this author does throughout his book, the higher classes with the nation. There are too many circumstances of dissimilarity between them, honourable to the English nation, and not quite so much so to the titled and very wealthy class of English subjects (a vile term) to permit us to speak of them without discrimination. But, à nos moutons. The English, from the time of Charles I. to the present day, live chiefly on beef, mutton, poultry, and game, roasted or boiled in large joints, en gros morceaux. Their grillés are confined to a beef-steak and a mutton-chop. Soups are not yet, or were not in fashion: vegetables and bread, were meagre portions of the dinner. After the remove of meats, puddings and pies of the most inveterate and indigestible composition, were always introduced "With a pudding on Sundays and stout humming liquor, says the facetious Walter Pope, in the time of Charles II. Their beverage was beer or ale at table, and, since the Methuen treaty, port wine after dinner which the majority in England would at this day prefer to claret. In England, (Great-Britain,) the dinner is not regarded as the principal article of the entertainment. It lasts an hour and a half, and every one rejoices when the wine is set on the table, and the stream of conversation among the male guests comes on in full flow. After the second glass, the ladies retire. Formerly, and indeed, until the last twenty-five years, wine after dinner was taken in quantities that did no service to the health or the intellect. Secretary St. John, Lord Bolingbroke, deferred a matter of business that was appointed for a particular day, because he recollected, he should be "exceedingly drunk" on that day. The French eat what the English eat, and they eat besides, frogs, snails, morells, and truffles. Mushrooms were not uncommon in England, but far from being general. The articles of French food are drily enumerated and discussed in the work entitled "Coutúmes du Peuple,” in three volumes. The French cook no large joints: their food is dressed grillé, a la braze, stewed, fricasseed, ragoued, with a thousand variations. The English cookery is all au naturel: they depend on the flavour of the meat itself; the French on the artificial flavour of their sauces, condiments, and piquant additions. The French kitchen is furnished chiefly with small brick stoves, and brazieres, or moveable stoves; the English with enormous fires. "Yours is a most desirable profession," said James Quin, the epicure and actor, to a cook, standing before one of the large kitchen fires of an English tavern, "when you go to the other world, you may set the devil at defiance." The English make use of stone-coal: the French, altogether, of charcoal. The French carry their knives in their pockets, and eat with a four-pronged silver fork in their right hand. They cut up their meat with their pocket knife, if cutting be necessary. The poorest peasant has his silver fork, his silver spoon, his separate tumbler, and napkin laid beside his plate. The English use their steel knives and forks, and both equally; both changed with their plate. These are necessary to cut and take up the hard pieces of their large joints. Hence, silver is much more common in France than in England. Hence, as the French used stone-coal only since the peace of Amiens, or thereabouts, large joints could not be dressed in a French kitchen with convenience: while ragouts, stews and fricassees were not in harmony with the dreadful coal fires of an English kitchen. The English entertainment, is the after dinner conversation. The French is the dinner itself, and the conversation during a meal of three hours or more. The French drink all their wine at dinner, and always in moderation. The English, after diuner, not always in moderation. At a French table, the entertainer sits opposite the lady of the house, at the middle of the table: the English at each end. After the cloth is removed and the dinner over, the French, with the ladies, adjourn to conversation and coffee. The English sit down doggedly to politics and the bottle. The great difference of the customs of the two nations in eating, has arisen chiefly from the use of stone-coal, introduced in England, by Becher, the German chemist, in the reign of James I. and Charles I., which, from the plenty of this kind of fuel, made large fires cheap, and enabled large joints to be easily dressed. It is but of late days, comparatively, that stone-coal has become common in France: hence the necessity of economising their charcoal fuel, and the impossibility of having the large joints of the English, even if the national taste permitted them. Hence, also, the superiority of English cutlery; and of English breeds of cattle. All, in our opinion, dependent on stone-coal or this fuel enables large joints to be cooked: and large joints proceed from large cattle: and the demand for large cattle leads to improvements in the breed. "Your sheep are so fat, (said a nobleman to Mr. Bakewell, the cattle-breeder,) that nobody can eat them." "If the nobility, my Lord, cannot eat fat, their tenants and labourers know the value of it," said Bakewell, and most truly. The author before us treats, throughout his sketch, rather on the character of kings and courtiers, and women of quality, of unchaste and dissolute conduct, than on the real character of the great mass of population, whether of the metropolis or the country. We do not find sufficient authority for attributing to the nation the character of the court. Kings, nobility, and men of great wealth, can gain as much consideration in society as they need, and far more than they ought, without acquiring the vulgar attainments of knowledge-learning, uprightness of conduct and affability of manners. Men, without wealth, must depend, of necessity, on their knowledge and their moral conduct. Where strong motives to exertion do not operate, the qualifications they introduce will seldom or never be found: where they do, the conduct will be conformable. Every man's maniere d'étre depends on his natural propensities in part, and in part on the motives that are calculated to lead or direct them, and to influence his conduct. The middle classes every where, are industrious, worthy, honest, conjugal people. It is their interest, upon the whole, to be so. Toward the close of his work, the writer indulges in a long but just tirade against the character and conduct of that very base and detestable man, Dean Swift: he criticises quite, á l'Anglois, the character of the French Revolution of 1793, and gives us a disquisition on Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox. All this relates to British politics: these politicians influenced the politics and politicians of their own time, but no one else. The private life of both these men did them infinite discredit. The French Revolution is treated with much harshness, more Anglicano. The author is a moderate whig, by political profession, strongly imbued with John Bullism, and appears in the full, fashionable costume of political orthodoxy. About all this we have nothing to say, except that a man must read history with a very dull apprehension, who can doubt for a moment, that the faults of the revolution of 1793, were faults that resulted from the depravity of manners introduced, cherished, protected, fostered by a long series of royal and aristocratic debauchees and despots, from Louis XIII. to Louis XVIII. Nor is it now any longer a dubious fact, that many of the atrocities that took place during that revolution, were incited, urged on, and paid for, by British gold. The greater the excesses of the French, the better arguments were afforded to the Pittites and the Burkeites, for abusing the revolution and the principles on which it was founded. Those principles were propounded indeed, and acted on, in company with acts disgraceful to the nation and to human nature: but these acts resulted from the long, long years of governmental abuse; from the vicious influence of courts and courtiers, and their panegyrists, on a nation kept in ignorance; and had nothing to do with the principles themselves. Those principles were equally the basis of the revolution of America in 1776, of the revolution of France in 1793, and the revolution so gloriously conducted in France within the past month, and which has driven Charles X. from a throne which he so unworthily filled. Nor have we any scruple to express our wish that these same principles of the sovereignty of the people, and the right of resistance to unconstitutional acts of usurpation, may ere long become the basis of a revolution in every country upon earth, where the people deserve freedom because they know how to use it. At the close of this review, it is no small gratification to be assured, as we well may be, that human intellect, human knowledge, human conduct, national and individual, is on the plain, direct road of improvement; not very rapid, indeed, but sure and certain. Public opinion is now an element in calculating power. The schoolmaster is abroad: and he is omnipotent. Compare the times of Louis XI, with those of Louis XIV.; the times of Louis XIV. with those of Louis XVIII.; the broad basis of the former revolution in France, compared to the timid, compromising notions of the English in 1688; the revolution of 1793 with that of July, 1830; look at the manifest and most salutary influence of the American revolution and those of France over public opinion in Europe; consider these things, and with joy shall we exclaim "Ca Ira." ART. VI.-1. Message of the President of the United States, in relation to the Survey of a Route for a Canal between the Gulph of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean; with the Report of the Board of Internal Improvement on the contemplated Canal between the Atlantic and the Gulph of Mexico, with a general Map annexed to it. February 28, 1829. 2. Map of Florida, constructed principally from authentic documents in the Land Office at Tallahassee. By J. G. SEARCY. Published by J. G. Searcy, Tallahassee; and F. Lucas, Jr. Baltimore. September, 1829. FLORIDA has always been a subject of lively interest in the United States, both before and since it came into our possession. It was a favourite territory of the Spaniards, from the earliest times. Every attempt to dispossess them, (for it has often been an object of cupidity to their enemies) was successfully resisted, until the English at length got a foothold there; who, however, restored it, as much in resentment to the new States, as from any friendly feeling towards Spain. It was retained in the spirit with which it was restored-as a thorn to repress the pride of the youthful republic-the asylum of insolvent debtors, runaway slaves, and hostile Indians. Wrested at length from Spain, in the just prosecution of a course of retaliation, for her insidious and cowardly hostility, though allowed to be reoccupied by the enemy, it is to be considered rather as a conquest than a purchase; the treaty having only yielded what could no longer be withheld. It is one of the wreaths that adorns the brow of the hero of Orleans; to whom we not only owe the protection of our soil from hostile invasion, but the extension of our territory, and the rounding it off by a natural and beautiful boundary. As the first Governor of Florida, his civil talents were advantageously exerted; and to his decision is to be ascribed, the preservation of the land titles of the province, from the frauds which would have entangled them in an interminable litigation. The late Map of Florida gives to the territory a most imposing appearance. It looks like a new Italy, stretching out a mighty limb in another Mediterranean. At its foot, that mysterious torrent, the Gulf Stream, after having washed the shores of the western province, rushes by, with irresistible violence, through those fearful keys, whose labyrinths inspire the mariner with a juster terror than the fabled or real dangers of |