Monthly Review of Literature. 649 



occasions adverted to the matters that form the chief points of the committee's 

 consideration, and in the notice that immediately precedes this, we have 

 expressed sentiments on the currency-question, that cannot be very displeas- 

 ing to the witnesses examined, however opposite they may be to those ex- 

 pressed by the honourable member who edits the pamphlet and condemns the 

 witnesses as romantic and eccentric. Time, perhaps, will show that there is 

 more truth than romance in our statements, and that the views taken by those 

 whom the M. P. condemns are based on sounder financial principles than 

 those which are supported by the great names of Baring, Palmer, Poulett 

 Thomson, &c. The denouement of this eventful drama is not far hence. 



We cannot quit the subject, however, without expressing some dissatisfac- 

 tion that the editor should have garbled the evidence, as he has done con- 

 fessedly from his own introduction. Audi alteram partam should be the 

 motto of a compiler of historical facts ; and it is much to be regretted that 

 the honourable committee-man should have swallowed a pill of oblivion, 

 before he took his scissors and paste-brush in hand. 



TRAVELS. 



Excursions through the Highlands and Isles of Scotland in 1835-6. 

 By the Rev. C. L. SMITH, M.A., Fellow and Lecturer of Christ's 

 College, Cambridge. 8vo. Simpkin and Marshall. 



THE clerical traveller who has thus introduced himself with all his blushing 

 honours is not the first person whom we have charged with writing about 

 what he can know nothing. The great Mr. Fenimore Cooper wrote two vo- 

 lumes about Switzerland, of which country and its people he knew no more 

 than an African knows of China : Mrs. Trollope libelled the Americans so 

 absurdly as to caricature human nature itself : Professor Hoppus (the learned 

 logico-illogical teacher of some ten or fifteen tyro's at University College, 

 London) has favoured the world with his lucubrations his pencillings by the 

 way de orAnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis during a ten weeks' tour through Ger- 

 many and Switzerland, and every person who knows aught of either countries 

 must on perusing the learned man's observations be quite convinced that he 

 knows much less of Germany than of logic. Mr. Smith we should place in 

 the same category : he is a student most probably ; one whom collegiate or 

 studious habits have forced into a certain and exclusive train of thought. He 

 is no doubt, in his way, a highly estimable and scientific person, one of 

 whom the university may be justly proud for his high honours ; but when he 

 comes forward as a writer on matters not belonging to his own metier, he then 

 becomes amenable to public opinion ; and we deal with him accordingly, as 

 we would with any titled or untitled author on the ground of his own 

 merits. 



Mr. C. Lesingham Smith has done more than most of our native tourists 

 think of doing. We knew one person who went to Havre and through the 

 Loire scenery to Orleans, thence to Paris, and again through Montargis, Ne- 

 vers, and Molines, to Lyons, whence, not visiting the silk manufactories, he 

 proceeded on his way to Switzerland, in which country he travelled a pied 

 about twenty miles a day for a fortnight, returned by Basle to Strasburg 

 and Cologne, and so back to our smoky metropolis. This excellent gentleman 

 was absent exactly for ty-two days, and during his absence he most industri- 

 ously employed himself with scribbling his crudities to such an extent that two 

 octavo volumes would scarcely contain them. Mr. Smith is somewhat more 

 modest ; he has taken two seasons, that is, altogether sixty days (twenty- 

 eight in one, and thirty-two in the other) to examine the Highlands, Islands 

 and metropolis of Scotland, and he has only filled one. We have some hopes 

 of him. When travelling Englishmen are the general laughing-stock of intel- 



