he has dedicated his Lunar Observations, will promote him to a command at the first opportunity. If he should fail hereafter, in capturing an American "sixty-gun frigate," with an English seventy-four, our lives upon it, he will do what may be considered the next proof of gallantry-attempt to filch from us the honours of victory, by the force of valorous rhetoric, trenchant syllogisms, and invincible arithmetic.

Lieutenant De Roos was almost twenty-one days and nights on his travels, during which time he overran the United States and Nova Scotia; visited Niagara Falls, New-York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, and George's Town, the Museum, the Academy of Arts, the theatres, the soda-shops, and Castle Garden; travelled upwards of two thousand miles, and, what is greatly to his honour, did not make above two thousand blunders. He moreover went once to church with an "affable and communicative" young lady; relished the pickled oysters and champaigne at divers tea-parties; dined with the British minister at Washington, with the British consul in Philadelphia, and several "citizens of credit and renown" in New-York; counted all the guns in the Navy-Yards double, and came very near to falling desperately in love with several young ladies in Baltimore, whom he only fancied he saw through the blinds of the windows. Veni, vidi, vici.-Assuredly the Lieutenant is the Cæsar of travellers. If he only fights as well as he writes, and conquers ships as fast as he overruns countries, it is all over with the Republic.

During the whole of this grievous pilgrimage, the Lieutenant seems to have had but one idea-namely, that he was travelling against time. Such was the Lieutenant's triumphant success, in this trial of speed with the gentleman who wears all his hair before, that not even Captain Barclay, of Urie, nor any of his perambulating successors-not the renowned 'Squire Janson, the great original of all English travellers, who ran and wrote through these good states, with a bumbailiff at his heels-not Hyde, the famous highwayman, who rode one hundred and twelve miles in twelve hours-not Hudson steam-boat, nor emigrating pigeon, nor chaff before the wind, ever covered so much ground, saw so many things in dark nights, or distanced so many whirlwinds, as the industrious, indefatigable Lieutenant.

The Lieutenant is, however, neither ill-natured nor prejudiced to the degree that might be expected, when we revert to the profession of which he is a member. The British naval officers, it must be confessed, have such ample reason to dislike us on the score of having taken them, as it were, by surprise, and beaten them soundly during the late war, whereby they lost sundry ships and somewhat more honour than they could well spare, that we

cannot find in our hearts to blame them for some slight demon. stration of mortified vanity. If he may laugh that wins, certainly he who loses may be allowed to whimper and scold a little. It is but justice. Thus a certain Mr. James, who, to the disgrace of British gratitude, died the other day in great poverty, attempted to dry the tears of mother England, by compiling a very specious romance on the subject of the naval transactions of the late war, which has since been regularly incorporated with the great romance of English history. In this he clearly proved that we ought to have beaten them, because it was impossible, in the nature of things, we should not have beaten them; and being thus impossible, if there was any disgrace in the business, it was on our side, for having better ships, better men, and fighting them better than the "Mistress of the Seas," as England is jocularly termed. All the officers of the "Royal Navy" hereupon took great comfort in their hour of sore tribulation, and have ever since been employed in counting our guns, weighing our shot, and measuring our scantling, for the purpose of keeping up their spirits, and enabling them to sing "Rule Britannia" with a proper air of determined defiance. The Lieutenant goes about among our Navy-Yards, as will be seen presently, comforting himself, in like manner, by calling our seventy-fours first-rates of 132 guns; our frigates "sixty-gun frigates," and our sloops "twenty-gun sloops," as if anticipating the time when they would give some of His Majesty's "Royal Navy" a sound drubbing, which, as usual, would be palliated by measuring scantling, weighing shot, counting guns, and manning all our ships with English sailors. The Lieutenant commences his book as follows:

"On the 15th of May 1826, my kind friend, Admiral Lake, gave me a month's leave of absence, from my ship at Halifax; and after considerable hesitation, whether I should shape my course towards the Falls of Niagara, or the cities and dock-yards of the United States, I decided to proceed to the latter. I embarked in the Frolic packet, having fortunately found a very agreeable companion, in Major Yorke, who consented to accompany me as long as our routes lay together. As we did not sail till the 16th, the wind being foul, I dated my leave from that day. The only books I could find in Halifax, relating to the United States, were a long statistical account, by Bristed; and the tour of an American to the Falls of Niagara, beginning with, I lay down in my military cloak,' &c.; and until by accident I met with Duncan's book, I could find no good account of that part of the world."

By italicizing the word "lay," the Lieutenant would seem to indicate, that he had caught our unlucky "American" sinning against the majesty of Lilly and Lowth; and that of course, his book could not possibly be worth reading. A man, however, may tell a great deal worth hearing, although he now and then commits a trifling error in moods and tenses; and there are worse faults in a book, than an occasional ignorance or disregard of grammatical niceties. Even the mighty sca-faring gramma

rian, had just before intimated, that two "routes" might "lay together;" and why not an officer and his cloak?

The great English navigator, who commanded the Frolic packet, after a week's voyage, made Block island, which, we presume, he mistook for York-island; and where the Lieutenant saw "two pretty girls." After two days more, being luckily guided by Long-Island, our great navigator at length found his way to the light-house at Sandy Hook; and aided by a fair wind, entered the Bay of New-York, which he thus sketches with tolerable accuracy:—

"About eight o'clock in the evening, we reached the Narrows, or entrance to the Bay of New-York. This channel does not exceed a quarter of a mile in breadth. The high land and picturesque scenery on each side, form a fine preparation for the first view of New-York. That magnificent city, which was now plainly dis tinguished, lies embosomed in the waters of her beautiful Bay, whence she sends forth her innumerable shipping to every quarter of the worid. The banks of the Bay, form one continued garden."

This description is pretty correct, except that the Lieutenant is mistaken by more than one half, in the breadth of the Nar- rows; and that the land on one side is quite flat and low. As the Lieutenant, however, sees most of his landscapes by moonlight, or starlight, such little inaccuracies are excusable.

"Our voyage,” continues the Lieutenant, "had consumed nine days, though it has frequently been made in three; and this loss of time was to me, who had only leave of absence for one month, a matter of serious annoyance. I consoled myself, however, with the hope of proceeding faster during the remainder of my journey."

And truly he loses no time afterwards. He goes to the inn, and thence sallies forth to the theatre, where the acting reminds him of that of Portsmouth; and "the most vulgar songs were loudy called for, and encored, between the acts and pieces,"-in imitation of the polite London audiences, we presume. The Lieutenant being resolved to lose no time, gallantly attacks the City Hotel, where it seems he took up his quarters.

"The house is immense, and full of company; but what a wretched place! the floors were without carpets, the beds without curtains; there was neither glass, mug, nor cup; and a miserable little rag was dignified with the name of towel. The entrance of the house, is constantly obstructed by crowds of people passing to and from the bar-room, where a person presides at a buffet, formed upon the plan of a cage. This individual is engaged from morn till dewy eve,' in preparing and issuing forth punch and spirits to strange-looking men, who come to the house to read newspapers and talk politics. In this place, may be seen in turn, most of the respectable inhabitants of the town."

All this is the result of one single night's observation, of our "Young Rapid," during which, he also went to the play; for, the next morning, he "gladly joined the messenger charged with the English mail, for Washington, who obligingly undertook "to be our guide." The Lieutenant has certainly a great talent for seeing.

Touching his account of the City Hotel, there is some truth, and a great deal not true, in his description. There are certainly a great many strange men to be seen there-that is, strangers to ourselves, and the Lieutenant; but we never remember to have seen any persons that walked on their heads, or on all-fours, or that did not wear a tolerably Christian aspect, bating sometimes a little redness at the nose. As for the deficiency of mugs, glasses, cups, and other nameless things, we speak not from actual experience; neither can we affirm, positively, to the identity of the little rag of a towel. Let the chambermaids look to these matters; we wash our hands of the unlucky towel, leaving it to be torn into utter tatters, by the wrathful Lieutenant. There is, however, without doubt, among many of the visiters and sojourners at our public houses, an unseemly habit of lounging in bar-rooms, infesting the doorways, and standing on the porches, or steps of hotels, staring modest women out of countenance as they pass along the streets. We have seen persons wearing the honourable livery of soldiers, and sailors, disgracing their country and their profession, by such exhibitions of impudence; and have blushed with shame, or reddened with indignation, to witness the hardy effrontery with which these tavern-loungers barred the doorway against passengers, and stared out of countenance all those unfortunate females who came within reach of such unmanly insult. Did they know how their uniform is tarnished by such disreputable effrontery, they would at least put on a plain coat, and save the other for a more honourable service. It is not, however, as the Lieutenant affirms, "the respectable inhabitants," that are seen in turn visiting the "buffet" of the bar-keeper, except it may be to inquire, whether persons whom they mean to visit, are at home. It is however degrading to descend to a refutation of these wholesale calumnies of ignorance, vanity, or prejudice; nor should we have noticed them at all, except to show how low an officer, and it is presumed a gentleman, can descend, to pamper the ignorant hostility of his countrymen.

The Lieutenant is off again, bright and early, for Washington. In the twinkling of an eye, or the cracking of a whip, we find him at New-Brunswick, forty-five miles from the infamous "rag of a towel," the uncarpeted rooms, and strange-looking men, of the City Hotel. The first thing your true born cockney does, on arriving at a place where he is to eat or sleep, is to reconnoitre the table, and explore the bed-rooms. You will see him with his eye fixed in most intense fascination on a certain spot, which is hallowed by the presence of the most savoury dish of all the tribe of dishes, waiting with a wary and knowing discretion for the first tinkling of the bell, to pass into the

seat sanctified by the proximity of the much coveted eatable. Or, if you see him not there, seek him in the upper stories, where he will be surely found, in deep investigation of beds, pillows, bolsters, sheets, counterpanes, et cetera-peeping over the bed, and under the bed, and practising upon the susceptible heart of the dingy Diana of a chambermaid, to seduce her out of the key of a single bedded room. Once in possession of this, he defies the fates, struts about, his hat on one side, with an air of deep complacency; manfully refrains from abusing the house, the landlady, and the Yankees; and the milk of his human kindness, peradventure, actually overflows in a grumbling panegyric in his book of travels, upon the place where he encountered such a providential blessing, as a room with a single bed. This insatiable solicitude for individual accommodation, is the great, infallible characteristic of refinement, and clearly demonstrates the superiority of Englishmen over us. The extremity of polish and refinement consists in the difficulty of being pleased, and the perfection of good breeding is to be pleased with nothing. Thus the English are unquestionably the best bred people in the world, and the Americans the worst; because the former are never satisfied with their accommodations, and the latter take things as they find them, and make the best of a bad inn. At Brunswick, the Lieutenant signalizes himself by obtaining sole possession of a single bedded room, an exploit almost equal to capturing a "sixty-gun frigate," and goes to sleep covered with glory. All that the Lieutenant has to say about the ancient town of Brunswick, is comprised in the following highly characteristic passage:

"Our good friend, the messenger, who was a crafty and experienced traveller, explained to us, that there was a considerable advantage in occupying the first coach, as the dust was thereby avoided, and the single beds secured, at the inn where we were to sleep. We had several companions; a young American, as rude as a bear; a vulgar old citizen, and four ladies, who were his wife, daughters, and sister-in-law."

Is it any wonder that a person having such accurate and highly interesting particulars to relate, should publish an octavo?

The rapid Lieutenant despatches the journey from Brunswick to Philadelphia in a single page, containing no other information than that the fog prevented his seeing Joseph Bonaparte's villa, coupled with some hearsay impertinence about that liberal and hospitable gentleman. At 10 o'clock he "arrived in Philadelphia, and as we were to remain only two hours, immediately proceeded to deliver our letters!" This was taking time by the forelock; but for all this the Lieutenant had leisure to make the discovery that "Philadelphia on the whole has the appearance of a well built town of the time of Queen Anne," and that so long as the young "Quaker ladies will confine themselves to plain