that these Travels have never appeared in any English translation.

Speaking of the richness of the soil, and the other sources of prosperity of England, the author proceeds as follows:"What principally contributes to the “ ་ promotion of agriculture in England is the general and well founded esteem in which that most beneficial of all human occupations is held in that country. The first Peer of the realm, the Nobility of every rank, even the King himself, do not || consider it beneath their dignity to become attentive and industrious farmers. || Ladies of the highest rank engage in the avocations of rural and domestic economy, by which they require the respect both of their own countrymen and of all enlightened foreigners."

Thus, for example, the Princess of Wales.

her favourite spot, a small and extremely simple seat, placed in the corner of the garden, overshadowed by two or three honeysuckles, the branches of which are bent in such a manner that one of the finest prospects which this place commands opens to the view as through a window,she invited me to survey the most important part of her grounds. Imanifested some surprise, conceiving that I had seen every thing. The lovely Princess smiled, and conducted me to a considerable tract covered with vegetables, composing the farther and largest portion of this remarkable garden. This,' said she, is my principal concern. Here I endeavour to acquire the honourable name of a farmer, and that, as you see, not merely in jest. The vegetables, which I raise here in considerable quantity are carried to town and sold. The produce amounts annually to a handsome sum.'

"When I was at her residence at Blackheath, she had the condescension to con- "You will probably guess to what purpose duct me to a garden at some distance, this handsome sum is applied. Or, shall I which she has principally laid out herself, || let you a little more into the secret of the and which she superintends, in such a com- active and benevolent life which the future plete sense of the word, that no person Queen of the first and most powerful namust presume to do any thing in it but tion in the world here leads in a simple what she herself directs. I admired the country house, which is in fact not so beautiful order and the careful cultivation large as that of a petty German Baron? even of the most insignificant spot; the Well then, be it so; I will even run the judicious combination of the useful with risk of incurring her anger, in case she the agreeable, which appeared so delight- should ever be informed of my treachery. ful wherever I cast my eyes. I was charmed My heart is too full to resist the impetuwith the neat borders of flowers between osity with which it attempts to discharge which we passed, and was doubly rejoiced itself. to find them so small; because, as the Princess remarked, too much room ought not to be taken from the useful vegetables merely for the purpose of pleasing the eye. I was transported with the elegance, taste, and convenience displayed in the pavillion, in which the dignified owner, who fur-chamberlains, no maids of honour, &c. nished the plan and the directions for every part of it, has solved the problem, how a building of but two floors, on a surface of about eighteen feet square, could be constructed and arranged in such a manner that a small family capable of limiting its desires, might find in it a habitation equally beautiful, tasteful, and commodious. The manner in which this has been effected, deserves, in my opinion, the notice and admiration of professed architects.

"After my Royal Guide had shewn mc

"Know then that this accomplished young Princess leads in this modest mansion a life so useful, so active, so virtuous, that I might challenge the most celebrated philosopher, in a like situatiou, to surpass her. She has no court, no officers of state, no

because she has no occasion for them here; but she is occasionally visited by a couple of female friends, who are not so merely in name, the very intelligent and worthy Mrs. Fitzgerald and her amiable daughter. Her whole long forenoon, that is, from six in the morning till seven in the evening, is devoted to buisness, to reading and writing, to the cultivation of different arts; for instance, music, painting, embroidery, modelling in clay, gardening, and to-education.

"My last word, I see, staggers you; because it is so extremely unusual to see persons of princely rank occupy themselves with an employment, which cannot have any charms for persons who have a taste only for the pleasures and amusements of || a court. But you will be still more surprised when I add, that it is not the young || and hopeful Princess, her daughter, whom she educates, but eight or nine poor or phan children, to whom she has the condescension to supply the place of a mother. Her own is the child of the State, and, according to the constitution of the country, must not, alas! be educated by herself. These poor children, on the other hand, are boarded by her with honest people in the neighbourhood; she herself not only directs every thing relative to their education and instruction, but sends every day to converse with them, and thus contribute towards the formation of their infant minds. Never while I live, shall I forget the charming, the affecting scene, which I had the happiness | of witnessing, when the Princess was pleased to introduce to me her little fosterchildren. We were sitting at table; the Princess and her friends were at breakfast; but I, in the German fashion, was taking my dinner. The children appeared clothed in the cleanest, but at the same time in the simplest manner, just as the children of country people are in general dressed. They seemed perfectly ignorant of the high rank of their foster-mother, or rather not to comprehend it. The sight of a stranger somewhat abashed them; but their bashfulness soon wore off, and they appeared to be perfectly at home. Their dignified benefactress conversed with them in a lively, jocose, and truly maternal manner. She called to her first one, and then another, and among the rest a little boy, five or six years old, who had a sore upon his face. Many a parent of too delicate nerves would not have been able to look at her own child in this state without an unpleasant sensation. Not so the Royal Mother of these orphans. She called the boy to her, gave him a biscuit, looked at his face, to see whether it got any better, and manifested no repugnance when the grateful infant pressed her hand to his bosom.

"What this wise Royal Instructress said to me on this occasion, is too deeply impressed upon my memory to be erased. People find fault with me,' said she, for not doing more for these children, after I have once taken them under my care; I ought, in their opinion, to provide them with more elegant and costly clothes, to keep masters of every kind for them, that they may once make a figure as persons of refined education. However, I only laugh at their censure, for I know what I am about. It is not my intention to raise these children into a rank superior to that in which they are placed; in that rank I mean them to remain, and to become useful, virtuous, and happy members of society. The boys are destined to become expert seamen, and the girls skilful, sensible, industrious house-wives,— nothing more. I have them instructed in all that is really serviceable for either of these destinations; but every thing else is totally excluded from the plan of education which I have laid down for them. Those who are acquainted with the splendour of the higher classes, and have reflected upon it, will beware of snatching children from the more happy condition of inferior rank, for the purpose of raising them into the former, in despite of Providence and natural destination.'

"Such is the wise and philanthropic manner in which this admirable Princess, in the flower of her age, passes one day after another. Towards evening, a very small company, of not more than three or four persons, assembles at her house to dine with her; and fortunately ceremony does not oblige her to pay regard in her selection to any other recommendation than merit. It is only on Court-days, when the Royal Family assemble, that she goes to town, or to Windsor, to complete the dignified circle of which she is such a distinguished ornament. To the Theatres, and other places of amusement of the fashionable world, her Royal Highness is a stranger. Since she came to England, she has only been twice to the play, and that was soon after her arrival. This, which of itself is an extraordinary circumstance, will be considered a great sacrifice by those who know the uncommon love and respect which is cherished by people

of all ranks for their future Queen, and consequently need not be told, that she || renounces a triumph as often as she withdraws from public view.

several other persons who are dear to her, in clay, and afterwards taken from them plaster casts, which are most perfect resemblances. In acquiring that art, this "She devotes one day in the week to her accomplished Princess pursued a manner Instead of working, as own daughter, the Princess Charlotte, of her own. who comes to see her, and spends the day usual, a long time from models, she with her. There is nothing to prevent merely procured instruction in the use her from enjoying this gratification oftener, of the tools; her fancy then formed, from the detached traits of a poem, the for the child must be brought to her whenever she pleases. For wise reasons, how-representation of an imaginary person, and ever, she denies herself and her daughter || she began to compose the figure without the more frequent repetition of a pleasure of which both of them are every day ardently desirous. If,' said she,' I were to have the child with me every day, I should be obliged sometimes to speak to her in a tone of displeasure, and even of severity. She would then have less affection for me, and what I said to her would make less impression upon her heart. As it is, we remain in some measure new to each other; at each of her visits I have occasion to shew her love and tenderness, and the consequence is, that the child is attached to me with all her soul, and not a word I say to her fails of producing the desired effect.'

any copy. The subject of her first essay was the Leonora of Burger's celebrated Ballad; her second was the head of an old Lord, whose name I have forgotten; and the third was her daughter, the Princess Charlotte.

"This reminds me of another piece of work by the hand of this Royal Artist, which I had likewise an opportunity of inspecting, and which appeared to me equally beautiful and ingenious. In passing through her work-room (where, besides a choice collection of books, and all-kinds of implements of the arts, you see a large table covered with papers, writings, drawings, and books), she took the trouble to direct my attention to a very handsome table, and asked me what I conceived it to be. Without a moment's hesitation, I declared it was inlaid, or, as it is called, Mosaic work, and that it was an excellent specimen of the art.

She smiled, and

said, that could not be, as she, who knew nothing of Mosaic work, had made it her

"I was myself an eye-witness of the truth of this. Such tender attachment, and such fervent love as this child, only seven years old, manifests to her Royal Mother is assuredly seldom seen in persons of that rank. Her eyes are incessantly fixed on the beauteous countenance of her tender mother; and what eyes! Never, in a child of her age, have I beheld eyes so expres-self, and in a few hours. It is nothing sive, so soft, so penetrating. The first time she cast them on me she seemed as though she would penetrate my soul. The most experienced observer of mankind cannot scrutinize more severely a person of whom he wishes to form a speedy judgment. For the rest, neither her dress nor her behaviour afford the least room to suspect her high destination. The former is so simple, and the latter so natural and unaffected, that were you to see her in any other place, without knowing her, you would scarcely take her for the heiress of a throne. In every dress, and in every place, however, the attentive observer would easily discover her to be an extraordinary child. The Royal Artist, her mother, has made a model of her, and of

more,' added her Royal Highness, than a square of ground glass, on which I have fastened with gum different kinds of natural flowers, which were first carefully dried and pressed, and then turned the glass with the smooth side uppermost, to produce the illusion by which you were just now deceived. The whole art, or rather the trifling degree of trouble, which this easy operation requires, consists merely in the choice of the situation which must be given to each flower, so that one may be properly connected with the others, and that as small a vacancy as possible may remain between them.' As the glass would not, however, be completely covered, I suppose (for unluckily I forgot to inquire) that the intervals are

stained with colours, so as to give them the appearance of stone.

"By means of this pleasing artifice she has made a Chinese lamp for one of her other apartments, which, like those of coloured glass or thin alabaster, diffuses a very mild light.

"A second table in her work room, which appears to be composed of every possible species of marble, is, what I never should have guessed without being told,-nothing more than a square of ground glass, which, on the under side, is painted in such a manner, that the spectator cannot help | taking the whole for specimens of all the species of marble joined together and inlaid. In each corner a small copper-plate of some antique figure is stuck; of course,

on the reverse of the square, which completes the deception.

"You must, my friend, have no sense of what is fair, and great, and lovely, if I should have occasion to apologize for this little digression into which I have been involuntarily led. Your heart, which is ever open to all that is virtuous and excellent, must, I know, receive equal pleasure with my own, from these particulars of the wise and benevolent system of life, which a Princess, destined for the Throne of Great Britain and Ireland, has prescribed for herself, and pursued for so many years with a fortitude and a perseverance which seem to exceed the powers, of her sex."

ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS.

ON THE USE OF THE FABLES OF MYTHOLOGY.

portal seldom opened but to amusement, or to interested knowledge; and thus, divinâ Palladis arte, often surprised the fortress of ignorance, and destroyed the retreat of infamy.

But such is the self-opiniated sufficiency of human nature, that we too frequently regard as our amusement only, those fictions with which wisdom has permitted some favoured mortal to veil her lustre, and are entirely unsolicitous whether mere mechanism, or a more celestial endowment, gives animation to the objects with which we are so much delighted. We are still entertained with the fable, but the internal mo. ral is neglected. The figures either become a speices of allegoric puppets, attractive by the fantastic habits of fancy, and remain pleasing by hereditary partiality, or from some artful impos tor receive new interpretations, become idols, and are soon sacred from hereditary reverence.

TO disguise the asperity of instructions by the more enticing mask of amusement, is a mode of condescension which the world expects from those who wish either to disseminate knowledge or to purchase fame. The power of directing the conduct of others, of appointing bounds to the sallies of passion, and of erecting the standard of duty, presupposes a superiority, against which obstinacy and self-esteem are in continual rebellion. By such as desire to instruct, this superiority must therefore be concealed: the sage must often submit to weave his lessons with romantic fiction; to be the pander of passions, that, by soothing, he may allay them; and to bribe our senses, that they may permit his access to our reason. Fable and allegory, on this account, assuming the attractions of fancy, the warmth of genius, and the language of poetry, arose in the earliest ages of the world, fraught with the moral precepts of the first philosophers. A virtue personified became the hero of a tale, interesting the imagination and subduing the affections; while vice, figured by some detestable object, excited universal dread and abhorrence. The qualities of air, of fire, of water, of earth, their combina-provement in physical and moral philosophy, tions and effects, were frequently expressed by allegoric images. Time, the seasons, and all the properties of light and darkness, likewise engaged the attention in figurative description. Thus moral and natural philosophy were taught, and wisdom in disguise was admitted where the

That this was the origin of the heathen divinities; that the inundation of celestial powers, which arose in Egypt, and ov rflowed half the world, in streams as slimy and prolific as the waters of the Nile, has this head, though long concealed, is at length manifest by that im

which has enabled many learned moderns to discover the coincidence of the powers of the natural elements, and of the structure of the human mind with the attributes and natures of those artificial deities. The enormous edifices of Egypt, built probably for the purposes of science, were

undoubtedly regarded by the vulgar with all the astonishment of ignorant curiosity, and their sculptured characters investigated with all the conjectures of superstitious credulity. What to the learned were perhaps no more than the observations of some enlightened mind, or some instructions relative to science, were to the uninformed a field of conjecture, replete with such hints as the various attitudes and forms of the several hieroglyphte objects supplied. Those whom power, riches, or virtue, had entitled to respect and superiority, were seen to pay parti-plundered the school boy's common place book. cular attention to these hieroglyphics; the multitude therefore soon regarded them with awe; the defacing them was accounted sacrilege, and adoration, to the simple, seemed due to objects|contents, as to make transcriptions from that which all revered.

grew were no longer protected by the power of history. She has now to seek authority for her fictions, in the works of her illustrious sons of Greece and Rome, who have stan ped an authenticity upon whatever they have touched, and have conferred a permanency to fable which even truth reveres. The fables that are found in Homer and Virgil, nay, almost the vast stories of Ovid, may be re-told in modern compositions without condemnation, although an accusation should be set up in the critical court of having

These illustrious authors have indeed become the common place book of the universe; and we have as just a right to make a liberal use of their

other great common place book, the volume of Nature. To use them, however, in preference to Nature, is pedantry; to misapply them, folly; and literally to copy them, is plagiarism. Milton has authorised their service in English

liries to his truly divine poem, where the nature of his subject allowed them only the secondary station: and in our own days a proof has appeared, that all the known supernatural machinery may with propriety and effect be used or alluded to in the same work. The proof I mean, is that beautiful poem, the Botanic Garden, of which the principal are, though perhaps not strictly, the elementary beings of the Rosi-crucian Phi

Thus that mythology which is now thought trivial, and only fit for the common place book of a school-boy, had its commencement in the highest cham ers of literature, and was sent forth to conciliate and instruct. It must, how-poetry by frequently calling in their aid as auxiever, be acknowledged, that many of the fables which have afforded matter for poetry, and have been sung and re-sung 1y successive bards, originated in the or.] histories of barbarous nations, when ignorance heard and believed all the tales of folly and of interest. Yet even in those parts of history which fable has most contaminated, truth often appears struggling for existence, while the unauthorised historian dares not assist her efforts, since fables ever dissimilar, though relat-losophy, while illustrations are drawn promiscuing the same event, seldom leave a single fact, either firm or extended enough to support an argument. Modern authors have therefore agreed almost totally to neglect the rude traditions of unlettered barbarians, and the poetic relations of historic bards, as impenetrable mists or dazzling exhalations. History gains in authenticity and dignity by the rejection of such spurious legends, but poetry is a sufferer by the pride of her sister. Many of her embellishments have been demoJished, because the events out of which theyed in the oblivion of three thousand years.

ously from ethics or from holy writ. The Dirorum Mars, Bacchus, Apollo, of many poetasters, might indeed be ridiculed, were they not beneath criticism; but to introduce the ancient fictions, with a view to their pristine significations, might tend to restore them to the dignity they once deserved; it might elucidate many passages of the classics, and encrease their value; it might unlock the repositories of antiquity, and recover much of that knowledge which has been conceal

SIR,

SOLUTION OF THE INQUIRY,

"WHO WAS THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK?"

he was the Duke of Beaufort, who fell at the EVERY reader must, without doubt, be ac-siege of Candia; while others have maintained, quainted with Voltaire's account of the person that he was the Count de Vermandois, the son known by the name of the Man with the Iron of Louis XIV. by Mademoiselle de la Valière, Musk, concerning whom so many contradictory who is reported by the author of the Memoirs of conjectures have been circulated during the last Persia, to have been snatched from human socentury. The history of the same extraordinaryciety for having struck the Dauphin. The fact character, attributed to the Marechal de Riche-is, that the Count de Vermandois died in the Jieu, in which he is stated to be the twin brother camp before Dixmude, and was solemnly inof Louis XIV. is equally familiar to the public. terred at Arras. Some, on the other hand, have asserted, that

Various have been the attempts to resolve a