pleasure that has beamed forth from his single mind over the civilized world, and of the weary hours that his genius has cheered or alleviated. We may remember that his writings are read with delight, wherever readers are to be found. But this is not all. Johnson seldom uttered a more weighty sentence of moral wisdom than when he taught, that, "whatever withdraws us "from the power of our senses; whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in "the dignity of thinking beings." No writer has possessed greater power to do this than Scott. He has not interested his readers by addressing their morbid feelings, their disordered passions, or their meaner propensities, but by appealing to their best sympathies, their more generous affections. He has enlarged the sphere of our thoughts and sentiments by his presentations of human nature under aspects so various, by exhibiting in his magic-glass vivid images and scenes of past ages, of which history generally shows us but faint outlines and indistinct forms; and by opening for us a new world, peopled with beings with whom we are almost as familiar as with our daily acquaintance, -almost as familiar as with the creations of Shakspeare. Such a writer forms an era in the progress of human improvement. A large portion of the most effective precepts and exhortations that have been addressed to men, whether tending to good or evil, have been conveyed to them in some form of fiction. The mind of an ancient Greek was fashioned in great part upon the poems of Homer. History has been said to be philosophy teaching by example. But history, as it has commonly been written, teaches little that comes home to the business and feelings of a private individual. It arrays public characters in their costume of state, and exhibits them as they appeared to public gaze. It tells of battles and negotiations. It falters, it errs, it exaggerates, it accommodates itself to the vulgar estimate of things, it overloads with panegyric or censure; and, at best, leaves the truth but half told, because but half known. But in the highest class of works of fiction, in those of Scott, and, with a more evident moral purpose, in those of Miss Edgeworth, philosophy does teach by example. Were we to reduce into the forms of direct instruction all that may be learnt from the novels of "The Author of Wa"verley," we should find that we had collected a body of truths, respecting human nature and human duty, such as none but a philosopher of a very high order could have furnished. And were we then to add all the vivid conceptions, all the glowing expressions which give distinctness to our feelings, all the embodyings of external and of moral beauty, which his poetry and his prose afford, we should feel that we had received from him much of the treasure of our minds. The splendor of his prose works has in some measure, withdrawn our attention from the earlier glory of his poems. But he created a new style of poetry, a style in the highest degree picturesque, unsurpassed in its presentation of images, distinct and true, in rapid succession. None ever described with more power. We are upon the spot, eye-witnesses of all. Here is one instance, among a thousand which his works afford, of how much may be told in a few lines. "The death shot parts—his charger springs Wild rises tumult's startling roar! And Murray's plumy helmet rings, Rings on the ground, to rise no more." What a contrast to these lines is presented by the following beautiful picture of equal distinctness: “The moon, half hid, in silvery flakes, His country is indebted to him for throwing a charm of romantic and poetical associations over her scenes and localities, her mountains, lakes, and streams, which makes her all but the rival of Greece. Her ruins breathe forth his poetry. In the very streets and wynds of Edinburgh, a stranger, at least, feels that the genius of Scott is with him. I have referred to the moral instruction which his writings afford. It is subject that cannot be treated of in such a notice as this but I may allude to one lesson which they teach, intimately connected with the character of the author, and in accordance with all that Christianity and philosophy inculcate. They teach universal tolerance. Human nature is delineated as kindly as it is justly. The mixture of good in imperfect characters, the qualities which redeem the bad from utter depravity, all the points to which our sympathy can attach itself, are brought before us. The artifi cial tastes, distinctions, and prejudices, which separate us from our fellow men, are done away. The genius and, what is better, the goodness of the writer, interest us more for a beggar, than a French tragedian of the old school could for a princess. To this tolerant view of human nature, in itself so amiable, we are principally, I think, to ascribe a few judgments concerning real personages, which one is sometimes tempted to wish had been expressed with sterner morality. But if there were any failing in this respect, it leaned to virtue's side. Some prejudices too in favor of rank and birth we must impute to the institutions of his country, and to the temperament of a poet. If bodily strength and skill, and feats of war, hold too high an estimation in his works, he errs but where most writers of romantic fiction, from the time of Homer, have erred before. His political loyalty may be thought to have been excessive. But there are, it must be remembered, prejudices equally mischievous of an opposite kind. Loyalty was once almost a name for virtue; and so far as we intend by it, strong attachment and deference to worth or rightful authority, gratitude for kindness, readiness to acknowledge and respect true superiority, and willingness to follow in a good cause, when we are unable to lead, these are qualities equally necessary to the virtue of an individual and the well-being of society. He has left to all future times the legacy of his works, and his high example of moral worth in all the relations of society. The world has now only to place him among her most honored names. There is something solemn and cheering in the universal feeling which his death has excited, in thus entering into communion with our fellow-men in distant nations, in hearing, as it were, the voice of praise and sympathy sounding from Europe, and returned across the Atlantic.-A. N.] [From "The Gentleman's Magazine for July, 1832."] SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. May 30th, 1832. Died, at his house in Langham-place, London, aged 69, the Right Hon. Sir James Mackintosh, Knt., a Privy Councillor, one of the Commissioners for the Affairs of India, M. P. for Knaresborough, and D. C. L. Sir James Mackintosh was born at Alldowrie, in the county of Inverness, Oct. 24, 1765. His father, Captain John Mackintosh, of Kellachie, was the intimate companion of Major Mercer, the poet, who thus spoke of him, in a letter to Lord Glenbervie; "We lived together for two years in the same tent, without an un"kind word or look. John Mackintosh was one of the liveliest, |