680 



Monthlij Review of' Lite rut urc, 



[Dec. 



but not yet free to acknowledge his daughter. 

 A few months, however, remove t)ic impe- 

 diments, and lie hastens to hail her as Lady 

 Zoi-ilda Fitzhugh, but too late. She is deep 

 in the descent of a decline, hurryed toward 

 the grave by a succession of harassing cir- 

 cumstances — especially by the thorn that 

 pressed for ever upon her gentle heart — her 

 anonymous existence — and by the intem- 

 perance of her lover, who, in a tit of des- 

 perate jealousy, had shot an innocent person, 

 and only escaped hanging by dying of a 

 fever, the elfect of undisciplined passions. 



The other tale, entitled the Young Ke- 

 formers, is the story of a clergyinan's 

 family in the west of Ireland, whose three 

 sons, to the misery of their excellent pa- 

 rents, are seduced into association with the 

 Irish rebels in the miserable year of 1798. 

 One perishes on the rebel field of battle, 

 another is saved from the scaffold by sink- 

 ing into incurable idiotcy, while the third 

 is happily rescued by jiidicious management. 

 Though filled with the extravagant doc- 

 trines of the Jacobin leaders and French 

 philosophers, and ready to go all lengths, 

 the youngest — all indeed were young — finds 

 himself not treated with aU the confidence 

 he is disposed to claim, and cooling in con- 

 sequence, he seizes upon an offer procured 

 by his parents from an uncle, a merchant in 

 Canada, to take him into his counting-house. 

 This uncle was a jewel of sound sense and 

 .safe conduct. He received his wayward 

 nephew kindly and frankly, but abruptly 

 cut short his haranging tendencies, and 

 pithily baffled his political wisdom — kept 

 him close to the desk — excused his neglects 

 and blunders — employed him on distant ex- 

 peditions to vary the scene and change his 

 associations, and a promising progress was 

 quickly made in reducing the young gen- 

 tleman's conceit. By and by comes to the 

 same office another nephew — a most grave, 

 wise, and intelligent youth, who becomes a 

 po'verfid ally in conducting the remedial 

 process and completing the cure of his cou- 

 sin. The two nephews are sent for three 

 years to a distant fort, in connection with 

 the Hudson Bay Company, to superintend 

 the fur business, and in that lone and lorn 

 station, the conversion is forcibly and firmly 

 accomplished by dint of ar;;ument and soli- 

 tude — he becomes thoroughly orthodox with 

 respect to both church and state. On their 

 return the two nephews become partners in 

 the uncle's concern, and just as our hero is 

 longing to revisit England, where one of 

 his sisters has recently married an English 

 earl, and is a lady star of fashion, the neces- 

 sity is discovered by his ever-considerate 

 uncle of sending him to Paris. Here, by 

 the time the countess arrives, the young re- 

 form6, by an odd sort of manoeuvre — be- 

 coming the protegee of an old maid — is so 

 completely brushed up, and brilliantly po- 

 lished, that he figures away among the lords 

 and ladies of the fashionable world, like one 

 of themselves. From this period all runs 



smooth ; he discovers his lost idiot brother, 

 witnesses his death, and buries him, and 

 gets a gliniple of his future bride — the uncle 

 dies and leaves him at least 100,000/., with 

 which he purchases a charming estate in 

 the emerald isle, marries the charming girl 

 he had once before seen, with the dowry of 

 a princess ; and they are, of course, as 

 happy as the day is long, as well as all his 

 surviving connections, sisters and cousins, 

 every one of them wise and beautiful, at least 

 such of them as never were rebels. 



Picture of Australia ; 1829 A very 



general but competent sketch of this new 

 world — not taken by an eye-witness, for who 

 is ever likely to see the whole ? — but care- 

 fully made up by a collation of numerous 

 accounts from the first settlers and voyagers 

 to the last, and executed with more ability 

 and zeal than such things usually are. No 

 subject of any interest relative to these ex- 

 tensive regions is wholly neglected. In the 

 term Australia the writer comprises the con- 

 tinent of New Holland and A'^an Diemen's 

 island. The whole of the coast of New 

 Holland, the line of which measures nearly 

 8,000 miles, the writer shews, has now, 

 with the exception of about 500 miles in the 

 north, been visited by British seamen, and 

 even the unvisited 500 miles is on the point 

 of being surveyed by Captain King, who has 

 already made^two or three voyages, and con- 

 tributed much to the general knowledge of 

 the shores. Of the interor nothing at all is 

 known, except in the rear of the settlements 

 in the south-east ; but all that is known, 

 especially of the coast, with scarcely any ex- 

 ceptions, is at present unfavourable for the 

 convenience of man. Generally, appear- 

 ances indicate barrenness, and symptoms 

 every where press upon the observer of its 

 being strictly a new world — not yet ripened, 

 speaking without a figure, into fertility. It 

 is thinly wooded — its rivers flow in uncer- 

 tain channels — the staple of its soil is shal- 

 low — its vegetables fit only for animals — 

 its roots insignificant — its fruits without size 

 or sweetness — its animals ungregarious, and 

 man in his very lowest state of degradation. 

 The quadruped class of animals is speci- 

 fically distinct — marked by an incomplete- 

 ness — a peculiarity, which has nothing like 

 it in the more known and apparently older 

 creations. The latest information confirms 

 the conclusion that they are all of the Mar- 

 supiata class, that is, the females are all 

 furnished with a sack or pouch (marsupium) 

 attached to the abdomen, which partially or 

 wholly covers the teats, and opens in the 

 front. " Into this pouch the young are re- 

 ceived, in a small, formless, and embryo 

 state, and they remain fixed to the teats 

 till they are perfectly formed, and have ac- 

 quired a size proportional to the size of the 

 parent animal ; at which time they are de- 

 tached, and the teat, which had previously 

 been extended, slender, and probably reach- 

 ing the stomach of the young animal, be- 



