of our modern republics, I would advise its magistrates to lead him to the gibbet. If such a man should appear in a monarchy like that of England, it would be prudent to confine him in the tower. He should receive no protection but under an absolute government, and there he might rise to be an excellent despot.

ON NATURAL BEAUTY.

THAT sensibility to beauty, which, when cultivated and improved, we term taste, is universally diffused through the human species; and it is most uniform with respect to those objects, which, being out of our power, are not liable to variation from accident, caprice, or fashion. The verdant lawn, the shady grove, the variegated landscape, the boundless ocean, and the starry firmament, are contemplated with pleasure by every attentive beholder. But the emotions of different spectators, though similar in kind, differ widely in degree; and to relish with just delight the enchanting scenes of nature, the mind must be uncorrupted by avarice, sensuality, or ambition; quick in her sensibilities; elevated in her sentiments; and devout in her affections. He, who possesses such exalted powers of perception and enjoyment, may almost say, with the poet :

I care not, Fortune! what you me deny ;
You cannot rob me of free Nature's grace;
You cannot shut the windows of the sky,
Thro' which Aurora shews her brightening face;
You cannot bar my constant feet to trace
The woods and lawns, by living stream, at eve;
Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace,
And I their toys to the great children leave;

Of fancy, reason, virtue, nought can me bereave.*

Perhaps such ardent enthusiasm may not be compatible with the necessary toils, and active offices, which Providence has assigned to the generality of men. But there are very few to whom some portion of it may not be advantageous; and, if it were cherished by each individual in that degree which is consistent with the indispensable duties of his station, the felicity of human life would be considerably augmented. From this source, the refined and vivid pleasures of the imagination are almost entirely derived, and the elegant arts owe their choicest beauties to a taste for the contemplation of nature. The vulgar indeed look no further than to scenes of culture and the produce of husbandry, because all their views terminate in mere pecuniary profit. They only remark that this is fine barley, or that is prime clover; as an ox or an ass would inform us, if they could speak. Persons of this character would equally admire a

Thomson's Castle of Indolence,

book for its binding, or a picture for its frame. But the liberal have nobler views, and though they give to agriculture its due praise, they can be delighted with natural beauties, where farming was never known.

Ages agone men of taste and sensibility have celebrated with enthusiastic rapture "a deep retired vale, with a river rushing through it; a vale having its sides formed by two immense and opposite mountains, and those sides diversified by woods, precipices, rocks, and romantic caverns." * Such was the scene produced by the river Penuës, as it ran between the mountains Olympus and Ossa, in that well-known classical vale, the Thessalian Tempe.

Virgil and Horace, the first for taste among the Romans, appear to have been enamoured with beauties of this character. Horace prayed for a villa, where there was a garden, a rivulet, and above these a little grove.

Hoc erat in votis, modus agri non ita magnus,

Hortus ubi, et tecto vicinus jugis aquæ fons

Et paulum silvæ super his foret.

SAT. VI.

Virgil wished to enjoy rivers, and woods, and to be hid under immense shade in the cool valleys of Mount Hæmus.

-O! qui me gelidis in Vallibus Hæmi
Sistat, et ingenti ramorum protegat umbra.

GEORG. II. v. 436.

The great elements of this species of beauty, according to these principles, were water, wood, and uneven ground; to which may be added a fourth, to wit, lawn. It is the happy mixture of these four that produces every scene of natural beauty, as it is a more mysterious mixture of other elements (perhaps as simple and not more in number) that produces a world or universe.

Virgil and Horace having been quoted, we may cite, with equal truth, our great countryman, Milton. Speaking of the flowers of paradise, he calls them flowers,

which not nice art

In beds and curious knots, but nature boon
Pours forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain.
P. L. b. 4. v. 245.

Soon after this passage he subjoins :

* Est nemus Hæmoniæ, prærupta quod undique claudit

Silva; vocant Tempe. Per quæ Penëus ab imo

Effusus Pindo spumosis volvitur undis

Dejectuque gravi, &c.

OVID METAM: lib. 1. v. 508.

A fuller and more ample account of this beautiful spot may be found in the first chapter of the third book of Ælian's Various History.

Milton explains this variety by recounting the lawns, the flocks, the hillocks, the valleys, the grottos, the water falls, the lakes, &c., and in another passage, describing the approach of Raphäel, he informs us that this divine messenger passed

Through groves of myrrh,

And flowering odours, cassia, nard, and balm,

A wilderness of sweets; for Nature here
Wanton'd as in her prime, and played at will.

Her virgin fancies, pouring forth more sweet

Wild above rule or art, enormous bliss. P. L. IV. v. 292.

The great masters in painting seem to have felt the power of these elements, and to have transferred them into their landscapes with such amazing force, that they appear not so much to have followed as to have emulated nature. Claude de Lorraine, and Salvator Rosa, may be called superior artists in this exquisite taste. In the art of landscape gardening, the French are far behind the English. The walks at Versailles, for example, are totally spoilt by their stiffness, formality, and sameness. How insignificant and tame do they appear, when contrasted with the scenery of Windsor. Contrast the Luxembourg with Kensington gardens, or the Champs Elysées with Regent's Park, and the palm of pure taste must be conceded to the English.

Even in the darkest periods, when civilization has only spread its amenities among a choice few, the love of natural beauty has been cherished. How warmly does Leland describe Guy's Cliff in his old English mixed with Latin. "It is a place meet for the muses; there is sylence; a praty wood: antra in vivo saxo (grottos in the living rock); the river rolling over the stones with a praty noise." His Latin is more elegant. "Nemusculum ibidem opacum, fontes liquidi et gemmei, prata florida, antra muscosa, rivi levis et per saxa decursus, nec non solitudo et quies musis amicissima." Vaucluse (Vallis Clausa) the favorite retreat of Petrarch, in the vicinity of Avignon, has been warmly praised by the poet. "It is a valley, having on each hand, as you enter, immense cliffs, but closed up at one of its ends by a semi-circular ridge of them; from which circumstance it derives its name. One of the most stupendous of these cliffs stands in the front of this semi-circle, and has at its foot an opening into an immense cavern. Within the most retired and gloomy part of this cavern is a large oval basin, the production of nature, filled with pellucid and unfathomable water; and from this reservoir issues a river of respectable magnitude, dividing, as it runs, the meadows beneath, and winding through the precipices that impend from above."

There never was a man, truly good and great, insensible to the beauties of nature, and who did not prize the composure of rural retirement. Horace, when he breaks forth into the following animated exclamation, seems to

regret the want of that heartfelt complacency which the bustle, pomp, and luxuries of imperial Rome could not afford.

O rus! quando ego te aspiciam, quandoque licebit
Nunc veterum libris, nunc somno et inertibus horis
Ducere sollicitæ jucunda oblivia vitæ.

No writer, however, ancient or modern, has so truly drawn the distinction between contemplative solitude and solitude arising from desertion, as Byron, in these exquisite verses so worthy of a poet and a philosopher, and in which he pays homage to the enchantments of natural beauty.

To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell,
To slowly trace the forest's shady scene,

Where things that own not man's dominion dwell,
And mortal foot hath ne'er, or rarely been;
To climb the trackless mountain all unseen,
With the wild flock that never needs a fold;
Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean;
This is not solitude; 'tis but to hold

Converse with nature's charms, and view her stores unroll'd.

But 'midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men,

To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess,

And roam along, the world's tired denizen,

With none who bless us, none whom we can bless;
Minions of splendour shrinking from distress!
None that, with kindred consciousness endued,
If we were not, would seem to smile the less
Of all that flattered, followed, sought, and sued;
This is to be alone; this, this is solitude!

THE LATE TAX QUESTION.

THE lively interest excited among the whole population of Guernsey on the subject of local taxation, induces us to give a copious report of the arguments adduced before the judicial Committee of His Majesty's Privy Council in the late case of Carré William Tupper, esq., and others, versus the Constables of the town parish. We have now before us the printed cases both of the appellants and respondents, with their respective appendices, and as they contain much valuable matter, both of historical and financial interest, their substance deserves to be recorded in a permanent form, for future reference.

The appellants were sentenced to pay their proportion of parochial taxes estimated on their funded property, by a judgment of the Royal Court of the 23d February, 1833, which judgment was based on a local ordinance passed on the 30th April, 1821. The appellants contended before the judicial Committee that the above-named ordinance was illegal and inoperative, both for want of the sanction of His Majesty in Council, and also as being an act beyond the jurisdiction of the Royal Court; and they further maintained, that there was no law in the island of Guernsey authorising the taxation of property in the British or Foreign funds. The respondents answered, that the judgment of the Royal Court of the island Vol. I.-No. 2.

9

of Guernsey, of the 23d February, 1833, was conformable to the law and ancient custom of the island, and also, even supposing (which they denied) that the present mode of taxing and rating required modification, the law could not be altered or modified by any judge called upon to decide judicially, but that such change or modification must be made by applying to the proper insular authorities in the first instance, and in the event of redress not being obtained, by afterwards petitioning his most excellent Majesty in Council.

The case drawn up by the appellants is very feeble in argument, and indeed in some essential points it subverts their own position. Whoever prepared it seems to have confused himself with giving too loose an interpretation to the words law, custom, and ordinance. In the second page, they quote an answer transmitted by the Royal Court to the Privy Council, dated the 10th January, 1737, to the following effect: 66 My lords, we never pretended to be vested with the power and authority of making laws, and it is what neither we, nor our predecessors before us, ever assumed; but we beg leave to acquaint your lordships that this court has always, as well by the nature of our constitution as by virtue of sundry charters from the Crown and other express orders of council, deemed itself authorised and empowered to make regulations and set down such rules and methods as were necessary for the enforcing and putting in due execution the laws of this island."

We cannot see how this quotation could serve the cause of the appellants; for the ordinance of 1821, on which they were cast, was not a new law, in the proper sense of the phrase, but, as it even appears on the face of it, merely an act explanatory and declaratory of an ancient usage which had existed from time immemorial. Surely there is an obvious difference between the origination of a fresh edict and the promulgation of a certain form for carrying into effect an established custom! In the nineteenth article of the ordinance of 1821, there occurs the following passage, and, curious enough, it has been cited by the appellants themselves: "The Court has judged, that in order to render the mode of taxation uniform in the different parishes, it was necessary to lay down the principle by which the custom of this island has been regulated, and having nothing in view but to follow the ancient custom, has found that it was established, First, that income or revenue was not taxed except it arose from capital; Secondly, that capital and effective properties were taxed, although producing no income." Hence it clearly follows that the ordinance was not a new law, but merely a more lucid interpretation of what had existed from the earliest periods. It does not, therefore, appear that the Court, in 1821, acted at all in contradiction to the opinions expressed by the Court, in 1737, in their letter to Council, for they merely affirmed the usage of the country, and it ought never to be lost sight of, that Guernsey is essentially "pays coutumier." Another passage in the appellants' case appears also to militate against their own views. "In the reign of king

James the First, 1607, Sir Robert Gardiner and Dr. Hussey were sent out as commissioners to the island of Guernsey, to inquire into the grievances of the people: and, by their decision and judgment, confirmed by the king in council, upon a complaint brought before them, it is expressly required that all future taxation shall be made according to the ancient privileges, liberties, and customs of the island." Surely this very paragraph expressly sanctions the ordinance of 1821, which is based on custom.

The case of the respondents is prepared with great ability, and if it be objected that it is too long, and in some parts too prolix, it should be remembered that the judicial Committee had no previous knowledge of our local customs; and as the whole point at issue depended on usage, it was highly judicious to enter fully into details and particulars exclusively appertaining to the bailiwick. Accordingly, the