been its former extent and condition, is now reduced to a village of the meanest and most wretched description. So mournful a combination of nature and art I never remember to have seen; every object bears the same impression of dismal poverty, whether the eye settle upon the ragged and tattered village, or wanders over the surround ing country, divided by stone walls into large unprofitable enclosures, without one spot of verdure, and with a soil insufficient, on every little eminence, to hide the nakedness and deformity of the rocks. The ancient buildings are situated in a deep hollow, and no part of them is visible from the village except the summit of the cathedral tower; but on approaching to the brink of the close, they all burst upon you in one view, and present a very melancholy scene, with some little surviving magnificence, but waste, silent, and forsaken. The cathedral is the only building within the close that is not perfectly a ruin.'

And even this venerable structure seems hastening toward that still more venerable condition; for the side aisles of the chancel are roofless, and yielded up without remorse to the inclemencies of the weather, no care being taken to preserve the monuments or any of the decorations of the interior.' There are some beauties of monumental inscription worthy to survive the hardest substances in which any of them are engraved. For example,

Again:

'Petra, precor, dic sic,
'Anselmus Episcopus est hic.'

'Silvester medicus jacet hic. Ejusque ruina,
'Monstrat quod morti non obsistit medicina.'

In reverting to the sterile bleakness of the coast, the Writer justly remarks, that

The want of trees and verdure has not the same mournful effect Immediately on the coast as in the interior; we are not accustomed to these ornaments on the coast, and they give way to a new order of scenery, possessing many charms in compensation. If the land be not embellished with vegetation, it is infinitely diversified in its outline, and with the rocks in all their fantastic detail, and the majestic sea spotted with ships and boats, constitutes a scene that is always interesting.'

Our Author's style is well adapted to the story of the ludicrous French invasion at Fishguard, in 1797. Harmless, however, and almost farcical as it was, it made on the people, unused to the martial games so amusing to their ancestors, an impression perfectly awful, which the subsequent twenty years have not modified to an indifference capable of according with the sportive strain of the Traveller's narration.

But the most striking part of this long stage of descriptions, is the account of a lighthouse on one of the rocks named the Smalls, near the southern promontory of St. Bride's Bay;

structure, says our Author, which stands in a more exposed and terrible situation than any other building of the kind on any part of our coast, the Eddystone not excepted It is seven leagues from the main land, completely open to the Atlantic, and surrounded on all sides by a wild and disordered sea.

At eth * Eddystone the tide runs less than three knots, and here more than six.' 'The rock is not more than six feet above high-water. mark, so that the sea, if in any degree agitated, passes entirely over it, and in gales of wind from the south or west, rises in a body thirty feet above it.'

It is built entirely with wood, and is very skilfully contrived. The base consists of eight oak posts, whole trees, surrounding a central one; and so arranged as to form a segment of an octagonal pyramid, twenty-four feet wide at the base, and sixteen at the apex The posts are fixed eight feet deep into the rock, and rise forty feet above it the intervals between them are open so as to give a free passage for the sea, except for a small space near the summit, where there is a close boarded cabin seven feet high, in which three men live, who have the charge of the lighthouse: above this there is a wooden cage forming the lantern. The building was erected in the summer of 1775, by Mr. Whitesides of Liverpool, a very ingenious man, who is still the superintendant."

In October, 1812, the inhabitants were in a dreadful situation for a whole fortnight, in consequence of a most violent tempest, which broke, in the night, one of the supporting posts.

Others were loosened and displaced; the lantern was entirely swept away; and the men's cabin so shattered, that the sea burst in upon them and drenched them with every wave. They gave up all hope of being saved, and waited in utter darkness, their cabin rocking in the wind, and the pillars cracking under them, for the final crush which they expected every moment to overwhelm them.'

Doomed to remain in their terrible abode fifteen days before it was possible to render them assistance, it is not improbable they endured a greater measure of the passion of fear, the estimate being combined of duration and intensity,-than the collective amount of that suffering in the whole life of some mortals.

The difference of appearance, in reference to picturesque character, between the coast of Cardiganshire, and the adjoining coast of Pembrokeshire, is strongly marked.

The latter is so deeply indented, and its promontories are so frequent and of such vast projection, that our views along its front were always bounded by a distinct and bold horizon; but the coast of Cardiganshire is drawn out in one long range of stupendous cliffs, broken by gentle bays and promontories, so as to vary without inter rupting the perspective, which the eye follows in all its turnings and inflections, till it gradually fades into obscurity.'

No single natural object seen on this western and northern line of coast, was so striking as one on the southern side of PemVOL. IX. N.S.

2 E

brokeshire, the Eligug-stack, an immense detached column, composed of strata once perhaps horizontal; but the soft mass is now so much inclined toward the sca, which dashes against its base, and with such a preponderating weight of its upper portion, as to make it almost iniraculous that it should maintain itself in the air for an hour. Mr. Daniell's drawing perfectly corresponds to the idea conveyed in the description. Eligug is the denomination of a species of sea-fowl, by which, at a particular season of the year, during the time of incubation, this and other inaccessible rocks on this coast are occupied so thickly, on the tops and every ledge, as to cause these tenants very great inconvenience, and give frequent occasion for quarrels.

As to the state of intellect among the people, no recent stage of the adventure affords so remarkable an exhibition as that given in the account of the superstitions of St. Gowan's chapel and well, at the southernmost point of Pembrokeshire, to which chapel and well, it would seem, by this account, to be a common thing for diseased and lame people to resort, in the hope of a miraculous cure, or at least a cure in some more mysterious way than from any merely physical cause.

On taking the sea again from Aberystwith, of which place we have a lively description, the voyagers had occasion to observe, with no small inquietude, how little security was afforded, by the extravagant demands of their boatmen, engaged at the place, for any tolerable knowledge of the proper channel among the shoals even no further off than three miles north of their own harbour. And here it is asserted generally, of the Welsh boatmen, that they are inferior to the English in local knowledge, skill, and intrepidity. The cause of this inferiority our Author finds in the poor and narrow scale on which the fisheries are carried on, owing in a great measure to the poverty which precludes all large adventure. The boats, and all the equipments, are in a diminutive way, the distances ventured from land are short; and the men trained in this very limited service know but little, and dare but little, compared with those, for example, of the Kentish coast, from one harbour of which (Broad-stairs) I have seen,' says the Writer, in the mackerel season, a fleet of nearly two hundred sail put to sea in an evening, the value of each of which, with all her gear, might be estimated, on an average, at £150.'

We are well pleased with the tone of enthusiasm in the feelIngs excited on first coming fully in view of Cader Idris and Snowdon, with their subordinate ranges, contemplated in one magnificent though partly very distant prospect. They appeared' to me as a new creation, and I could scarcely regard them as parts of a world formed for the use of man.' The majestic character was not impaired in a very near approach to the former of these noble eminences, at Barmouth, a place which, for any

thing but its mountain views, the Writer pronounces to be, "in all its combinations, the ne plus ultra of every thing that is cheerless and uncomfortable.' It is built in horizontal ranges or tiers up a steep ascent, with such well adjusted relative dispo-. sition of these tiers, that the smoke from the chimneys of the lower, regularly and imperatively applies for admittance at the doors and windows of the next above. The want of this luxury in the lowest range, which is near the level of the sea, is more. than compensated by

a high bank of sand before them, which not only intercepts their view of the sea, but sprightlily introduces itself with the west wind into every pervious cranny from the garrets to the ground. One cannot account for the strange indolence or ignorance of the inhabitants, in not attempting to consolidate these sands by vegetation; though, when the wind blows strongly from the west, they actually, render the lower houses scarcely habitable.'

It is a watering-place;' and our Author takes occasion to descant on the miserable ennui of the places so denominated, in terms the strength of which may be imagined when we say that they reach the difficult fault of exaggeration.

(To be continued.)

Art. IV. The Inquisition Unmasked. By D. Antonio Puigblanch. Translated by William Walton, Esq. 2 Vols. 8vo.

(Concluded from page 252.)

LAWS for the support of social establishments, to be in acᏞ cordance with justice, and to promote the good of the

community, must appeal to the hopes and fears of mankind, inspiring the innocent with confidence of protection, and awaken-" ing in the guilty the dread of punishment. The regulations and mode of judicial process established in the Inquisition, are founded on injustice, in a disregard of all the principles by which human society can maintain its relations and secure its legitimate ends. Instead of its proceedings being adapted to alarm the offender, and to inspire the unoffending with assurance of safety, an impossibility almost absolute on the part of the accused, to substantiate the justice of their cause, and a facility almost boundless on the part of the Inquisition to aggrieve them, are the two principal hinges on which its judicial examinations turn. in criminal cases. This execrable tribunal exhibits the very perfection of craft and despotism.

Like an abortion, which it in fact is, of the ignorance and fanaticism of the middle ages, its judicial forms in no way differ from the impurity of its origin; and its code is an assemblage of all kinds of barbarous legislation, till even illegality is therein reduced to system. A tribunal which, regardless of every thing man holds sacred, such as good faith and respect to the Divinity, forces him to utter the sen

timents of his heart in order that they may serve as a motive of condemnation-a tribunal which surrounded by darkness, rests the issue of the most important affairs of which it takes cognizance in the impenetrable secrecy of its proceedings-a tribunal, in short, which fears no one on earth, for to no one is it answerable, not even to public opinion, whose censure tyrants themselves have not escaped, of what horrors must it not be capable, what monsters must it not harbour in its bosom? It is therefore no longer a subject of wonder that such a multitude of enormous crimes have been committed by this tribunal, and rendered its name so odious-crimes so much the more revolting and abominable, because they have been committed under the sanction of religion.' Vol. I. p. 131.

The qualifications of a judge are at all times of primary consideration in the administration of law; but where the proceedings of a criminal tribunal are conducted in secrecy, and the powers of the judges are supreme, their qualifications are of the greatest possible moment. That nothing may be wanting to the legitimacy of the title by which the Inquisition may challenge the possession of pre-eminent infamy, the ignorance and incom petency of the judges who preside at its tribunals, are included in the grievances which the Author enumerates and exposes.

With regard to the inquisitors of Italy, John Calderini positively asserts the fact, and exhorts them to take counsel of experienced men, as most of them are ignorant of the principles and practice of public law; adding, that otherwise they would be in danger of absolving the guilty and condemning the innocent*. Judges who are unacquainted with the principles of right and the precepts of the canon law, I make no hesitation to say, cannot know their obligations, or be fitted to sit on the bench. Respecting those of Portugal, Tavernier furnishes us with proofs, in what he relates of a Capuchin friar of the name of Ephraim de Nevers, who about the year 1600 was a prisoner in the Inquisition of Goa. When he was set at liberty, notwithstanding his great virtue and reserve, he could not refrain from complaining that no inconvenience he experienced was so great as that of seeing his fate in the hands of such ideot judges. Dr. Dellon affirms that he noticed this circumstance some years afterwards, when he was a pri soner in the same Inquisitiont. Hence do the Portuguese noble. men say, when they wish to joke about the backwardness of their children at college, that they will put them into the post of inqui sitors or canons. Vol. I. pp. 134-136.

Nothing can more determinately attach the character of injustice to a government, or more clearly indicate its gross cor

* Johan. Calderini, Tractatus de Hæreticis Cap. VI. n. I. « Quia Inquisitores ut plurimum sunt juris ignari, et possent faciliter sie decipi ut absolverent condemnandum, vel damnarent forsitan absol vendum, debent circa occurrentia processus communicare consilia peritorum in jure."

+ Dellon; Relation de l'Inquisition de Goa, Chap. XXVIII. Narrativa da Perseguiçao de Hippolito Joseph da Costa, written by himself. Tom. I.