Edinburgh Society, approved of by a General Meeting, held the 4th May 1818, and in this letter of Mr Duncan's, and both should be carefully perused by those who wish to form a decided opinion on a subject that has now become of no small importance to a large class of the population. Our former impressions, which were unfavourable to Mr Duncan's late bill, as we always are on principle to our rulers meddling with our private affairs, have, we confess, been in some degree removed by the present pamphlet, which, with a few exceptions, is distinguished throughout by good sense,candour,and ingenuity,-though not free from egotism, and some indications of the writer's soreness at the fate of his favourite measure. We are still not satisfied that there is any urgent occasion for public encouragement to Saving Banks in Scotland, nor do we see any dangers they are exposed to which Parliament should provide against; but there are certainly some inconveniences presented by our laws, some expence to be incurred, some discouragements, and possibly some counteracting influence which it is desirable to get rid of. A new law is necessary, if necessary at all, not to set the machine in motion, but by reinoving small obstructions, such as, though trivial in other cases, might be sufficient to resist or derange so novel an invention, to permit it to work with freedom and security. Whether or no Mr Duncan has ever carried his views farther, we shall not at present inquire; but there is no proof of the affirmative in the present pamphlet. Those who admit the importance of the regulations he recommends must, we think, agree with him as to the expediency of a legislative measure for procuring them. When Mr Rose's bill for the protection and encouragement of Saving Banks was before Parliament, it is well known, that its application to Scotland was successfully opposed; and that a separate bill for Scotland was brought in last Session, but did not pass. Every one knows the different circumstances of England and Scotland, which made it more necessary, or at least expedient, for Parliament to interfere in the case of the former country than of the latter. The chief of these are the English poor laws, and the want of secure places of deposit for small sums to bear interest and be payable on demand; the English bankers not commonly allowing interest on money lodged with them, as is the uniform practice of the Scottish. Still it seems almost as certain as any prospective event can be, that difficulties and discouragements will be felt in the progress of our Saving Banks, especially if the popular plan should come to be generally adopted. Mr Duncan points out these pretty fully, and reasons on them, in opposition to the Edinburgh Committee, in a manner that we suspect will not be without its weight among the lower orders. But the arguments for and against a legislative measure could not be understood by general readers without our going more into detail than our limits will permit. Several of them, too, involve questions of law, which with many would possess little interest. We must, therefore, content ourselves with referring them to the pamphlet itself, which contains a very able view of the subject. One short extract regarding the payment of deposits to the representatives of the deceased, not the least important consideration, may serve as a specimen. be desirous of devising the little store they "Many of the depositors will certainly have accumulated in the bank; all of them, sooner or latter, must die; a large proportion of them will unquestionably leave funds sufficient to render their heirs liable to the payment of the legacy duty; some of them will, as unquestionably, leave only distant relatives, whose contending claims, would, without the provisions of the bill, embarrass directors, and force them, for their own security, to demand a title by casional litigation, also, is the unavoidthe expensive process of confirmation; ocable attendant on numerous pecuniary transactions, and stamps on bonds, and extracts, and law proceedings, must follow of course. These are some of the chief occurrences which the bill regards, and the inconveniences of which it is intended to obviate; and in all this there is nothing hypothetical. Although the times and circumstances be contingent, the events themselves are as certain as if they had ac tually taken place. It is evident, therefore, that the argument on which the Edinburgh Reporters found their objection is totally inapplicable to the present case. In legislating for these necessary occurrences, Parliament will not enter the ocean without pilot or compass. Its course is clearly pointed out by the state of Society, and by uniform experience." Specimens of the British Poets; with Biographical and Critical Notices; and an Essay on English Poetry. By THOMAS CAMPBELL. In 7 vols. London, 1819. WE are disposed to welcome the appearance of any work which can have the effect of keeping the author of this one in the public eye; because his merits far surpass his reputation; and because he is much less importunate in his calls on public favour than many of his less-gifted contemporaries. To use a phrase of his own, there is no poetry of our times, or of any time, that is better "fixed in the general memory" than his. We know of none that so much deserves to be so. And yet, although what he has written is treasured up in more hearts, and become more a part of public opinion, than what has come from the pen of any other author, there is not one poet who has done so much for his age, that, for some years past, has been so little talked of. But he may well allow others to possess the gossip of the town, and provoke controversy and criticism, while every young person in the united kingdom is committing portions of his works to memory, and storing, refining, and strengthening his mind with our poet's pure and sublime productions. This is the true reward, and the highest reward which society can bestow upon genius. And poetry like Campbell's is the highest gift which genius can present to society. For these very reasons, however, it is a duty which this poet owes to his country, to present himself somewhat oftener before it; especially as the present work shows that, if he would, he could distinguish himself no less as a critic than as a poet. But with all these sentiments of respect and attachment for and to the author, it does not follow that we must necessarily approve of the present work. Our main quarrel with it is, that we have a great deal too little of his own composition; so little, indeed, that we cannot help considering this publication as an imposition, to a certain degree, on the public. The essay on English poetry is unquestionably a valuable contribution to our literature; a contribution which, from its a desty and delicacy, will not for some time perhaps be estimated as it ought; and some of the critical notices-for the deep knowledge of poetry, the exquisite sensibility to the beauties both of sentiinent and fancy, the justness of perception, and felicity in pure, simple, and yet choice expression, displayed in them, are supe rior to any thing of the kind which we have in the language. And this, when we advert to what the public have already in a distinguished periodical work, is saying more for these notices than may at first be imagined. But in point of quantity, they amount comparatively to nothing. Out of the whole seven volumes, it would not, we suspect, be possible to make half a volume. This is truly giving "the word of promise to the ear, and breaking it to the hope." What the public wanted was, not specimens of the composi tions of such poets as Pope and Thomson, but criticisms on their works, and discussions on their merits from the pen of Campbell. And although we would rather take these seven volumes entire, than want the little he has given us, we cannot help feeling as if the public were defrauded of their due. We could have seen some propriety în employing such a master in rescuing from the hand of time, some of the better specimens of the more obscure writers, whose works, as a whole, are fast sinking into oblivion; but to offer us specimens from our most popular and best established poets, is worse than an absurdity. It is loading the book with what every one has, or must have otherwise; and it is making us pay too much for knowing what portions of Milton, Cowper, and Burns, are most approved of by Campbell. Of many of these national poets the British public, we trust, will never be brought to accept of specimens: and, at any rate, the attempt to make such a corpus poetarum acceptable, is made too early by a whole century. The only rational purpose to be answered by this publication is, we think, that it may answer tolerably well for a lady's library; and if the bookseller shall succeed in making it fashionable to have these seven volumes on fashionable shelves, we can have no objection. The selections are judicious in themselves, and they are accompanied with a few gems from the most pure and sublime genius that has ever employed a lofty imagination in the affairs and affections of com mon life. But it is time now to give a specimen or two of the author we have so praised, and of the work we have so strongly censured. We take the first from the notice of COWPER. The nature of Cowper's works," says our author, "makes us peculiarly identify the poet and the man in perusing them. As an individual, he was retired and weaned from the vanities of the world; and, as an original writer, he left the ambitious and luxuriant subjects of fiction and passion, for those of real life and simple nature, and for the developement of his own earnest feelings, in behalf of moral and religious truth. His language has such a masculine idiomatic strength, and his manner, whether he rises into grace, or falls into negligence, has so much plain and familiar freedom, that we read no poetry with a deeper conviction of its sentiments having come from the author's heart; and of the enthusiasm, in whatever he describes, having been unfeigned and unexaggerated. He impresses us with the idea of a being, whose fine spirit had been long enough in the mixed society of the world to be po lished by its intercourse, and yet withdrawn 30 soon as to retain an unworldly degree of purity and simplicity. He was advanced in years before he became an author; but his compositions display a tenderness of feeling so youthfully preserved, and even a vein of humour so far from being extinguished by his ascetic habits, that we can scarcely regret his not having written them at an earlier period of life. For he blends the determination of age with an exquisite and ingenuous sensibility; and though he sports very much with his subjects, yet when he is in earnest, there is a gravity of long-felt conviction in his sentiments, which gives an uncommon ripeness of character to his poetry. "It is due to Cowper to fix our regard on this unaffectedness and authenticity of his works, considered as representations of himself, because he forms a striking instance of genius writing the history of its own secluded feelings, reflections, and enjoyments, in a shape so interesting as to engage the imagination like a work of fiction. He has invented no character in fa ble, nor in the drama; but he has left a record of his own character, which forms not only an object of deep sympathy, but a subject for the study of human nature. His verse, it is true, considered as such a record, abounds with opposite traits of severity and gentleness, of playfulness and superstition, of solemnity and mirth, which appear almost anomalous; and there is, undoubtedly, sometimes an air of moody versatility in the extreme contrasts of his feelings. But, looking to his poetry as an entire structure, it has a massive air of sin VOL. IV. cerity. It is founded in stedfast principles of belief; and, if we may prolong the architectural metaphor, though its arches may be sometimes gloomy, its tracery sportive, and its lights and shadows grotesquely crossed, yet altogether it still forms a vast, various, and interesting monument of the builder's mind. Young's works are as devout, as satirical, sometimes as merry as those of Cowper; and, undoubtedly, more witty. But the melancholy and wit of Young do not make up to us the idea of a conceivable or natural being. He has sketched in his pages the ingenious, but incongruous form of a fictitious mind-Cowper's soul speaks from his volumes." "Of all the verses that have been ever de voted to the subject of domestic happiness> those in his winter evening, at the opening of the fourth book of the Task, are perhaps the most beautiful. In perusing that scene of intimate delights," fireside enjoyments," " and home-born happiness," we lue of existence, when we recognize the seem to recover a part of the forgotten vaed, and so cheaply attainable, and find means of its blessedness so widely dispensthem susceptible of description at once so enchanting and so faithful." Our next specimen, which, if possible, is still more valuable, is from the notice of JOSEPH WARTON. "It is also true," our author remarks "that even the nobler tenets of morality are comparatively less interesting, in an insulated and didactic shape, than when they are blended with strong imitations of life, where passion, character, and situation, bring them deeply home to our attention. Fiction is on this account so far the soul of poetry, that without its aid as a vehicle, poetry can only give us morality in an abstract and (comparatively) uninteresting shape. But why does Fiction please us? surely not because it is false, but because it seems to be true; because it spreads a wider field, and a more brilliant crowd of objects to our moral perceptions, than reality affords. Morality (in a high sense of the term, and not speaking of it as a dry science) is the essence of poetry. We fly from the injustice of this world to the poetical justice of Fiction, where our sense of right and wrong is either satisfied, or where our sympathy, at least, reposes with less disappointment and distraction, than on the characters of life itself. Fiction, we may indeed be told, carries us into world of gayer tinet and grace,' the laws of which are not to be judged by solid observations on the real world. a "But this is not the case, for moral truth is still the light of poetry, and fiction is only the refracting atmosphere which diffuses it; and the laws of moral truth are as essential to poetry, as those of physical truth (Anatomy and Optics, for instance) are to painting. Allegory, narration, and the drama, make their last appeal to the ethics of the human heart. It is, therefore, unsafe to draw a marked distinction between morality and poetry, or to speak of solid observations on life, as of things in their nature unpoetical; for we do meet in poetry with observations on life, which, for the charm of their solid truth, we should exchange with reluctance for the most ingenious touches of fancy." We can afford to give only one specimen more. It is from the notice of our countryman BURNS, whom our author vindicates from the attacks of a critic, whose genius puts him on a level with almost any poet that he has yet reviewed in proof of which we might refer to his critiques on MARMION, GERTRUDE of WYOMING, MANERED, and many others. But whether our readers shall agree with us in this opinion or not, they will all assent to this, that it was as magnanimous, as it was honourable, in this distinguished critic to acknowledge, as he did very lately in a public meeting, that CAMPBELL had justly, modestly, and temperately corrected the errors and severities into which he had fallen. The remarks of our present author on this subject are these: "Burns," he says, "meets us in his compositions undisguisedly as a peasant. At the same time, his observations go extensively into life, like those of a man who felt the proper dignity of human nature in the character of a peasant. The writer of some of the severest strictures that ever have been passed upon his poetry, conceives that his beauties are considerably defaced by a portion of false taste and vulgar sentiment, which adhere to him from his low education. That Burns's education, or rather the want of it, excluded him from much knowledge, which might have fostered his inventive ingenuity, seems to be clear, but his circumstances cannot be admitted to have communicated vulgarity to the tone of his sentiments. They have not the sordid taste of low condition. It is objected to him, that he boasts too much of his own independence; but, in reality, this boast is neither frequent nor obtrusive; and it is in itself the expression of a manly and laudable feeling. So far from calling up disagreeable recollections of rusticity, his sentiments triumph, by their natural energy, over those false and fastidious distinctions which the mind it but too apt to form in allotting its sym pathies to the sensibilities of the rich and poor. He carries us into the humble scenes of life, not to make us dole out our tribute of charitable compassion to paupers and cottagers, but to make us feel with them on equal terms, to make us enter into their passions and interests, and share our hearts with them as with brothers and sisters of the human species. "He is taxed in the same place, with perpetually affecting to deride the virtues of prudence, regularity, and decency; and with being imbued with the sentimentality of German novels. Any thing more remote from German sentiment than Burns's poetry could not easily be mentioned. But is he depraved and licentious in a compre hensive view of the moral character of his pieces? The over-genial freedom of a few assuredly ought not to fix this character upon the whole of them. It is a charge which we should hardly expect to see preferred against the author of the Cotter's He is the enemy, inSaturday Night.' deed, of that selfish and niggardly spirit which shelters itself under the name of prudence; but that pharisaical disposition has seldom been a favourite with poets. Nor should his maxims, which inculcate charity and candour in judging of human frailties, be interpreted as a serious defence of them, as when he says, Then gently scan your brother man, He knows each chord, its various tone, "It is still more surprising, that a cri tic, capable of so eloquently developing the traits of Burns's genius, should have found fault with his amatory strains for want of polish, and of that chivalrous tone of gallantry, which uniformly abases itself in the presence of the object of its devotion.' Every reader must recal abundance of thoughts in his love songs, to which any attempt to superadd a tone of gallantry would not be To gild refined gold, to paint the rose, Or add fresh perfume to the violet,' but to debase the metal, and take the odour and colour from the flower. It is exactly this superiority to abasement' and polish which is the charm that distinguishes Burns from the herd of erotic songsters, from the days of the troubadours to the present time. He wrote from impulses more sincere than the spirit of chivalry; and even Lord Surrey and Sir Philip Sydney are cold and uninteresting lovers in comparison with the rustic Burns." We were also much pleased with the notices of Lillo, Thomson, Mason, Beattie, and some others; but for these we must refer our readers to the work itself. First Book of Geography for the Use of Schools and of Private Teachers. Edinburgh, 1819. THE love of innovation and experiment, by which this age is distin guished, has been in nothing more successfully displayed than in many essential improvements which it has wrought on our systems of education. Not only is the range of elementary instruction greatly extended, but our modes of teaching are much better adapted than they ever were before to the various powers of the mind. The practice of learning by rote is now nearly exploded. The pupil is considered as a being endowed with intellect, as well as with memory, and by engaging his curiosity, to lead him to the exercise of his reasoning powers, and to train him to habits of investigation, is the primary object of every enlightened teacher. To this rational mode of instruction, it may seem remarkable that the method of teaching geography has been hitherto an exception. In a country whose commercial and political relations are so various and extensive, the study of geography is of prominent importance. This, indeed, is sufficiently understood; and the very general attention which is now paid to it, may be fairly classed among the improvements in modern education. Yet in no branch of elementary instruction is less attention bestowed on the understanding of the pupils. A dry detail of the names of countries, with their respective boundaries, their mountains, rivers, and towns; a meagre outline of the solar system, and a few problems on the globes to be mechanically performed, are all that is to be found in most of our systems of geography, and all that our teachers of geography, in general, attempt. The pupil is compelled to commit to me mory whatever his respective system contains, and he doubtless acquires in this manner much valuable Knowledge. But that knowledge is conveyed in no inviting form, and neither deriving light and precision from the understanding, nor being re commended by the consciousness of any mental exertion, except the fa tiguing exercise of memory, it will be found, in general, equally vague and evanescent. The little work which has given rise to these reflections is a valuable present to all who wish to have their pupils or children instructed, on ra tional and scientific principles, in this important branch of education. It is evidently the production of a man of science, who has taken a very com prehensive and accurate view of the wide range of topics which geography embraces; and (what is at least of equal consequence) has been accus tomed to conduct the young mind in the path of investigation, and to mark the steps by which it proceeds from the simplest axioms to the most important conclusions. We are told that it was written by a father for the use of his own family, after hav ing found that none of the elementary books on the subject, within his reach, could serve the purpose he had in view." This purpose was to lead the pupil in such a manner, that, as far as is possible, he may seem to make discoveries himself, and be satisfied of the truth of what he is taught. 66 We can very confidently promise, that the work will be found, by all who choose to make the experiment, eminently conducive to this desirable end. It not only lays down an excellent plan of procedure, but suggests, from time to time, questions, hints, and observations, by which the intelligent teacher may awaken the curiosity, enliven the attention, and enlarge the views of his pupil, and thus animate him with fresh ardour at every step of his progress. The work commences with an explanation of such terms as it is necessary to employ in the course of instruction. The definitions are remarkably simple and clear, and are, besides, illustrated by suitable plates. The author then proceeds, according to the plan suggested by Rousseau, to conduct his pupil into the fields,-to direct his attention to the objects around him and at a distance,-and thus to lead him to such inquiries as may afford an opportunity of explaining to him, with effect, the real form of the earth, and the various phenomena which it exhibits. He is then prepared for observing the heavenly |