population in European Turkey at nearly one third. This may perhaps be exaggerated, but to justify such a calculation in any degree, the falling off must be very great; and we may observe that the opinions of several of the oldest merchants there, founded on the diminution in the demand for articles not only of luxury, but of prime necessity, nearly coincided with the above statement.

This view of the depopulation of the country, confirming what we incidentally learn from Mr. Galt of the scarcity of provisions; and added to what he says of the badness of the roads, and the difficulty of passing through the present seat of war, inclines us to draw conclusions altogether opposite to his, touching the probability, we do not say of the final, but of any very speedy subjugation of European Turkey. Of such an event we have no expectation until the power that undertakes the task shall bend its whole force and attention to that single object. To penetrate the country adjacent to the Danube, to overrun whatever is at no great distance from her own means of supply, has been the easy, we can hardly call it successful, warfare of Russia in the present contest. But to advance with an adequate army to the Great Balkem, to cross it with success, and pursue the road to Constantinople, would require, in every stage of the journey, the establishment of magazines, to be supplied, not from the country subdued, but from that from which the enemy set out. The only other practicable method of supply would be from the shores of the Black Sea; and to cut off this, were a Turkish fleet insufficient, there would be no great difficulty, we presume, in procuring the assistance of an English one. Nor are we without a hope, that the change which has lately taken place in our diplomatic arrangements at Constantinople may enable us to recover whatever we have lost of influence and good will; and, at no distant period, give us an opportunity of removing, by benefits conferred in the support of an ancient ally, that stain upon our character, which was incurred by the unjust and inglorious expeditions to Alexandria and the Dardanelles.

Our readers will we presume by this time be happy to be released from any farther attendance on Mr. Galt; of whom we now take leave, in the certainty that he cannot complain in our review of what he most seemed to dread,' verbal criticism;' and in the hope that he will not, without very mature consideration, visit us with another volume of travels.

ART. VI. Eighteen Hundred and Eleven. A Poem. Ay Anna Letitia Barbauld. 4to. Loudon. Johnson and Co. 1812.

UR old acquaintance Mrs. Barbauld turned satirist! The last thing we should have expected, and, now that we haveseen her satire, the last thing that we could have desired.

May we (without derogating too much from that reputation of age and gravity of which critics should be so chary) confess that we are yet young enough to have had early obligations to Mrs. Barbauld; and that it really is with no disposition to retaliate on the fair pedagogue of our former life, that on the present occasion, we have called her up to correct her exercise ?

But she must excuse us if we think that she has wandered from the course in which she was respectable and useful, and miserably mistaken both her powers and her duty, in exchanging the birchen for the satiric rod, and abandoning the superintendance of the 'ovilia' of the nursery, to wage war on the 'reluctantes dracones,' statesmen, and warriors, whose misdoings have aroused her indignant muse.

We had hoped, indeed, that the empire might have been saved without the intervention of a lady-author; we even flattered ourselves that the interests of Europe and of humanity would in some degree have swayed our public councils, without the descent of (dea ex machina) Mrs. Anna Letitia Barbauld in a quarto, upon the theatre where the great European tragedy is now performing. Not such, however, is her opinion; an irresistible impulse of public duty-a confident sense of commanding talentshave induced her to dash down her shagreen spectacles and her knitting needles, and to sally forth, hand in hand with her renowned compatriots,* in the magnanimous resolution of saving a sinking state, by the instrumentality of a pamphlet in prose and a pam phlet in verse.

The poem, for so out of courtesy we shall call it, is entitled Eighteen Hundred and Eleven, we suppose, because it was written in the year 1811; but this is a mere conjecture, founded rather on our inability to assign any other reason for the name, than in any particular relation which the poem has to the events of the last year. We do not, we confess, very satisfactorily comprehend the meaning of all the verses which this fatidical spinster has drawn from her poetical distaff; but of what we do understand we very confidently assert that there is not a topic in Eighteen Hundred and Eleven' which is not quite as applicable to 1810 or 1812, and which in our opinion, might not, with equal taste and judgment, have been curtailed, or dilated, or transposed, or omitted, without

* See Art IL

any injustice whatever to the title of the poem, and without producing the slightest discrepancy between the frontispiece and the body of the work.

The poem opens with a piece of information, which, though delivered in phraseology somewhat quaint and obscure, we are not disposed to question, namely, that this country is still at war; but it goes on to make ample amends for the flat veracity of this commonplace, by adding a statement, which startled, as much as the former assertion satisfied, our belief. Mrs. Barbauld does not fear to as. sert, that the year 1811 was one of extraordinary natural plenty, but that, with a most perverse taste.

Man called to Famine, nor invoked in vain.'

We had indeed heard that some mad and mischievous partisans had ventured to charge the scarcity which unhappily exists, upon the political measures of government :-but what does Mrs. Barbauld mean? Does she seriously accuse mankind of wishing for a famine, and interceding for starvation? or does she believe that it is in the power of this country, of what remains of independent Europe, nay, of herself, to arrest the progress of war, and, careless of what Buonaparte or his millions may be about, to beckon back peace and plenty, and to diffuse happiness over the reviving world?

But let us select a specimen of her poetry, which shall be also one of her veracity, prophecy, and patriotism. It is the description of the fallen state of this poor realm.

Thy baseless wealth dissolves in air away,

Like mists that melt before the morning ray;

No more in crowded mart or busy street,

Friends meeting friends with cheerful hurry greet.

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Yes, thou must droop; thy Midas dream is o'er,
The golden tide of commerce leaves thy shore,
Leaves thee to prove th' alternate ills that haunt
Enfeebling luxury and ghastly want.'-p. 5.

We do not know where Mrs. Anna Letitia now resides, though we can venture to assert that it is not on Parnassus: it must, however, be in some equally unfrequented, though less classical region; for the description just quoted is no more like the scene that is really defore our eyes, than Mrs. Barbauld's satire is like her 'Lessons for Children,' or her' Hymns in Prose.'

England, in her prophetic vision, is undone; soon, it seems,

By the gray ruin and the mouldering stone.'

while America is to go on increasing and improving in arts, in arms, and even, if that be possible, in virtue? Young Americans

will cross the Atlantic to visit the sacred ruins of England, just as our young noblemen go to Greece.

Then the ingenuous youth, whom fancy fires

With pictured glories of illustrious sires,

With duteous zeal their pilgrimage shall take

From the blue mountains or Ontario's lake'-p. 10.

and pay sentimental visits to Cambridge and Stratford-upon-Avon. These ingenuous' Americans are also to come to London, which they are to find in ruins: however, being of bold and aspiring dispositions,

They of some broken turret, mined by time,
The broken stair with perilous step shall climb,
Thence stretch their view the wide horizon round,
By scatter'd hamlets trace its ancient bound,

And choked no more with fleets, fair Thames survey
Through reeds and sedge pursue his idle way.'

This is a sad prospect! but while all our modern edifices are to be in such a lamentable state of dilapidation, Time is to proceed with so cautious and discriminating a step, that Melrose Abbey, which is now pretty well in ruins, is not to grow a bit older, but to continue a beautiful ruin still; this supernatural longevity is conferred upon it in honour of Mr. Scott.

But let not Mr. Scott be too proud of a distinction which he possesses in a very humble degree, compared with him, to whom belong

The Roman virtue and the Tuscan song.'

Which of the virtues, the (xal ox) Roman virtue is, Mrs. Barbauld does not condescend to inform us, nor does our acquaintance with Mr. Roscoe enable us to guess any virtue for which he is more particularly famous: so great, however, is to be the enthusiastic reverence which the American youth are to feel for him, that, after visiting the scenes which are to remind them of General Moore, Mr. Clarkson, Lord Chatham, Doctor Davy, Mr. Garrick, and Lord Nelson, they are to pay a visit,

Where Roscoe, to whose patriot breast belong
The Roman virtue and the Tuscan song,
Led Ceres to the black and barren moor,

Where Ceres never gained a wreath before'

Or, in other words, (as the note kindly informs us,) to Mr. Roscoe's farm in Derbyshire, where, less we apprehend, by the Roman virtue and the Tuscan song, than by the homely process of drainage and manuring, he has brought some hundred acres of Chatmoss into cultivation. O the unequal dispensations of this poetical providence! Chatham and Nelson empty names! Oxford and Cam

bridge in ruins! London a desert, and the Thames a sedgy brook! while Mr. Roscoe's barns and piggeries are in excellent repair, and objects not only of curiosity, but even of reverence and enthu

siasm.

Our readers will be curious to know how these prodigies are to be operated there is, it seems, a mysterious Spirit or Genius who is to do all this, and a great deal more, as we shall presently see; but who or what he is, or whence he comes, does not very clearly appear, even from the following description:

There walks a Spirit o'er the peopled earth,
Secret his progress is, unknown his birth,
Moody and viewless as the changing wind,

No force arrests his foot, no chains can bind.'-p. 17. This extraordinary personage is prodigiously wise and potent, but withal a little fickle, and somewhat, we think, for so wise a being, unjust and partial. He has hitherto resided in this country, and chiefly in London; Mrs. Barbauld, however, foresees that he is beginning to be tired of us, and is preparing to go out of town; on his departure that desolation is to take place in reality, which is so often metaphorically ascribed to the secession of some great leader of the ton.

But the same Genius has far more extensive powers even than these; he changes nature,' he absorbs the Nile,' (we had not heard of the Nile's being absorbed,) and he has of late taken it into his head to travel northward,' among the Celtic nations,' with a mercantile venture of Turkey carpets, of which speculation the immediate effects are, that the vale of Arno' and the coast of Baia' are not near so pleasant as the dykes of Batavia; that the Pontine marshes have lately become extremely unwholsone, and that Venice is no longer, as she was a short time since, the mistress of the sea. (p. 20, 21.)

This wonderful person is also so condescending as to assist us in divers little offices, in which we are hardly aware of his interference; he is the real author of Dryden's Virgil, and Middleton's Cicero, (p. 22,) he dresses light forms' in transparent muslins,' he tutors' young ladies to swell the artful note,' and he builds verandas to our balconies; he is, besides, an eminent nursery man, and particularly remarkable for acacias' and cedars,' and the 'chrystal walls' of his hothouses produce the best grapes and pines about London; (p. 23;) in short, there is nothing good, bad, or indifferent, that this Genius does not do; but, alas! good upon England he intends no longer to confer; our muslins, pines, acacias, and even our forte-pianos are in jeopardy;

For fairest flowers expand but to decay,

The worm is in thy core, thy glories fade away;