reduced by my prodigality to the utmost distress, curse me. My daughter, rejected by a Frenchman, has cut his throat, and must suffer for it. For myself (whose negligence has caused these evils), I expect every instant to be dragged to prison for my debts; and, to crown my wretchedness, love must interfere; I love to distraction, and am looked upon with horror. Our English remedy for all misfortunes is death, and death I will have recourse to. But what will become of my family?—They shall die with me. I cannot make life agreeable to them; I ought then, as a good parent, to deliver them from it.'

Having settled this point, he made his wife and children (not omitting Cecilia) follow him into a deep, spacious vault, lighted only by the glimmering of a sepulchral lamp.

It was beneath the lamp which hung from the middle of the cellar's roof, that Blickman, with a poignard drawn in his hand, stopped short. His mournful family no longer doubted the purpose of their visiting this gloomy cave. Cecilia, scarcely alive through fear, fell at the savage's feet; the rest of the family, as if they had waited for that signal, formed a kneeling circle around him; while he, untouched by their distress, by his haggard looks confirmed the worst of their apprehensions. When this dreadful silence, interrupted by nothing but the sobs of Cecilia, had lasted a few minutes, this tender parent, with a voice rendered more horrid by the echoes of the vault, spoke as follows:—

'It is now, my children, forty years that I have been teazed with the repeated view of the same sun; I am sick of his beams.-The more I see of life, the more I detest it. The one half of it is spent in sleep, the other in trouble. Besides the plagues which one's own wants occasion, there are children to educate,-wives to contend with,-debts to be paid; then one must be tyrannized over by laws-by fashions-by fortune-and by appetites. I am disgusted with such an existence; nor ought any of you to be more attached to it than myself. What, indeed, should make you fond of it? Do you want to follow my example-to place your affections where you ought to point your most inveterate hatred? No, no, let us prevent such calamities; let us imitate those glorious ancestors, whose examples have shown us that contempt which a true Englishman should entertain for life. Your great grandfather, tired of these absurdities, had recourse to poison, to release him from them; and you may still cast your eyes up to that glorious halter, which delivered your worthy grandmother from the plagues of mortality. 'Twas this vault they chose to honour with their deaths;-and shall not we have the spirit to follow such gallant leaders? Let us at once baffle the hopes of creditors and physicians, let us leave the world to its misery, while we remain for ever in repose.'

He first stabs Cecilia, and afterwards his own children; but the story is too good to be told in other words than the author's, who

says:

"The whole assembly rejoiced at this opening of the scene, and each disputed the honour of following the common enemy. The hardened savage

now produced an old razor, stained with the blood of his ancestors; with this he released from the cares of life, his wife and his children.-There now only remained Fanny; Blickman tenderly embraced her.-'You,' said he, 'are worthy of your father;-you have stabbed that dog of a Frenchman, that had

found means to gain your affections; you shall now receive the last, the greatest proof of my paternal love.'

Strike, my father (said the resolute daughter), strike, and let me fall on the body of my rival;-let me only form this wish, that my perjured spouse may survive his wound, to learn how to dread the resentment of an Englishwoman, and that he may die in the agonies of despair, for the loss of his mistress, while we are involved in peace and oblivion.' Here her father put an end to her discourse, by bestowing on her that death which she had so eagerly desired.

The truly English parent contemplated with pleasure the slaughtered carcasses around him. Warmed by the carnage, he seemed to wish for more victims. 'Ah,' said he, why are not these all French? Why do I not see the perfidious spouse of my daughter extended at my feet? But,-my wife, -my children'

It was now his fury abated. Remorse succeeded to his rage. The voice of Nature for the first time struck his heart. To deliver himself from reflection, he hastened to share the fate of his family;-he stabb'd himself, he fell furious on the bodies of those he had butchered, and expired in the arms of horror. The lamp burnt out, and darkness, jointly with death, heightened the execrable scene."

And now, the tragedy being concluded, how does our author contrive to make the virtuous French lovers happy? Nothing so easy: the gentleman recovers of his wounds; the lady had been but slightly wounded; fright had thrown her in a fainting fit, and her screams, on her recovery, "had alarmed a legion of creditors who had seized the house," and who carry her to her lover with great alacrity, lest she should expire on the road, they "dreading the expense of her burial." The lovers are reconciled, and slowly recover under the care of a good catholic priest, who is at last seized and carried to prison, simply because he is a priest.

Now comes the last and most amusing scene of all. The lovers sally out, in hopes to gain intelligence of the Chinese philosopher, who has been for some time missing, and the unfortunate priest :—

"One morning they found themselves near Tyburn, and seeing a great mob assembled to view two executions, they turned that way, in hopes of finding, among the crowd, what they wished for. But what was their horror when, in the features of the two sufferers, they could not help recognizing their two dearest friends! What a shock to minds of sensibility! Our hero, as he was unable to relieve them, endeavoured with Cecilia to avoid being a witness of their fate, but in vain, as the crowd was too thick about them. In spite of all endeavours they were forced to be spectators of the death of that good priest, who, but a very little while before, expected to have performed the last offices to them. He gave his blessing to the mob, to their infinite diversion; and he endeavoured to persuade the Chinese to die in the Christian faith. Kin Foe replied, that he would die a philosopher, and a dispute began between them on religion, in which our Mandarin's objections to revelations breathed such a spirit of infidelity and profaneness, that they

interested the populace in his favour. The ecclesiastic was now turned off, but the Mandarin, taking advantage of the English custom, made an harangue to the people. The good philosopher would have quitted life without regret, could he but hope to communicate, even at the last gasp, some spark of humanity to the surrounding Barbarians. He now, with great composure, spoke in favour of the light of Nature, and ridiculed the different religions which prevailed in the world. A murmur now began, that this malefactor must be an honest English Protestant, and no Catholic priest, since he made so light of revelation.' The mob arose; in the instant the hangman was knocked on the head, the ordinary overturned in the dirt, the gallows cut to pieces, and the Mandarin set at liberty. For once in their lives our savages took the part of a worthy man in distress, but from a motive exactly suited to their turn of mind. Our lovers lamented their dead friend, but made haste to secure the living one. They embraced him with tears in their eyes, hurried home, and set off for France with the greatest expedition, with firm, but unnecessary protestations, of never revisiting the abominable asylum of The Savages of Europe."

Thus ends a 'Comic Romance,' worthy almost of Scarron himself, plentifully seasoned with grotesque absurdity, rendered all the more piquante by the gravity of its relation; and which, no doubt, was gravely read by many of the author's countrymen as a picture of English life and manners, true in the main, but slightly prononcée in a few hideous facts, which, however common they might be in England, the inhabitants of the foggy island kept as carefully concealed, as their merits or virtues appear to have been, from the eyes of the redoubtable author of this romance.

It is not unamusing to trace, in the exaggerated incidents of parts of this story, some slight traces of truth-it has been held as an axiom, that no lie can be perfect without it. Such kind of falsehoods as these generally end in forming national prejudices, which can always convert shadows into substance with perfect ease; they have, however, their uses, inasmuch as they teach nations that they are not so immaculate in the eyes of their neighbours as they are in their own; and they should also teach ourselves a charitable forbearance in believing much that is imputed, on equally untenable grounds, to our foreign neighbours.

ART. IV. Population and Emigration at the beginning of the Seventeenth Century.

Ku. Welliv 18 18 1801-86

A Plaine Path-way to Plantations: that is, a Discourse in generall concerning the Plantation of our English People in other Countries; wherein is declared, That the Attempts or Actions, in themselves are very good and laudable, necessary also for our Country of England. Doubts thereabout are answered: and some meanes are shewed, by which the same may, in better sort than hitherto, be prosecuted and effected. By RICHARD EBVRNE, of Hengstridge, in the County of Somerset.-Printed by G. P. for John Marriot, 1624.

ᎪᎢ

Ta time when English emigrants are leaving our shores, like swallows in the wane of summer, and when the need and the end, the good and the gain, of emigration and colonies,-or plantations, as they were called in Mr. Eburne's time,-are so much in our thoughts, and take so large a share in our prints; it cannot be but interesting to see those aspects of emigration at which our forefathers looked the most earnestly more than two hundred years ago.

Although Mr. Eburne writes himself only "Richard Eburne," it is clear from his book that he was a clergyman. He dedicates the First Part of his book to the Right Reverend Fathers in God, and Honourable Lords, Arthur, Lord Bishop of Bathe and Wells; and Robert, Lord Bishop of Bristol; one of whom was his "much and worthily honoured Diocesan," and the other, his "worthy and favourable Patron;" and he offers a few words in his own behalf, in answer to any that may think it "a point beyond his compasse," for a divine by profession to deal with plantations, which are commonly taken to be a matter altogether of temporal and secular right. Mr. Eburne's "much and worthily honoured Diocesan, Arthur, Lord Bishop of Bathe and Wells," was the pious and learned Arthur Lake, who succeeded to his bishopric in 1616, and died in 1626; and his "worthy and favourable patron, Robert, Lord Bishop of Bristol," was Dr. Robert Wright, who was consecrated in 1622, and translated to Lichfield and Coventry in 1632. Mr. Eburne writes his book in the form of 66 a conference" between two speakers-Respire, a farmer, and Enrubie (a kind of anagram of his own name), a merchant; and divides it into Two Parts, "for the more plainnesse, ease, and delight to the reader." Our copy has a Third Part, which may have been printed after the two others.

Our reverend author strengthens his call to his English brethren in behalf of emigration, with so earnest a cry of over-population at home, that it is become no louder even in our times, although one would hardly believe it could have been raised at all in his. In his Dedication he tells his right reverend episcopal friends, that he considered, and viewed, "not without griefe of mind, and sorrow of heart, the great miserie and encumbrance of this our goodly countrie, the countrie of England, by reason of the excessive multitude of people, which therein, at that time present, did swarme and abound." He says elsewhere,

“Whereas our land even swarmeth with multitude and plentie of people, it is time, and high time, that like stalls that are overfull of bees, or orchyards overgrowne with young sets, no small number of them should be transplanted into some other soile, and removed hence into new hives and homes."

"The common, that is, the meaner sort of people, are even undone, and doe live, in respect of that they did for thirtie or fortie yeeres past, in great needinesse and extremitie; that there is neither hope, nor possibilitie of mending this evill, but in the diminution of the number of people in the land." P. 71. "The multitude that aboundeth in our land, is so exceeding great, that without great riddance, the benefit thereof at home will be little seene and lesse felt."

And again:

"Our land is not able to yeeld corne and fruit enough for the feeding of so many as now do lie and live upon it."

To the "Curteous and Christian readers," he

says:

"Bee not too much in love with that countrie wherein you were borne ; that countrie which bearing you, yet cannot breed you, but seemeth and is indeed, weary of you. Shee accounts you a burthen to her and incumbrance of her; you keepe her downe, you hurt her, and make her poore and bare, and together with your owne, you worke and cause, by tarrying within her, her misery and decay, her ruine and undoing."

There is a cry in our days that all trades and professions are overdone, and that the competition for business among craftsmen and tradesmen is so strong, as to be almost a struggle for each other's bread. So was it in Mr. Eburne's time. He says:

P. 63. "There bee so many of all trades, sciences, and occupations; that one cannot live for another. They that be workmen doe often loyter for lacke of worke, many dayes and weeks together; and when they can have worke, are faine to doe it better cheape,* then they can afford, and were wont to doe. So it is with shopkeepers, they hardly can finde any place where to set up shop, all places being already full, and overfull."

* Compare the French bon or meilleur marché. Cheap, or Saxon ceap, meant at first, price or sale.