538 
character is dependent upon great events. 
« Shew me,”’ says Mr. G., ‘‘ the man who 
may not be warped by circumstances. Then 
how shall a nation escape ? Are the English 
what they were before the reformation ? 
The French the same as before the revolu- 
tion ?”? The Belgians have been subject to 
repeated changes, have consequently been, 
in some proportion or other, more modified. 
They have mo national character, say 
strangers. They have two or three, cry the 
native writers. Mr. G. thinks they have 
none peculiarly their own. Centuries of 
subjection to various European powers, all 
widely opposite to each other in manners and 
customs, have left among them evident 
traces of inconsistency, modified by time, 
and by one brief and brilliant era of liberty. 
The taint of each separate tyranny blends 
with the bright colouring of freedom, and 
their faults combine with courage, humanity, 
industry, and pride. Under a settled state, 
a constitutional government, a liberal king, 
and a gallant heir-apparent, they will take a 
place among the nations, and be themselves. 
At present the Belgian but scurvily com- 
pares with others. A Spaniard throws an air 
of chivalry into his fanaticism. The bigotry 
of a Belgian is as dull as it is gross. An 
Irishman ‘disguised’ amuses by his humour ; 
the bright spirit of his whisky evaporates in 
fun or fighting. The drunken Belgian is 
besotted as well as brutified; he is but a 
fermented beer-barrel. The avarice of a 
Dutchman is based in calculation ; that of a 
Belgian in cunning. The petty cheateries 
on the road, the impositions of the swarm of 
blood-suckers that fastens on the traveller, 
are the plodding realities of roguery. A 
picturesque highwayman, or sentimental 
pickpocket, never appears. Elsewhere one 
is cheated sometimes; but in Belgium one 
never escapes. “I met,’’ says Mr. G., “with 
more exactions ; I lost more articles of dress, 
in afew months rambling through Belgium, 
than in twice as many years of travelling 
and residence in France. Yet, after all, I 
majntain that there is much of individual 
and natural good to be found by those who 
will take the pains to seek it; and I (like 
my countrymen) think the ‘ trouble a 
pleasure.’ ”’ 
The Begging brother of La Trappe will 
illustrate these characteristics, but we have 
no space to sketch the interesting details. 
The Naval Officer, 3 vols., 12mo. ; 1829. 
—This is one of the effects of a long peace— 
to generate idleness and book-making. With 
no fighting, and an army of half-pay, naval 
and military, multitudes of them are rushing 
into the ranks of literature—within these 
few months we know not how many stories 
we have had of sea-scenes and adventures. 
This is one of the best we haye seen—bear- 
ing with it an air of life and reality (as to 
the facts we mean, for as to the authors of 
these things nobody can doubt of their being 
professional—no landsman can be up to the 
Monthly Review of Literature, 
[May, 
details) though not without manifest signs 
of a propensity to exaggerate and rhodomon- 
tade. But how any soder person, if any 
such person should read these tales, and 
especially the one before us, who has any 
regard for the moral welfare of a child, can 
expose him to the corruptions and horrors of 
such a situation, must excite our wonder, if 
it were not for the commonness of the thing 
—and even common as it is, we must still 
wonder. It only shows how thoroughly 
hypocritical we are, when the chances of 
providing, as we call it, for a son in the ser- 
vice, can counterbalance the dread that must 
naturally spring from the consequences of 
such exposures. The motive is evidently 
an overwhelming one—otherwise the Ad- 
miralty had need look to it and suppress 
such disclosures—to secure the manning of 
the navy, or rather boying, from families of 
any respectability. 
The hero tells his own rough tale, with a 
view chiefly to apologise, or at least to ac- 
count for the excesses he commits. He was 
early exposed to the perversions of bad ma- 
nagement, for, at school, he was taught 
lying and treachery, by the mistress of the 
establishment, systematically disbelieving 
“ what boys said;’’ recklessness, was, of 
course, the natural effect, and this, by as easy 
a consequence, led to mischief, and a love 
for adyenture—nothing was gained by in- 
tegrity and order. The sea was now his 
choice, and at, thirteen he was plunged into 
the very-hot-bed of iniquity, a vessel of war, 
at anchorin Plymouth harbour. There his 
first reception by the young fry of middies 
was a rude one, and by the boy petulantly 
resented, which led to hatreds and suspicions 
on their part, and prompted in him a desire 
of revenge, and a determination to indulge 
it. His activity, his energy, and the pride 
of his nature, spurred him to the attaining 
of an early and athorough knowledge of his 
profession, and to some superiority over his 
associates. This could only be accomplish- 
ed by skill or strength, and he was not de- 
fective in either—but mainly fowght up his 
way to the head of his mess. Quickly he 
became ringleader in all schemes, either for 
the glutting of revenge, or the maintenance 
of privilege, and in more than one instance, 
by dint of combining, effected a riddance of 
obnoxious officers —making the ship too hot 
to hold them. His popularity among the 
crew was unbounded, by indulgence—and 
affecting a generosity, and a promptitude in 
all perils personal or general, which he, in a 
spirit of mock humility, acknowledges to 
have had its spring in vanity. With the 
first years of puberty, he forms a /iaison 
with a young actress of the Plymouth boards, 
and quits his ship himself to play Romeo to 
her Juliet. The father suddenly presents 
himself, and contrives to get him on board 
again, with the captain’s injunction to the 
lieutenant to take care of him. When refused 
permission, accordingly, to go ashore, he 
leaps into the water, like another Leander, 
