CRITICAL NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. 169 



saint, we can have no difficulty as to the miraculous tracks made by 

 her mare and colt ! But to suppose Tubal-Cain taught the natives, 

 or, that the antediluvian females '^ used a kind of patten or sandal 

 shod mth an iro?i ring' to " defend their feet from the gigantic ve- 

 getation of those days ;" — to say nothing of the " prior race of men 

 and horses" existing before Adam, &c. is in fact to compose a geo- 

 logical romance, which, however amusing, is in reality no more 

 credible than the often cited fact of the Ledbury bells ringing with- 

 out hands in honour of St Catherine ! 



Mr. Allies must excuse these free remarks ; he is, in fact, a gen- 

 tleman of research and observation, but, like a true neophyte, he 

 sets no bounds to his imagination. Still, we heartily thank him 

 for his really curious work. He has rendered a dri/ subject a very 

 wet one — wet with our tears ! though not those resulting from grief. 

 If he will only refrain from meddling with " the antediluvian solar 

 year,'' and let Methuselah, Enoch, and Noah, sleep in peace; if he 

 will be kind enough not to " submit that the deluge commenced 

 when the oak and other forest trees were not in leaf ;" if, indeed, 

 he will mercifully spare us from " deluges," bones of " cows and 

 buljs^" and let the " sappy fluid in the wood" remain there in quiet ; 

 if lie^tvill but leave Dr. Adam Clarke and the Fabians to fight their 

 own battles, and confine himself to the bounds of actual observation, 

 we are sure he could write a volume of interest and value. But 

 here the very titles of the articles in his " Appendix " would fill 

 one of our pages, and he goes out of his way to descant upon " the 

 most ancient of the pyramids being probably antediluvian," and tells 

 us that '^ Ab d'Allatif sai^s that he saw a prodigious number of 

 hieroglyphical inscriptions on the two great pyramids, as many as if 

 copied would fill perhaps ten thousand volumes | ! " It is these off 

 hand assertions and imaginative hypotheses that confuse Mr. AUies's 

 labours; and as gold or silver becomes undistinguishable when 

 mixed with too much alloy, so the really sensible observations of the 

 learned author before us are injured from the mass of dubious not 

 to say fabulous matters that he has unadvisedly introduced. 



Wanderings through North Wales. By Thomas Roscoe, Esq. 

 Embellished with highly-finished Engravings, by Wm. Rad- 

 clyfTe, from drawings made expressly for the work, by Catter- 

 mole. Cox, and Creswick. Parts 4, 5, and 6. London : 

 Charles Tilt, and Simpkin and Marshall ; and Wrightson and 

 Webb, Birmingham. 



We have often visited and admired with a poet's and a painter's 

 eye, the romantic and beautiful scenes which are in this work so 

 enchantingly described by the graver of Radclyffe and the pen of 

 Roscoe, and can speak, therefore, more decidedly on the point of 

 truth of resemblance than the stranger who collects his information 

 from oral or published description. Travellers talk with wonderful 

 facility of the verdant plains of Italy, and the stupendous mountain 



