All urns contained not single ashes; without confused burnings they affectionately compounded their bones; passionately endeavouring to continue their living unions. And when distance of death denied such conjunctions, unsatisfied affections conceived some satisfaction to be neighbours in the grave, to lie urn by urn, and touch but in their names. And many were so curious to continue their living relations, that they contrived large and do family urns, wherein the ashes of their nearest friends and kindred might successively be received, at least some parcels thereof, while their collateral for memorials lay in minor vessels about them."

This is indeed putting life into dry bones. Behold, too, how much sentiment he throws over the accompaniments of certained sepulchral vessels, such as those which contained liquors, and "which time had incrassated into jellies :

"For, besides these lachrymatories, notable lamps, with vessels of oils, and aromatical liquors, attended noble ossuaries; and some yet retaining a vinosity and spirit in them, which if any have tasted, they have far exceeded the palates of antiquity. Liquors not to be computed by years of annual magistrates, but by great conjunctions and the fatal periods of kingdoms. The draughts of consulary date were but crude unto these, and Opimian Wine but in the must unto them."

How prodigally he heaps honour upon bones preserved in Urns ; "Christians dispute how their bodies should lie in the grave. Inx urnal interment they clearly escaped this controversy." Again,"To be knawed out of our graves, to have our skulls made drinking bowls, and our bones turned into pipes, to delight and sport our enemies, are tragical abominations escaped in burning burials." And again, according to still nobler associations and comparisons : "Now since these dead bones have already outlasted the living ones of Methuselah, and in a yard underground, and thin walls of clay, outworn all the strong and specious buildings above it; and quietly rested under the drums and tramplings of three conquests: what prince can promise such disturnity unto his relicks, or might not gladly say, (with Tibullus)

'Sic ego componi versus in ossa velim ?' Time which antiquates antiquities, and hath an art to make dust of all things, hath yet spared these minor monuments." Yes, hath yet spared, while the gigantic works and monuments of the proud and great, the cities of Babylon Ninevah, &c. are as if they had never been.

But Sir Thomas Brown did not rest content with making the antiquities of the grave and of funeral Urns the theme only of his tender and ennobling imaginings; yet, had he so confined himself, the treatise would have been beautiful as well as curious. But he passes on to more important associations, to the true nobility and immortality or man, the past, present, and the future meeting and blending their interests and conditions in each and all. He thus guides us to the deeper speculations :--

"It is the heaviest stone that melancholy can throw at a man, to tell him he is at the end of his nature; or that there is no further state to come, unto which this seems progressional and otherwise made in vain. Without this accomplishment, the natural expectation and desire of such a state were but a fallacy in nature." But the superior ingredient and obscured part of ourselves, where to all present felicities afford no resting contentment, will be able at last to tell us, we are more than our present selves, and evacuate such hopes in their fruition of their own accomplishments."

He regards the condition of our dead bodies, in whatever form mankind have preferred to put or leave them, whether neglected, or treated with a care to perpetuate them or parts of them, as intimating that "apprehensions rested in opinion of some future being. He even immortalizes oblivion, saying, it "is not to be hired; the greater part must be content to be as though they had not been, to be found in the register of God, not in the record of man." He states that the "number of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The night of time far surpasseth the day, and who knows when was the equinox ?" "It is too late to be ambitious. great mutations of the world are acted, or time may be too short for our designs." "And, being necessitated to eye the remaining particle of futurity, we are naturally constituted unto thought of the next world, and cannot excusably decline the consideration of that duration, which maketh pyramids of snow, and all that's past a moment."

The

With what majesty he moralizes in regard to affection, pagan phantasies, and ingenious methods to render memories everlasting, in the following passage :

"Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares with memory a great part even of our living beings; we slightly remember our felicities, and the smartest strokes of affliction leave but short smart upon

us.

Sense endureth no extremities, and sorrows destroy us or themselves. To weep into stones are fables. Afflictions induce callosities; miseries are slippery, or fall like snow upon us, which notwithstanding is no unhappy stupidity. To be ignorant of evils to come, and forgetful of evils past, is a merciful provision in nature, whereby we digest the mixture of our few and evil days, and, our delivered senses not relapsing into cutting remembrances, our sorrows are not kept raw by the edge of repetitions. A great part of antiquity contented their hopes of subsistency with a transmigration of their souls-a good way to continue their memories, while, having the advantage of plural successions, they could not but act something remarkable in such variety of beings, and enjoying the fame of their past selves, make accumulation of glory unto their last durations. Others, rather than be lost in the uncomfortable night of nothing, were content to recede into the common being, and make one particle of the public soul of all things, which was no more than to return into their unknown and divine original again. Egyptian ingenuity was more unsatisfied, contriving their bodies in sweet consistences, to attend the return of their souls. But all was vanity, feeding the wind, and folly. The Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses or time

hath spared, avarice now consumeth. Mummy is become merchandize, Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for balsams."

In an equally lofty and arousing strain, he declares

"The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying; when avarice makes us the sport of death, when even David grew politicly cruel, and Solomon could hardly be said to be the wisest of men. But many are too early old, and before the date of age. Adversity stretcheth our days, misery makes Alcmena's nights,* and time hath no wings unto it. But the most tedious being is that which can unwish itself, content to be nothing, or never to have been, which was beyond the mal-content of Job, who cursed not the day of his life, but his nativity; content to have so far,been, as to have a title to future being, although he had lived here but in an hidden state of life, and as it were an abortion."

But we must arrest our copying pen, being assured that whoever of our readers have been till now ignorant of such a venerable treasure as is now before us, will in the warmth of their admiration and delight feel inclined to say, we did not believe that such an original and such a stupendous literary monument existed anywhere-that such sweetness could be extracted from human ashes-that such immortality could be preached, dry bones being the text. A few scattered sentences from the latter part of the work may be advantageously strung together to form a fitting conclusion to our paper. What is the value of renown? "The Canaanitish woman lives more happily without a name, than Herodias with one?" for "To be nameless in worthy deeds, exceeds an infamous history." But what hope to the good and truly great who have never blazed in the page of history!-for, "who knows whether the best of men be known? or whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot, than any that stand remembered in the known account of time?" "There is nothing strictly immortal, but immortality." "The sufficiency of Christian immortality frustrates all earthly glory, and the quality of either state after death, makes a folly of posthumous memory" thus profoundly does he wrap up the whole in accordance with the most sacred and solemn truths.

Take, last of all, Dr. Johnson's character of Sir Thomas Browne as a writer:-" His exuberance of knowledge, and plenitude of ideas, sometimes obstruct the tendency of his reasoning, and the clearness of his decisions: on whatever subject he employed his mind, there started up immediately so many images before him, that he lost one by grasping another. His memory supplied him with so many illustrations, parallel or dependent notions, that he was always starting into collateral considerations; but the spirit and vigour of his pursuit always gives delight; and the reader follows him, without reluctance, through his mazes, in themselves flowery and pleasing, and ending at the point originally in view."

*One night as long as three.

507

South

ART. IV.-South Australia in 1837; in a Series of Letters: with a Postscript as to 1838. By R. GOUGER, Esq. London: Harvey & Co. 1838. THE author of this small volume states, that "feeling convinced that if on arrival in England I found South Australia exciting much public interest, I should have numerous demands upon me for full particulars' regarding the province, and that to tell each inquirer an already ten times told tale,' would occupy more time and patience than I should be able to bring to the occupation, I amused myself during my return to England, by extracting from my letters to private friends, and putting into a little more arranged shape, such information as I thought might be publicly acceptable.' Australia is exciting a very considerable degree of public interest at present in this country as a field for emigrants to settle upon; and as the statements contained in the little work before us are not only of a practical nature, but entertaining and calculated to satisfy a praiseworthy curiosity, we shall be doing nothing more than our duty when for a little space we solicit attention to some of them. The openings held up to intending emigrants are very various, each having its advocates and warm eulogists, so as to puzzle the heads of many who on leaving the mother country hope to better their condition; and therefore the more widely we can promulgate the true character of any one settlement, we are the more effectually serving the interests of civilization, knowledge, and happiness.

It must be admitted that Mr. Gouger writes in a manner that may subject him, especially in the earlier Letters, to the suspicion of at least being a person of a very sanguine temperament; but after a perusal of the entire work, and attending to his details, we are satisfied that his only desire has been not only to publish valuable information, but that his general conclusions and hearty encomiums are borne out. His introductory Letter opens thus,-" You ask, what attaches me so closely to this province of South Australia? What induces me to prefer it to any other colony?"-and the answer is," its constitution; first, as regards the disposal of the land; and, secondly, its principles of government.' He then proceeds to enumerate the features of this constitution, maintaining that it is the very best that has yet been adopted,-one important circumstance characterizing it, viz., that it has been rendered permanent by an act of parliament, a thing that cannot be declared of any other colony belonging to Great Britain, but one that may be regarded as illustrative of a more systematic style of legislation in reference to colonization being of late recognized than was wont to distinguish the history of our country.

The leading principles which control the mode by which the public land of South Australia may become the property of individuals, are stated by our author to be as follows:

"1st. Uniform disposition by grant, instead of by gift, or reward for services performed.

"2nd. Absolute freehold of the land to be granted, on condition of an uniform rate of deposit to an emigration-fund.

3rd. Such rate of deposit to be determined by the cost of conveyance to the colony of the number of mechanics and labourers required for the cultivation of the land granted, and for the general purposes of the community.

"4th. The emigration-fund so raised to be expended in the conveyance to the province, from Great Britain or Ireland, of young healthy poor persons of both sexes, in equal proportions."

Now Mr. Gouger holds that this mode of disposing of land deprives a bad government of one means of corruption. An undue dispersion of the settlers is also prevented. To be sure it may be objected that this mode of disposing of public land is nothing but a species of sale at a very high price, and that land can be got at a much lower rate in other colonies. The author's knowledge of other settlements as derived from personal observation does not seem to be very extensive. But he has visited Van Dieman's Land, and thus compares the two colonies

"I leave out of this question now the purpose to which the purchasemony of land is applied, because, though in the case of South Australia, the money is returned in the form of imported labourers, in Van Dieman's Land colonists are brought to the settler's doors by application to the government. In South Australia, land of the first quality is to be had in the greatest abundance by the payment of £1. an acre to the emigrationfund of this land, upon comparison with much in Van Dieman's Land of the very best kind, two acres in a state of nature will be required to keep one sheep; in Van Dieman's Land no such land is now to be ob tained of the government; it is all appropriated; and of that which is now open, four acres would be required to keep one sheep. I speak upon this point, not only from my own observation, but upon the concurrent testimony of some of the oldest colonists and best judges in Van Dieman's Land. Again, in South Australia, land peculiarly valuable by situation, can be obtained of the commissioners at the same rate as country land; in Van Dieman's Land it is now impossible to get any suburban or town lots without paying a very high price; in proof of which I quote from some valuable returns made by the colonial secretary of Van Dieman's Land to Governor Arthur in 1836, since which time the prices have increased. The average of the last three years, given in those returns, shows 9s. 1d. per acre to be the price of country land purchased of the government, and of the town and suburban lots £15. 14s. 3d. per acre is the average quoted; and one year, in which the greatest extent of land was sold, gave an average of £33. 14s. 9d. per acre, as the price paid to the government. Estimating, then, the comparative fertility of the land to be procured at South Australia for £1. per acre, and that of Van Dieman's Land for 98. 1d., with a fertility at least two to one in favour of South Australia, together with the advantage of situation without additional price, I leave