weight. These hideous animals seem, like their kindred in Madagascar, to live wholly on vegetables. It is a curious discovery that the vampire of South America should have been formed to subsist in the same manner, and that that appetite for blood which renders it destructive to cattle, and even dangerous to man himself, should be an acquired habit! Sir Everard Home, in examining the stomach of pne of these creatures, found that it had no resemblance to the stomach of the common bat, which is carnivorous; it was filled with the stamina of the flowers of the eugenea in so perfect a state, that botanists could ascertain the plant to which they belonged.

The parrots of these islands, according to P. Faure, were in great request in India, because they were thought to speak more distinctly than any others; a superiority as imaginary as that of the Ceylon elephants, which was said to be acknowledged by all the elephants of the continent! The Hirundo edulis, or Hinlane, as the natives call it, is found here, and its nests, the well known dainty of the Chinese, are the only produce of the Nicobars, for which there is a constant demand. Mr. Haensel dealt so largely in this article, (having sometimes, in one excursion, collected fifty pound weight, or above 2000 nests,) that he had ample opportunities of observing for what use the birds designed them, and of endeavouring to ascertain from what substance they were made. The legs of these birds are so short that if they once settle on the ground they are unable to rise, and they build their nests not only for the parpose of laying their eggs in them, but for resting places from whence they may take wing: they are therefore of two sorts-the hen building the house, and the cock fixing a smaller one of ruder construction close to it for the perching place. That formation which makes such a provision necessary, renders it impossible that they can obtain their materials on the coast or from rocks in the sea as has been supposed. Mr. Haensel has often caught them as they lay helpless on the ground, and when he threw them up into the air they readily took flight. It is his opinion that they make their nests from the gum of a peculiar tree called the Nicobar cedar, the fruit of which discharges a resinous fluid; for he has seen innumerable flocks of these little birds fluttering about these trees when bearing fruit, like bees around a shrub in full flower.

No mention is made of any plague of insects; there is probably, therefore, little or no stagnant water, and the insalubrity of the climate is ascribed to the closeness of the woods, with which hills and vallies are overrun. They are in many places so closely interwoven with rattan and bush-rope that they seem to be spun together, and the light of the sun never penetrates them. Most of the trees and plants bear fruit-the fruit falls and rots, and thus the very bounty of nature, which, with an active and full population,

would

would reuder these islands truly fortunate, becomes injurious to savages, who suffer the productions of the earth, as well as their own moral and intellectual faculties, to run waste. Thus it is that wherever moral evil is found, physical evil, in some form or other, is at once its consequence and punishment. Even the natives suffer from a climate which this cause, and this alone, renders unhealthy but to the missionaries it was peculiarly destructive; malignant fevers and liver complaints were produced by it, the effects of which generally proved fatal, and always continued through life. Eleven missionaries were buried in Nancauwery, and thirteen died shortly after their return to Tranquebar.

To these fatal effects of the climate, Mr. Haensel chiefly attributes the failure of the mission-most of the missionaries were carried off by it before they could learn the language, or just when they had got so far that they were able to speak to the natives in their own tongue. This rendered the difficulty of attaining the language insuperable, and without that attainment it was impossible to make any progress in the work of conversion. Upon this subject this humble Moravian speaks with a sincerity, which forms a striking contrast to the edifying parts of the Lettres Edifiantes.

'I cannot help observing,' he says, that when we speak of the total failure of our endeavours, we have cause, in a great degree, to blame ourselves. For my part I must confess with humble shame that I soon lost my faith and courage, brotherly love having ceased to prevail amongst us. It is true our trials were great, and the prospect most gloomy; but we have seen in other instances what the Lord can do, by removing obstacles, and giving strength to his servants, if they are one in spirit, pray and live together in unity, and prefer each other in love. This was too much wanting during the latter part of our abode.'

In another place he says:

are

'Oh how many thousand tears have I shed during that period of distress and trouble! I will not affirm that they were all of that kind which I might with David pray the Lord "to put into his bottle" and ask “ they not in thy book;" for I was not yet fully acquainted with the ways of God with this people, and had not yet a heart wholly resigned to all his dealing. Oftentimes self-will, unbelief, and repining at our hard lot, was mixed with our complaints and cries unto him. Do not therefore think them so very pure and deserving of pity as they may seem. Thus much however I can truly say, that amidst it all, our Saviour was the object of our hearts desire, and he beheld us with long-suffering and compassion."

Mr. Haeusel was at length sent from Tranquebar to bring away the last surviving missionary, and break up the establishment. 6 Words,' he says, cannot express the painful sensations which crowded into my mind while I was executing this task, and making a final conclusion of the labours of the brethren in the Nicobar islands.

E 4

I re

I remembered the numberless prayers, tears and sighs, offered up by so many servants of Jesus, and by our congregations in Europe, for the conversion of the poor heathen here; and when I beheld our burying ground where eleven of my brethren had their resting place, as seed sown in a barren land, I burst into tears and exclaimed, Surely all this cannot have been done in vain! Often had I visited this place, and sat down and wept at their graves!'

His farewell to the inhabitants was very affecting; they wept and howled for grief, and begged that the brethren might soon return.

No sect was ever more calumniated than that of the Moravians when Count Zinzendorf brought them into public notice; and it must be admitted, that the language of their hymns gave ample. occasion for disgust and scandal. Like other sects they have outgrown their follies, and outlived the calumnies consequent upon them; and certain it is that no community in proportion to its numbers and means has ever made such persevering and successful exertion for spreading the gospel. Wherever men are most ignorant, most brutalized, most wretched, there they have gone to teach them the first and most essential of the arts of civilized life, and to offer them the hopes and the consolations of christianity. They have thus effected the conversion of the Greenlanders; they are labouring among the Esquimaux; the North American Indians; the negro slaves in the sugar islands and in Dutch Guiana; and the Hottentots. The annual expenditure of these missions, beyond what the establishments furnish to their own support, is about £8000, and hitherto it has been wholly as well as cheerfully supported by a community which is neither numerous nor opulent, but most meritoriously industrious and frugal. But they have shared in the general ruin which the insatiable ambition of one individual has brought upon the whole continent of Europe. Their settlements in Germany have been exhausted by repeated requisitions, and that at Moscow plundered by the French and burnt; all its members being at once literally made beggars. In this state of things they have for the first time appealed to the benevolence of other christian communities, to assist them in discharging a debt of £4000, at which they estimate the deficit of the year, occasioned by these circumstances.-We offer no apology for concluding with this statement, feeling it an act of duty to make it as public as possible.

ART.

ART. V. The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton; with a Supplement of Interesting Letters, by distinguished Personages. 2 vols. 8vo. Lovewell and Co. London.

1814.

IT is with great regret that we undertake to give our readers some

account of these volumes.

The only cloud which has obscured the bright fame of the immortal Nelson was generated in the fatal atmosphere of Naples.His public honour and his private faith have been sullied by, to say no worse of it, a foible, of which these volumes are a fresh, and we must add, a shameless record.

In what we have to say, we shall not follow the example which we reprobate, nor contribute to spread the poison which, with a double malignancy, invades the reputation of the dead, and the tranquillity of the living. We should indeed not have noticed this publication at all, but that public justice, and the peace and wellbeing of society require that we should visit such an attempt with the seyerest punishment that our literary authority can pronounce, and we feel ourselves the more obliged to this just severity, from observing in the preface a pledge that more matter of the same kind is in the same hands, and about to be employed in the same indiscreet and profligate manner.

The fame of Lord Nelson is, as his life and services were, public property; and we absolutely deny the right to which any unworthy possessor of a few of his private notes may pretend, to invade (by the publication of what never was intended to pass the eye and ear of the most intimate and confidential friendship) to invade, we say, that public property, and lower the reputation of the hero and his country.

Lord Nelson's private letters to Lady Hamilton contain absolutely nothing to justify their publication. Of his public transactions, or of his private sentiments of public affairs they furnish no memorial;-they are the mere records of the transient clouds of his temper, of the passing feelings of his heart, of the peevishness, which an anxious spirit and a sickly frame produced: and if we are obliged, in truth and candour, though most reluctantly, to say that they are coarse, shallow, and fulsome, miserably deficient in taste, ease, or amiability, let us not be accused of endeavouring, by this fair speaking of the truth, to degrade a name which we love almost to idolatry: our real motives are a true auxiety for his fame, and a desire to extinguish at once these base attempts at turning a penny by the prostitution of so noble a name, and the betraying of so high a confidence.

We knew Lord Nelson, and we saw in him abundant reason to

excuse,

excuse, almost to forget these little imperfections of his noble nature but even those who knew him not, or, we should rather say, even those who only know him by his great achievements and generous spirit will be prepared, from their own knowledge of human nature, to expect that so much zeal, such an ardent enthusiasm, such a self-devouring anxiety as prompted him in his career of glory, would not have been unaccompanied by a certain impatience of feeling and a certain freedom of expression which were naturally pardonable, indeed almost admirable, in the man himself, but which it is grievous to every honest heart, and injurious to the human character to have recorded, chronicled, and exposed.

In the pangs of disappointed hope, in the pain of illness, in the hurry and agitation of great zeal and conscious supremacy of talent, is it very surprising that even the best, and dearest, and earliest friends of Nelson should, when they happened to cross the favourite path of his mind, to interrupt his glorious day-dreams, or in their love and prudence, to think for him who never thought for himself, is it, we say, surprising, that they should be sometimes. lightly treated in his hasty notes to a woman whom unfortunately he adored rather than loved, and who has, by this publication which appears to have been made, if not by her, at least with her sanction, proved herself but little worthy the confidence of such a man?

It may perhaps gratify the personal vanity of Lady Hamilton to publish to the world how Lord Nelson and Lord Bristol, and twenty others called her their own dear, dearest, best beloved, and all accomplished, incomparable Emma' but really this personal gratification is obtained at a price at which we did not think that the vainest and the most indelicate of her sex could have condescended to buy it. What will our readers think when we tell them that in these letters, so complimentary to the elegant and delicate Emma, other females of the highest rank and the purest characters in so`ciety are designated by appellations so vulgar, so gross, so indecent, that we cannot stain our paper with them, and can only describe them as belonging to the dialect of the most depraved profligates of both sexes; and these horrible passages, neither honour of the dead, nor tenderness for the living, nor respect for public decorum, has induced the editor (who however can obliterate on occasion) to expunge!

Besides Lord Nelson's letters, there are also published, under pretence of being elucidatory of his lordship's letters to Lady Hamilton,' a number of letters to and from other persons-Lord Bristol, Mr. Alexander Davison, Sir William Hamilton, Lord St. Vincent, &c. &c. But these various letters are any thing but elucidatory of his Lordship's-they afford nothing like elucidation;

they