u 
ultimate triumph of the British naval 
spirit and discipline ; and the cheerful 
Parry with his bold free-hearted com¬ 
panions, frozen up in the midnight 
horrors of the frozen regions, will in all 
times coming, be referred to by moral¬ 
ists and poets, as one of the richest 
tales of courage and fortitude, that 
philosophy or the arts have yet comme¬ 
morated. The agreeable recreation of 
a newspaper for the ships, we should 
however notice, is an old marine con¬ 
trivance : we have seen ourselves seve¬ 
ral highly amusing specimens of the 
soit, got up during the American re¬ 
bellion, on board the men of war sta¬ 
tioned along the American coast—not, 
however, either in purity or ability— 
though exceedingly humorous—equal 
to the North Georgia Gazette. 
The tenth article, relative to Scuda¬ 
more on mineral waters, we recommend 
to all water-drinking invalids. It is 
one of the characteristics of the present 
day to compress and bring together 
the floes of subjects with which the 
ocean of literature is overspread, and a 
sensible book on mineral waters, drawn 
up with science, and no quacker-y, was 
much wanted. It has been supplied by 
Dr. Scudamore, and his work is re¬ 
viewed in a judicious manner. 
But by far the most interesting ar¬ 
ticle of the Number is the eleventh , on 
Mr. James Fergusson’s Reports of Dis¬ 
cussions of the Consistorial Court of 
Scotland. It is, we conceive, impossi¬ 
ble for any mind but those parchment 
intellects, whom the perusal of statutes 
and reports has dried up and draiued 
of all human sympathy, to read this ac¬ 
count of the state in which the law re¬ 
specting marriage and divorce stands 
between the institutions of England 
arid Scotland, without shuddering with 
horror and disgust. It has long been 
felt and confessed, that the marriage 
act of England is a daring usurpation 
over the laws of God and nature, and 
that the sins and sorrows to which it 
gives rise cannot be much longer en¬ 
dured. It must, and that shortly, too, 
be amended. But to hear it solemnly 
maintained by the tribunals of justice, 
that a marriage contracted in England, 
cannot be dissolved by any process 
short of an act of the English legisla¬ 
ture—let the adultery take place in 
what country it may, or the parties be 
resident where they think fit—is one 
of the most audacious pretensions that 
ever legal presumption dared to set up 
against the rights and the natural fran¬ 
[Aug. r, 
chises of man. Adultery is a crime— 
it is in all lands and in all societies, 
treason against the most sacred of all 
institutions. And is it to be tolerated, 
that the legislature of England shall 
say it shall not be punished by any 
other authority than that of the 
English judicature? The nation is 
under great obligations to the writer 
in the Quarterly Review, for directing 
the public attention to the importance 
of this question—and we trust and hope 
that Lord Ellenborough, who seems to 
have bestowed great consideration on 
the anomalies of the marriage act, will 
be induced to consider this serious 
question also, with the view of supply¬ 
ing some remedy of the kind we suggest, 
for we are well aware that it will not 
do to attempt any change in the mar¬ 
riage law of Scotland, nor would it be 
wise to try by any modification, to cor¬ 
rupt its rational simplicity, in any de¬ 
gree, by trying to adapt it to the work¬ 
ings of such a crude system of facilities 
to fraud and sin as the marriage law of 
England. 
To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. 
SIR, 
OUR correspondent, Inquisitor, 
in your Number for June, p. 402, 
refers to a letter in the hand-writing 
of Junius, by the Bury post, and en¬ 
quires who 4 was at Buryat that date V 
At what date ? I suppose, however, 
the date intended is that of the letters 
of Junius. Also that Bury St. Ed¬ 
munds, Suffolk, is intended. The only 
person, I believe, in that vicinity, whose 
name has ever been implicated in this 
puzzling affair, is General Lee. Now, 
could the hand-writing of the imita¬ 
tions, epigrams, Ac. be identified with 
that of General Lee, it might doubtless 
be received as a sufficient proof, that 
he was really the author of the letters 
of Junius. This test surely cannot 
present insuperable difficulties, since 
Lee’s MS. canuot yet be entirely ex¬ 
tinct, and most probably some of his 
letters are yet preserved in the Davers’ 
family, where he was so often an inmate. 
I have periodically, but always hi¬ 
therto anonymously, borne some share 
in the Junian controversy, having been 
a constant reader and enthusiastic ad¬ 
mirer of the style and spirit, not in¬ 
deed of the half-bred and insidious 
politics, of those letters from their first 
appearance, which was during my resi¬ 
dence in Suffolk. Among my earliest 
juvenile essays (1769.) was an attempt- 
Letters of Junius. 
