188 



Monthly Review of Literature, 



[AUG. 



cause committed a tremendous oversight 

 in the battle of Blenheim ; and all men 

 know that the eagle-eye of the Duke of 

 Wellington has given great effect to his 

 olher astonishing military powers." 



Personal Narrative of Travels in the 

 United States and Canada in 1826, by 

 Lieut, the Hon. Frederic Fitzgerald de 

 Roos, R.N. 1827. Mr. de Roos is a young 

 man, a lieutenant in the navy. He was on 

 the Halifax station in May 1826 ; and his 

 " kind friend," Admiral Lake, gave him a 

 month's leave of absence. What should he 

 do with it? He hesitates between the 

 Falls of Niagara, and a visit to the cities 

 and dock-yards of the United States ; and 

 determines on the latter. He sails in a 

 packet for New York, where he stays only 

 one night, and pushes on, the next morn- 

 ing, for Washington, by Philadelphia, Bal- 

 timore, &c., making his way by stages and 

 steam-boats. At Washington, his first 

 point are the dock- yards an area of about 

 forty acres, and much of it unoccupied 

 and finds only two frigates on the slips, 

 and a smaller vessel afloat ; looks over the 

 works, but the whole falls far below his 

 expectations, after hearing so much of 

 American superiority in naval matters ; 

 perambulates the town, and is amazed at 

 American want of foresight to build a 

 metropolis in a spot possessing neither 

 facilities for commerce, nor fertility for 

 agriculture; canvasses the subjects which 

 occupied Congress the previous session ; 

 and speculates on the probable duration 

 of the republic. In the evening he goes to 

 the French ambassador's tea-party meets 

 with a number of pretty women does not 

 like their drawl, but thinks they matched 

 their European entertainers in dress, 

 beauty, and conversation. The women 

 of the southern states, he says, are gene- 

 rally pale j but this paleness is regarded 

 by the possessors as a mark of high breed- 

 ing. The manners of the highest classes 

 he considers to be those of the middling 

 classes of England ; but, as he proceeds, 

 particularly at Boston, the women improve 

 upon him, not only in manners, but in 

 beauty heis quite a connoisseur in beauty 

 .and ultimately he is more than half dis- 

 posed to be pleased with the very drawl 

 that at first so much offended him. Major 

 Denham, we remember, got to admire the 

 jetty skins of the Africans, and more than 

 once caught himself exclaiming, " What 

 a charming girl !" 



After babbling a little about the glorious 

 capture of Washington, and our humbling 

 the pride of America and quoting a 

 speech of some Indians then at Washing- 

 ton, soliciting from the President the re- 

 storation of some lands, and deprecating 

 the institution of schools among them, on 

 the ground that the Great Spirit never 

 meant red men should read and write, 



or they would have been before-hand with 

 the whites Mr. de Roos returns to Balti- 

 more. This he thinks the prettiest town 

 in the Union. The port is chiefly fre- 

 quented by the French j and the ladies 

 he never forgets the ladies conse- 

 quently dress in the Parisian taste or 

 style, rather, we suppose. Here he dines 

 at the same table with Mr. Carrol, the 

 grandfather of the Marchioness of Welles- 

 ley, and now the sole survivor of those 

 who signed the original deed of indepen- 

 dence ; visits the docks, of course, where 

 he sees a schooner building for the purpose 

 of smuggling on the China coast, in which 

 every thing was sacrificed to swiftness 

 the loveliest vessel he ever beheld. In 

 the yards he meets with a builder, who 

 had a book cf drafts of all the fast-sailing 

 schooners built at Baltimore, which had 

 so much puzzled our cruizers, he says, 

 during the war. " It was the very thing," 

 he adds, '< I wanted ; but, after an hour 

 spent in entreaty, I could not induce him 

 to part with one leaf of the precious vo- 

 lume. Though provoked at his refusal, I 

 could not help admiring the public spirit 

 which dictated his conduct ; for the offer 

 I made him must have been tempting to a 

 person in his station of life." Bless thee, 

 Master de Roos ! hast thou been told that 

 honour and honesty are nowhere to be 

 found but among the " honourable ?" 



Quitting Baltimore, on his return to 

 New York, he stops at Philadelphia, where, 

 in the docks, he sees the Pennsylvania, a 

 three-decker, said by the Americans to be 

 the largest vessel in the world. But the 

 lieutenant believes her scantling to be 

 very nearly the same as that of our Nel- 

 son. She mounts 135 guns. Speaking of 

 the size of the American ships, he takes 

 the opportunity of correcting an erroneous 

 opinion very prevalent : 



The Americans (he says) call such ships as the 

 Pennsylvania seventy-fours, which, at first sight, 

 and to one unacquainted with the reason, bears the 

 appearance of intentional deception. But this is 

 explained by the peculiar wording of the Act of 

 Congress, by which a fund was voted for the gra- 

 dual increase of the American navy. In it the 

 largest vessels were described as seventy-fours ; 

 but great latitude being allowed to the commis- 

 sioners of the navy, they built them on a much 

 more extended scale. The only official mode of 

 registering these is as seventy-fours ; but, for all 

 purposes of comparison, they must be classed ac- 

 cording to the guns which they actually carry ; 

 and in this light they are considered by all liberal 

 Americans, 



From the dock-yards he goes to the an- 

 nual picture exhibition, and had an oppor- 

 tunity, he says, of judging of the American 

 taste in that department of the fine arts. 



But, alas! they have none positively none! 

 There were two or three works of the old masters, 

 belonging to Joseph Bonaparte, and a picture of 

 Napoleon crossing the Alps, by David; the rest 



