202 
Dominicans. But the Dominicans soon 
bestirred themselves, and the Pope quickly 
surprised Ricci with a brief, in which he 
declared that he himself would not have 
dared to conceive such suspicions against 
the most holy order of the Dominicans. 
Still Leopold upheld the bishop, at least for 
the furtherance of his own views, till, by the 
death of his brother Joseph, he, in 1790, 
became Emperor. His departure was fol- 
lowed by a general outbreak against Ricci 5 
and even when the Emperor returned in the 
following year to Florence, Ricci could 
never recover his ground—the Emperor 
himself had cooled—the French Revolution 
had alarmed him; and though he treated 
Ricci still with distinction, he himself beg- 
ged him to resign his bishopricc. 
We have no space to trace his after 
course minutely. Before the French took 
possession of Tuscany, in 1800, he was 
persecuted almost to death by his personal 
enemies, who had got things in their own 
hands. For after the battle of Trebia, and 
Tuscany was again occupied by the Au- 
strians, and the old enemies of the Tuscan 
reforms had again the upper hand, Ricci 
was quickly thrown into prison, and sustained 
the most intolerable treatment till the re- 
turn of the French in 1800. Still persecu- 
tion, though of a milder kind, followed, nor 
did his enemies desist till they had driven 
or beguiled him into concessions, and re- 
conciled him to the Holy See by confession 
of error. 
Life and Adventures of Alexander Sel- 
kirk, by John Howell; 1829,—As_ the 
person, whose adventures are said to have 
suggested to Daniel de Foe his memorable 
romance of Robinson Crusoe, Selkirk is 
naturally an object of curiosity. The first 
notice found of him is in 1711, in the 
Englishman, one of Steel’s periodicals. 
Steel. had seen and conversed with him, 
and moralizes upon his story after his not 
very profound fashion. This plain man’s 
story,”’ says he, “‘ is a memorable example 
that he is happiest who confines his wants 
to natural necessities, and he that goes fur- 
ther in his desires, increases his wants in 
proportion to his acquisitions ; or, to use his 
own (Selkirk’s) expression, I am now worth 
£800; but shall never be so happy as when 
I was not worth a farthing.’” The mate- 
rials of his little volume, Mr. Howell has 
gathered from. “‘ Voyages to the South Sea,” 
published by Dampier, Rogers, and Cook, 
and partly from family tradition—a great 
nephew of Selkirk’s being now a teacher in 
Cannon-mills, a village near Edinburgh, 
who inherits the relics of his ancestor, con- 
sisting of a chest, a flip-can, and a staff, 
and which he carefully preserves. By this 
person Mr. Howell was conducted over 
Selkirk’s favourite spots in his native vil- 
lage of Largo, in Fife, and all the family 
ers were thrown open to his researches. 
Mr. Howell is known to the public as the 
Monthly Review of Literature, 
[Fes. 
Editor of the Journal of a Soldier of the 
78th, and the Adventures of John Nichol, 
iner, but more advantageously as the 
author of an essay on the War Galleys of 
the Ancients, noticed by us some time ago, 
as by far the happiest solution of that puz- 
zling question. 
Of Selkirk, after all Mr. Howell’s indus- 
try, little is known, and that little of less 
importance. It cannot detract an atom 
even from the originality of De Foe’s 
inimitable conceptions. The son of a fisher- 
man, Selkirk’s inclinations naturally lent to 
the sea; and, being a seventh son, he was 
more indulged than his brothers by a fond 
and foolish mother, and thus neither his 
temper nor his actions were disciplined to 
the usual sobriety of the peasants around 
him. When he first went to sea is not 
ascertained ; but before 1703—he was then 
twenty-seven years of age—he must have 
been in the South Seas; for in that year he 
was appointed sailing-master to one of 
two ships, fitted out for privateering, under 
the command of Dampier—a man not at all. 
likely to appoint a raw sailor to so respon- 
sible a post. Though a good seaman, Dam- 
pier was headstrong and violent, and quar- 
relled with most of his officers. Mutinies 
were frequent—intemperance, desertion, and 
expulsion, till Selkirk came to the resolu- 
tion of demanding to be left on some island ; 
and about the end of September, 1704, he 
was landed on the island of Juan de Fer- 
nandez. The delight with which he stepped 
on shore was speedily checked by the retreat- 
ing of the vessel, and the coming conscious- 
ness of his solitary position—he rushed into 
the water, and implored to be taken in 
again; but he was cursed for a mutinous 
rascal, and left unceremoniously to his 
fate. 
For days and days he could not bear to 
quit the shore for a moment ; despair seized 
him—he was on the point of suicide ; but 
the lingering lessons of religious instruction 
withheld him, and the thoughts thus sug- 
gested, verifying and reinvigorating, brought 
him to feelings of resignation, and finally 
cheered him to endurance. He now turned 
his attention to the securing of accommoda- 
tion; he built a hut, and caught goats, and 
tamed them, laming them to keep them 
within bounds ; and being annoyed by rats, 
he at last succeeded in catching some wild 
cats, whom—when the rats were routed— 
he taught to dance, and divert him. Much 
of his time was spent in acts of devotion. 
The constant exercise he was compelled to 
take for procuring food, and the temperate 
and regular life he led, increased his bodily 
powers prodigiously—till, indeed, he could 
run down the strongest goat, and tossing it 
over his shoulder, carry it with ease to his 
hut. Events were of course few and far 
between—he had no man Friday—onee he 
fell down a precipice in pursuing a goat, 
where, by the increase of the moon, he cal- 
culated he must have lain senseless three 
