quarter, they remain inside two nights and one day; full moon and last quarter, they remain inside two nights and one day; full moon and last quarter, the same time. While the chiefs and priests are in the morai, the women are prohibited from going on the salt water, either in canoes or boats, on even from touching it; neither are they permitted to come within forty yards of the morai. They pay the greatest respect to their chiefs and priests, and are kept in a superstitious ignorance. Their muckahitee, or annual festival, commences in November; it begins by three of the most expert warriors throwing each a spear at Tameameah, who is obliged to stand without any thing in his hand to fend them off; the first spear he catches, and with it makes the other spears fly several yards above his head. He then breaks a cocoanut; the sea is tabooed, and none of the natives are allowed to go near it. The King enters the church where he remains for some days, and the people decorate their houses with green branches and new mats. They dress in their best garments, and the head god is taken from the principal morai, and sent round the island carried by

the priests. Any persons coming between the god and the sea are immediately stripped of their garments, and the same is done if they do not strip as the god is passing, and lie flat on their faces. This is the season for dancing, boxing, feasting, and all kinds of amusement. When the god arrives from the place whence he first started, the Taboo it taken off. They are generally about thirty days going round, calling at all the villages and plantations, to remind the people that it is time to bring in their taxes, which they do twice a year. This feast ended while I was here on the 24th of December. I have frequently questioned the chiefs about their religion, and their general answer was, that they go to the morais more to feast than pray, which I believe to be really the case. Mr. Cox, or Teymotoo, that I have before mentioned, sets the wooden gods and priests at defiance; he says, that the white men's God is the true and only God. The Sandwich Islanders have entirely abolished human sacrifices; all the time I have been about these islands, I have not known a single instance of sacrificing a human be ing.

THE following is a recent instance of those charitable offices which the pious Monks of St. Bernard, from a sense of duty, as well as from the locality of their establishment, are in the habit of performing. A poor soldier travelling from Siberia to the place of his nativity in Italy, set out from the village of St. Pierre in the afternoon, in the hope of reaching the monastery before night-fall; but he unfortunately missed his way, and in climbing up a precipice, he laid hold of a fragment of a rock, which separating from the mass, rolled with him to the valley below, which the poor man reached with his clothes torn, and his body sadly bruised and lacerated. Being unable to extricate himself from the snow, and night having came on, he remained in that forlorn situation till morning. The weather was uncommonly mild for the season, or he must have perished. He

spent the whole of the two following days in crawling to a deserted hovel, without having anything to eat. Two of the Monks of St. Bernard, on their way to the village about sun-set, were warned by the barking of their dog, and descried the man at a distance; they hastened to his succour. They found him at the entrance of the hovel, where he lay as if unable to cross the threshold, and apparently in a dying state, from hunger, fatigue, and loss of blood. They raised him on their shoulders, and carried him to the village, a distance of five miles, through the snow. The man was above the middle size, and robust; so that, independently of his helpless condition, it required a considerable portion of strength, as well as management; in the village of St. Pierre, the poor traveller received every attention and assistance that his situation required.

Oct. 1, 1821.

A country that draws fifty foot of water,
In which men live as in the hold of nature;
And when the sea does in upon them break,
And drowns a province, does but spring a leak.-
That feed, like cannibals, on fishes,

And serve their cousin-germans up in dishes.
A land that rides at anchor, and is moored,
In which they no not live, but go aboard.

BUTLER.

Hlland, that scarce deserves the name of land,
As but the off-scouring of the British sand;
And so much earth as was contributed
By English pilots, when they heaved the lead;
Or what by the ocean's slow alluvion fell,
Of shipwrecked cockle and the muscle-shell.
Glad then, as miners who have found the ore,
They with mad labour, fished the land to shore;
And dived as desperately for each piece
Of earth, as if it had been of ambergris.
Collecting anxiously small loads of clay,
Less than what building swallows bear away;
How did they rivet with gigantic piles
Thorough the centre of their new-catched miles ;
And to the stake a struggling country bound,
Where barking waves still bait the forced ground;
Building their wat'ry Babel far more high
To catch the waves, than those to scale the sky.
Yet still his claim the injured ocean laid,
And oft at leap-frog o'er the steeples played ;-
And oft the Tritons, and the Sea-nymphs, saw
Whole shoals of Dutch served up for cabillau.
MARVELL.

THE

HE Dutch are a formal people, and an attachment to system is conspicuous in all their transactions. This disposition is strikingly exhibited in the affairs of courtship and marriage. Imprudent matches are seldom made in Holland, most of the wealthy or respectable inhabitants of a place always contriving to intermarry with one another; so that sometimes half the people of a town are linked together in this manner. The youth of both sexes have but few opportunities of making a choice out of their own circle, nor do they seem at all anxious to do so, one young man being in the estimation of the young ladies nearly as good as any other young man, and the gentlemen are not too difficult if a lady's person is at all tolerable, prudence being consulted previous to every other consideration. The chief members of those family circles give dinners to the rest in turns, for which purpose certain days are appointed, called familie dags. When a young man wishes to get mar

This

ried, and has made his choice, he writes a formal letter to his father and mother respectfully requesting their approbation. The old people send for answer that they must have time to consider and consult together upon a point so important, but that he may expect an answer in three weeks, more or less. Hitherto, it must be observed, the lovers have never met in private, at least so it is understood. The young man having received the approbation of his parents in due form, he again in the same style, requests that his father would be pleased to wait upon the young lady's father to demand his daughter in marriage for his son. Much form and ceremony passes between the two old gentlemen, but the real business is to settle pecuniary affairs in a satisfactory manner; which generally takes place, as they are always well informed before hand on this subject. A further delay of a few weeks, however, still takes place, before the lady's father gives his final consent. having with much formality been given, all reserve between the lovers is instantly thrown off, and the next day a large party of their young friends accompany them a few miles out of town, and the afternoon is spent in mirth and jollity. They are now considered as onder trouwd, a word nearly of the same meaning as betrothed, but it does not imply that parties are bound to each other, as either is at liberty to withdraw, and the marriage seldom takes place till a year after the period of which we are speaking. An advertisement is now put in the newspaper stating that such and such persons are onder trouwd, and another is inserted at their marriage to announce that they are getrouwd (married.) As soon as the consent of relations is given, the lover has access to his mistress whenever he pleases, and he sometimes spends whole days in her company in her father's house, nor is the least restraint felt by either, though the whole family, young and old, and even strangers be present. Indeed the stiff formality which was so strictly observed

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before, is now exchanged for unbounded freedom, and what we should consider as gross indelicacy. The young couple lavish the most extravagant endearments upon each other, and it must be confessed that the lady is by no means loath in returning the fondness of her lover, frequently entertaining both the sight and hearing of the spectators with the ardent marks of her attachment. We have witnessed all this and a great deal more, again and again, and often in the midst of a large party of both sexes and all ages, yet nobody seemed conscious of either the impropriety or indelicacy of it. This state of things continues about a year, when the marriage takes place, if neither party withdraw, which is seldom the case. The marriage is celebrated by a magistrate, a burgomaster always attending at the town-hall for that purpose; a certificate of their ages, and that they have the full approbation of their parents or guardians, must be produced. The ceremony is very short, but most people are married again by a clergyman,on the same day, though, this is by no means necessary to render the marriage valid. The old custom of throwing the stocking is still kept up even among the rich, and the happy bridegroom is exposed to all the mischiefs that his friends may think proper to teaze him with, such as spoiling the lock of his chamber, or shutting up a cock or hen in the room, which do not fail to awake the young couple betimes.

The Dutch are remarkably fond of making verses, and they never fail to gratify this propensity on such occasions. We have seen many of these effusions, and though but few of them had any claim to the appellation of poetry, the versification was generally good. The authors always read such tribute of their affection or respect during the wedding feast, addressing themselves with great formality to the new married pair, who always appear highly gratified by them. Sometimes a masquerade takes place, and such of the guests as are capable of personating a character, come forward and make a speech to the happy couple, who on this occasion are placed upon an elevat

ed seat to receive the addresses. It must be confessed, however, that all this is conducted in a very childish manner; there is a want of dignity and elegance throughout, and this remark may be applied to all the amusements of the Dutch. There is in their mixed society a degree of trifling in their conversation, which to persons of a different disposition is often uninteresting, and frequently disagreeable or disgusting.

There are certain times and seasons of which much notice is taken among the Hollanders, such as the first day of the year, and some other festivals. At Christmas, the oldest and richest members of the circles receive the congratu lations of their relations and descendants with great formality.

The following advertisement, translated from an Amsterdam newspaper, is a specimen of the manner in which deaths are made public.-"That our enjoyments are fleeting, and that our happiest prospects may be in a moment blasted, I have this day experienced; as it has pleased God to take from me, by death, my worthy and beloved spouse, Adriana van Bunk van Ommering, with whom I have not yet been a year united, at the early age of twenty-one years and six months. A child of a few weeks old is thus bereft of a tender mother's care, and I of the comfort of a dearly beloved friend and partner. (Signed)

"CHRISTOFEEL Van der Vulgt." The different classes of society are much more distinctly marked by their dress in Holland than in this country; this is particularly the case with regard to females. In cities and large towns, the female servants never wear gowns nor straw hats; their dress generally consists of a short jacket or bed-gown, and petticoat either of white dimity or some very shewy colour, with a cap very high and much ornamented. They usually wear a black silk apron, which contrasts well with the white dimity. If a servant girl were to be seen with a straw hat or gown, her character would be lost for ever; but their appearance is much more interesting without them, and the extreme neatness of their dress is beyond description. This distinc

tion of classes extends to different employments and professions; in England bankers and merchants often associate with shop-keepers, shoe-makers and butchers, and sometimes even taylors, when wealthy, are admitted into the company of their betters; this is seldom the case in Holland, as all winkeliers (shopkeepers) kleermakers, (taylors,) &c. are carefully excluded from the society of real gentlemen, such as banniers, (bankers) klopliedew (merchants) and de geleerde, (the learned or professional gentlemen.)

The Dutch have an idea that it is a common practice in England for people to sell their wives, and we have often heard ladies express their firm belief that if they were to marry Englishmen they would have a right to sell them whenever they pleased. They also believe that all Englishmen are boxers, appearing to be quite ignorant that the battles, of which they find accounts in the newspapers, are fought by prizefighters, but are quite persuaded that any respectable person challenges another to fight for money.

THIS amusing little volume, we observe from its text in various pages, is the production of an artist, long resident at the Court of St. Petersburgh. In his preface he vouches for its being entirely composed of authentic original matter, and he has given the public an entertaining olio, agreeable to his title page.

It is highly original, for we do not think that above three of the anecdotes have crept into circulation before; it displays many curious traits of Russian manners; it is generally lively and laughable in its "Scraps," (for such is the appellation given by the author to the storied divisions); and it contains a number of useful hints, as well as sensible reflections on various topics in the other of its divisions, which he has called "Introductions," and with which he prefaces every fact he has recorded. That the writer of such a work must himself be a bit of a humourist is more than probable; we should have guessed so, even had he not made it clear by the following

"PROLOGUE.

"For me and for my Scraps, it is my aim A patient reading from good folks to claim.

This kind indulgence granted, on my part I pledge the tribute of a grateful heart.