1828.) 
yiation to his melancholy, that, though unable to 
share in the pleasure of a new composition, he 
could at least readin the smiles on the faces of 
his friends, a proof of the beauty of his ideas, and 
in that version must have enjoyed them. 
In his younger days Beethoven consented to 
the jurisdiction of musical laws, and obeyed them ; 
his earlier piano-forte works, and his first and 
second instrumental sinfonias, are pure with 
respect to progressions, classical in their episodes 
and general construction, but in advanced life, he 
set the pedants too heartily at defiance—as he 
grew older he became more tenacious of the merit 
of those productions in which he had, as it were, 
trodden on the confines of forbidden ground— 
hovering between genius and extravagance. 
When his friends pra‘sed the regularity ofhis early 
writings, he preferred the wildness of his later 
ones ; and there never yet was, I believe, a writer 
who did not reserve the weight of his own liking 
for the sickliest and ugliest bantlings of his 
imagination—for what all the world agrees to 
call beautiful is in no want of patronage. 
One little passage is worth quoting for the 
information it conveys of German musicians, 
and the lesson it might read :— 
No artists can be less mercenary in the exercise 
of their profession, nor more ready to play for the 
pleasure of their friends, than the great musicians 
of Germany; but they have no skill in flattering 
the great, and no appetite for worthless praise. 
Most of them enjoy that enviable competency, 
whieh enables them to pursue fame at their lei- 
sure; the little duties of their employment, such 
as directing an orchestra, or composing a few 
pieces for the entertainment of the noblemen of 
whose establisiiment they are apart, are so easily 
discharged, as to leave them plenty of time for 
idleness if it was their taste to indulge init. But 
this is not the case—they have that last infirmity 
of noble minds—an appetite for fame, and labour 
as hard for the mere pleasure of inventing and 
combining, as others do for the vulgar acquisition 
of wealth. The ennobling power of the divine 
art of music is best felt when among a number of 
professors each strains to penetrate the deepest 
into its mysteries, without envy and without sordid 
interest; and I believe it is the advantageous 
equality upon which they all start in pursuit of 
their favourite science, which makes them liberal 
and ingenious inthe appreciation of contemporary 
talent. Until men of genius in other countries are 
placed out of the reach of vulgar wants, or the 
fear of poverty, there can be no competition in any 
of Europe with the musicians of Germany. 
We cannot forbear whispering that there 
is one other source, and one in their own 
_ hands—rconomy—less ambition to shine 
like gentlemen, in the splendour of furni- 
ture and equipage, and the profusion and 
costliness of dinners and wines. Were men 
content with the plain accommodations of 
life, there need be few complaints of this 
- Five out of six, in these parading 
times, get into difficulties by display. 
Two Years in Ava; 1828.—The title 
misleads—for the book contains nothing but 
a narrative of the late war conducted by 
_ General Campbell, which has been already 
M.M. New Series. —Vox.VI. No. 32. 
Domestic and Foreign. 
193 
communicated, in a manner sufficiently 
ample, by Major Snodgrass, the military 
secretary to the expedition. Major Snod- 
grass left the army as soon as the treaty of 
Melloon was concluded, on the 4th January, 
1826, to obtain the signature of the governor 
general. That treaty, in the mean while, 
was rejected by the emperor; and the chief 
value of the present volume is, that it pre- 
sents the detail of occurrences on the march 
from Melloon to  Yandaboo, where, in 
March, the final treaty was made; and the 
subsequent route of a detachment of the 
army from the Irrawaddy across the country 
to Aeng in Arracan. In general,.the ac- 
counts vary little, and scarcely furnish any 
ground for preferring one to the other.. The 
most remarkable variation consists in the 
statement of numbers. Major Snodgrass 
talks, we remember, of sixty and seventy 
thousands opposed to the handful of British 
forces ; but we do not find the present au- 
thority ever venturing on more than /ive- 
and-twenty thousand. This is a little un- 
accountable, where both parties must have 
had pretty much the same opportunities 
of information—the one military secretary, 
and the other in the quarter-master-gene- 
ral’s department—though he does not give 
his name. The maps and plans are marked 
as drawn by Captain T. A. Trant, of the 
95th ; and he, we conclude, is the man. 
In noticing Major Snodgrass’s work, we 
sketched the course of the campaigns ; and, 
with respect to the volume before us, we shall 
confine ourselves to a few circumstances, 
which we marked as we went along. 
Of the Andamas—the island where the 
expedition rendezvoused before starting for 
Rangoon, and which was some years ago 
colonized as a receptacle for convicts from 
the presidencies, but since abandoned from 
the malignity of the climate—the author re- 
marks :— 
The inhabitants are represented (it does not ap- 
pear hesaw any) asamost savage and miserable 
race, almost destitute of the necessaries of life. 
They are diminutive in stature, and possessing 
most hideous features, differing materially from all 
the nations in the vicinity, with the exception of the 
inhabitants of the Nicobar islands. Their habita- 
tions are formed with a few boughs of trees, and 
their food consists of the produce of the ocean, or 
indeed almost any thing they can lay their hands 
upon. Instances have been related of their voracity, 
which are quite disgusting ; but still there is no 
fact known, which convicts them of the dreadful 
habit of devouring human flesh, with which they. 
have been taxed. Nature, in one itstanee, has 
provided for their wants, by the immense quantity 
of oysters, and other shell-fish, to be found on the 
rocks of Port Cornwallis; but when this food 
fails, and bad weather prevents any other kind of 
fishing, the poor wretches have literally nothing 
to exist upon. 
Are there no roots, or fruits, or animals ? 
In describing the splendid Shoe Dagon- 
Prah—thus awkwardly syllabled by the au- 
thor—the great pagoda of Rangoon—the 
2C . 
