have recourse to this method of supplying that necessary article, the caverns are neglected, and are going so fast to decay, that in a few years they will be filled with the rubbish which falls from the roofs.'' p. 334-336.

The following are the most material parts of his observations upon the peasantry.

The inhabitants of Ronda have peculiarities common to themselves and the other people in the mountainous districts, and obviously differ from the people on the plains. The dress both of the males and females varies as well in the colour and shape of the garments, as in the materials of which they are composed, and is peculiarly calculated for cold weather. Their countenances, as I have before noticed, are very expressive, and, in my judgment, superior to those of any race of people I have seen. The men are remarkably well formed, robust, and active, with a flexibility of well-turned limbs, which, doubtless, contributes to that agility for which they are celebrated; but the females in general are of short stature; and the cumbersome dress which they wear so conceals the figure, that it is difficult to determine whether they are well or ill formed; but there is an expression of sensibility in their countenances, and a peculiar grace in all their movements, which is extremely fascinating. In walking the streets the women wear veils, to cover their heads, as a substitute for caps and hats, neither of which are worn. These veils are frequently made of a pink or pale blue flannel; and, with a petticoat of black stuff, form their principal dress. The men wear no hats; but, instead of them, what are called montero caps, made of black velvet or silk, abundantly adorned with tassels and fringe; and a short jacket, with gold or silver buttons, and sometimes ornamented with embroidery, is worn just sufficiently open to display a very highly finished waistcoat; they wear leather or velvet breeches, with gaiters; so that the whole of the figure, which is generally extremely good, is distinctly seen.

Having observed much of the manners and character of the Spanish peasantry, more especially within the last fourteen days, I feel I should not be doing them justice were I to abstain from speaking of them according to my impressions. I have given some account of their figures and countenances; and though both are good, I do not think them equal to their dispositions. There is a civility to strangers, and an casy style of behaviour, familiar to

this class of Spanish society, which is very. remote from the churlish and awkward manners of the English and German peasantry. Their sobriety and endurance of fatigue, are very remarkable; and there is a constant cheerfulness in their demeanour, which strongly prepossesses a stranger in their favour. This cheerfulness is displayed in singing either ancient ballads, or songs which they compose as they sing, with all the facility of the Italian improvisatori. One of their songs varying in words, according to the skill of the sing, er, has a termination to certain verses, which says, "that as Ferdinand has no wife, he shall marry the king of England's daughter." Some of these songs relate to war or chivalry, and many to galantry and love: the latter not always expressed in the most decorous language, according to our ideas.

Though the Spanish peasantry treat every man they meet with politeness, they expect an equal return of civility; and to pass them without the usual expression, "Vaja usted con Dios," or saluting them without bestowing on them the title of Cabaleros, would be risking an insult from people who, though civil and even polite, are not a little jealous of their claims to reciprocal attentions. I have been informed, that most of the domestic virtues are strongly felt, and practised by the peasantry; and that a degree of parental, filial, and fraternal affection is observed among them, which is exceeded in no other country. I have already said sufficient of their Religion; it is a subject in which they feel the greatest pride. To suspect them of heresy, or of being descended from a Moor or a Jew, would be the most unpardonable of all offences; but their laxity with respect to matrimonial fidelity, it must be acknowledged, is a stain upon their character; which, though common, appears wholly irreconcileable with the general morality of the Spanish character. They are usually fair and honourable in their dealings; and a foreigner is less subject to imposition in Spain than in any other country I have visited.

'The generosity is great, as far as their means extend; and many of our countrymen have experienced it in rather a singu lar way. I have been told that, after the Revolution, when Englishmen first began to travel in the Peninsula, many who had remained a few days at an Inn, on asking for their bill, at their departure, learnt, to their great surprise, that some of the inhabitants, with friendly officiousness, had paid their reckoning, and forbidden the host to communicate to his guests the

persons to whose civility they were indebt. ed. I knew one party myself to whom this occurred at Malaga: they were hurt at the circumstance, and strenuously urged the host to take the amount of their bill, and give it to the person who had discharged it; but he resolutely refused, and protested he was ignorant of those who paid this compliment to Englishmen. It was common, if our countrymen went to a coffee-house, or an ice-house, to discover, when they rose to depart, that their refreshment had been paid for by some one who had disappeared, and with whom they had not even exchanged a word. I am aware that these circumstances may be attributed to the warm feelings towards our country, which were then excited by universal enthusiasm; but they are, nevertheless, the offspring of minds naturally generous and noble. p. 337-341.

What he adds upon the upper classes of the community, will probably be thought sufficient to warrant the distrust we have already expressed in the exertions of the country at large, so long as its resources, comprehending that excellent peasantry of whom our author has just been discoursing, shall be at the disposal of the lawyers, the priests and the grandees. The following passage is indeed concise, and rather gives the results of Mr. Jacob's observations, than his remarks themselves. The subject is of rather a delicate nature and he may perchance recollect the wrath which used to be manifested by the pretended friends of Spain, at various times, and in divers manners, when any one happened to speak disrespect fully of the privileged orders in that country.

"I should be glad if I could, with justice, give as favourable a picture of the higher orders of society in this country; but, perhaps, when we consider their wretched education, and their early habits of indolence and dissipation, we ought not to wonder at the state of contempt and degradation to which they are now reduced. I am not speaking the language of prejudice, but the result of the obser vations I have made, in which every accurate observer among our countrymen has concurred with me in saying, that the figures and the countenances of the higher orders are as much inferior to those of

the peasants, as their moral qualities are in the view I have given of them. p. 341.

We cannot close these quotations better, than with the two following short facts, which deserve the attention both of Spanish and English politicians.

· The mountains in this neighbourhood are filled with bands of contrabandists, who convey tobacco and other goods from Gibraltar to the interior of the country. They are an athletic race of men, with all the hardiness and spirit of enterprise which their dangerous occupation re quires. They reside in the towns which are situated in the most mountainous part of the country, and are well acquainted with all the passes and hiding-places. They are excellent marksmen; and though the habit of their lives has rendered them disobedient to the revenue laws, yet they are much attached to their native land, and might with a little management be rendered very formidable to its invaders.' p. 341, 342.

There are no game laws in Spain, nor could any power enforce such laws, were they enacted. Every man in Spain carries his gun when he goes from home. The Spaniards are all excellent marksmen; Spain, depends much on their skill in this and the kind of defence best adapted for respect. The parties of guerrillas formed over the country are very numerous; and, by intercepting despatches, and cutting off supplies, have annoyed the French more than the regular troops. Had game laws been established, and the peasantry procountry would not have made the resis hibited from carrying fowling pieces, the

tance to the French, which has so far exceeded that which they have experienced in other countries.

Though all are permitted to kill game, there are extensive preserves, called Cortos, belonging to the King, and to some of the nobility, which are protected by privileges similar to our right of free warren.' p. 198.

There is one part of Mr. Jacob's common-place book which we should have been glad to bring before our readers, if he had thought fit to print it, or to make any allusions to it ;-we mean the facts and anecdotes relating to the French and Spaniards, which, as we find in the parliamentary reports for last session, he detailed in his place in the house of commons,

on the very day, if we rightly remember, of his arrival from the Peninsula. He appears to have entered the house while the debate was going briskly on respecting the Portugueze subsidy; and finding, or thinking, that his majesty's ministers were at a loss for support, and especially for proper facts, he is reported to have supplied them most opportunely from the rich store with which he had that instant returned. This was worthy of the safe character which, we have already remarked, belongs to the worthy Alderman in his political capacity. We will not inquire whether his colleague, who had recently visited the Scheldt, adopted a still more prudent course, by only giving his silent vote upon that memorable expedition; but we are quite sure, that, when he comes to favour the impatient public with his tour, he will follow Alderman Jacob's safe example, and suppress all mention of the reasons and facts upon which his opinion was formed.

The appendix contains some of the papers before parliament,-the Itinerary of Antoninus in the south of

Spain, and an abstract of the population in 1803, from Censo de fontos y Manufacturas de Espana. Accord ing to this account, Spain, including the islands in the Mediterranean, contained, then, 10,351,075 souls upon 15,001 square leagues; the density of the population varying from 2,009 on a square league, the proportion in Guipuzcoa, to 311, the proportion in Cuenca. These are not the facts in the eloquent and opportune speech above referred to.

We have only to add a word or two as to the external qualities of this volume. Of the plates we have already spoken favourably; but the size, type, and, of course, the price of the book, are not of that moderate and useful description which we have had occasion to notice with approbation in the works of other mercantile travellers, and which cannot be too highly praised. With respect to the general character of Mr. Jacob's production, enough has been said, to make it quite unnecessary more particularly to recommend it to the attention of our readers.

THAT branch of the Napoleon code, to which we are now about to introduce our readers, may justly be considered, in the solemnity of its sanctions, in the lasting consequence of its decisions, and in the tone which it naturally imparts to the moral character of a people, as the most important portion of the duty of a legislature; and finishing, as we now do, an attentive perusal of this system, we cannot refrain from expressing our admiration of the general princi

VOL. VI.

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ples on which it is founded; our satisfaction at the salutary reforms which it has produced, and on the whole, the pleasure with which we always witness the progress of just theory in regulating the concerns of mankind, and in assuming that legitimate control over practical affairs, without which it is hopeless at any time to aspire after permanent im provement. The age in which we live will not rank among its meanest triumphs, the total abolition of torture,

-the limitation of capital punishments to a small number of cases, the infiction of death (except in a single instance, that of parricide) without insult or aggravation, and the establishment of a simple code of punishments, in that empire which most pertinaciously adhered to the cruelty, the complexity, and all the false principies and odious practices which disgraced the multiform enactments of the ancient civil code.

For our own part, we can scarcely regard without envy the employment to which the public men of France have recently been called, in re-organizing the laws of their country, at a period when the discussions of enlightened men have thrown so much light on the true doctrines of penal legislation. Yet they are not entitled to the merit of having been the first to promulgate from authority the wise and beneficent decrees in question. In the year 1791, the Constituent Assembly, (a body which, in spite of occasional mistakes and inconsistencies, will be allowed by impartial posterity to have deserved well of its country and of mankind,) undertook the weighty task of revisinge of the most oppressive and corrupt penal codes that ever was endured in civilized society. They threw off the grosser errors, and rectified the more prominent anomalies; they appealed from the experience of evil to the abstract principles of right, and laid a sound basis for equitable coercion in the universal and well recognized propensities of the human mind. Their scheme has now undergone the trial of nearly twenty years; and it is adopted by the orators of the imperial council, with some variations imposed by the altered nature of the government, and others which have been suggested by the experiment itself.

These rests and pauses in which a nation calmly looks back on her former practice with a view to amendment, are advantages dearly bought in a despotic government by violent

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convulsions, which they precede or follow. They are the moments of awful tranquillity that announce the approaching hurricane, or the first respite which permits the half-recovered proprietor to repair its destructive ravages. In a free state, like our own, where the warmest discussion of general topics provokes only an answer, and the most violent animadversions serve only to prove the stability of the system against which they are directed, no period can be improper for the detection of abuses, the exposure of errors, and the suggestion of remedies. Yet this very facility may sometimes operate to defeat the objects within its command; and, as according to the vulgar observation, "every body's business is nobody's business,' so the exact season seems never to arrive for doing that which may at any time be effected. It is said, "things have gone on hitherto without any very material inconvenience; why select this particular instant for redressing trifling wrongs, which the habitual sufferance of them renders comparatively harmless? The events of the passing hour are fully sufficient to absorb the faculties of the wisest governours : their temporary pressure cannot dispense with immediate and unremitting attention; and why should we divert any part of it to that prospective amelioration which has long been delayed, and may wait a little longer, and which may be brought about at any time with as much advantage as at the present!" Without encountering these approved excuses of indolence and inactivity, by other topics as general in their nature, but of an opposite tendency, and without citing or even insinuating the instructive proof which recent circumstances have afforded, of the immense danger of unnecessary postponements, we shall merely observe, that at the present epoch the public mind does happen to be peculiarly alive to the doctrines of criminal jurisprudence, and the defects in our own.

penal system. Undismayed by the various objections and imputations which are calculated to deter them from the inquiry, several of the most distinguished members of our legislature have presumed to question the policy, the justice, and the humanity of our existing laws, and have most certainly been seconded by a very strong opinion out of doors. The opportunity, therefore, appears to be favourable for giving circulation to a rather ample exposition of the course pursued on the same subject by a great and enlightened people, and we design to state fully the contents of the work before us, for the information of our own countrymen, without instituting any parallel, or obtruding many remarks, except for the purpose of rendering more intelligible, by the contrast, that which, standing alone, it might be difficult to explain. The Penal Code of France begins with certain preliminary dispositions, comprising little more than the definition of the legal terms most constantly employed; and the first book opens with a table of punishments, which are divided into, 1, the afflictive and infamous; 2, the infamous; 3, the correctional. Those of the first description are, death, compulsory labour for life, or for a certain time, deportation, and imprisonment. Under the second head are the pillory, banishment, and civil degradation. The correctional punishments are, temporary imprisonment in a place of correction, temporary interdiction from certain rights, either of a civic or domestic nature, and fines. In the details which regulate the mode of inflicting these punishments, it is enacted that a parricide shall be taken in his shirt to the place of execution, barefooted, and his head covered with a black vail: that he shall be exposed on the scaffold while his sentence is read aloud; that his right hand shall be cut off, and he shall then be instantly executed. Decapitation is the only mode in which capital punishment can be administered.

In their remarks on this catalogue, the orators of the council introduce the subject of solitary confinement in terms not unworthy of consideration:

We have suppressed the punishment of constraint, (la gêne) which consisted in being imprisoned without any communication externally or with the other prisoners; which was sometimes pronounced for a term of twenty years. We confess that on this occasion we do not recognize the philanthropic sentiments of the constituent assembly; for what is the destiny of man confined for twenty years, without hope of communication either with those within or those without the prison ? Is he not plunged living into the tomb? Besides, what can be the utility of this punishment? It cannot be said to be established for example, since the iminal, said to be dead to society: it is moreover withdrawn from every eye, may also be almost impossible that an arrangement, which introduces so severe a sequestration, should ever be carried in execution, an additional motive for making the punishment of solitary confinement disappear from the penal code.'

Whether the total exclusion of the sentence in question can be defended as a prudent measure, we shall offer no opinion: but we confess that our ideas of humanity are widely different from those of persons who can propose the commutation of death for permanent and absolute solitude, as a measure of humanity. To us the suggestion of Cæsar, for the imprisonment of Catiline's associates, has ever appeared more cruel than Cato's stern denunciation of immediate death.

The punishment of civil degradation can scarcely be deemed very severe in France; when it excludes from voting at elections, and from serving in the army.--For certain offences, on which the law entirely declines to animadvert,-and for others, when expiated by a given portion of legal restraint, the offender is remitted to the superintendence of the police; a state nearly answering to that of a person in this country, who enters into a recognizance for abstaining from any particular mode of offending against the security of society.