This is wretched quackery, and bitter bad policy. The printed speech of Mr. Twiss is really a good one, and would have done him great credit but for the extravagant accompaniment of applause, which brings its accuracy into suspicion; reminding one, as it does, of past quackeries. The Times gives Mr. Twiss's speech of last night in about fifty lines, and reports a "hear."

SIX MONTHS IN THE WEST INDIES.*

THIS is manifestly the production of " a wonderfully clever fellow," just fresh from Christchurch or Trinity, who has not yet lost, by rough intercourse with the world, any portion of that charming confidence in self which abounds in young gentlemen of lively minds and moderate abilities, educated in our universities. The peculiarity of these young persons is, that they know every thing-nothing comes amiss to them; by the mere force of genius they decide on men and things without enquiry and without hesitation. In society and in literature we always detect these youths by the air of infallibility with which they pronounce their opinions, and by the universality of their geniuses. Impressed with a due sense of the immense difficulties they have surmounted in their schoolbooks, the labours of men appear light to them, and they go to the world as if to kick it like a foot-ball before them. This gives them a remarkably dashing, off-hand air, and, considering its grace, we only regret the shortness of its duration : in ordinary cases it does not survive one year's commerce with the world; a great fund, however, of natural conceit or folly will protract its existence considerably beyond this period. As we are inclined to think well, on the whole, of the author of the book before us, we have rated him as just fresh from college, under the persuasion that the separation of a few months from Alma Mater would have rendered him one-tenth part as wise, and witty, and egotistical, and dogmatical, and consequential, and sentimental, and classical, as he is in these pages. A very little of the jumbling and jolting of life would have shaken our author into something like his true place, even in his own opinion; and he would have discovered that instead of being the eighth wonder of the world, he was in fact a young gentleman of some good sense, liveliness, and observation, who would write very intelligently, prettily, and amusingly, if he could but divest himself of the notion that any thing that could fall from his pen would be worth reading. We cannot lay down this book without fancying that the author, when composing it, imagined himself the performer, a-laMathews, of a monopolylogue, with the admiring universe for an audience. There runs through it the richest vein of conceit that we ever remember to have met with, and that is saying a great deal. But, nevertheless, the work is not without merit: it is rendered nauseous by the excessive conceit of the author, but it is not rendered valueless by it, for judicious observation has its intrinsic worth, no matter how it is communicated. Certainly, however, the utility of the book is impaired

* Six Months in the West Indies in 1825. Murray, London, 1826.

by the fault we have noted, for we are persuaded that many readers will fling it aside after a few pages, disgusted with its tone before they have discovered its better matter. And indeed it is a sore trial of patience to bear with an author who, on the strength of an opinion he has conceived of the boundless extent of his genius, thinks that he cannot fail to delight when he elaborates every folly that enters his head. Like a spoiled child, he seems persuaded that there is nothing that does not become him; and sometimes he is absolutely idiotic when he obviously believes himself witty, and nauseously maudlin when he imagines himself a Sterne. It is the misfortune of the young gentleman to have been encouraged to consider himself as an universal genius, whereas he is in truth, we take it, but an university genius, which is a very different thing-he is not a wit, or a sentimentalist of any water, nor has he any idea of humour, nor is he a gastronomist,* or any of the three hundred and thirty-two things which he imagines himself to be in as many pages; but, as we have before remarked, he is a young person of very good parts, and of a natural liveliness, which he has pushed into a painful extreme that reminds us, we speak it without any wish to offend-of a fool in spirits. The author's sallies have been encouraged by some little circle of admiring but injudicious and inexperienced friends, and he has carried those whims into cold print which thrive only in the immediate atmosphere of a spoiled favourite. Having so far opened the case, it is time that we should call the evidence.

As every thing that concerns the author of this book is important to the world, he commences with a chapter confiding to the universe HIS REASONS FOR GOING ABROAD. Under this head he informs mankind that he had the rheumatism, and sought a cure for it in the West Indies, whither he went in the suite of the Bishop of Barbadoes, and he takes this the earliest opportunity of acquainting us that he was an Eton boy, and a Cambridge man-two facts which he is so anxious to impress on our admiring minds, that he repeats them in a hundred shapes, and under as many pretexts, in the course of his three hundred pages. He introduces the end of a Latin verse for the sake of saying that he had tried to make a beginning to it, and of lamenting, with an easy air," how quickly all that Eton craft goes out of the fingers," or he parodies a line, observing that he could have done it once-when he was at Eton. Now, to be candid and honest, this makes us absolutely sick, and utterly disorders the evenness of our naturally and notoriously sweet tempers. If the author had civilly requested us in his first page to remember that he had been at school and college, we

* The very young men of the present day esteem it a mark of manhood to affect gastronomy, because they observe that men of mature age concern themselves the most in the business of the kitchen. The words of Juvenal may almost be applied to our fashionable, or would-be fashionable youth-nec tantum Veneris quantum studiosa Culina. The author before us being like most very young men, accomplished in every particular, the man of the world as well as the man of knowledge, is of necessity a gastronomist, and very erudite he is in his eating. He however unluckily betrays the profundity of his knowledge in this interesting science, by discovering Floating Island' in the West Indies, a dish for ages perfectly familiar to all tender mothers, and housekeepers who have to do with children at Christmas, and long since laid down in the chart of that ancient authority and early cook, Mrs. Glasse.

should have complied with his wish, but we hold it a bore to be reminded of these curious facts a hundred times by direct or indirect references; for when the writer does not allude to Eton, he still contrives to keep the circumstance of his having been at school before us by two or three Latin quotations in almost every page;* and now and then he brings his heavy artillery to bear on the same fact, in the shape of as many words of Greek-absolute, genuine Greek, which must astonish the ladies. He says in one place that he had been imposed upon in England in the article of chocolate, and then we have, Nýπiog' àXX' oỷк aνÐıç which shows a double understanding both of chocolate and Greek. At a party at Antigua " the ovveroi wore boots!" While the author being ignarus mali' was bitten by musquitoes. Ekias ovap clenches a moral reflection; and altogether, in one word, Caleb Quotem was a fool to our author.

So abundant indeed is the stream of his erudition, that it runs over on every occasion, and he cannot address his mistress without spouting Latin to her, just as our old friend Caleb in the farce spoke Latin to Cowslip the dairy maid.

Many geniuses delight in contrasts, in hurrying from one extreme to another, and showing themselves excellent in the most opposite provinces; thus they take a pride in exhibiting themselves as triflers after having played the sage, and puerilities succeed philosophy; or, as our author would surely clench the observation,

-neque semper arcum
Tendit Apollo

Thus it is with him: he does not always crush us with the weight of his learning, and grind us to dust with Greek quotation, but he ranges from the best thumbed pages of the classics, to the rhymes of the nursery and this with such an air! as if every thing became him. See for instance the parody he condescended to make on the corn-bird in Trinidad, who builds a hanging nest like a hammock:

"Hush a bye! corn-bird, on the tree top,

When the wind blows thy cradle will rock;
If the bough breaks, thy cradle will fall,

Then down will come cradle and corn-bird and all."

But the author's graces and accomplishments are drawing us out of the stream of the subject:-as Mrs. Hardcastle says of Tony, "he would lure the bird from the tree."

In the second chapter we find him at Madeira, where he appears in the light of a lady-killer, having won a nun's heart, Maria Clementina by name (being a Sterne, he provided himself with a Maria) on the instant. He sees her once at church, asks her age, name, and whether she is happy: he makes eyes at, and a bow to her, she kisses violets at him in return, and on THIS he goes on to ask:

This schoolboy pedantry, however, is not without its effect; it imposes on the vulgar. In a notice of this book in a Magazine, the author is described as a man apparently of high classical attainments!" After this we should be glad to hear the Reviewer's opinion of Partridge's acquirements. The classical attainments of the writer of Six Months in the West Indies can only be inferred from the heap of commonplace quotations with which he interlards his discourse. He is with Latin what Lady Morgan is with French-and can we describe any thing more offensive? But hold! we are doing him injustice, for he quotes correctly, which her ladyship does not.

I wish to know whether there would have been any harm in my accepting the captain's offer of his coxwain and gig's crew, and running away with Maria Clementina? The thing was perfectly easy, as we all agreed at the time; at the principal door there was no grating, and in the court none but maimed or decrepit persons; three men should stand at the outer gate and prevent any egress till we had brought our prize down to the Loo Rock; in a quarter of an hour we should be on board a man-of-war, and even if they had taken the alarm, and fired from the battery, it is perfectly well known that the Portuguese government never allows more than one half of the due charge of powder to its artillery, and so we might have laughed at their impotent attempts. But what could I have done with my nun? Her lover was, heaven knows where; and as to conjugating myself, although Maria was a very lovely girl, I happen to have my hands quite full for the present. So God bless thee, and again in very sorrow I say, God bless thee infinitely, sweet and unfortunate Madeiran!

These young gentlemen from Cambridge make short work of ladies' hearts. It is ask and have, a word and an elopement, look and die, with them!

In the next chapter the author crosses the tropic, and talks to us about one Eugenia after this sort:

"I had been hanging over the windward gangway, and gazing on the sea till my eyes swam; and methought a fair and languid shape rose ever and anon between the foaming crests of the purple waves, looking Eugenia at me, and beckoning and speaking, though I could not hear, and pointing down to ocean, and then long and steadily to heaven, whereat I trembled and sighed, and fears and suspicious fancies, and thoughts of dead things, and musings of preternatural agencies, absorbed my senses." Lackadaisy!

This Eugenia is a fine name, with which the author gallants in the course of these pages; he pays compliments to it, and talks sentiment to it, breaking out every now and then into touching apostrophes and invocations somewhat after the manner of Don Quixote, "Oh! my Eugenia," and "Ah! my Eugenia," and the like. In one place, however, he comes to the point, and makes a declaration of love to Eugenia in good set terms, but here the scholar becomes too strong for the lover, and in the very whirlwind of his passion he suddenly begins to talk Latin to the poor lady. Oh! says he, that I could see you, my Eugenia, my star of beauty, that I could hear,* really hold that white and soft hand; but, adds he, becoming mathematical, this thing is impossible, for it so happens that I write this with the trade-wind blowing in my face (he is very circumstantial) on the shores of the Atlantic. Here, remembering a bit of Latin, he forgets that he is talking to a lady, and remarks to her,

Intervalla vides humane commoda.

Then he speaks to her in Portuguese, which he obligingly translates into Latin, and comes the Eton man over her in,

Ah! quanto minus est cum reliquis versari,

Quam tui meminisse.

If Eugenia can stand this she must possess more patience than we boast, for we are absolutely enraged that a learned youth should thus set his wits against a girl, and perplex an innocent creature by mystifying his tender declaration by heathenish quotations; how was she to

This is new. We never before heard of hearing a white hand, nor can we understand what it means, unless indeed the lady has an ugly habit of cracking her fingers.

know that he was saying what was proper! As the whole passage must extremely interest mankind, we submit it to our readers.

Eugenia, with every faculty do I love thee; thine am I, in union or separation, to my life's end; yet I wish to throw up my sweet service, for I cannot love as I ought; I am muddy, sulky, selfish, vain, and stupid. In visions by night, in musings by day, in noise and in silence, in crowds and in the wilderness, I have thought I saw thee, alone or not, the glossy tangles sleeping coiled on snow, the lips of rose half open, the old romance, the lake, the mountain, the cousin star of beauty-twin divinities of Vallombrosa. O could I really see, could I really hear, really hold that white and soft and faithful hand :

So white, so soft, so delicate, so sleek,

As she had worn a lily for her glove!

Behold the force of imagination? for I write this in Barbados on the shores of the Atlantic, with the trade wind blowing in my face!

Intervalla vides humane commoda.

It is all one for that; I swear from Camoens,

Antes sem vòs meus olhos se entristeçaō,

Que com qualquer cousa outra se contentem,
Antes os esqueçais que vòs esqueçaō;
Antes nesta lembrança se atormentem,
Que com esqueçimento desmereçao

A gloria, que em sofrer tal pena sentem.

of which I can give but one translation in the world—

Ah! quanto minus est cum reliquis versari,
Quam tui meminisse.

Here we must take leave of the author's flirtation, the importance of which, as it is his flirtation, can alone excuse our having given so much space to it.

The author's descriptions of the West India Islands are generally very prettily painted; there is a little too much, perhaps, of the gaudy in them for our sober tastes, but nature is inclined to the gaudy in these regions, and the painter only adopts her humour with some exaggeration. His political views are often sound, and entitled to great praise, proceeding as they do from so young a man, and indicating much sagacity. We shall give some examples. On the institution of Saving Banks in Trinidad he remarks:

The institution of Banks for Petty Savings does not seem to be a wise plan of going to work in a society like this; the object should rather be to induce an appetite for comforts of dress and food which can only be purchased by the product of some labour. I would rather that a negro spent a dollar in buying a new hat, than he should lay it up in the bank. With a new hat he will purchase or acquire a perception of, and craving for, new comforts and new conveniences; he will be more and more loth to part with what has either gratified his vanity or contributed to his ease, and the pain of losing will be in just proportion to the pleasure of possessing the article. When this pain begins to be felt constantly, the great difficulty will be surmounted; a stimulus to industry, a spur to improvement will have been introduced into the mind, and from that time forward the negro may be safely left to the impulsion of those external and internal agents which are commonly found to be effectual in the more civilized regions of the globe. The unequivocal existence of this stimulus in steady operation seems to me to be the true and unerring sign of the arrival of that era when emancipation will be a blessing to the slave, the master, and the community. If, before this point be attained, complete freedom be given to all the bondmen in the British colonies, it is as demonstrable morally, as any proposition in Euclid is mathematically, first that the property in the soil must change hands; secondly, that the commerce of the islands must languish or die altogether; and thirdly, that the progress of civilization in the negroes themselves must be indefinitely retarded, and the quality of their future condition incalculably dehased.

A Bank for Savings is the peculiar product of an age and nation of high refinement, dense population, and laborious subsistence. It is that aid which should alone be