little prejudice his title-page and preface may seem calculated to raise, no such feeling shall be permitted to affect, in the slightest degree, our estimation of his work.

Doctor Granville, it would seem, was nearly frightened from undertaking this journey by the perusal of the two foregoing doctors, Clarke and Lyall.

Mercy on me?' he exclaims, I am to be fleeced, cheated, and laughed at; I shall lie without a bed, starve on black bread, and swarm with vermin. The villages are of mud, and the towns of logs of wood, and the two capitals moonshine. There is no chance of seeing a handsome woman; the gentlemen are all ignoramuses, and the common people brutes. The government is despotic; the police troublesome; and the dogs bite differently from English dogs.' These scraps thus strung together made the doctor' ponder ;' but calling to his recollection that it is the fashion among some English travellers (of Dr. Granville's acquaintance) to maintain that St. Paul's is the finest church in the Christian world, and the Thames the largest river in Europe,' he took courage, and prepared for his journey.

We pass over the advice to his patients to make Dover their residence as a watering-place; the blessing he bestows on steampackets; and his discovery that sea-sickness consists in vomiting, or something like it,'-thus clearing up the history of a malady which he assures us has puzzled most, nay all of the grave doctors, to find out what it arises from.' (vol. i. p. 8.) What may be more important for our readers to know, Dr. Gran ville says he prevented this distressing malady from visiting either the countess or himself by administering forty-five drops of laudanum at the beginning of the voyage;' a prescription as old as some of our grandmothers. The doctor adds, and, however strange it may appear, we by no means disbelieve it, that both the lady and the doctor, in about four-and-twenty hours after their arrival in Calais, could scarcely be considered any longer as invalids such is the almost instantaneous efficacy of a change of air, a change of scene, and the power of the imagination.

،

Doctor Granville paints Ostend in colours that certainly do not belong to it. Its commercial houses,'' great canal,'' vistas of the principal streets,'' lofty narrow tower with its beaconlight,' the old and new ports,' 'bomb-proof and impregnable,'-these, he says, form collectively' a landscape worthy of the pencil of Ruysdael!' Such encomiums on this miserable place have satisfied us, that his descriptions must be received with caution, and that his knowledge of the arts is not very extensive. Who but the doctor would have selected a low, monotonous, naked town without a tree, with some little shipping shut up in a basin, for

B 2

the

the pencil of an artist whose forte was in rugged mountain-scenery, rude rocks and foaming waterfalls, old hoary woods, and melancholy groves? Ostend is a poor, dull place, and, if a fit subject for any pencil, it would be that of a Vernet or a Vandevelde. We observe, indeed, other proofs in his book, that the doctor is not much of a connoisseur in painting. He says that the pictures of merit in the cathedral of Saint Bavon at Ghent are numerous, but those of the brothers Hubert and John Van Eyck, the inventors of oil painting, are justly considered as the most valuable productions of the Flemish school.' So say the guide-books; but his authorities have deceived the doctor in spite of all his Academies; the paintings of the Van Eycks are only considered as valuable for their antiquity; and as to their being the inventors of oil painting,' Sir Joshua Reynolds thought otherwise; indeed it has been proved that oil painting was practised more than a century before they were born. If Doctor Granville had looked sharp near the same part of the wall where he saw the Van Eycks, he might have discovered an old German painting with the date 1300 in the corner.

Again, at Cologne, in speaking of the picture of the crucifixion of St. Peter by Rubens, he says, that

* for strength, truth, and colouring, it may be considered as far superior to most of the productions of that artist. Yet,' he continues, there are some connoisseurs who affect to believe that this painting is not the work of that master, but of one of his pupils. This arises probably from the absence of those huge, fleshy, exaggerated figures which are generally observed in most of Rubens' pictures.'

It is quite true that there are ignorant connoisseurs' who believe what he states, and among the number that ignorant connoisseur Sir Joshua Reynolds. As to the rest, our readers, who know any thing of the arts, will be able to appreciate the extent of Doctor Granville's acquaintance with the paintings of Rubens.

The palace of the new University of Ghent founded by William I. is certainly a noble building, and does infinite credit to the liberality and right feeling of the King of the Netherlands. Doctor Granville says, 'it is by far the handsomest architectural monument consecrated to the arts and sciences now existing in Europe.'. To this university there are three curators, nineteen professors, a secretary, inspector, and librarian. The number of students amounts already to more than five hundred. It contains collections of natural history, particularly of zoology and mineralogy, of comparative anatomy, and of medals; and in the library are upwards of sixty thousand volumes. There are also established an excellent botanical garden and a botanical society. The garden is extensive, tastefully laid out, and although in its in

fancy,

fancy, it can already boast of twelve hundred genera and five thousand six hundred species, all arranged according to the system of Linnæus.

At Ostend, and afterwards at Brussels, Dr. Granville met with the celebrated,' as he is pleased to call him, Capo d'Istrias; and is quite enraptured in praise of this distinguished individual.' He was no less struck with his personal appearance: the squareness and great elevation of his forehead; the extraordinary size of his ears, considerably detached from the back part of the head; and the remarkable paleness of his complexion, give him a very peculiar character.' The late Sir Thomas Maitland was not at all smitten with the peculiar merits of this broad-fronted, longeared gentleman, when he had to deal with him in his character of Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands-but doctors will differ.

But

At Brussels, we are told, some enterprising booksellers are reprinting the Paris novels, romances, plays, &c., which they can afford to sell at half of the Parisian prices; that Tarlier, one of the principal publishers, had reprinted, in the first six months of 1827, not less than 318,615 volumes, of the value of 1,183,315 francs. The publishers in Paris are, as may be supposed, up in arms against those of Brussels, and are about to establish a depôt at the latter place to undersell them. Thus do the public reap advantage from competition. The population of the Netherlands would keep pace with the multiplication of books, if, as Dr. Granville says, it had increased, since the year 1814, at the rate of one-tenth in ten years, or of doubling itself in a century. the doctor has mistaken the Netherlands proper for the whole kingdom of William I.; the provinces of Holland reckon hodie about 1,900,000 souls-which we believe is a considerable diminution since the commencement of the century. The improvements that have taken place in the Netherlands, under the present government, in commerce, manufactures, agriculture, and industry, in general, are very remarkable, more especially in the vicinity of Brussels, Antwerp, Liege, and Namur; and the arts and sciences, literature, and the fine arts, go hand in hand with the extended education, prosperity, and comforts of the people. In the Netherlands, the roads, in particular, are daily improving; but it is quite true as Dr. Granville says, that, from the moment the Belgian frontier is passed, they are intolerable, whether on the paved chaussée or on the sandy and clayey sides, as far as Cologne.

Brussels, we are told, may be said to be, next to Paris, the largest English colony on the continent; and that there are not fewer at this moment than six thousand English residents there.

This is not at all surprising. Cheapness of living, of education, of amusements a mild government and agreeable society-the abundance of all the necessaries of life, of tine fruits and vegetables in particular, are temptations; though we pity those who have not the virtue to resist them. 'A small basket,” says Dr. Granville, of the finest peaches in the world has been bought for ten cents. in the summer; I have seen some magnificent pears sold in the market for three cents. the pound. Bread is of an excellent quality throughout Flanders, perfectly white, light, and highly flavoured; and its price is not more than half of what it bears in England.' And he concludes the many advantages of Brussels, by stating, as a fact, that the greatest number of the English residents in Brussels, or any of the provincial towns, live in comparative affluence on an annual income which would not enable them, without the strictest economy, to struggle through life at home.' This is probably not far from the truth; and Dr. Grauville is too much a man of the world to hint that in such cases one ought not to think wholly of selfish and immediate gratifications. Who has a right to spend systematically an income, however narrow, resulting from English property, protected by English laws, where he escapes from his obligation to defray a fair part of the expense of maintaining those laws in authority, and that property in safety? We do not wish to press such an argument to extremity; but assuredly it is one that ought not to be wholly neglected. We fear the poet has some reason when he says that expense' is become an idolatry' among us. 'We must run glittering like a brook

6

In the open sunshine, or we are unblest.'

At Aix-la-Chapelle, Dr. Granville visited, as who does not? the old dom-church built by Charlemagne, and felt much interest, he says, in holding in his hand the real skull (credat Judæus !). of the gigantic emperor.' However, be the skull whose it may, he found strongly marked and ample, in its upper region, what are called by phrenologists the organs of self-will and veneration. We have a higher opinion of Dr. Granville's sagacity than to suppose him capable of being deluded by so gross a piece of quackery as craniology-for that is its proper name. Let him leave that, by all means, to the young gentlemen of Edinburgh, who pretend to believe as strongly in the infallibillity of their patron Spurzheim, as a good catholic does in that of the pope; each equally contrary to common sense and human reason. › While on this subject, we will tell these northern bump-hunters. a little anecdote of their oracle which we know to be true.

On visiting the studio of a celebrated sculptor in London, his attention was drawn to a bust with a remarkable depth of skull

from

from the forehead to the occiput. 'What a noble head,' he exclaimed, is that! full seven inches! What superior powers of mind must he be endowed with, who possesses such a head as is here represented!' Why, yes,' says the blunt artist, 'he certainly was a very extraordinary_man-that is the bust of my early friend and first patron, John Horne Tooke.' Aye,' answers the craniologist, you see there is something after all in our science, notwithstanding the scoffs of many of your countrymen.' Certainly,' says the sculptor; but here is another bust, with a greater depth and a still more capacious forehead.' 'Bless me!' exclaims the craniologist, taking out his rule, 'eight inches! who can this be? this is indeed a head-in this there can be no mistake: what depth of intellect, what profundity of thought, must reside in that skull! this I am sure must belong to some extraordinary and well-known character.' 'Why, yes,' says the sculptor,' he is pretty well known-it is the head of Lord Pomfret.'

Dr. Granville tells us there are three Farinas in Cologne who make the perfumed water which bears its name, but that only one is the genuine descendant of the inventor and proprietor of the secret ; and it may be useful to the traveller to know that the legitimate distiller has his magasin opposite to the Poste aux lettres. The doctor then lets us into his secret for making Eau de Cologne, equally good with that of the best Farina, and at one-fourth of the price; which we shall give, that any of our readers may try the experiment if they please :

Take of the essence of bergamot, lemon-peel, lavender, and orangeflower, of each one ounce; essence of cinnamon, half an ounce; spirit of rosemary, and of the spirituous water of melisse, of each fifteen ounces; strong alcohol, seven pints and a half. Mix the whole together, and let the mixture stand for the space of a fortnight; after which, introduce it into a glass retort, the body of which is immersed into boiling water contained in a vessel placed over a lamp, while the beak is introduced into a large glass reservoir well luted. By keeping the water to the boiling point, the mixture in the retort will distil over into the receiver, which should be covered over with wet cloths. In this manner will be obtained pure Eau de Cologne.'—vol. i., p. 118.

Unqualified praise is given to the king of Prussia for having founded, in the year 1818, the university of Bonn, with a donation of the castles of Bonn and Poppelsdorf and the land belonging to them; establishing five faculties-three for jurisprudence, medicine, and general science, which includes all branches of literature, --and two for theology, one for protestant and the other for catholie students. In that of literature, there is also a protestant and a catholic professor. This is certainly most liberal on the part of his Prussian Majesty, whose declared sentiments on this occasion

reflect