have now no more idea than the ancients had of the circulation of the blood, or the optics of Sir Isaac Newton.' Vol. V. p. 15. 16. After observing that, in a preceding letter, her Ladyship declares, that it is eleven years since she saw herself in a glass, being so little pleased with the figure she was then beginning to make in it,' we shall close these extracts with the following more favourable account of her philosophy. 'I no no more expect to arrive at the age of the Duchess of Marlborough, than to that of Methusalem; neither do I desire it. I have long thought myself useless to the world. I have seen one generation pass away, and it is gone; for I think there are very few of those left that flourished in my youth. You will perhaps call these melancholy reflections: they are not so. There is a quiet after the abandoning of pursuits, something like the rest that follows a laborious day. I tell you this for your comfort. It was formerly a terrifying view to me, that I should one day be an old woman. I now find that nature has provided pleasures for every state. Those are only unhappy who will not be contented with what she gives, but strive to break through her laws, by affecting a perpetuity of youth, which appears to me as tittle desirable at present as the babies do to you, that were the delight of your infancy. I am at the end of my paper, which shortens the sermon.' Vol. IV. pp. 314. 315. Upon the death of Mr Wortley in 1761, Lady Mary returned to England, and died there in October 1762, in the 73d year of her age. From the large extracts which we have been tempted to make from her correspondence, our readers will easily be enabled to judge of the character and genius of this extraordinary woman. A little spoiled by flattery, and not altogether undebauched by the world,' she seems to have possessed a masculine solidity of understanding, great liveliness of fancy, and such powers of observation and discrimination of character, as to render her opinions of the very highest authority on all the ordinary subjects of practical manners and conduct. After her marriage, she seems to have abandoned all idea of laborious or regular study, and to have been raised to the station of a literary character merely by her vivacity, and her love of amusement and anecdote. The great charm of her letters is certainly the extreme ease and facility with which every thing is expressed, the brevity and rapidity of her representations, and the elegant simplicity of her diction. While they unite almost all the qualities of a good style, there is nothing of the professed author in them; nothing that seems to have been composed; or to have engaged the admiration of the writer. She appears to be quite unconscious either of merit or of exertion in what she is doing; and never stops to bring out a thought, or to turn an expression with the cunning of of a practised rhetorician. The letters from Turkey will probably be more universally read than any of those that are now given for the first time to the public; because the subject commands a wider and more permanent interest, than the personalities and unconnected remarks with which the rest of the correspondence is filled. At the same time, the love of scandal and of private history is so great, that these letters will be highly relished, as long as the names they contain are remembered; and then they will become curious and interesting, as exhibiting a truer and more minute picture of the manners and fashions of the time, than is to be found in any other publication. The Fifth Volume contains also her Ladyship's poems, and two or three trifling papers that are entitled her Essays. Poetry, at least the polite and witty sort of poetry, which Lady Mary has attempted, is much more of an art than prose-writing. We are trained to the latter, by the conversation of good society; but the former seems always to require a good deal of patient labour and application. This her Ladyship appears to have disdained; and accordingly, her poetry, though abounding in lively conceptions, is already consigned to that oblivion in which mediocrity is destined, by an irrevocable sentence, to slumber till the end of the world. The Essays are extremely insignificant, and have no other merit, that we can discover, but that they are very few and very short. Of Lady Mary's friendship, and subsequent rupture with Pope, we have not thought it necessary to say any thing, both because we are of opinion that no new lights are thrown upon it by this publication, and because we have no desire to awaken forgotten scandals by so idle a controversy. Pope was undoubtedly a flatterer, and was undoubtedly sufficiently irritable and vindictive : but whether his rancour was stimulated upon this occasion by nothing but caprice or jealousy, and whether he was the inventor or the echo of the imputations to which he has given notoriety, we do not pretend to determine. Lady Mary's character was certainly deficient in that cautious delicacy which is the best guardian of female reputation; and there seems to have been in her conduct something of that intrepidity which naturally gives rise to misconstruction, by setting at defiance the maxims of ordinary discretion. то VOLUME SECOND OF THE EDINBURGH REVIEW. A ALEXANDRIA, account of the fortification of, 56. Opinion of American Philosophical Transactions, remarks on Dr Priestley's pa- Anecdote of Louis XIV., 399. Of an English gentleman, ib. Author, literary and personal history of, how connected, 229. Authors, military, apt to be partial in relating actions in which they B Baillie, Miss, examination of the plan of her Plays on the Passions,' Balance of power, whether that system had its rise at the treaty of Bass, Mr, discovers the straits which separate Van Diemen's Land Belsham, W. increasing virulence of his pen, 177. His abuse of Mr Bishops, objections to investing the bench of, with the power of en- Bloodhounds, account of, 382. Instances of their ferocity, 383. Not Bombay, the only safe harbour during the monsoons in the whole pe- Boswell, Mr, how his pen would probably have been employed, had Botany Bay, anticipation of the consequences of its establishment, Bracciolini, Poggio, in what points of view he most engages attention, Brain, Dr Gall's account of, 150. British isles, how described in the Hindoo sacred books, 119. Bullion, variations in the market price of, 409. 412. Bulls, Irish, enquiry into the nature of, 399. Busbequius, his picture of a Turkish camp in the middle of the six- C Camp, Turkish, picture of one in the sixteenth century, 334. Cataract, Mr Hey's method of couching, 263. Cateau, general character of his Tableau des Etats Danois,' 287. Ceylon, geographical figure of the British possessions in, 137. Ac- Character of a Ceylonese Dutchman, 139. Of the Portuguese in that Chrystal, Iceland, on the oblique reflection of, 99. Cinnamon, description of the woods of, in Ceylon, 144. Clergy, on the residence of, 202. Small value of their livings in ge- Collins, Colonel, his character as an author, 33. Commerce, what effects its vast increase during the last century has |