At the end are two dramatic sketches, "Pride and Passion," and "Editha.' The former approaches the verge of horror; but in the latter, although our tears are called for, they are such as cease to flow when we look upward, there is no bitterness in them. It is an exemplification of earthly instability, and of the fragility of all that is beautiful and graceful in this world; but beside the death-bed of the innocent, there is the angel of peace, and his presence, though not seen, is feltthe fall of dew is never visible to the eye during the night, but the dawn insensibly arrives, and the renovating drops are found hanging on every leaf. However dark be the night of grief, when the good are mourning for the good, there is sure to be such a morn of present refreshment and gladness of heart, and hope of enjoying the perfect day. THE BEECHEN WOOD.-A SONG. Air-Unknown. How dark and dismal, my Jessy dear, My heart is fill'd with thoughts about thee.— The lark he rises up with the sun, And soars, and soars, till heaven is ringing; From the twilight coppice softly singing. Long is the lonesome night to me; Oh, what were all the wealth of earth! Though far from me shine grandeur's ray, TOWNSEND'S TOUR THROUGH IRELAND AND GREAT BRITAIN. ONE of the great and conspicuous excellencies of this Magazine is, its near approach to omnipresence. We penetrate into regions unknown, save to the plodding gazetteer; we illuminate obscure districts, which would burst on the ear of the incredulous public with a sound of perplexing novelty. Gentle reader, did you ever hear of such a place as the jaw-breaking town of Llanwrst, for instance? We bet six to four you never didand yet we have three correspondents sleeping in one bed there, who write the most pathetic poetry possible. Did you suspect the existence of such a place as Aghabullague? Decidedly not! and yet there we have a contributor whose genius is particularly splendid on topics of political economy. You may have perhaps heard of there being a University at Aberdeen, in a distant and confused murmur, little suspecting, however, that from that Panglossian mint of doctors of canon and civil law, we derive articles of a peculiar salmon-tasted jocosity. In like manner, from Orkney to Wight, from the Giant's Causeway to Glangariffe, we have trusty subjects, who pour their tributary rivulets into our magnificent reservoir, whence we distribute them in kindly streams over the land. This subject we some time since have explained so much to our own satisfaction, and consequently that of the public, that there is no need of expatiating any longer on it here. But as it is a point of great general interest-of paramount political importance of &c. &c. &c. as we may say, we shall most probably recur to it, and treat it with that due gravity and regularity which its weight calls for. The advantages arising from this are various, but so obvious, that the meanest capacity in the country can at once appreciate them; so plain, that even Peter Moore, or Kit Hutchinson, would not, we think, be much puzzled to see the great value of our ubiquity. Among other things, we get intelligence of the state of literature in districts where others imagine that no literature whatever exists. Not a provincial press pours out its brochures, but slap! a copy comes in to us, very fre quently with a review ready written, oiling over the author with the goodly chrism of flattery, or cutting him p with the most savage and unrelenting cruelty. We, of course, frequently fling the provincial book into the fire, and consign no less frequently the provincial critic to purposes more easily conjectured than decorously express ed. And on the contrary, we sometimes admit them into our pages, and sometimes disregarding the reviewer, in partibus barbarorum, do up an affair ourselves in the twinkling of a bed-post. Thus, for instance, who would ever have heard of Dr Morris's elegant letters, which issued from the press of Aberysthwith, had not a silly leek-eater transmitted us a copy, which we reviewed to the general satisfaction of the population of these kingdoms? A provincial press in Yorkshire exhibited Archdeacon Wrangham's elegant translation of the Odes of Horace-we held it up to the admiration of our good friend the public. The circumstance of his printing his pretty poetry at the private press of Sir Egerton Breeches, did not hinder us from expatiating on the great merits of that eminent Heavy Dragoon Minstrel, Lieutenant Edward Quillinan of the Fourth, or King's Own. Who ever heard of there being a press in the city of Cork? yet we actually, last year, demonstrated the fact, by our brief critique on the excellent and loyal little pamphlet of John Lord Carbery, which came to light in that most meritorious and cattle-slaughtering city. But we should be as tedious as Joe Hume himself, were we to enumerate all the similar instances. Truce then with prefaces, and let us come to the point, towards which we have been moving with ambling pace. We are just going to add a fresh proof of our universal comprehension of the literary world around us. There is another pamphlet* issuing from A Tour through Ireland and the Northern parts of Great Britain, with Remarks on the Geological Structure of the Places visited, made for the purpose of forming some judgment respecting the Nature and Extent of the Coal Formation in Ireland. Cork. Edwards and Savage. 1821. pp. 80. VOL. XI. 20 Cork, which is, of course, absolutely unknown-quite MS. in fact, to the people in general. And yet it is a tour in Scotland by a most intelligent and observant clergyman, the Rev. Hen. Townsend, a county of Cork rector, and author of an excellent statistical survey of his native country. We got it just as we get every thing else. Cork, as appears by the last census, contains 100,535 inhabitants, of whom, by a singular coincidence, exactly 35 are contributors of ours, leaving the other 100,500 to employ themselves in the exercise of other less dignified occupations; and from one of our good men and true, the pamphlet came right a-head to our lofty chambers in "mine own romantic town." On looking at the book we were at first going to pitch it to Erebus profound. We thought-but, as it turned out, erroneously-that it was all about coal, and geology, and mineralogy, and other such barbarities. Now, we know nothing whatever about mineralogy, and of course despise the science most heartily. True it is that we are up to trap, and have made various experiments on quarts, but the science itself is a most base affair. Think of an individual, otherwise respectable, peeping at a paving-stone, and prating about it to some dozen gawffawish-looking young men, every one of whom is inwardly praying for an opportunity to fling it at his head! Is not it vastly absurd? We are informed that a Professor of our University here is the first mineralogist in Europe, but it is impossible. He is a man of too much talent; we respect him too much to be able to believe such a rumour, universal as it is. We rejoice, we own, in a flint when we see it set properly in the snapper of a fowling-piece, but care not a flash in the pan how it was originally concocted. The laughing spectacle of a fine blazing, glowing, coal-fire, we delight in-though not to such a degree as to clap our feet on the fender to enjoy it, like our friend, the King of all the Cockneys, and, when in a philosophical mood, we consider its advantages in cookery, punch-making, and other fine arts, we do feel a certain enthusiastic respect for the inventor of fire-places. Yet we must say, that a discourse upon the structure, &c. of old coal, is in our ideas as tedious as a discourse by himself on the politics, &c. of Old Coke. However, de gustibus nil disputandum, every man to his taste, and we shall let Mr Townsend give his opinion on the advantages which the possession of collieries confers on a country. "To the county of Chester nature has been peculiarly bountiful, in furnishing it with mines of salt, a species of fossil of imhowever, is the main source of prosperity mense value, but rare occurrence. Coal, in the northern part of Britain; for if we deduct the advantages afforded by this article from its means of wealth, and incitements to exertion, though much no doubt will still remain, yet the remainder will make but a very disproportionate figure in the catalogue. The traveller might indeed be gratified with the view of a fair country, exhibiting handsome seats, and cultivated nient port, or a navigable river, he might lands. Where nature had given a convealso find towns improved by commerce, and adorned by architecture; but without coal, he certainly would not see what is now presented to his view in the great and flourishing towns of Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Edinburgh, and Glasgow, to say nothing of those of inferior note; and he would want those lively scenes which he now meets of steam-boats, steam-engines, rail-roads, canals, aqueducts, &c. as well as that abundant and happy population, to which coal affords in this climate so much have domestic comfort, as well as so much profitable employment. Hence it is, that the thoughts of an Irishman, who has travelled through the coal districts of Great Britain, are so anxiously turned to the hope, that a future period may, by fortunate discovery of earth's concealed treasures, enable some part at least of his own country to exhibit similar appearances of wealth and prospe rity. Nature has, in several respects, been very bountiful to the Emerald Isle. We rivers, a wholesome climate, and a fertile many good ports, some navigable soil. For want, however, of that prime article of human comfort, fuel, many of our most fertile tracts, though not devoid of inhabitants, are devoid of one important means by which men are enabled to exercise useful arts, to enrich themselves and their country by manufactures, or, indeed, to enjoy the common conveniences of life. Happy though it be that we have such a neighbour as Britain, yet it is not pleasant in Ireland, besides many that are not seato think, that every considerable port town ports, draw their whole stock of fuel from the sister island." This review has hitherto been rather irregular, but henceforward we shall get on more secundum artem. We confess we look on a regular review of a book to be a bore; but we must occasionally fall in with the absurd fashions of our time. To begin then with the beginning, Mr T., in consequence of illness, was recommended, in 1820, a trip to Harrogate, and on his return took Scotland in his way. He bears high testimony to the celebrated, though villainously-tasted waters of Harrogate. "Our entrance into Yorkshire was rather discouraging, for we had to travel on a rough and generally ill-paved road, and to cross that high and broad range of moorland which separates the counties of York and Lancaster. The hills too are long, steep, and frequent, yet loaded carts and coaches appear to travel easily, though not smoothly along. The public coaches, generally loaded to excess, never have more than four horses, right good ones indeed, always in high condition, and rarely exhibiting any injurious marks of the collar. In sandy districts, and all this is sandstone country, pavement is absolutely necessary where wheels are much used, and heavy burdens carried. Though not good for the horses' feet, or conducive to the traveller's ease, the paved road affords such facility to draught, that all one wonders at in such a country is, that the pavements are not more carefully executed, and kept in better order. As we advanced, this great county improved upon the view, more with respect to the number and opulence of its manufacturing towns, than the beauty or fertility of the land. In other parts it is indeed rich and beautiful, but a large portion of the West Riding is coarse and high. Leeds is a great, and apparently a rich and flou. rishing town. We entered it on a market day, not without admiration of the prodigious quantity of articles exposed to sale, particularly vegetables, among which early potatoes, beautiful in appearance, but too watery and insipid for an Irishman's palate, bore a distinguished place. From Leeds we had a pleasant stage to Harrogate, passing close to the magnificent mansion of Lord Harewood, situated on the south bank of the river Wharfe. "Of all the British watering-places resorted to for health, Harrogate perhaps owes least to fashion, and most to the real virtue and efficacy of its medicinal springs. Of these, which are all cold, the most remarkable is the sulphur-well at lower Harrogate, known from an early period, but at first only used externally for the cure of cutaneous and perhaps rheumatic complaints. Indeed, a stranger's first impression of wonder is, how any other use of a water, so extremely nauseous both to smell and taste, should ever have been ventured on. It is true that after a few draughts its offensive qualities disappear, and it be comes by no means disagreaable to the pa late. But the first taster could not have known this, and if he drank it on speculation, a case which seems very probable, he was, at least, a bold experimentalist. Of simple nature's repugnance to the draught, verting instance on the morning after our we had an opportunity of seeing a very diarrival at Harrogate, (July 1st.) Having strolled to the well before the usual time of drinking, we saw there a couple of common men, one from the vicinity, well acquainted with the water, and drinking with much apparent satisfaction; the other, a simple peasant from a distant part of Yorkshire, to whom the former was warmly recommending a glass of the salubrious beverage. The latter, in whom the very smell of the fountain, disagreeable enough, it must be owned, had already excited a marked disgust to its waters, was beginning to make wry faces, and to shrink from so appalling a proposal. On our joining in the recommendation, and his perceiving that it went down so smoothly and innocuously with the other, much against his will he was at last prevailed upon to take a glass ;—previously, however, he took care to let us know he was in no want of any antiscorbutic- Oi have but one little pimple upon my whool body,' said he, with a seeming inclination to give us ocular proof of his veracity. This we rendered unnecessary by professing to entertain no doubt of his purity, but still recommending a draught so innocent and wholesome, and urging the impropriety of returning to his distant home without a taste of the celebrated spring. Prepared as he was to meet something disagreeable, it is impossible to describe the effect of the nauseous potion on the muscles of his face, or the ludicrous nature of his ejaculations and grimaces. Ill-natured as it seemed to be, it set us, and indeed all present, into a most violent fit of laughing, which was the more freely indulged, as we knew that his fears were unfounded, and that his disquietude would be soon over." We do not much wonder at the poor man's disquietude. Rheumatic as we are, we would not swallow a pint of that stuff for a Marquisate. Indeed, we have always found water of any kind to be a pernicious beverage, and in consequence abstain from it most temperately. We have heard many water-drinkers declare, that pure spring water is a great luxury; but we are not inclined to be luxurious. Luxury, as our readers will remember, overthrew the Roman empire, and did many other bad things, and we shall therefore avoid any intemperate debauchery in the water way. "Six weeks sojourn at Harrogate would supply a professed tourist with matter for no inconsiderable volume, in describing the qualities and variety of its fountains, the rapid successions of its numerous visitants, and all the peculiarities of the place and neighbourhood. But as these are not my objects, I shall restrict myself for the most part to such things as fall within the scope of my principal purpose. at the Queen's Head,' one of the oldest hotels, there are very fine sycamores, some of which cannot be less than a hundred years old. There are also in the fields behind it (poor remains of the timber it once possessed) a few still living trunks of oaks, which must have been respectable trees some two or three centuries since. High the situation certainly is, and therefore cool; but the air is pure and salubrious, and the very reverse of unfavourable to the growth of trees: on the contrary, they grow well even upon much higher parts of the Moor than where Harrogate stands. Matthew Bramble's report of the sulphur-well be. trays too much ignorance, and is too unworthy of a man of medical science to permit me to believe that Doctor Smollett had ever been at Harrogate. He was fond of caricature, but would not deliberately falsify. "Upper and Lower Harrogate, about a half a mile asunder, are situate on the eastern extremity of the old Forest of Knaresborough. The former is of earlier establishment, on account of its chalybeate springs, which were the first discovered, and for a long time the only waters held in esteem for their medicinal virtue. The sul phur-well, however, has nearly superseded the chalybeates, and, with the exception of a newly-discovered saline chalybeate in Lower Harrogate, hardly any other water is now drank. It is also copiously employed for warm bathing, and as it keeps well in bottle, great quantities are sent from Harrogate to different parts of the British empire. It is unquestionably one of the most valuable of all the medicinal springs which has been ever discovered, very rarely I believe injurious, and very seldom failing to rectify a disordered state of the stomach and bowels.-Fact, indeed, the surest of all arguments, speaks with incontrovertible decision in its favour; for it is impossible to conceive that so many thousands should persist in drinking (without, as well as with medical advice) a water so horridly disgusting as this at first is, unless they had full assurance of its salubrious efficacy. There are many excellent hotels, and many good private lodgings, the number of which is daily increasing, and where much company resorts, some amusement hunters will of course be found, but the great inducement is, undoubtedly, the virtue of the springs. "I was amused by Dr Smollett's account of Harrogate, in his Humphry Clinker, written about fifty years since. In that entertaining work it is represented by the younger persons of the party as a pleasant place enough, containing a good deal of company very socially disposed; but the report made by old Matthew Bramble, who seems to be a counterpart of the Doctor, is unfounded, as well as unfavourable. Indeed I am inclined to think that Smollett never actually visited Harrogate, and that he speaks from the information of some acquaintance as cynical as himself. He represents it as a naked, disconsolate moor, high, cold, and not only destitute of trees, but incapable of producing them. The sulphur-well was the object of his abomination, and operated on him in the double capacity of a purge and an emetic,-it contained, he said, no sulphur, and was pronounced to be neither more nor less than salt water putrified in the bowels of the earth!! Harrogate was certainly much more naked at that time than it is now, but The neighbourhood of Harrogate is particularly celebrated for the growth of great and beautiful trees. The Cowthrope oak, an object of wonder for some centuries, and supposed to be a thousand years old, is still living, but in the last stage of decay. One can hardly conceive a more magnificent sylvan spectacle than this noble tree must have exhibited in the full pride of its growth, and when, as it is said, half an acre of ground was shaded by its branches. In the year 1720 a main branch was broken off, which, on measurement, was found to contain more than five ton of timber! The circumference of the trunk close to the ground was then sixty feet, being somewhat greater than at present, but it is obvious that it shrunk considerably,—the other dimensions are not recorded. We measured it accurately, and found the circumference at the base fifty-four feet, and at the height of six feet from the ground, forty-seven feet; from this it does not vary much to the top, which is twenty-one feet high. The few remaining branches are supported by props, rendered necessary by the weakness of the trunk, which is hollow to the top, affording at bottom a chamber thirtythree feet in circumference. I have seen and measured many great trees in various parts of Great Britain, but never met one that would bear comparison with this venerable monarch of the forest. In truth, I did not think, nature capable of so great an effort in this climate, and I am only surprised, that so little notice has been taken of it." His observations on the contrast between England and Ireland are well written, and worthy attention. "A sojourn of six weeks in the north of England afforded opportunity of more acquaintance with national habits and manners, than is to be obtained in the usual rapidity of travelling. I speak of the peasantry and lower orders for the higher |