But how much it is underrated in the official returns, the following reference to official documents will shew. It is here, however, proper to remark, that this value is exclusive of freights and charges, (about one-third more,) and exclusive of the imports from, and exports to, foreign islands conquered and restored. These imports were nearly L.50,000,000. 1797-1803, declared value of Imports, Sugar, Cotton, Ditto, Ditto, by official value, every article, Difference, or under-estimated about one-half, British Produce and Manufactures exported. 1798-1802, Official value. L.70,116,020 46,114,421 L.24,001,599 Declared value. Declared value still underrated, because a convoy duty was paid, and the estimate given in low accordingly. The real exports in value were onehalf more than the value given by the official scale. Sugar imported into Great Britain. 1793-1827 Cwts. 127,619,864 Gaz. av. Value. exclusive of imports into Ireland. From 1793 to 1821, the imports from the East Indies, included in the above, were 2,878,628 cwt. value L.7,006,904. Including freights and charges, therefore, the value of imports from the West Indies from 1793 to 1827 inclusive, certainly exceed L.600,000,000, and the exports L.300,000,000. TRADE-British North America. Official value, exclusive of freights and charges; the real value was a great deal more. The value of our Colonial Trade is best shewn by the following official reference. My Lord Duke, it is-it must be -knowledge, wise laws, civilisation, capital, and industry, not terror, tyranny, and oppression, which produce the invaluable commerce, more valuable far than the mines of the precious metals in Mexico and Peru, just adverted to. You may also rely upon the following truth, namely, that the oppression and ruin of the master will never tend to advance the African savage and barbarian in the scale of civilisation; and as a British warrior and a British statesman, I would conjure your Grace to remember the counsel which Talleyrand gave to Bonaparte, when the latter sought the immedi GLASGOW, 7th January, 1830. L.50,622,426 I am, &c. JAMES M'QUEEN. MY DEAR SIR, TO CHRISTOPHER NORTH, ESQ. As you consented in so flattering a manner, to insert my desultory reminiscences of Miss O'Neill, I am emboldened to commit to your kindness the complaints of an old-fashioned mortal, on what are called the improvements of modern times. I dare swear, that if you publish my lucubrations, your readers will call me an illiberal old fellow; but, dear Mr Editor, only consider how startling must be the effect upon a quiet aged gentleman, of such rapid changes as I have lived to see in the world. Invention succeeds invention with such haste, "That unbelief has scarce a space to breathe." The face of society and of nature has actually been less changed through all the centuries that have elapsed since the Norman Conquest, than in this. Innovation is making gigantic strides, and things, that but to dream of, would have seemed insanity to our grandsires, are to us become the common elements of every-day existence. Already we wash by steam, print by steam, hatch eggs by steam, manufacture in every possible way by steam. Steam-boats startle the waves and rocks of the Swiss Cantons, and convey the fat dames of England to melt over the footsteps Your faithful, though amazed servant, COMPLAINT OF AN ANTEDILUVIAN ON THE DECAY OF THE PICTURESQUE. THE picturesque will soon vanish entirely from the dwellings and from the scenery of England. Look at yonder tight square mansion, higher than it is broad, with a very low pyramid for its roof, the bright slate of which crowns the red brick walls,even as Mrs Firkin's bonnet of blue forms the capital to her scarlet pelisse! You behold, alas! a fair sample of nine-tenths of our present houses. In the meantime, the venerable relics of our forefathers' taste and magnificence are daily removed, to make way for the upstart excrescences of modern meanness. Possessed with a rage, alike to create and to destroy, we multiply deformity, and blot out all beauty, until scarce an object remains to reward the indefatigable searchings of a Syntax. Turn to what yet remains to us, in some remote and happy Goshen, of our primeval architecture. How beautiful are all its forms,-how congenial to the painter's art! Its very humblest work is as much embued with an imaginative spirit as its noblest. How admirably an old cottage, with its pointed gables, twisted chimneys, and carved porch, harmonises with the varied outlines of nature! I allow that its colouring, mellowed by time, its vines and mosses, which make it appear rather a spontaneous production of the earth, than a structure raised by man, contribute in no small degree towards its picturesque effect. But then one may ask, can even Time, the beautifier, consecrate yonder teacaddy of a cottage, or, except by an entire process of decay, prevent its 、 f stiff proportions from injuring the surrounding landscape? An old market-cross still pleases the eye from a distance, even through its coat of parochial white-wash; but nothing short of an absolute pall of ivy could render bearable the square brick column with a pine apple at the top, to make room for which the noblest oak in our vicinage, which had been for centuries the village play-room, and the traveller's hospitium, was destroyed root and branch. If we rise to the domestic architecture of antiquity, we shall still find the same broken outline, and variety of form, repeated on a larger scale-ever beautifulever harmonious; while the "hovels of a larger growth," namely, the country mansions of our own day, in preserving their resemblance to the modern cottage, do but magnify the defects of a vicious system, and glare upon the eye,-ever frightful-ever out of place. How well does the nobleman's house of Queen Elizabeth's time crown some rising ground, and peer above its coeval woods! The projecting buttresses, and irregular gables, finely vary its lights and shades, and forbid that any front of it should be ever one glare of sunshine, as is the citizen's box, 66 with windows in a blaze, Beneath a July sun's collected rays." And here let me observe, in order to vindicate the wisdom, as well as the taste, of our ancestors, that these same gables are of real unromantic service in our variable climate; for they break the violence of the unruly winds, which rock old November upon his cloudy throne, and temper the heat of summer, by opposing so many surfaces to the action of the elements. They also give great stability to the building, which, being broken into separate portions, can never decay all at once. The ruin of one part may still leave another habitable; while, if one rafter in our single-jointed roofs were to give way, I would risk very little upon the safety of any head in any part of the dwelling beneath, unless indeed (as might very well be) the skull were thicker than the walls. If you would know the superiority of ancient palaces over those of modern date, go and survey that mighty pile which lives for ever in the description of Burke, as "the proud Keep of Wind sor, rising in the majesty of proportion, and girt with the double belt of its kindred and coeval towers;" and then turn to behold the finest edifice which the taste, the wealth, the genius of our age can construct for its monarch. Advancing higher still, let us compare the religious edifices of our forefathers with our own.-A Cathedral!-What a stupendous piece of work is a cathedral! The mind can scarcely grasp it. The gorgeous richness of detail; the noble simplicity of effect; the infinite variety of decoration; the wonderful unity of purpose; the lavish invention, which seems to riot in its own exhaustless and spendthrift profusion, crowning every column with a different wreath, and enriching every window with new tracery-who can behold these wonders without exclaiming, "There were giants in those days!" Truly the march of mind is not that of imagination. A poverty of creative ge nius characterises all our edifices, and of no kind more than our churches. Copies of Grecian, copies of Dutch, copies of Saracenic architecture meet our eye-but always copies; and by their minute proportions (especially in the attempted Gothic) they forfeit all the excellence which a faithful imitation would possess. Even the last century puts ours to shame, for, though I cannot admire the mixture of impure Grecian, and heavy German, which came over to us with the House of Hanover, still there is a solidity about the buildings of that period, which bespeaks a more sterling generation. In that day, men yet built for their sons, grandsons, and great-grandchildren-we only build for ourselves; yet in this we certainly shew wisdom-that making our edifices hideous, we also make them perishable. The principal feature (if it have any feature) of the present style of architecture, is a servile adherence to the Grecian school. We err greatly in this, for there is nothing classical about us. The new gateway into Hyde Park (beautiful, I allow, in itself,) is a perpetual satire on the forms that trip or lounge through it. Women in seduisantes, and men in moleskin trowsers, make but a bad basement to the battle of the Lapitha and Centaurs. The architectural vagaries of China would assort better with the genius It of the place. But if we wish to consult the genius of our cloudy clime, we should adhere to the dark and solid towers, the massive pillars, and vaulted roofs of Saxon or Gothic origin. The loveliest Grecian temple, could it be transported hither by Aladdin's lamp, from its own Athenian groves, would less embellish our metropolis, than be itself disfigured by its new situation. should be backed by cypress trees, or by a cerulean sky, not by sooty elms and a November fog. Above all, a Grecian edifice should be erected where it could be kept clean. A Gothic building may bear to have its frowning aspect still further darkened by the smoke of a city-but the sooty hue is destructive to the beauty of a classical structure, one of whose greatest charms is purity of colour, and whose native tints the hand of Time alone can successfully enrich or vary; for example, which has suffered least from the application of London blacking Westminster Abbey, or St Paul's? The latter, with its sculptured loops of dingy flowers, looks like a lady in an old court dress that wants scouring the former resembles a giant of the preadamite world, clad in a majestic robe of darkness-and who but a churchwarden would think of white-washing it? Believe me, by the comparison of the two buildings, I intend no disrespect to the ghost of Sir Christopher Wren, who, notwithstanding his diminutive name, had the spirit of an eagle. St Paul's is, undoubtedly, a fine fabric, even from its size-for, without a pun, size is a great constituent of sublimity. Were its proportions less exquisite than they are, still their very vastness would command astonishment; for the same shape which disgusts in a pig, looks noble in an elephant. Seen from afar, the dome of our metropolitan cathedral rears itself aloft, the Chimborazo of London's congregated spires;-yet few could feel, on a near view, the same sensation of awe which a sight of Westminster Abbey is calculated to inspire. Notwithstanding all that later ages have done to injure the effect of this magnificent pile,-the wretched church immediately in front, wherewith men have dared to cramp its wide circumference-the gilt clock and vile Grecian ornaments on the western tower-Westminster Abbey still remains one of the grandest objects that can fill the eye and soul. Who can behold it, and not feel that he stands in the presence of a fragment of an earlier and a colossal world? When we look at structures such as this, the mind enquires with astonishment—who were the architects of the era that produced them? How could they die and leave no name behind? Was, then, Imagination, in the lusty youth of Science, a dower as common as the light and air? Did there exist a master-mind, the Michael-Angelo of its compeers, to create and harmonize the elements of grandeur and of beauty;—or, were the very builders touched with fire from Heaven? Survey throughout Britain the broken shreds, which barbarians have suffered to remain, of a period which they call barbarous-the cathedrals-the castles-the ancient houses-the carved work in stone, and the carved work in wood-must it not have required thousands-yea, tens of thousands-of minds as well as of hands, to have devised such glorious specimens of human power? Is the mould in which such intellects were cast, utterly broken? Or what mean the hideous and flimsy fabrics reared by the descendants of such wondrous beings? A solution of the riddle has the Roman Catholic religion exerbeen sought in the influence which cised at that period. Each individual, concerned in the erection of working out a part of his own salvaa sacred edifice, felt that he was tion, and hence the mighty result responded to the mighty motive. Besides, it may be suggested that the able to the production and growth fables of superstition were favourabove all, that the habit of moneyof a wild and exuberant fancy, and, getting had not as yet confined the thoughts to one mean track. Men laboured for another world rather than known by its fruits, there was in the for this; and, if the tree be indeed devotion of that time a fervour and sincerity, which, whether our own displays at the present period, it may be as well not over curiously to enquire. These reasons, however, do the causes of the amazing superiority not, I confess, satisfy my mind as to |