682 Monthly Review of Literature. |[Dec. 



in consequence, though noticed before with a tact little short of prescience, has 

 now more honours thrust upon him. By the way, so much do the ministry 

 want the tongues as well as the votes of the bishops, that we marvel that Smith, 

 who has a tongue, was not preferred to Maltby, who has none ! 



The Adventures of a Younger Son. 3 Vols. 



For vigorous description of an active career we have seldom seen this sur- 

 passed. The conceptions are everyvvhere vivid, and conveyed to the reader in 

 the most direct and forcible terms — with the profoundest contempt for all com- 

 mon hum-drum sentiments, and occasionally of almost all proprietj^. Every 

 thing is as strongly defined as if the writer told nothing but what he had seen 

 and felt ; but the scenes are too much out of the common course of things to 

 have fallen to the lot of one individual. The chief locale of the piece is the 

 Indian seas, and, it may well be supposed, he has some acquaintance with the 

 scene. We know nothing of the writer — he will soon be delerre. The Younger 

 Son, born with a sound organization, and a bold and resolute spirit, is rendered 

 dogged and wilful by harsh treatment, and dispatched, at ten years old, to sea, 

 as a place well adapted, as most landsmen think, to keep the unruly in order. 

 At sea he meets with the most galling tyranny from his superiors — too like what 

 he had been subjected to at home, to soothe or soften ; and he is only the more, 

 day by day, hardened in his inflexibility, and strengthened in his resolves to 

 work his own will. While but a boy, he has sundry violent encounters with 

 his foes, and shews, at every turn, a desperation and a recklessness in pursuing 

 his revenge, that place him quickly at the head of all malcontents — he is at once 

 the defender of the weak, and the annoyer of the strong — as prompt to revenge 

 others' wrongs as to vindicate his own rights. After a seven years' struggle, he 

 resolves to quit a service, in which he finds his will at every turn thwarted. At 

 Bombay he luckily meets with a person, in the guise of a merchant, whose sen- 

 timents fascinate him, and whose notice he feels to be a distinction. The attrac- 

 tion is mutual — he is encouraged to quit the ship — he accordingly deserts her, 

 and takes, at the same time, ample vengeance on one of his chief tormentors. 

 His new friend screens him from detection, and secures his gratitude. The 

 merchant, a pirate, in fact, was himself charmed with the resolute character of 

 the youth, took him into his confidence, and gave him, already a man in expe- 

 rience, though but a boy in years, the command of a vessel. The roamings and 

 maraudings of this pirate vessel constitute the bulk of the narrative. The scene 

 of action is wholly in the Indian seas. The Mauritius is the pirate's home — 

 the occasional scene of indulgence and repose for himself and his friends — but 

 the field of action ranges from Madagascar to the sea of China, Wrecks, fires, 

 battles, storms, perils — sharks by sea and tigers by land — abound ; while some- 

 thing of a softer interest is thrown in, by the hero's marriage with the daughter 

 of an Arab chief — a lovely, a gentle, and devoted being, with a spirit, neverthe- 

 less, that fits her for a pirate's bride. Her death, after a time, unsettles the 

 hero, and he is ready to abandon his profession, when his chief has occasion to 

 visit Europe, and he accompanies him to Havre-de-Grace. There they separate, 

 to meet again in six months — a meeting, however, which never occurs. The 

 hero goes to England, and the narrative suspends ; but a hint is given that it 

 will be resumed in other scenes. Forsaking the trade of piracy, he rushed into 

 rtvolutionary tumults, unable to breathe in the stifling regions of subordination, 

 or to move, gored and cramped, in the narrow tracks of sleepy socialities. 



New Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. 



The new edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica circulates, we hope, as suc- 

 cessfully as its abundant merits, and the Editor's indefatigable exertions, richly 

 deserve. The articles are, very many of them, re-written, and some of them 

 executed with great ability. In glancing upon the later portions, we dropt upon 

 Architecture — it is a very able performance, the production of Mr. William 

 Hosking, an architect of London, and she>V8 an independence and soundness of 



