Britons should so soon divest themselves of prejudices, which they had thought to be not only hereditary, but inherent in our nature. 'We left Canton the 27th December, and on our return refreshed at the Cape of Good Hope, where we found a most friendly reception. After remaining there five days, we sailed for America, and arrived in this port on the 11th instant.

'To every lover of his country, as well as those more immediately concerned in commerce, it must be a pleasing reflection, that a communication is thus happily opened between us and the extremity of the globe; and it adds very sensibly to the pleasure of this reflection, that the voyage has been performed in so short a space of time, and attended with the loss of only one man. To Captain Green and his officers every commendation is due, for their unwearied and successful endeavors in bringing it to this most fortunate issue, which fully justifies the confidence reposed in them, by the gentlemen concerned in the enterprise.

'Permit me, Sir, to accompany this letter with the two pieces of silk, presented to me by the Fuen of Canton, as a mark of his good disposition towards the American nation. In that view, I consider myself as peculiarly honored, in being charged with this testimony of the friendship of the Chinese for a people, who may, in a few years, prosecute a commerce with the subjects of that empire, under advantages equal, if not superior, to those enjoyed by any other nation whatever.

'I have the honor to be, &c.

'SAMUEL SHAW.'

We take this opportunity, in passing, to notice an assertion of the British Quarterly Review, which we believe to be incorrect, relative to an unfortunate occurrence, on board an American ship at Canton. The following is the remark to which we allude:

'From the moment that our violation of the Chinese law is of such a nature, as to drive the Chinese government to the extreme measure of seizing the persons of the offending parties, the die is cast, and we fear that hostilities will become inevitable. The last instance of the kind, that occurred, was in 1784, when one of the supercargoes of a private ship was seized to answer for homicide, and subsequently, after a good deal of blustering and preparations for commencing hostilities, was redeemed, by the surrender of another individual, equally innocent, though of an humbler station. Much as we regret the probability of a rupture with the Chinese, we fervently hope that we may never see it averted by such another disgraceful compromise, which has only for its parallel, one made by the Americans a very few years ago, when an innocent Italian was given up to be strangled,

to save the life, (it has never been denied,) of a guilty Ameri

can.'*

How the learned writer knows that this statement has 'never been denied,' we are unable to say. We suppose he means, that it has never been denied in his hearing. We will not undertake now positively to deny it, but we are informed, on what we deem the best authority, that the statement in the Quarterly Review is wholly incorrect;-and that the Italian taken out of an American ship, fourteen or fifteen years ago, by the Chinese authorities, was unquestionably the author of the homicide, for which, (under the law of China) he suffered. Whether, as was stated on his behalf, the homicide was purely accidental, we do not know; and supposing it to have been so, Heaven forbid we should justify his execution under the Chinese Law. But as a question in the Law of Nations and casuistry, it would bear an argument, whether the United States could rightfully go to war against the Chinese, for administering their own laws on persons voluntarily coming within their jurisdiction. The Quarterly Reviewer seems to lean to the affirmative of that question.

In the same volume, from which we quote the foregoing letter, may be found two or three other long letters from Mr. Shaw, written the following winter from Canton, on his return to that place, containing an admirable sketch of the condition of the trade with China at that time. We regret that we can only refer to them.

The fifth and sixth volumes of this work exhibit the same marks of inadvertence, in preparing the materials, of which we have spoken in reference to the former volumes. Thus the letters of Mr. Barclay, contained in the third volume, pages 128 and 141, are repeated in the fifth, at pages 412 and 418. In the sixth volume, Sir John Temple's letter is repeated, page 7, from volume IV, page 404. In the same volume a letter of Count Florida Blanca is repeated, page 127, from a former volume. At page 183, volume VI, a letter of General Lafayette is given, which is contained in the Diplomatic Correspondence of the Revolution, volume X, page 30. M. Rayneval's memoir, relative to the Western boundary of the United States, which appears in the Diplomatic Correspondence of the Revolution, volume VIII, page 156, is repeated in the present work, volume VI, page 189. The letter of R. H. Lee

* London Quarterly Review, Vol, L, p. 462.

to the King of Spain, and one of Mr. Jay to the Count Florida Blanca, are given twice in the sixth volume. The editorship of the seventh volume is decidedly superior to that of most of its predecessors.

These imperfections are blemishes in the work; but its substantial value, as a repository of important historical documents, remains unimpaired. It completes the series of publications made at the public expense, in pursuance of the joint Resolution of March 27th, 1818. The preceding works, published under the same Resolution, are the Journal of the Convention which formed the Constitution, the Secret Journal of the old Congress for foreign affairs, their Secret Domestic Journal; and the Diplomatic Correspondence of the Revolution. The papers remaining in the archives of State yet unpublished, from this important period of our history, will find a place in the work of Messrs. Clarke and Force, just commencing under the auspices of Congress; and those of the period since the adoption of the Constitution are contained in the great collection of Messrs. Gales and Seaton. Of this important and valuable work seven volumes in folio have already appeared, and to these, and the volumes which may succeed them in the same publication, we may perhaps, on a future occasion, invite the attention of our readers.

ART. III.-The Italian Drama.

Tragedie di Alessandro Manzoni, Milanese, Il Conte di Carmagnola e l'Adelchi, aggiuntevi le poesie varie dello stesso, ed alcune prose sulla Teorica del Dramma tragico. Parigi. 1826.

Tragedies by Alexander Manzoni of Milan, entitled, The Count of Carmagnola and the Adelchi: to which are added miscellaneous poems, and some remarks on the theory of the tragic drama by the same author.

THE Moderns have separated the useful from the beautiful, and have placed in the class of superfluities many of those enjoyments, which the wisest amongst the ancients considered as essential to the well-being and happiness of mankind. Little of the poetry of life remains to us. The wells in the

desert are unheeded, or dried up. The traveller in his progress may hear the sound of the harp and the viol, but they no longer accompany him to cheer his journey. We are invited, like Hercules, to choose between virtue and pleasure, as if they were incompatible, and all which cannot be proved necessary is considered as useless and cumbersome, as were the pomps and pageantries which accompanied the march of the Persian Darius. Yet the roses still bloom in our valleys, and the wild-flower wastes its fragrance on the barren moor; and no one is tempted to marvel at the lavish prodigality of nature, which has thus thrown a charm over the most dreary

scene.

Is it that the mind of man has become more truly elevated, so that he justly regards with scorn the puerilities which enchanted his forefathers, or is it that the arts themselves have been degraded from their high places, and employed for purposes less exalted, less noble and refined? that the cups of the Temple have been used in profane sacrifices?

Among the ancient Greeks, music, poetry and dancing, formed a part of religion, were employed with a moral and political view, were studied by sages, and inculcated by legislators. Tragic authors sacrificed on the tomb of Eschylus. Poets appeared in public, a lyre in their hand, and crowned with laurel, the objects of superstitious veneration. The Athenian child received his first instructions in verse, performed his first movement to the sound of music, and was surrounded from infancy by the most beautiful productions of sculpture. At the theatre, he received an impression of all the arts combined in one brilliant and harmonious whole. There, the splendid choruses, that superb blending of poetry and music,-the dresses and dances, in strict unison with the gravity and sublimity of the subject,-the mighty multitude, breathless with admiration, or transported with enthusiasm, or shuddering with horror, as the virtues, or the sufferings, or the glorious deeds of their godlike heroes were successively represented before them, must have produced an effect, in comparison with which that of any modern drama is necessarily feeble.

In the time of Aristotle, the author and the people, to whom the Greeks were indebted for the invention of Tragedy, were unknown. But all the religious ceremonies of Paganism were of a dramatic nature. At the festivals, held in honor of the gods and their immortal progeny, their different adventures were represented by dances, and verses accompanied with

music. The sorrows and maternal anxiety of Ceres, when she wandered through the world in search of her daughter, -the grief of Venus for the loss of Adonis,-her joy at his restoration to life, but above all, the adventures of the joyous god of wine,-his victories,-his descent into hell,formed inexhaustible themes for representation. The wild Bacchante, and the attendant train of fauns and satyrs, in their grotesque and hideous grouping, were well fitted for scenic effect. The poets were divided into two classes,those who sang the praises of the gods, and those who indulged in raillery at the follies of men. Hence the distinction between heroic and iambic verse; while the heroic poets were again divided into epic, sententious, and lyric.

The epic poem shadows forth the past,-the dramatic poem brings us face to face with grey antiquity. The Homeric epic,' says Schlegel, 'is, in poetry, what half-raised workmanship is in sculpture, and tragedy the distinctly separated group.' Homer may be justly regarded as the Father of Tragedy. His poem was like the fabled Pactolus, throwing on the shore its golden treasures, to be collected in precious heaps by passing generations.

Tragedy, in its origin, was a sacred hymn, sung and danced in honor of Bacchus;-so that Epigenes, having brought forward a Tragedy, of which the subject bore no relation to that god, the astonished spectators exclaimed-There is nothing there which concerns Bacchus!" A remark which afterwards passed into a proverb, applicable to those who treated of any matter foreign to the proposed question. The scene was at the entry of a Temple or Palace, or in the midst of some public place. It passed between the first persons of the state, and was of a nature to interest the whole body of the people. These were represented by the Chorus, composed, as in the Edipus of Sophocles, of the wisest and oldest men of the state. As they never left the stage, unity of place was necessary to probability.

Thespis being forbidden by Solon to represent his pieces in Athens, or, as the legislator expressed it, to tell falsehoods. before so many honest men,'- he and his troupe traversed the country in a chariot, after the fashion of modern strolling companies, their travelling equipage serving them for a stage. Then Phrynicus, the pupil of Thespis, first introduced female characters, and in his day, notwithstanding the rude state of