for that which is suspended, should be to permanent and lasting general improvements, improvements which may afford accommodation to the public, as well in future, as at present:-Public works, not likely to be undertaken, in ordinary times; by these all may be gratified; the labourer who now receives his hire; the subscriber who witnesses the beneficial effect of his subscription; and Posterity, to which the example may be quoted, as equally laudable and profitable.

the communications of History, or an accession to general knowledge.

We can have no objection to Geographical Illustrations; and we have no less than three works of this description lying on our table, at this time. Our obligations are great to those who have preceded in this line, though not precisely on the same plan. By means of Hollar's labours we obtain sufficiently correct notions of buildings no longer existing. Old St. Paul's Cathedral is known, to later ages, chiefly by what representations (prints) of it have decorated descriptive works. Owing to the accidents to which such works are ex

A Geographical Illustration of the Metropolitan Cathedral Church of Can-posed, they are daily becoming more terbury; accompanied by a History and Description of that Venerable Fabric. By W. Woolnoth; consisting of twenty plates, engraved by himself, from Drawings by F. Hastings. Royal. 4to. Price £3 3s. Cadell and Davies. London.

1816.

AMIDST the din of war and all the anxieties to which that state of alarm is subject, the British public has retained some of its attachment to the Arts; and has conferred its patronage on some branches of those laborious studies of which they are the origin. That they have prospered generally is too much to assert; but that public attention has distinguished certain departments is known to the literati, and we presume is not to be questioned.

Among these the study of our national Antiquities has held a principal place. It has met with encouragement, when other branches have been neglected; and it has, in consequence, been conducted with a spirit which has done honour, as well as proved advantageous, to the publishers of works on that subject.

and more scarce; and consequently acquaintance with them is confined to a smaller number of determined antiquaries. When those prints were engraved, little was it foreseen that the extensive and magnificent fabric which had adorned the metropolis for ages, should be consumed, with many an ancient Church besides, in one general conflagration;-that not a vestige of them should remain, except in description, or that the Cathedral of Canterbury (or delineation. As little may it be suspected any other) approaches the termination of its existence ;-but, admitting the thought, the obligation of the ingenious to the Art which has preserved its appearance, and to the Artist who has reand acknowledged. What value should corded its history, must be freely felt we not place on prints, of many subjects of antiquity, of which we have merely verbal, unsatisfactory descriptions!

Mr. Woolnoth informs us in his Preface that,

He has spared no pains to render the Geographical portion, the production of which formed the more immediate end of his exertions, as complete as possible.During the progress of the plates he Whether the present Work would has personally corrected the proofs upon have appeared had not the public ap- the spot, to insure accuracy of detail; and plause bestowed on its predecessors he trusts that the uniformity of style in operated as a stimulus, is more than we which they have all been executed by his can determine. It is to be considered own hand, will prove a recommendation as a specimen of the skill of the engra- scription. To his literary department he not common to publications of a similar dever, who here claims precedence of the cannot but advert in a tone of subdued man of letters; as a Geographical Il-confidence. It has been the production of ustration, rather than as an addition to the short intervals which the slow labours

of the Engraver's art allowed to be subtracted from almost incessant occupation. Particular objections existed to consigning the task to the pen of trained authorship. He wished the peculiar feeling of the artist to give a predominant cast to his composition, and to connect it intimately with the transcript which his views exhibit.

The first section of the work contains the History of the Structure until its partial destruction by fire in 1174. The murder of Becket in 1170, caused the church to be desecrated for one year, during which time no service was performed; the bells were fastened, the In this avowal is somewhat to praise, pictures removed, and dirt and rubbish pavement turned up, the hangings and

were suffered to accumulate within the walls. Its re-consecration after so memorable an event gave the signal for a prodigious influx of benefactions and honours, strongly characteristic of the superstition of the age, and of the almost unlimited influence of the priesthood. Not the King of England only, but the King of France, also, paid his devotions at Becket's tomb. The structure erect

and somewhat to blame. The correcting of his proofs on the spot, is honourable to the engraver. The refusal of assistance from a competent antiquary-and no other could be thought of, is detrimental to the work. It is not always the mere history of the article to be treated on that satisfies an able writer he illustrates this, by his recollection of others, by reference, by discrimination; he contrives to give im-ed after the fire in 1174, is that which portance to subjects which to the unlearned eye appear trivial; and when this is done without affectation of learn

ing, his performance is usually equally entertaining and instructive.

The assistance of such a friend, interested as he must have been in the

correctness of the work to which he was a party, would have saved Mr. W. the painful confession of the inaccuracies he acknowledges in his print of the tomb of Edward the Black Prince :nor would the alledged "unfortunate error of the writing-engraver," who has referred a plate to "the Lady Chapel," when it should have been referred to the Trinity Chapel, have passed undetected: the plate should have been altered; and the faulty impressions cancelled: a few shillings' cost had corrected the error, which now deforms a handsome work.

We say "a handsome work," for such in truth it is: the plates are executed with great attention and care; they are well finished, and are wrought into a barmony, which generally pleases the eye. The desire to shew the principal articles to advantage, has induced the Draughtsman to indulge in a licence of light and shade, which according to the best of our recollection of the places represented, he would be at a loss to justify but, in this case, the intention warrants the means. If, as critics, we could allow the existence of laudable error, it would be on such subjects as those before us.

we now behold; with small variations.

The state and magnificence of this blow that laid its grandeur in the dust, structure immediately before the fatal is thus described by Mr. W.

At this time the Cathedral Church had which it was so rapidly to decline: its reached the zenith of its splendour, from reparations were nearly all complete; the stores of decorative articles for the proces sions, and other religious rites, were immense; men of taste and magnificent spirit superintended the concerns of the Church; its fame spread abroad throughout Christendom; grand and imposing in all its accompaniments, it overwhelmed the senses of beholders, and drew forth rapturous exwitnessed its splendour a short time before it received the death blow of its pride. The different services of the Romish church were performing in perpetual succession, and at numerous altars, where tapers continually burning, gave glittering radiance to their sumptuous adornments; masses were celebrated in all its chantries for the

clamations from the learned Erasmus, who

souls of the illustrious dead; clouds of perfumed incense were tinged with the rays which flowed through windows of gen-like brilliancy, contrasting with the grey harmonizing hue of the walls. The church anthems and responses were chanted by the most melodious voices, which, blended with the notes of the organ, vibrated through the holy edifice. A picturesque and uniform costume, according to rank, was compelled to be worn by those who officiated; all was conducted with a view to dazzle the senses, and fire the ima gination.

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But the spell was doomed to be dissolv- | Church, its chapels, tombs, cloisters, ed; a profligate monarch was the agent &c. &c. It is enough to say, that his through which the pride of the Church was views give a good idea of the structure, of the architecture are given at large, and that some of the more curious parts

to be humbled.

In 1536 Henry abrogated by his royal authority all the high festivals between the first of July and the twenty ninth of Sep-on separate Plates, Lists of Bishops, tember: this included the festival of St. Deans, &c. are also given. Thomas à Becket, (July 7), and the commemoration of the Saint was expressly forbidden. The following year he was

denounced as one who " had been a stub

It must be acknowledged that, to the general reader the modern mode of abridging ponderous folios into thin born rebel and traitor to his prince," and quartos, or portable octavos, has many his images and pictures were ordered to advantages. It enables a student to inbe cast out and destroyed throughout the clude in his course of reading many ar realm: his name was to be erased out of ticles which otherwise must escape him; all books, and collects, antiphons, &c. were while, if well conducted, it conveys suffifor ever to remain in disuse. The edifice cient information, unless to a party was not, therefore, abandoned; but out of deeply interested. To the learned resi the previous mass of wealth arose another dents at Canterbury, the heavier laestablishment; in which many of the mem-bours of Somner, Batteley, Dart, &c. bers of the former were provided for; and which gradually assumed its present form and dignity.

may recommend themselves by their extent and erudition: to others the lighter Woolnoth may be more than equally and more ornamental epitome of Mr.

Some Account of the Lives and Writings of Lope Felix De Vega, Carpio, and Guillen De Castro. By Henry Richard Lord Holland, 2 vols. 8vo. Loudon. Longman and Co. 1817.

Fated to experience vicissitudes of fortune; by turns honoured and neglected; enriched and despised, revered and plun-acceptable, as a companion in the library dered; our Cathedral bears witness in its and reading room. records of every eventful change in our national history, of every fluctuation in the taste of our predecessors. In ages antecedent to the earliest tradition, Druids may have first hallowed its site by the performance of their mystic rites. Borne in the train of the masters of the world, the gods of Grecian mythology were here for a while worshipped and invoked. In the Lope De Vega, the principal subject dark and low recesses of a rude structure of these elegant volumes, was the idol formed of a ruined temple, here were as- of his countrymen during his life time, sembled the earliest Christian communi- and his name, wherever it is known, is cants. Hence they were expelled by the associated with astonishment at the worshippers of sanguinary and relentless fertility of genius, which enabled him deities, engendered in the gloomy forests to multiply his productions till even the of the north. Here broke the radiant light of the true faith, and humanized bar-bare retention of their titles became a barians; and here subtle and designing monks plotted their projects of political ascendancy, to whose aid, a delegate from the Roman Pontiff, came Superstition, and stored her relics, and displayed her pageantry. These carefully swept away with the besom of reform, Fanaticism, a more direct foe, next insulted its venerable antiquity. Rescued from further degradation by being placed under the protection of the members of a pure and enlightened Church, breathing Charity and peace, may it, coutinue to exhibit, through ages of tranquillity, a memento of the varieties of art, and of the vicissitudes of fate.

We cannot follow Mr. W. in his perambulation and description of the

task beyond the Mnemonic powers of his warmest admirers. Twenty one million three hundred thousand of his lines, are said to be actually printed; and no less than eighteen hundred plays of his composition, are reported to have been performed upon the stage. Such wonderful proofs of fertility and industry are almost sufficient to make us credit the accounts of his biographers that at two years of age poetic fire sparkled in his eyes, and that before his hand was strong enough to guide a pen he was enabled to make a profit among bis schoolfellows of the verses, which he recited to them.

It should seem that poetry is as prolific in Spain as Metaphysics are in Germany. Lope de Vega stands only at the head of a corps of miraculous

writers.

La Cureba mentions one who had written one thousand plays in four acts; some millions of Latin lines were composed by Mariner; and many hundred dramatic compositions are still extant of Calderon,

as well as of authors of inferior merit.

cies; the Pope honoured him with dignities and preferments; and every nobleman at court aspired to the character of his Maecenas, by confering upon him frequent and valuable presents.

The profits of his plays have been estimated at not less than eighty thouceived from individuals at ten thousand sand ducats, and the presents he refive hundred more. In the very same street where Lope was thus nursed in affluence and adulation, Cervantes, the Before such inexhaustible scribblers inimitable Cervantes! was starving and our Lydgate and Heywood hide their neglected; yet so much better is the diminished heads;' while certain mofavour of heaven than that of man, that dern bards, whose industry in produc- Cervantes, under all the varied ills of ing saleable verses in every variety of his hard life, could retain a cheerful metre, and good fortune in turning them spirit, which supported hin against to profitable account, have rouzed the every attack of adversity, with a sweetenvy and sharpened the critical discern-ness of temper which allowed him to ment of some of their contemporaries, must redouble their efforts before their Epic poems and Editorships will bear the most distant comparison with those indefatigable votaries of the Muses, who wielded the pen with an incessant industry, and a devotion beyond compare. Honours were heaped upon Lope de Vega in full proportion to the fertility with which he devised fresh claims to public notice. The admiration of his person and character became a species of worship in Spain; scarcely an author ventured a work without bearing incense to his shrine. Pope Urban VIII. wrote to him with his own hand, and conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Theology.

The cardinal Barberini followed him with veneration in the streets; the king would stop to gaze at such a prodigy; the people crowded round him wherever he appeared; the learned and the studious thronged to Madrid from every part of Spain to see this phoenix of their country, this monster of literature; and even Italians, no extravagant admirers in general of poetry that is not their own, made pilgrimages from their country for the sole purpose of conversing with Lope. So associated was the idea of excellence with his name, that it grew in common conversation to signify any thing perfect in its kind; and a Lope diamond, a Lope day, or a Lope woman, became fashionable and familiar modes of expressing their good qualities. His poetry was as advantageous to his fortune as to his fame: the king enriched him with pensions and chaptain

praise whatever was praiseworthy in the works of the man whose talents he saw so unjustly rated above his own: Lope on the contrary, notwithstanding his outward appearance of prosperity, was a prey to all the restlessness of vanity, and all the miseries of discontent; laden with honours and with pensions, he still imagined that his fortunes were unequal to his deserts, he tormented himself by even distrusting the sincerity of the public in the extravagance of their applause; and false alike to the Muses and to gratitude, wrote to his son to dissuade him from the study of poetry, and filled his letter with lamentations over his own calamities.

Lord Holland has delineated his hero with much impartiality, both in his private character and in that of an Author; he exhibits all his excellencies, at the same time that he seeks not to blind the judgment of the reader with respect to his defects. The remarks his lordship makes in his own person are always elegant and just. As a critic on Spanish literature he affects no advantage in his knowledge of the language, beyond what he proves hituself to possess by the fidelity and spirit of his translations from it-and his taste leads him agreeably to diversify the application of the reader by relieving the dryness of analysis with a well timed introduction of such lighter pieces of poetry as admit of being given entire, without destroying the interest of their