SPECTATOR'S LIBRARY.

]LISCELLANEOVS LITEIATIIRE,

The Emigrant. By Sir Francis B. Head, Bart Murray.

Hurroar, Florentine History, from the Earliest Authentic Records to the Accession of Fer- dinand the Third, Grand Duke of Tuscany. By Henry Edward Napier, Captain

in the Royal Navy, F.R.S. In six volumes. Volume I Moron.

RELIGIOUS LEGENDS,

The Bible, the Koran, and the Talmud; or Biblical Legends of the Mussulmans, compiled from Arabic sources, and compared with Jewish Traditions. By Dr. G. Weil, Librarian of the University of Heidelberg, Fellow of the Asiatic Society of Paris, &c., &c. Translated from the German, with occasional Notes. Poway, Longman and Co. The Country House, and other Poems. By James Prior, F.S.A., &c., Author of " The Life of Burke," " Life of Goldsmith," &c..... Chapman and Hall.

SIR FRANCIS B. HEAD'S EMIGRANT Is a mixture of light sketches and heavy politics; the sketches being de- signed by the author as feathers to make the heavier carcass of the poli- tics fly. This they are scarcely able to accomplish, from want of suffi- cient vitality and natural vigour ; and had they possessed more of both, they would have been unable to raise such a dead and inert mass as the rigmarole stories about a long-settled fact, which Sir Francis Head intends for political exposition. Considered as mere literary lucubrations, the sketches are pleasant reading. But they are disjointed in their structure, and rambling in the story, whilst the information they convey is often of the oldest. In fact, they owe their attraction to the peculiar qualities of Sir Francis Head's style ; and that, though brisk, rattling, and animated, derives some of its effects from the figure denominated hyperbole.

The subjects are varied enough. The opening chapter, called "The Sky," gives an account of the climate and country, with that old topic Ca- nadian winter amusements. "The Back-woods" is a sketch of emi- grants, and the toils and pleasures of emigration ; " Sergeant Neil " is an account of that person's saving a little girl on the breaking up of the ice in the St. Laurence ; "The Long Trot" and "The Bark Canoe" are narratives of the author's tour through the province as Governor, and his meeting the Red Indians in a council touching the sale of their lands. Sometimes the sketch of a single and small topic is the subject of a chap- ter,—as the story of an Emigrant's Lark ; whose song from his wooden cage spread loyalty and a love for the British connexion through the pro- vince ; and the bird, eventually dying, was stuffed at our author's ex- pense, and is preserved among his relics. Sometimes Sir Francis rises to the dignity of history,—as in "The Flare-up"; which repeats the often-told tale of M'Kenzie's insurrection and its suppresion ; the ci-devant Governor, without a Timotheus to celebrate his exploits, growing vain at the mere thought of them, and striking his strokes of policy, as well as fighting his battles, o'er again.

It has been observed by persons who followed the Old Man in his visit to the Brunnens, that they did not always recognize the thing from the description : and it is possible that Nature suffers nothing in the hands of Sir Francis, any more than his own doings. The effects of the intense cold of Canada are well known, but the following will be new to most readers.

" I one day inquired of a fine ruddy honest-looking man who called upon me, and whose toes and insteps of each foot had been truncated, how the accident hap- pened? He told me that the first winter he came from England he lost his way m the forest, and that after walking for some hours, feeling pain in his feet, he took off his boots, and from the flesh immediately swelling he was linable to put them on again. " His stockings, which were very old ones, soon wore into holes; and as, rising on his insteps he was hurriedly proceeding he knew not where, he saw with alarm, bat without feeling the slightest pain, first one toe and then another break off as if they had been pieces of brittle stick; and in this mutilated state he continued to advance till he reached a path which led him to an inhabited log-horse, where

he remained suffering great pain till his cure was effected. * * *

" In all directions running water gradually congeals. The mill-wheel becomes covered with a frozen torrent, in which it remains as in a glass case; and I have even seen small waterfalls begin to freeze on both sides, until the cataract, ar- rested in its fall by the power of Heaven, is converted for the season into a solid mirror."

Looseness of statement, and the want of logic which that quality im- plies, is the great feature of Sir Francis Head's mind. As Shelley's Peter

" WAS a Man

Too great to scan,"

io Sir Francis is too elevated to attend to fact ; but looks rather to whas he wishes to be than what is, and writes accordingly. This defect it continually visible, and the- reader will find a remarkable instance of it in the following extract.

" When I was in Canada, I often thought that it would have been as amusing to have kept a list of the various different reasons that had propelled from Eng- land those who were around me, as it is to read in Gil Bias the dissimilar causes which had brought together the motley inmates of Rolando's cave.

" For instance, one very gallant naval officer told me, that after having obtained two steps in his profession by actions with the enemy, he waited on William the Fourth, when he was Lord High Admiral, to ask for a ship; in reply to which re- quest, he was good-humouredly told that he was too young.' " That a few weeks afterwards, on making a similar request to Sir James Gra- ham, who had just succeeded to be First Lord of the Admiralty, with grave dig- nity be was told " that the policy of the Government was to bring forward young men, and that he was too old' ; and so," said my friend, I instantly tamed on my heel, and, declaring that I would never again set my foot in the Admiralty till I was sent for, I came out to Canada."

" The inability of the Government to attend to every just claim that was brought before its consideration drove crowds of distinguished officers of both ser- vices to the back-woods. Many fine fellows came out because they could not live without shooting, and did not choose to beers; a vast number crossed over

because they had heavy families and incomes'; and one of the most loyal men I was acquainted with, and to whose protection I had afterwards occasion to be indebted, in answer to some questions I was inquisitively putting to him, stop- ped me by honestly saying, as he looked me full in the face, My character, Sir, won'tbear investigation '"

The "few weeks" of the text, between the Duke of Clarence's resig- nation and the accession of Sir James Graham, was in reality two years and three months. The error is of no great consequence in itself, but it is a curious mark of a mind which does not scruple to falsify such a well-known chronological fact, for some mistaken idea of effect.

The position of Sir Francis as Governor gave him great facilities for seeing the most remarkable features of the country and its inhabitants; which he appears to have taken every advantage of; and his descriptions are graphic, if we could divest ourselves of the suspicion of exaggeration. Here is a striking account of the descent of a slide on a raft.

" A little above the picturesque city of Bytown. which appears to overhang the river, there are steep rapids and falls, by which the passage of this timber was seriously delayed. To obviate this, some capitalists constructed a very important work, by which the torrent was first retained; and then conducted over a long pre- cipitous' slide' into the deep water beneath, along which it afterwards continued its uninterrupted course.

" Although the lumberers described to me with great eagerness the advantages of this work, I did not readily understand them; in consequence of which, they proposed that I should see a raft of timber descend the slide; and as one was ap- proaching, I got into a boat, and, rowing to the raft, I joined the two men who were conducting it, and my companions who had taken me to it then returned to the shore.

" The scenery on both sides of the Ottawa is strikingly picturesque; and as the current hurried us along, the picture continually varied. " On approaching the slide, one of my two comrades gave me a staff about eight feet long, armed at one end with a sharp spike; and I then took up my position between them at what may be termed the stern end of the raft, which was com- posed of eight or ten huge trees, firmly connected together.

" As soon as the raft reached the crest of the slide, its stem, as it proceeded, of course took leave of the water, and continued an independent' horizontal coarse, until its weight overbalancing the stern, the raft, by tilting downwards, adapted itself to the surface of the slide, and then with great velocity rushed with the stream to the water, which was boiling and breaking beneath. " During the descent, which was totally divested of all danger, I found that by sticking my staff into the timber, I had no difficulty whatever in retaining my position; and although the foremost end of the raft disappeared in the deep water into which it had plunged, yet, like the head of a ship, it rose triumphantly above the breakers; and it had scarcely recovered, when the raft rapidly glided under a bridge, from the summit of which it received three hearty cheers from my brother lumbermen, who had assembled there to see it pass."

The politics, as we have said, are tedious and flat; but there are some few exceptions here and there. The following account of the real site of old England is smart, and true, though not in the writer's sense.

" During my residence in Canada, I had read so much, had heard so much, and had preached so much about ' the Old Country,' that as the New York packet in which I was returning approached its shores, I quite made up my mind to see, in the venerable countenance of ' my auld respeckit wither; the ravages of time and the wrinkles of old age. • • *

" Everything looked new. The grass in the meadows was new, the leaves on the trees and hedges were new, the flowers were new, the blossoms of the orchards were new, the lambs were new, the young birds were new, the crops were new, the railway was new. As we whisked along it, the sight, per minute, of an erect man, in bottle-green uniform, standing like a direction-post, stock still, with an arm extended, was new; the idea, whatever it might be intended to represent, was quite new. All of a sudden, plunging souse into utter darkness, and then again into bright dazzling sunshine was new. Every station at which we stopped was new. The bells which affectionately greeted our arrival, and which, some- times almost before we even could stop, bade us depart, were new.

" During one of the longest of these intervals, the sadden appearance of a line of young ladies behind a counter, exhibiting to hungry travellers tea, toast, scald- ing hot soup, sixpenny pork pies, and everything else that human nature could innocently desire to enjoy—and then, almost before we could get to these deli- cacies, being summarily ordered to depart—the sight of a crowd of sturdy Eng- lishmen, in caps of every shape, hurrying to their respective carriages with their mouths full—was new. In short, it was to new and merry England that, after a weary absence, I had apparently returned; and it was not until I reached Down- ing Street I could believe that I really was once again in 'the Old Country' But there I found everything old—old men, old women, old notions, old prejudices, old stuff and old nonsense, and, what was infinitely worse, old principles; in fact, it appeared as if the building in which I stood was intended to collect and remove to our Colonies all worn-out doctrines that had become no longer fit for home con- sumption."

Apart from tedious personal grievances, regarding loss of places or the withholding of honours and pensions, the political part of the story amounts to this. Lord Durham was imposed upon, and induced to sign a report recommending the union of the Canadas, though he disapproved of the measure; the leaders of the two political parties in England were deceived and bamboozled in combining to carry that measure into effect ; this union, together with "responsible government" for the Colonies, will eventually cause a separation from the Mother-country ; which will be further hastened by Sir Robert Peel's treachery, et cetera, in granting amnesties to and promoting persons engaged in the rebellion; and, inshort, the only mode of obviating these evils is to repeal the union, and follow the advice of Sir Francis Bond Head and friends, who are the Solomon for the government of the North American Colonies. Setting aside the self-confident part of the business, two things seem op- posed to the conclusion. If the country is so loyal and so wishful for a British policy as the writer represents it, what harm can arise from fol- lowing the popular will ? and if the long list of proscribed traitors now promoted are at all competent to the posts they fill, the Family Compact must have been what it is said to have been—a narrow oligarchy, which created dissatisfaction by confining all offices to their own clique, and by their domination produced the discontent they denounced. It is, however, by no means clear that Sir Francis himself is guiltless of pardoning traitors. Upon his own showing, he was frequently in the habit of sacrificing his duty to his Sovereign and his country, from a mere love of what the players call a striking effect. Here is one of several cases in which he omitted to do justice, from a claptrap lust after the show of an improper mercy. Mr. Bidwell, a lawyer and politician of great eminence, had, at least so says Sir Francis, been deeply implicated in the rebellion, and indeed an organizer of the whole : his letters, con- taining proofs of his treasons, were intercepted, (though, as they were not opened, we do not know how their contents were ascertained,) and the traitor himself cut off from escape to the United States : in this dilem- ma he made a merit of necessity; or, as Sir Francis more grandly says- " In this agony of mind, his acquaintance with the magnanimity of British in- stitutions, his knowledge of British law, British justice, and British mercy, ad- monished him to seek protection from the sovereign authority he had betrayed— from the executive power he had endeavoured to depose; and, accordingly, with faltering steps, he walked towards Government House, and, entering the waiting- room, he there took refuge under the very British flag which it had been the object ofewhl: of his political m'e to desecrate tredaytftheat I had had the windows of the room in which I was sitting when I received Mr. Bidwell's card blocked up with rough timber, and loop-holed; and on his opening my door, the instant this strange and unex- pected arrangement caught Mr. Bidwell's eyes he remained at the threshold for some moments, and at last slowly advanced until he stood close before me. He neither bowed to me nor spoke; but fixing his eyes on the tied-up bundle of his sealed letters which I held in my hand, he stood for some time broken down in spirit, and overwhelmed with feelings to which it was evident he had not power to ive utterance.

As I had not sent for him, I of course waited to hear what he desired to say; but as he said nothing, and appeared to be speechless, I myself broke the solemn silence that prevailed, by saying to him, as I pointed with his letters to the loop- holed windows at my side, Well, Mr. Bidwell, you see the state to which Ton have brought us.' He made no reply; and as it was impossible to help pitying the abject fallen position in which lie stood, I very calmly pointed out to him the impropriety of the course he had pursued; and then, observing to him, what he well enough knew, that were Ito open his letters his life would probably be in ,my hands,1 reminded him of the mercy as well as the power of the British Crown; and I ended by telling him, that, as its humble representative, I would restore to him his letters unopened, if he would give me in writing a promise that he would leave the Queen's territory for ever. " Mr. Bidwell had concealed in his heart some good feelings as well as many bad ones • and as soon as his fears were removed, the former prompted him to ex- press himself in terms which I will not undertake to repeat: suffice it however, to say, that he retired to the waiting-room, wrote out the promise I had dictated, and, returning with it, I received it with one hand, and with the other, -according to my promise, I delivered to him the whole of his letters unopened."

This was all very well for a melodrama, and, properly enacted, might have drawn down the gallery thunders - but mercy, or rather compassion, is not r ling to be arbitrarily or weakly exercised by authority. The parda . a personal attempt, by the person against whom the at- temr was directed, may be an act of magnanimity or of ill-judged lenity: it depends upon the circumstances of the case. It may be prudent in some cases to destroy evidence, when the parties are too nume- rous to be punished and the very attempt would drive them into hostilities. But there were none of these excuses here. Sir Francis Head was not a supreme authority, but an agent, bound to exercise his power with the greatest care and circumspection : according to his own showing, this man deserved no mercy, for he stimulated others into re- bellion from which he shrunk himself; and if there was any truth in the Governor's suspicions, those unopened letters might contain important information respecting the plans and purposes of our enemies in the United States, whether they were Sympathizers, who afterwards waged a war, or, as our author seems to intimate, the public authorities; and a knowledge of which might have prevented much of the subsequent evil consequences. Yet, without one thought of these things, or indeed of anything save self-display, did this flashy litt&ateur, transformed into a governor, allow a suspected traitor to pass out scot free, and carry all his information away with him.