ture of his father and uncle, though not without some beautiful lines, appears to be the effort of an injudicious and mistaken ambition. Should we even allow, that in any instance of this sort Mr. Coleridge had equalled the parallel passage in Shakspeare, this would not in any way affect our judgment of the merits of the two poets. It is one thing to invent, another to imitate; it is one thing as by inspiration to throw out a bright passage, which shall become a text in the mouths of all men for ever, and another to study that passage, to enlarge its beauties, to supply its defects, to prune its luxuriancies, and thus at length produce a faultless copy of an imperfect original. Mr. Coleridge is not often guilty of this fault; he has in general rather given us the character, than the features of Shakspeare. For these and many other excellences, which our limits prevent us from noticing, we will venture to recommend the Remorse to our readers. We are confident of its success in the closet, we wish we could be as sanguine of our own, when we exhort Mr. Coleridge to a better application of the talents, which Providence has imparted to him. He has been long before the public, and has acquired a reputation for ability proportioned rather to what he is supposed capable of performing, than to any thing which he has accomplished. In truth, if life be dissipated in alternations of desultory application, and nervous indolence, if scheme be added to scheme, and plan to plan, all to be deserted, when the labour of execution begins, the greatest talents will soon become enervated, and unequal to tasks of comparative facility. We are no advocates for book-making, but where the best part of a life, and endowments of no ordinary class have been devoted to the acquiring and digesting of information on important subjects, it is neither accordant with the duty of a citizen to his country, nor the gratitude of a creature to his maker, to suffer the fruits of his labour to perish. We remember the saying of the pious Hooker, that he did not beg a long life of God for any other reason but to live to finish his three remaining books of Polity.' In this prayer we believe that personal views of fame had little or no concern; but it is not forbidden us to indulge a reasonable desire of a glorious name in the aftertime. ART. XIII.- History of the Azores, or Western Islands; containing an Account of the Government, Laws, and Religion; the Manners, Ceremonies, and Character of the Inhabitants; and demonstrating the Importance of these valuable Islands to the British Empire. London. 1813. THE HE quality possessed by the magnet of attracting iron was well known to the ancients; but when, or where, or by whom the remarkable remarkable property of its polarity was first discovered, is doomed, it would seem, to remain an impenetrable secret. Nor is the first application of this quality to the purposes of navigation—a circumstance which must for ever rank among the most important as well as wonderful events in the history of the progress of human knowledge-better known to us. That no record should remain, no trace be found, of the success or failure of the first experimentsof the cautious proceedings, of the hopes and fears, of him who first launched his frail bark into the wild ocean's wave' under the directing influence of this extraordinary instrument,-is difficult to be conceived, even with all the allowances for the unenlightened times in which it was made. If, however, a hope may yet be indulged that any such records are in existence, they must unquestionably be sought in Portugal. It may be urged, indeed, that the two great historians of the nautical discoveries of that nation, Jean de Barros and Faria y Sousa, having had the full command of all the requisite documents for the compilation of their respective narratives, would not have overlooked so extraordinary a discovery, if any record of it had passed through their hands. But this by no means follows. They inquired not beyond the facts of the voyages that came before them. And even› in recording these, it was too much the fashion of writers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to quote authorities for opinions but not for facts; if it was maintained that fire would burn, or water drown,' Pliny was called upon to vouch for the one, and Galen for the other; but an historical fact was to be taken on the simple authority of the author, whom indeed they rarely condescended to name. Of the lights therefore which led to these maritime discoveries-the spirit in which they were undertaken and persevered in, in spite of the numerous difficulties and dangers to be encountered, and which would do honour to any age or nationthese historians convey but very scanty and imperfect information. The preparatory memoirs, and the original journals of the voyages, if still in existence, (of which we have little doubt,) would afford materials for one of the most curious and instructive histories of the early progress of maritime and geographical knowledge that has yet been exhibited; and we cannot help thinking that this desideratum in literature might yet fall to the share of some of our countrymen who have been the means of preserving the existence of that ancient kingdom, if a proper search were set about at this We venture to say there would be no objection on the part of the Portugueze government. Any intelligent and respectable Englishman, well acquainted with the language of the country, would find no difficulty in getting access to the public records: the object of the research, so flattering to the nation, would of itself ensure every assistance. moment. The The fortitude and perseverance of the people who,' as Doctor Vincent has justly observed, 'completed for the world the greatest discovery that navigation has yet to boast of,' must command the admiration of all nations and all ages. It is that perseverance which gives a colour to the argument of their sovereign having procured some previous knowledge that a passage to India did exist round the Cape of Good Hope. This, however, could not have been obtained, as some suppose, from the Moors of Africa, with whom they came in contact after the conquest of Ceuta. The knowledge of the Arabs on the west side of Africa extended no farther than the great desert of Saara, and on the east was limited to Sofala; all beyond these limits was supposed to terminate in the mare. tenebrosum.' It appears, indeed, from the account of the voyages of Abu Zeid al Hasan to India and China, in the ninth century, that, from the wreck of an Indian-built ship found on the coast of Syria, his countrymen inferred there must be a communication between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean, a thing,' says he, quite unknown to those who lived before us;' they thought, however, that this communication was round the country of China, and of Sila, the uttermost parts of Turkestan and the country of the Chozars.' (Czars). It is far more probable, that whatever information the Portugueze possessed, was derived from the Venetian school, at that time the seat of maritime science. We know from Barros, and the fact is corroborated by Candido Lusitano, that Prince Henry procured, with much expense and difficulty, a certain Jacomo of Majorca to teach the art of navigation and also the construction of mathematical instruments and geographical charts, for all of which he was in those days much celebrated; and we also find that in 1444 this prince employed Luiz Cadamosto, a noble Venetian, in prosecuting his discoveries; and a record still remains in the monastery of St. Michael di Murano, at Venice, of Alphonso V. of Portugal having ordered a copy to be made of the famous map of Fra Mauro deposited there, in which Africa is terminated on the south by Cape Diab', and a note inserted, stating the report of a ship from India having passed the extreme point South 2000 miles towards the West and S. W. in the year 1420. The date of this map is 1459, twenty-seven years previous to the voyage of Diaz to the Cape of Good Hope. No mention, however, of this map is made by the early Portugueze writers; they do not even inform us, whether, in their African discoveries, which commenced in 1415, they were assisted by the compass, though the probability is that they were in possession of this instrument, as in 1418 they discovered Porto Santa, and the following year returned and took possession of the island of Madeira, Madeira, the accidental discovery of which they attribute to one The exact periods in which the several islands forming the cluster called the Azores were discovered, are not precisely known. The best account that we have met with is given by Candido Lusitano, in the life of Don Henry of Portugal, written in the Portugueze language, from which, as far as our knowledge extends, it has never been translated, and consequently is very little known. It is there stated that, in the year 1431, Don Henry directed Francisco Gonzalo Velho Cabral (a gentleman of good family) to sail towards the setting sun, and on discovering an island, to return with an account of it.' Cabral proceeded in the course directed, and discovered certain rocks which, from their number, and the manner in which they were clustered together, he called the Formigas, or ants, but finding nothing else, returned much disappointed to Don Henry. The prince, far from being discouraged, dispatched Velho again the following year, assuring him that near the Formigas he would not fail to meet with an island. 'Some persons,' says Lusitano,, were inclined to attribute the confidence with which the prince' spoke, to divine inspiration; but, for my part, I am rather inclined to attribute it to the prince's having received from his brother, Don Pedro, on his return from his travels, a map of the world.' Cabral again set sail, and on the 15th August, 1432, fell in with an island which he named Santa Maria. The prince was delighted at his return, and conferred the lordship of it on the discoverer. St. Mary's had been peopled and cultivated some years, when a runaway negro discovered, from the top of a mountain, land that did not belong to the island; with an account of which he ventured to return to his master. The truth of the story was soon ascertained, and the information speedily communicated to the prince, who found that the thing agreed with his old map.' On the 8th May, 1444, Velho landed on the island and gave it the name of St. Michael. course. We do not think it necessary to accompany the author in the successive discoveries of the other islands; they followed as matters of We may observe, however, that if any credit is due to Lusitano, Prince Henry must have had in his possession, previously to Cabral's first voyage, a map in which some or all of these islands were marked down; and consequently that they must have been known before the discovery of the Formigas in 1431. Such a map is reported to have been brought by Don Pedro, Henry's brother, from his travels, on which, according to the Historia Genealogica de Real Caza Portugesa, he set out in 1424, and returned in 1428. He visited the courts of the Grand Turk and the Sultan of Babylon; from whence he returned to Rome: he thence proceeded to the court of the Emperor Sigismond; visited Hungary, Denmark, and England, where he was invested by Henry VI. with the order of the garter. He was also well received by the Kings of Spain and of Arragon. Whether he touched at Venice is not mentioned; but if so, he might there have found maps of all the known world up to that period. The earliest however that we know of, is that of Andrea Bianco, deposited in the library of St. Mark, which bears the date of 1436, and on which all the western islands are laid down. It is evident, therefore, that, unless these islands were subsequently inserted on this map, there must have been other maps which contained them, previous to the discovery of any of the islands, excepting Santa Maria, from which Bianco must have copied. If any documents should remain of Velho's voyage, they could not fail of being highly interesting. The islands themselves, however, possessed no peculiar interest, being without human inhabitants. They are described as abounding with such flocks of hawks that the Açores, or Hawk Islands, were considered as their appropriate appellative. Carnivorous animals are rarely gregarious, and in the absence of all quadrupeds, (and none were found on the islands,) one can hardly discover the inducement for this assemblage. Perhaps, instead of hawks, we may set them down for auks, or Manx puffins, whose crooked bills might have deceived the navigator; be this as it may, the name of Açores will remain to them in perpetuity. All the accounts of these islands from the earliest voyages and travels, down to the present day, are uncommonly jejune and barren. No naturalist, except Masson, and his knowledge was principally confined to botany, has yet visited them with a view of inquiring into their natural history. No geologist to examine the volcanic products of which they are wholly composed, and those remarkable changes that have taken place on their surfaces, or in the surrounding part of the ocean, since their discovery, by the agency of subterranean fire; but from their present appearance, and the testimonies of various witnesses, we may safely pronounce them to be the most recent act of creation in the western world; and, on this account, the more interesting. Mr. Masson, in his short but interesting view of St. Michael's, published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1777, says the inhabitants have a tradition, that when the island was first discovered there was an extraordinary high peak near the west end; on the second visit it had disappeared. This circumstance is particularly mentioned by Don Henry's biographer. The pilot who carried Velho to the island was the same who ascertained the truth of the negro's story the preceding year. He had then observed that there |