is laid on the pavement in front of the prison, and is allowed to remain there till claimed or recognised by relations or acquaintances; and, therefore, those alone who have occasion to pass the place of exposure early in the morning, know how often a murder is com. mitted.

• This depraved and lawless state of things may be ascribed to three causes; the inefficiency of the police,-the love of gaming and dissipation that prevails among the lower orders,-and the facility with which absolution of the greatest crimes can be obtained from those to whom the people are taught to intrust their consciences and spiritual concerns. In fact, the Catholic religion, as it now exists in Cuba, tends to encourage, rather than to check vice. We shall suppose, for example, that a man makes himself master of one hundred dollars by robbing or by murdering another, and that the church grants him absolution for half the sum thus lawlessly obtained, it is evident that he will gain fifty dollars by the whole transaction, and think himself as innocent as he was before he committed the crime. The negligence of the police enables four fifths of the offenders to escape detection; and no man need mount the Havana scaffold, whatever be his crime, if he has the means of ministering to the rapacity of the church, and of bribing the civil authorities. A poor, friendless criminal is executed a few days after sentence is pronounced upon him; but a person of wealth and influence generally manages to put off capital punishment for a series of years, and at last to get it commuted to fine or imprisonment.'

Three instances of this kind came to the Writer's knowledge while in Cuba. In one case, two girls were found guilty of having murdered their mother under circumstances of the deepest atrocity, were condemned to death, and the day was twice fixed for their execution; but their uncle, by paying large sums to the church, succeeded in deferring each time their execution, and at length he found means to persuade the civil authorities to let them escape. A Spaniard who had murdered a priest for carrying on a criminal correspondence with his wife, was condemned to death, but, by means of bribery, succeeded in delaying his execution for more than two years. At length, his funds being exhausted, he was hurried to the scaffold. The third case was that of a mulatto whose execution Mr. Howison witnessed. He had been found guilty of murder seven years before, but, by occasionally paying money to the church, had obtained a series of respites, till at length, bis resources were exhausted, and the priests resigned him to the executioner.

This frightful picture of the moral state of society, receives a finishing touch in the following paragraph.

• It is evident that, however interesting the objects with which a man is surrounded may be, he will overlook them all if he is aware VOL. XXIII. N.S.

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that his life is in danger. Therefore, most foreigners, on arriving in Havana, think more about the yellow fever than any thing else. The fatal effects of this disease are forced upon their attention so frequently, and in so many different ways, that none but those who possess a large share of philosophical coolness can regard its ravages with indifference. At the boarding-house, a man seldom sits down at table without perceiving that one or two of the usual party are absent. If he inquires for them, he is told that they lie dangerously ill, and in the course of next meal probably receives intelligence of their dissolution or burial. Those who have resided long in Havana hear things of this kind without the slightest discomposure, and sometimes even pass jokes upon the subject; for a consciousness of their own security, makes them careless about the danger to which others are exposed; while, at the same time, a fansiliarity with sudden death renders its awfulness comparatively unimpressive.

• The proximate causes of the yellow fever have not as yet been correctly ascertained, and therefore it is difficult to explain why this epidemic should prevail so much in Havana. The city is indeed filled and surrounded with sources of disease. The streets are badly aired and odiously dirty; the water is obnoxious to the eye and to the taste, and the harbour forms a receptacle for the innumerable impurities which are daily thrown from four or five hundred vessels of all descriptions and sizes. The miasmata arising from such a quantity of putrescent materials, conjoined with the scorching heat of the sun, soon operate upon a European constitution, and produce the most fatal consequences. Two-thirds of the crew of a ship, recently come into port, often fall victims to the yellow fever in the course of a few days. Those who escape the first attack of the disease are generally exempted from a second, unless they leave Havana, and return to it after residing some months in a northern climate. The Protestants who die in Cuba are not allowed interment among Catholics; and therefore the hotel-keeper already mentioned has a burying ground of his own, in which the bodies of the English and Americans are deposited; however, within these few years past, the mortality has been so great that the premises have become rather small, and the corners of the piles of coffins, which occupy every part of them, may be seen projecting through the earth.'

These same British and Americans, with whom the higher classes of Spaniards seldom or ever associate, are describedas for the most part uneducated adventurers leading a very contemptible sort of life. There is something attractive and amusing to a foreigner fresh from Europe, in the novel and varied habits, costume, and manners of the motley population ; but the disagreeable features of the place, soon force themselves on his attention. He finds round him, a debased * state of society, a pestilential atmosphere, an unprincipled

and hypocritical priesthood, and a dissolute, atrocious popu* lace;' curiosity soon yields to disgust, and he becomes anxi

ous to escape from a spot in which physical and moral evil personified in their most dreadful forms, seem the very demons that wait on avarice, the master demon who holds his court in this infernal capital.

That the Spaniards should be expelled from Cuba, is at all events ardently to be desired by every friend of humanity. The island, from its geographical position, would seem to belong naturally to Mexico. Humboldt supposes that it originally formed part of the peninsula of Yucatan, and that it was separated by some great physical convulsion. As an island, however, it would require to be rather under the protection of some maritime power, which the Mexican Republic is not likely to become. Colombia, who is pushing her frontier towards the North, and already lays claims to great part of the Mosquito coast, stands in the nearest political relation to Cuba. On the other hand, the merchants of New Orleans are closely bound in commercial ties to those of the Havana. Were Great Britain to become possessed of this fine island, what could she do with the four hundred priests and a slave population dangerous alike in bondage and in freedom? We have already enough on our hands in the West Indies. Time will resolve the problem.

The other contents of Mr. Howison's first volume are entitled, Life at Sea; Boarding-house Recollections; a Journey in the Deckan; Two Days at the Cape of Good Hope ; and a Voyage from Havana to New Providence. The first of these articles is extremely well managed, and has interested us highly by the almost dramatic spirit which pervades it. The least edifying or entertaining portion of a volume of travels is, in general, that which details the log-book memoranda of a voyage. The writer is then going out, perhaps for the first time, full of curiosity and ignorance, and is unable to analyze even his own sensations. The description which Mr. Howison gives of a life at sea,' is evidently written by an old traveller. We shall make room for his description of a sun-set at sea.

• Sunrise, sunset, and moonlight, constitute some of the most interesting modifications of ocean-scenery. The first, however, seldoin displays much beauty or variety; for, at a distance from land, the great luminary in general emerges upon an unclouded horizon, and, therefore, nothing but a glare of light attends his appearance on the brow of the morning. With sunset, it is quite the reverse. In almost every dissimilar climate and different sea, the celestial phenomena that accompany the departure of day, vary in their character, and assume different aspects. I am far from thinking that sunset, as seen at sea, can ever equal what it is on shore, where mountains, valleys, forests, rivers, and ruins, clad in the glorious investments

of evening, and mutually heightening the individual effect of each other, dazzle the eyes and mind of the beholder, and make the scene excite emotions as numerous and diversified as the objects thatcompose it. But, in the midst of the ocean, the exhibition has a more abstract kind of magnificence, and, from the absence of all terrestrial features and associations, more ideality.

Perhaps the finest sunsets of any take place in the West India seas during the rainy season. In the morning, the horison is encircled by a range of clouds, the masses of which gradually increase in magnitude till noon. They then become motionless and unchang. ing, and float indolently in the overpowering fervour of day; but when the sun has declined considerably, new masses start up from the place at which he will set, as if to prepare for his reception. After he sinks behind them, he remains for a little time completely shrouded; but the obscuring volumes are at length divided by a chasm, through which a magnificent burst of splendour flashes forth with startling rapidity. Every flake now rolls away from before him, and his orb, dilated into glorious magnitude, pouring floods of golden light, and sublimely curtained with clouds of the most dazzling tints, throws a parting smile upon the ocean, whose mirrored bosom placidly receives the radiant gift, and reflects back the whole celestial pageantry with a chaste and tempering mellowness. But as the moment of dipping approaches, the sun's glare falls unequally upon the gigantic clouds, and lights them with gorgeous dyes on one side, while they remain black, portentous, and pregnant with thunder on the other, and seem to await, with lurid impatience, the time when their controlling luminary will disappear, and leave them to burst into tempest, and discharge their pent-up wrath upon the bosom of night; at last he sinks below the horizon, and darkness almost instantaneously involves both ocean and sky.

Sunset, as seen in the Southern Atlantic, has a more sober magnificence than in the West India seas. The clouds are equally bril liant in colour, but are less fantastically arranged; the light is nearly as vivid, but has not the tropical glare and fierceness just described; and the reflection upon the sea is quite as beautiful, but not so dazzling and extensive.

The most lovely and impressive sunset I ever witnessed, took place at the mouth of the St. Lawrence, where the river is thirty miles wide. I was on board ship, and we lay in the middle of the majestic stream, the surface of which was perfectly calm, and apparently without current. Several vessels had anchored within a mile of our station, and the sound of the voices and rattling of cordage, which occasionally proceeded from them, were the only vibrations that agitated the air. A number of belugas, or white whales, sported silently on the still expanse around us, raising their backs gradually above it, in the form of a snowy crescent, and then gliding downwards with graceful smoothness and elegance. On one side, the dreary coast of Labrador, lightened by the glow of sunset into an appearance of richness and verdure, occupied the horizon, and, on the other, the barren mountains of the American coast were dimly

visible. Before us we traced the windings of the St. Lawrence, and saw them studded with islands, and narrowing into more intense beauty, until they were lost amidst the recesses of accumulated hills and forests. The sun was setting serenely on a land of peace,-a land which was calling the children of misery to her bosom, and offering them the laughing joys of ease and plenty. We were in the midst of the most magnificent of nature's works, these appearing still more magnificent from our having seen nothing but ocean and sky for many preceding weeks. We had just entered the gates of a new world, and it was impossible to view the glorious sunset which illumed its skies, without mingled emotions of awe, gratitude, and exultation.

• Sunset in the East Indies is as deficient in grandeur, gloriousness, and impressive magnificence, as is the country in which it takes place, The horizon is usually cloudless, and the sun, even when about to disappear, emits a glare and heat nearly as concentrated and scorching as he does at noonday. He is not encircled with orient colours and fanciful forms, nor tempered by kindly vapours, but descends in all the unadorned and unattractive simplicity that characterizes the face of nature in the eastern tropics.

• But where, after all, shall we find sunsets equal to British ones? where such serenely beautiful horizons-such rich and varied dyes such mellowness of light-such objects to be irradiated by it, and evenings so happily adapted for contemplating them? The mixture of fierceness and gloom in a West India sunset call to mind the coarseness of the people there, and the implacable deadliness of the climate. The milder glories of one in the Southern Atlantic can be enjoyed at sea only where every thing else is unpleasing. The effect of a similar scene in America is injured by the want of objects of antiquity, and of the lofty associations connected with them; and, in India, the tropical glare attending the departure of day, forces us to imprison ourselves while it is taking place, and to remember that we are in exile. A British sunset alone excites no regretful ideas ; its placid beauty is heightened by that of the scenery

which it embellishes, while the quiet imagery of its horizon, and the softness of the succeeding twilight, are characteristic of the undisturbed peace and domestic happiness that have their dwelling-place in that land upon which the shadows of night always steal softly and unobtrusively."

Vol. I. pp. 32–37. The contents of the second volume are, Life in India ; Foreign Adventure ; the Cantonment of Seroor; the Delinquent. Of Life in India, Mr. Howison draws a very dark and gloomy picture ; and he is aware that it will convey a very unfavourable impression of the country. But we are by no means disposed to suspect that the description is overcharged. He visited Bombay, he tells us, under the impresssion that it was the seat of wealth, splendour, fashion, and extravagance, but a stroll upon its esplanade dissipated the illusion. I believe;' he says, 'there are few English watering-places of the third