tically, in the sight of the general assembly and church of the first born, with shouts, with the voice of the archangel, and the trump of God, attended by the cherubim and the seraphim, and all the heavenly host; his heart overflowing with love; his countenance beaming benignity; his lips uttering blessing; his hands dispensing glory; his sacred person clothed with the robes of light and immortality, making the clouds his chariot, and riding on the wings of the wind. When he had overcome the enemies which in the days of his humiliation opposed him, he ascended to dispense judgment. When he shall have overcome all his enemies, he shall so come in like manner to judge the quick and the dead: to erect his awful tribunal; and to summon before it the whole human race; and to render eternal life or everlasting death to each man, according as his work shall be. There are two laws of nature which, like all its operations, are very simple in themselves, but mighty and wonderful in their effects. The one is that of attraction, by which one particle unites or coheres to another. The other is that of gravitation by which things have a tendency to fall to the centre of the earth. By these two principles, God preserves in their appointed situation and order, animals, and vegetables, and minerals, and the sea, and the dry land, and rivers, and mountains; by these he firmly binds together all the atoms which compose the world, and girds this solid globe. By the same laws he both directs the motions, and preserves the order of the sun, and the moon, and the planetary orbs. But when our Lord ascended, he evinced his authority and power over these laws; he burst their mighty chains, and in opposition to their most powerful restraints, he rose from earth, and soared above the ethereal heavens. In like manner, he shall so come. He shall dissolve the bonds of gravitation, and the sun, and the moon, and the stars, shall fall; the mountains shall remove and the rivers shall fail; and the sea shall be dried up; and the solid globe shall be rent, asunder in every direction. He shall untie the cords of attraction, and particle shall separate from particle, and atom from atom, and the whole world shall fall to pieces, and shall be no more. Thus the same Jesus who was taken up into heaven, shall so come in like manner as he was seen to go into heaven. pp. 235237.

We ought not to waste our time in idle speculations. When Elisha was favoured with witnessing the ascension of Elijah, the chariots of fire and the horses of fire having conveyed him out of his sight, he gathered up the mantle which had fallen from that great prophet, and hastening to the banks of Jordan, he smote the waters and passed between the divided parts of the stream, stopped not till he arrived at Jericho, and instantly began to discharge the duties of his office. But when the disciples of our Lord were permitted to witness his ascension, and to behold the cloud receive him out of their sight, they lingered on the spot; they stood still ; they steadfastly looked up; they gazed; thoughts arose in their breasts, and questions started in their minds, which they seemed inclined to indulge. Whither is he gone? What change has taken place upon

him? What is he now doing? They were on the verge of a thousand idle speculations, fraught with ten thousand dangerous errors. There is a point to which speculation may advance with safety, when it tends to enlighten the mind with truth, to season the heart with grace, and to rouse the active powers to holy conduct, But beyond this, it is vain, it is forbidden, it is fatal to proceed. At this point, the disciples of our Lord had at this moment arrived. To prevent their going beyond it, angels interposed, "Ye men of Galilee," said they, "why stand ye gazing?" The moments of speculation are over, and the time for action is come.' pp. 240, 1.

We now take leave of Dr. Jones, with remarking that his volume bears the evidence of one who has not accustomed himself much to the practice of correct or elegant composition. He has evidently read much, but what he has excogitated for himself forms a far more abundant portion of his intellectual wealth, than what he has appropriated from others. It would appear as if the power and facility of his unwritten language had made him so independent of the ordinary means of conveyance by which a minister transfers the product of his own mind to the minds of his people, that his views, and his thoughts, and his modes of illustration, are 110 sooner conceived, than he is able to transfer them at once upon his hearers through the channel of cotemporaneous communication. We have no doubt that in this way much powerful eloquence, and much solid instruction, and many felicities of thought and of expression, which were worthy of being preserved, are destined to be forgotten in the course of a few years, and so to perish for ever from the remembrance of the world. We are glad, however, that the public have been presented with such a memorial of the Author, as that which he has now furnished; and if we think it is not an adequate representation of all the talents and accomplishments of him who has produced it, yet we feel confident that it is calculated to extend the usefulness of Dr. Jones, as well as to advance his reputation beyond the narrow circle of his own auditory.

Art. IV. The Narrative of Robert Adams, a Sailor, who was wrecked on the Western Coast of Africa, in the Year 1810, was detained three Years in Slavery by the Arabs of the Great Desert, and resided several Months in the City of Tombuctoo. With a Map, Notes, and an Appendix. 4to. pp. 260. Price 11. 5s. Murray, 1816.

HEN a tract of the globe is hardly worth exploring, at the cost and trouble of a regular expedition fitted out for the purpose, it is a very acceptable thing on the ground of economy, to have some of the wished-for information brought in by

an unexpensive casualty, like that which has produced the present volume;-excepting indeed the shipwreck which threw Robert Adams upon his adventures. If we may only be allowed to put this melancholy circumstance out of the account, we have here an instance hardly to be paralleled in the history of geographical knowledge, for the extent of enlargement gained to it, as considered in conjunction with the insignificance in many respects of the agent, and the total absence of preparation, equipment, co-operation, or protection

All the inquisitive imaginations in Europe were longing, and till lately almost despairing, to have the prospect opened across the vast African deserts as far as Tombuctoo Conjecture, speculation, legends, had accumulated, through centuries, to the amount of volumes, concerning that city, and its precincts, and the formidable intervening tracts. How to get there safely, and safely back, was the question. And who shall adventure the hazardous enterprise? What a fortunate mortal it will be, that shall one day penetrate to those desert-guarded dwellings of strange men, and return to tell what he has seen.

While such are the fancies and wishes of a curious and restless ignorance, and while possibilities are weighing, and enterprises planning, there is thrown on the African coast a common sailor, who can neither write nor read, who has probably never heard the name of Tombuctoo, who is nearly stripped of his clothes by barbarians as soon as he comes to land. This man, thus unfurnished with any one terrestrial thing for the purposes of enterprise and geographical discovery, but the limbs and organs of which his person is composed, accomplishes what no man of the Christian name ever before accomplished, however commissioned or provided, however ardent or brave; accomplishes what enthusiastic individuals, and what academics and governments, had been wishing and planning in vain. He traverses the hideous region very far towards its centre, resides a number of months, sometimes in royal society, at Tombuctoo, has the intimate inspection of Mahomedan and Pagan manners and character, and after several years spent at various positions in the fiery desert, comes as a ragged beggar into London, and by the merest chance falls into the company of some of the most learned, philosophic, and powerful persons of that metropolis, to whom he describes what no other individual in the civilised world could have described, authoritatively compelling at length their reluctant belief that the far-famed Tombuctoo is an accumulation of mud huts, the royal palace being the mud-hut-inchief. Nor was the fact that this city is the seat of a Negro, instead of a Mahomedan government, the point in which his evidence had the least force of prepossession to overcome.

Our first sentence made an implication against the value of the Continent to be explored. And truly every additional authentic description but aggravates its character of worthlessness and horror. It might seem to have been a ground consigned early in the lapse of time to the evil powers of nature, as a scene in which to prepare themselves for their operations over the world, and which ground their exercises and experiments had blasted and calcined to a state of total and perpetual death. For hundreds of leagues the wretched traveller still sees around him the uniform relic of a creation destroyed, a boundless expanse of substance which would be happily exchanged for empty space,-unless the scorching atmosphere should have left him fancy enough to assign this infinite sand to some use of ballast to the planet of which it forms so blank and dismal a part of the convexity. A tract broad enough for a respectable kingdom, shall not be of the value of a single parish, hardly of a large farm, of one of these more northern countries. The mighty malignant agency which has smitten these devoted regions with utter desolation, has not been confined to one mode; it has drowned what it could not burn; for it appears that the frightful aridity of the sandy deserts has its counterpart in the morasses and stagnant pools which occupy much of the wide space from the coast of Benin to Haoussa.

This empire of desolation has, however, its spots and stripes of beauty, a considerable portion of which will be brought within the view of the two parties recently sent from this country, since their track will be the course of the great rivers. In the vicinity of these the principles of life and fertility will be found retaining their hold on this dreadful Continent, and taking a compensation for their expulsion from so large a proportion of it.

The interest and expectation of African discovery are now fixed so intensely and so justly on these two expeditions, the confidence is so great that we shall very soon see disclosed in full light what the torrid deserts and the ferocious Moors and Arabs have hitherto retained under the veil of thickest darkness, that the knowledge brought by this humble, illiterate, but brave and observant wanderer, will seem of less value than it would have seemed some years since. His name, nevertheless, must always remain recorded as by no means the least considerable of African travellers, and the work will not cease to be an amusing personal history, when whatever it now supplies of geographical novelty shall become in a great measure absorbed and superseded.

Perhaps the share of this volume, or rather tract, employed in verifying the story, will seem somewhat disproportionate.

The evidence is laboured quite to an anxious minuteness. A few of the main points clearly established in the sailor's favour, would with most readers have obtained him credit for the rest; since the pleasure of believing is with the generality of us much greater than that of doubting. To the few of a contrary taste this work will afford very little gratification; for really the evidence is very comprehensive and complete, and our objec tion to its minuteness of detail is somewhat abated by the circumstance that the process of verification is made to supply a very material addition to the geographical information. This is especially the case with the "Notes and Illustrations," (amounting to nearly as much matter as the Narrative itself,) furnished by Mr. Dupuis, the British Vice-Consul at Mogadore, who happened to arrive in England at the time when the Editor was preparing the Narrative for publication, and was induced to give his very intelligent and valuable assistance.

We must content ourselves with a very brief abstract of the story.

In the month of October, 1815, the Editor of the following pages (Mr. Cock, of the African Trading Company) was informed by a friend, that a gentleman of his acquaintance, recently arrived from Cadiz, had accidentally recognised an American seaman in the streets of London, whom he had seen, only a few months before, in the service of an English merchant in Cadiz, where his extraordinary history had excited considerable interest; the man having been a long time in slavery in the interior of Africa, and having resided several months at Tombuctoo.'

It would have been strange if, just at such a juncture especially, such a phenomenon could have been suffered to pass without notice. It was instantly and eagerly resolved to find out and lay hands on so unique a mortal. He was soon brought to the Editor, on whom he consented to wait again, in order to answer inquiries relating to what he had seen of Africa; but he was very far from being over forward in either presenting himself or telling his story. He was much more desirous of availing himself of the first safe opportunity of returning to America, than of staying to be made a person of some consequence in London. He was with some difficulty prevailed on to forego the first favourable opportunity, and to be introduced to the many distinguished persons who felt it a matter not only of curiosity but of importance, that all the information he could supply should be obtained from him. He underwent long and various interrogatories, in the course of which his clearness, consistency, and honest manner, overcame every doubt of the general truth of his story, and excited admiration of the precision with which,-when the uncultivated state of his mind