CRITICAL NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. 50 



A71 Historioal and Statistical Account of New South Wales. By John 

 Dunmore Lang, D. D. 2 vols, post 8vo. London : Cochrane and 

 M'Crone. 1834. 



This is an account of what New South Wales has been and is at the 

 present time, not collected from previously written books, but imparted 

 by one who has lived through a great part of the history which he details, 

 in the very capital of the colony. Such knowledge of the period which 

 did not come under the author's own observation, he has derived chiefly 

 from the lips of persons who mixed in the transactions recorded, or 

 before whose eyes they passed. A long residence in the country has 

 made him perfectly familiar with its physical and its moral characteristics, 

 with its geography, as far as that has been ascertained, with its rapidly 

 progressive agriculture, its manners, its politics, and all the other 

 particulars of its social condition. — ^To his book itself we must refer our 

 readers for a full detail of his arduous and persevering struggles for the 

 great object on which he had set his heart — the establishment of the first 

 seminary for dispensing education in the higher branches of literature 

 and science throughout his adopted country. In this project he finally 

 succeeded — the Australian College is established, and promises in due 

 time to be a flourishing institution. — Altogether we consider this the 

 most complete and able account of New South Wales (deducting 

 some few blemishes of intolerance on speculative points, which slightly 

 mar the detail) that has yet been published of that colony. The in- 

 terest of the work is increased by the number of anecdotes with which 

 it abounds, and which may, in fact, be rightly called the author's life 

 and adventures — and the impress which it bears, of a mind eager and 

 enthusiastic in its views and pursuits, but on all occasions manly and 

 honourable. 



The Poetical Works of the Rev. George Crabbe, with his Letters and 

 Journals, and his Life, by his Son. Vol. G. Murray. 



Justly has it been said that the world never beheld a poet so true to 

 nature, so rich in fine benevolent feeling, yet so painful in the perusal, as 

 Crabbe. In his pages the tempest of passion is never raised, the madness 

 of frenzied feeling never bursts forth in uncontrollable fury ; but we see 

 care, and anxiety, and hopes half-buried in the ashes of their own fires, 

 crowded together, each emptying its own corrosive phial into a heart 

 bruised and broken by aflflictions, which seem suspended over the heads 

 of all mankind. It is that peculiarity in Crabbe's pictures of life, which 

 gives them so painful a character. He does not seize the heart, and 

 hold it forth lacerated and bleeding, with an appeal to our sympathies ; 

 nor does he present it to us in its fierce writhings, that we may watch its 

 workings : he gently raises the bosom's veil, and sitting down before it, 

 marks its hidden springs, its secret movements, its gradual sinkings, 

 from meanness to error, from error to vice, and from vice to infamy. — ^The 

 poetry of Crabbe is too deeply imprinted on the memory of our readers 

 to render it necessary to quote from its pages. The volume before us 

 begins with the " Tales of the Hall," the most agreeable in design of all 

 the author's poetical works. It is ornamented with two fine pictorial 

 engravings, by Finden, from the pencil of Stan field — the one a com- 

 manding view of Belvoir Castle, and the other of Beccles Church. 



