departure of Captain Franklin on his second expedition accelerated her death; but that was by no means the case. On the contrary, ever herself in the pursuit of knowledge, she entered fully into the enterprising spirit of her husband; and, notwithstanding the unprecedentedly severe hardships and dangers to which Captain Franklin had been exposed in his first expedition, she was anxious that he should have an opportunity of repeating the attempt, in the hope that the great object in view might yet be accomplished. The pulmonary complaint, however, from which she had so long suffered, rapidly gained ground; and it became evident that no human power could save her. She was given over by her physicians five days before that fixed for Captain Franklin's departure. After joining with him and with her family in receiving the sacrament, and after taking an afflicting farewell of all, she awaited in resignation the fiat of her Maker. It was, perhaps, an alleviating circumstance, that as the service on which Captain Franklin was ordered was of a nature that would not admit of delay, her life was spared until after his departure; thereby enabling him to set forward with the hope, however faint, which her still being in existence would allow him to entertain. She, on her part, survived to know that he had sailed from England; and then tranquilly breathed her last, on the night of the 22d of February, 1825.'-pp. 350, 351.

The only remaining article, the memoir of Mr. Fuseli, is a very animated piece of biography. It is marked by some variety of interest, for Fuseli's distinction was not confined even to first-rate excellence in his art alone. By his father, who was a Swiss artist, he was early destined for the church; and though the natural bent of young Fuseli's inclination totally frustrated the design, and made him a painter, he derived the benefit, all his life, of a learned education. But, in truth, nature had given him an universal genius. He was so perfect a Greek scholar, that he used to amuse himself by making verses in that language extemporaneously, and then pretend he could not recollect the author. "Whose are those, Porson?" repeating four or five sonorous lines. "I really do not know," answered the learned Professor, after a short pause; no doubt surprised to find that any Greek existed in the world with which he was unacquainted." How the deuce should you," was the chuckling reply, "when I wrote them myself?"

His facility in acquiring languages was wonderful; and it was his habitual saying that six weeks were sufficient to enable a man to grasp the elements of any tongue. He wrote French with great ease, and Italian in its purest dialect: German was his native language; and that he was perfect master of English, beyond the mere power of fluent conversation, is evident from the fact that into no man was the spirit of Shakspeare and Milton ever more thoroughly transfused. He was a nervous English writer, and a sound and experienced literary critic; and Cowper was glad to avail himself of his learning for the revision of his translation of the Iliad.

Fuseli was born about the year 1735, and came to England in 1762: his genius soon grew to the soil. We have here the wellknown story of Sir Joshua Reynolds's prophetic estimate of his professional greatness, even while he was balancing between the church, literature, and art. It was on seeing some of his drawings that the President, in admiration of the conception and power displayed in these efforts, could not refrain from exclaiming, with all the enthusiasm of his art, "Young man, were I the author of those drawings, and offered 10,000l. a-year not to practise as an artist, I would reject the proposal with contempt." This flattering opinion, from so great an authority, decided the destiny of Fuseli; and he had no cause for subsequent regret that it did so. How splendid was his professional success needs not be told; and in advanced years it was his grateful boast that his life had been one of happiness, as well as success.

In his art, the peculiar quality of his genius was shown by the idolatry with which, as it were, he worshipped the sublimity of Michael Angelo; and the best specimens of his own mind may be found in his compositions for the Shakspeare and Milton Galleries. Above all, among them, the ghost-scene in Hamlet and the Lazar House were his master-pieces. Relative to the former picture, we have here a curious anecdote: There never, perhaps, was a greater testimony given to the effect of any picture, than was involuntarily paid to this performance by a celebrated metaphysician still living. As a matter of favour, this gentleman was admitted to an inspection of the Gallery some time before it was opened to the public. He began his scrutiny with the pictures on the side of the room opposite to that where Mr. Fuseli's Hamlet hung; but on suddenly turning his head in that direction, he caught a sight of the phantom, and exclaimed, in an accent of terror, "Lord have mercy upon me!""

Perhaps we might complain, as the defect of the biographical piece before us, that the very peculiar features of Fuseli's mind and style are not struck off in it with sufficient strength and precision. Much of what is said of him might apply to almost any other master. His genius was unquestionably of the very highest order; and its character was essentially grandeur and sublimity of conception. That these master-qualities sometimes wandered into extravagance was their natural erratic course. But in the design and composition, the grouping and situation of his pieces, and, above all, in his mode of telling the story of a picture, as it is cantly phrased, he was truly great. His drawing was astonishing: bold, broad, and free, yet minutely and anatomically correct, he fearlessly threw the human figure before us into positions and attitudes, which almost any other painter would have shrunk in terror from attempting. But of the whole art of colouring he was either absolutely and altogether ignorant, or, if he knew any thing

of it, he entirely overlooked its importance, and systematically despised its details.

Now if these points of Fuseli's character as an artist had been plainly and directly set before the reader in the memoir in a few words, it would have saved whole pages of aimless and indecisive dissertation. When the biographer proceeds to render to Fuseli's literary compositions, and to his lectures at the Academy especially, the praise of characteristic vigour of thought and energy of style, we perfectly agree with him: but, in candour, he should not have omitted to add, that there were some peculiarities in temper which made the professor, with all his excellences, not the fittest instructor in the world for the youthful pupils of the Academy. His conversation to them was habitually coarse, and too often obscene; and every mark of inaptitude was sure to provoke a burst of invective, interlarded with vulgar and shocking oaths, or rounded, not more excusably, with some indecent pleasantry. A strange debasement of habit for so gifted a spirit, and so estimable a nature! Of the eccentric manner in which his impetuosity would glance off into a jest, we have a laughable little instance in this

memoir:

When Mr. Fuseli resided in Berner's Street, two of the Royal Academicians, men more remarkable for their abilities than for their attention to "the outward man," of which they were sadly negligent, called on him to talk over some business connected with the Academy. The host and his visitors disagreed on the subject, and on their departure, the discussion which had commenced above stairs continued as they descended, and was prolonged as they all three stood on the step of the street door. At length, Mr. Fuseli, adverting to his friends' shabby habiliments, put an end to the conversation by saying to them in a humorous tone, "Come, go away! go away! I don't wish my neighbours to think I have bom-bailiffs about me!"'

p. 254.

But we must have done: after having noticed the regular memoirs which occupy the text of the volume, we shall only add, that in the sort of biographical index which follows, of persons who have died in 1824-5, we have perceived more than one name which we could have wished transplanted with a suitable memoir into the body of the work. But we are sorry to find from the editor's preface that, in some cases in which he had desired to insert full biographical notices, his applications for materials to the near connections of the parties were met only by refusals. We cannot but deem this, as the editor justly calls it, a strange degree of apathy in those connections, and we shall add, too, a very impolitic insensibility to that reflective honour on themselves, which the careful record of a good or great man's deeds must always in some measure cast upon his family and descendants. It is with reason also that the editor, in referring to the obstacles which he has thus experienced, laments, that, at a time when the public mind is unceasingly vitiated by narratives of the profligate

adventures of strumpets and swindlers, every opportunity is not anxiously embraced of counteracting the pernicious tendency of those infamous details, by describing the honourable and successful career of persons distinguished for their moral and intellectual qualities.'

The whole of the present work is composed so much in the spirit of this commendable object that we are loath to find any 'occasion for censure; but before we close our remarks, we cannot forbear to notice the unkind tone in which one article in the index is written. It is that on the late Mr. Maturin, and its levity is the more remarkable, because it is so different from any thing else in the volume. It is no excuse that the notice appears to have been transplanted verbatim from the Gentleman's Magazine. If the editor cannot obtain worthy materials, it is neither necessary nor just that he should substitute a heartless caricature for an authentic resemblance. Whatever were his foibles, poor Maturin was, in the truest sense of the word, a man of fine and original genius. His very last romance, the Albigenses, for splendid and striking situations and admirable delineations of character, may stand no unfavourable comparison with some of the master-pieces of the Great Unknown; and, if nothing else, the melancholy affection of mind which darkened the premature close of existence upon this unhappy child of imagination, should in itself, at least, have protected his memory from insult. His fate should have shamed into silence the wanton and unfeeling jester, who has depreciated his powers and thrown his weaknesses into prominent relief, merely for the miserable gratification of aggravating the ridicule,

ART. III. An Introduction to Entomology; or, Elements of the Natural History of Insects. With Plates. By William Kirby and William Spence, &c. Vols. III. and IV. 8vo. 21. 2s. London. Longman and Co. 1826.

Ar length we have the long-expected termination of this work, Our readers have probably not forgotten the amusement, as well as instruction, which they received from the two first volumes; the nature of which was also such as to render the reviewer's task no less easy than delightful. Neither the reader nor the reviewer must expect the same entertainment here; for these two volumes comprise those analogies and anatomical details which belong to the scientific, not the popular history of this most interesting department of creation.

In our limited space, we can give but a very slender sketch of the immense quantity of matter contained in these dense volumes. Like the two former, those now before us are wordy and diffuse; and, worse than the former, that superfluity of writing is here a serious evil, as it perpetually interrupts the atten

tion, besides enormously increasing the bulk of the work. Indeed, it is often nearly impossible to keep up in our minds the trains of reasoning and analogies, so essential to a clear view of the subject. We have rarely seen a scientific treatise written in so injudicious and teazing a manner.

When we say that 51 pages (Letter xxviii. vol. iii.) are spent on The Definition of the Term Insect,' and that the two volumes contain 1300 pages, our readers will see that we cannot, in our space, avoid entirely passing over very much of what they embrace. We cannot, indeed, from these 51 pages, even extract the definition in question; since the only thing that looks like one is much too long for our purpose.

Letter xxix. is on the Egg State of Insects, also occupying 50 pages. All insects are oviparous; even those which appear to be viviparous, producing eggs which are hatched within the body. But this last, here called the ovo-viviparous state, has two subdivision, called larviparous and pupiparous; the insects being produced from the mother's body, in one case, in the state of a maggot, in the other, in that of a pupa. Eggs are deposited by means of a peculiar instrument, called Ovipositor, generally singly, but they are often extruded with great rapidity, and sometimes even to a great distance, and with considerable force. A few expe. them in a mass. By some they are committed to the water, imbedded in a mass of jelly. The Blatta and the genus Mantis lay them with a case containing the whole mass. Many kinds surround them, after exclusion, with bags or coverings of various kinds, resembling silk, or wool, and sometimes, after this, they carry them about their persons, or attach them to different bodies.

Those in particular, whose eggs are condemned to pass the winter, have various contrivances for their protection. Thus they form covers for them, of varnishes, or of hair or cottony matters of their own fabrication, or of fragments of leaves, or other substances, cemented together; or they imbed them in fissures of trees, or in leaves which they derange by their punctures, or glue them upon twigs, protecting the whole mass also by a glue or a varnish. The egg itself is a simple membrane, apparently containing a fluid. In this, the embryo is gradually developed.

As the fertility of insects is one of the most striking subjects in their economy, we shall extract some instances from this part of the work. The variety itself is singular. The Musca meridiana lays two eggs; a Flea 12; the Silk-worm 500; the Goat-moth 1000; various Cocci from 2000 to 4000; the Wasp 30,000; the Bee 40,000 or 50,000; the Aleyrodes protetella 200,000; while the Termes fatale is computed to lay 211,449,600 in a year. The sizes of some eggs seem as large as that of the parent; some are almost invisible to the naked eye, some exceed the tenth of an inch. The