BRIGHT'S NEW ZEALAND.

Ma. BRIGHT is a surgeon, who left England some years ago to settle in Australia. The colony he selected does not appear ; but he speaks of the population of New South Wales as from actual know- ledge, and he was evidently a resident in South Australia. His health suffering from the climate, increased perhaps by nervous irritability, he was advised, in the autumn of 1839, to try the effects of a voyage to New Zealand; where be became convalescent, and remained till his "recent" return to England. The publication before us professes to give the results of bis experience; and be- sides a history of New Zealand, and an account of its climate, soil, productions, and inhabitants, to contain some remarks on the climate and colonies of the Australian continent.

Looking at the opportunities of Mr. BRIGHT and the length of time he was employed in making his observations, the matter of his book is very much below what might have been expected; whilst his want of method, and other literary deficiencies, render his matter, such as it is, less available to the general reader than it might have been. Smallness is the character of this author's mind; and all he has collected and all he says is vitiated by this defect. Any thing like distinct results, or a large view of a subject, it is vain to look for in the Hand-Book for Emigrants, unless it be as regards climate in a medical sense ; from which it seems that New Zealand is by far the most wholesome, and the freest from annoying insects, besides being altogether free: from dangerous reptiles. Of South Australia, Mr. BRIGHT says- " The summer heats of Australia render the frame very irritable, and the extreme changes to which you are there liable endanger health. The Euro- pean, on landing there, finds the action of the skin greatly increased ; the per- spiration, incessant, relieves at first, but soon frets the system ; in such state any undue excitement or exposure to vitiated air produces fever, increasing arterial action, to be allayed only by death; or in such state, if exposed to the causes of cold, a violent dysentery Bets in, extremely difficult to manage; un- certain, often fatal in its results, or causing chronic affections which impede efforts for subsistence. Diarrhoea is frequent, and a virulent ophthalmia: it is wo uncommon thing to witness a blind eye among the aboriginal inhabitants. The North blasts of Australia blow as if front the mouth of a furnace ; the soil, finely pulverized, owing to a deficiency of moisture, is shovelled up by the wind ; and in addition to the suffocating heat, you are terribly embarrassed by showers ofdust poured upon you—eyes, nose, clothes are filled with it. I have known it blow through the shingled roof, and descend in clouds where no ceiling has intervened, rendering food uneatable and linen unfit for use. Spas- modic complaints are frequent : I experienced a severe form of it myself, and the agony was tremendous. It was followed, after frequent attacks, by ery- sipelas about the legs, and inability to move without pain; at the same time, I attended frequent cases, all alike to my own. 1 sought a change of climate ; and a month in New Zealand renovated me entirely. Meat in Australia be- comes blown in a minute. A limb that was amputated was, previous to the operation, covered with maggots, like a liver buried in spot to produce maggots for angling. Parturition, to the new comer, is not unattended with danger. The dysentery and ophthalmia are the diseases peculiar to the clime, and are highly dangerous; they attack those who are careful as well as the intemperate : as elsewhere, the latter are most obnoxious to disease. The climate evidently tends to a premature development and to early decay; yet old people, whose systems are not sapped by disease, coming from cold climes and avoiding ex- posure to mid-day heats and midnight chills, feel an invigoration ; and might, if threatened by ill health at home, prolong existence in Australia. 1 have met with many elderly persons out there who have praised the climate."

Of the soil and productions of New Zealand, Mr. BRIGHT speaks favourably ; but he adds little or nothing to what was already known, unless, perhaps, to impress more prominently upon the mind the hilly character of the country, and the consequent ab- sence of extended plains; though he merely mentions it as a fact, not adducing it as an impediment to cultivation. Upon the most interesting subject, the manners and characters of the people both natives and foreign settlers, he is vague, general, and unsatisfying. Mr. BRIGHT'S particular examples, among the settlers at the Bay of Islands, are taken from some extreme cases of profligacy and debauchery ; and his chief native sample is an old chieftain, a patient of his, who, though first professing 'Wesleyanism, and turn- ing Catholic on the arrival of the Apostolic Vicar, recurred to his native superstitions when sick, and was only driven from them by Mr. BRIGHT withholding his medicines. So far as any general conclusions can be drawn from his general descriptions, the state of morals in every point of view is very low among the settlers. Crime is not common, but every thing short of it is an every-day affair ; money, by any means not felonious, being the object both at New Zealand and in Australia. The native New Zealanders, it would appear, are quite competent to pro- tect themselves in matters within their experience—which (a very great matter) the sale of their land is not ; and this, now they are become our subjects, requires careful looking to by the Home as well as Colonial authorities. Of the effects of the Missions Mr. BRIGHT speaks in high terms, and defends the Missionaries from the charges brought against them : his defence, however, amounts to little more than this, that they have pursued their worldly interests in a more guarded and respectable way than the escaped convicts and retired whalers, and with less injury to the character of the natives.

Although occasionally visiting other parts of the country, Mr. BRIGHT'S domicile was the Bay of Islands, the irregular settlement effected at the Northern part of the Northern island, by such float- ing population as found a refuge in New Zealand from law or the ocean. And he defends Governor Honsost for not fixing the seat of government at the infant settlements of the New Zealand Coin- panics; because, he intimates, the population was not then so nu- merous, the trade little or none, the harbours neither so safe nor so convenient, and the success of the colonists not yet proved. On the other hand, he attaches great blame to the Government at home, or in New South Wales, or to Governor HOBSON, for the unbusiness-like and dilatory way in which they set about the investigation of titles to land; and, so far as he can be under- stood, with justice. The whole management appears that of

people whose capacity consisted in forming paper plans, with- out any thought of their execution : a determination to investi- gate the titles of British subjects to lands acquired in New Zealand, and a commission thereupon, seem to have been the extent of their reach. When the announcement of the fact reached New Zealand, it caused great consternation ; and, such is

the sensitive nature of property, that it might have induced anxiety even among far more bowl fide purchasers than any in the island.

The first effect was to stop speculations and sales in land, and to drive away many Australian people who had come to purchase or settle ; the next was to put a stop to trade,—though we do not trace a sequitur here, since ships would still want supplies, and the

actual holders of land could still furnish them ; and lastly, says Mr. BRIGHT, the purchasers of allotments from companies in Eng-

land cannot be sure of their titles when they get out. Notwith- standing all these evils—easily foreseen—the Governor came with- out the Commissioners of Inquiry ; the announcement was made whilst the Commissioners were still at New South Wales, and no steps were taken to hasten their arrival: a wanton and mis- chievous tampering with interests, which the slightest forethought could have prevented. At the same time, the investigation in itself was highly proper : now that the New Zealanders have ac- knowledged the sovereignty of Great Britain, one of the first duties of the Colonial Office is to protect them from fraudulent purchases of their territory, whether by individual or joint-stock land-sharks : and the most effectual mode of serving them would be, to extend the plan of reserving a certain portion of any land sold, for its present possessors, rendering all sales beyond that proportion in- valid at any price; and rigidly to enforce the rule.

TEN THOUSAND A-YEAR

Is the title of the popular fiction that has amused the readers of Blackwood's Magazine during these two years past, and which is now published entire, after having undergone a careful revision. The author, in his preface, " ventures to express a hope that his work may prove to be an addition, however small and humble, to the stock of healthy English literature" ; and deprecates the no- tion that has been formed of its scope and object during its pro- gress, by those Who have regarded it merely as a comic and laugh- able story. " Whatever may be its defects of execution," he says, " it has been written in a grave and earnest spirit ; with no attempt to render it acceptable to mere novel-readers, but with a steadfast view to that development and illustration of principles, of cha- racter, and of conduct, which the author had proposed to himself from the first, in the hope that he might secure the approbation of persons of sober, independent, and experienced judgment." A person opening a folio of GILLRAY'S caricatures, and meeting with a prefatory advertisement to the like effect, would be scarcely more astonished than a reader of the class described by the author, who should read the story of Ten Thousand a-Year for the first time in these volumes : it is throughout a series of written political carica- tures, as broad, coarse, and personal, as ever GILLRAY drew; and, it is but just to add, characterized by a similar degree of force and humorous exaggeration. Every character of any prominence is represented as belonging to one of the two great political parties : all the Liberals being described as unprincipled scoundrels, whe- ther dupes or knaves, and most of them ill-looking, low-bred per- sons, with vulgar names ; the Tories, on the contrary, pictured as paragons of virtue, talent, and propriety, high-minded, dignified, and handsome, with euphonous names—models of human perfection. Not only does the novelist sink into the partisan, and the painter of men and manners prostitute his powers to the purposes of poli- tical warfare- " To party give up what was meant for mankind "-

but the satirist degenerates into the libeller, and scurrilous per- sonalities are alternated with religious cant. The political bias neu- tralizes the influence of the libellous insinuations against public men, but the animus is not the less censurable, and it vitiates the interest of the narrative no less than the truth of its pictures of life.

The story of this politico-legal novel is the temporary dispos- session of Mr. Aubrey, the right owner of a landed estate of " ten thousand a year," through the instrumentality of Messrs. Quirk, Gammon, and Snap, a firm of Old Bailey solicitors, who prosecute the claims of a supposititious heir for the purpose of making a profit of the business. The claimant is a haberdasher's shopman, absurdly named Tittlebat Titmouse ; a wretched little coxcomb, as brainless and pluckless as he is ignorant and conceited. Titmouse is a mere puppet in the hands of Mr. Gammon, the arch-plotter of the scheme, and prime mover of the legal chi- canery. This Gammon, a wily, unscrupulous, ambitious attorney, with commanding talents and address, is the best-developed character in the book ; nay, it is the only one that is not dena- turalized by the distorting medium through which the writer sees both men and things. The aristocratic Aubrey is too perfect for a mortal; and the sublime spectacle of " a good man struggling with adversity " is considerably weakened by the superhuman character of the example : the mawkish pathos of some parts lessens the force of this otherwise affecting picture of manly forti- tude supported by resolution and energy.

The " glorious uncertainty of the law," the intricacies and cumbrous forms of conveyancing, and the various kinds of legal subtilty exercised in unravelling the tangled mazes of evidence, are set forth with the knowledge and ingenuity of a lawyer com- bined with the skill of a literary craftsman : whether the law is sound or not, it seems to have been paid the compliment of being called in question by the big-wigs ; and the author has evidently got up the case with great pains. The dry details of the lawsuit are relieved by a love-suit, which Gammon urges to Mr. Aubrey's sister ; and the feelings of tenderness, pity, and remorse, which redeem the character of the heartless villain—influencing his proceedings, and finally tending to defeat his projects—are artfully exhibited. Gammon is a bad man, but he is a real character—made up of good and evil : hence he excites a strong interest, that neither the all-perfect Aubrey nor the miserable idiot Titmouse can awaken. The other characters are subordinate ; being either grotesque phantasmagoria, or sketches of the representatives of a class, sometimes painted couleur de rose, or blackened into hideous- ness, according as it suits the author's purpose, but not unfre- quently truthful in their lineaments. The scenes and descriptions are, in general, both too diffuse and too coarse for extract : we therefore cull a few samples of the finer touches of thought and delineation that are scattered through the volumes.

ACTION THE SPIRIT OF LIFE.

The language of the ancient orator concerning his art may be applied to life, that not only its greatness but its enjoyment consists in action, action, se- xton ! The feelings, for instance, may become so morbidly sensitive as to give an appearance of weakness to the whole character ; and this is likely to he specially the case of one born with those of superior liveliness and delicacy, if he be destined to move only in the regions of silent and profound abstraction and contemplation—in those refined regions which may be termed a sort of paradise, where every conceivable source of enjoyment is cultivated for the fortunate and fastidious occupants to the very uttermost, and all those innu- merable things which fret, worry, and harass the temper, the head, and the heart of the dwellers in the rude regions of ordinary life, most anxiously weeded out ; instead of entering into the throne of life, and taking part in its constant cares and conflicts; scenes which require all his energies always in exercise to keep his place and escape being trodden under foot. Rely upon it, that the man who feels a tendency to shrink from collision with his fellows, to run away with distaste or apprehension from the great practical business of life, does not enjoy moral or intellectual health ; will quickly contract a silly conceit and fastidiousness, or sink into imbecility and misanthropy ; and should devoutly thank Providence for the occasion, however momentarily startling and irritating, which stirs him out of his lethargy, his cowardly lethargy, and sends him among his fellows—puts him, in a manner, upon a course of train- ing, upon an experience of comparative suffering, it may be of sorrow, re- Turing the exercise of powers of which he had before scarcely been conscious, and giving him presently the exhiliarating consciousness that he is exhibiting himself—a MAN.

AN RUMBLE COMPANION.

This was Miss Macspleuchan, a distant connexion of the Earl's late Countess—a very poor relation ; who had entered the house of the Earl of Dreddlington in order to eat the bitter, bitter bread of dependence. Poor soul ! you might tell by a glance at her that she did not thrive upon it. She was about thirty, and so thin ! She was dressed in plain white muslin ; and there were a manifest constraint and timidity about her motions, and a depression in her countenance, whose lineaments showed that if she could be happy she might be handsome. She had a most ladylike air ; and there was thought in her brow and acuteness in her eye, which, however, as it were, habitually watched the motions of the Earl and the Lady Cecilia with deference and anxiety. Poor Miss Macspleuchan felt herself gradually sinking into a syco- phant; the alternative being that or starvation. She was very accomplished, particularly in music and languages, while the Lady Cecilia really knew scarcely any thing; for which reason, principally, she had lung ago conceived a bitter dislike to Miss Macspleuchan, and inflicted on her a number of petty but ex- quisite mortificatious and indignities; such perhaps as none but a sensitive soul could appreciate, for the Earl and his daughter were exemplary persons in the proprieties of life, and would not do such things openly. She was a sort of companion of Lady Cecilia, and entirely dependent upon her and the Earl for her subsistence.

A LEADER OF TON.

Take, for instance, the gay and popular Marquis Gants-Jaunes de Millefleurs but he is worth a word or two of description, because of the position he had con- trived to acquire and retain, and the influence which he managed to exercise over a considerable portion of London society. The post he was anxious to secure was that of the leader of tow; and he wished it to appear that that was the sole object of his ambition. While, however, be affected to be entirely en- grossed by such matters as devising new and exquisite variations of dress and equipage, he was, in reality, bent upon graver pursuits—upon gratifying his own licentious tastes and inclinations with secrecy and impunity. He despised folly, cultivating and practising only vice; in which he was, in a manner, an epicure. He was now about his forty-second year, had been handsome, was of Hand and fascinating address, variously accomplished, of exquisite tact, of most refined taste: there was a slight fulness and puffiness about his features, an expression in his eye which spoke of satiety; and the fact was so. He was a very proud, selfish, heartless person ; but these qualities he contrived to dis- guise from many of even his most intimate associates. An object of constant anxiety to him was to ingratiate himself with the younger and weaker branches of the aristocracy, in order to secure a distinguished status in society ; and he succeeded. To gain this point, he taxed all his resources; never were so ex- quisitely blended, as in his instance, with a view to securing his influence, the qualities of dictator and parasite; he always appeared the agreeable equal of those whom for his life be dared not seriously have offended. He had no for- tune, no visible means of making money, did not sensibly sponge upon his friends, nor fall into conspicuous embarrassments; yet he always lived in luxury; without money, he in some inconceivable manner always contrived to be in the possession of money's worth. He had a magical power of soothing querulous tradesmen. He had a knack of always keeping himself, his clique, his sayings and doings, before the eye of the public, in such a manner as to satisfy it that he was the acknowledged leader of fashion ; yet it was really no such thing ; it was a false fashion, there being all the difference between him and a man of real consequence in society that there is between mock and real pearl, between paste and diamond. It was true that young men of sounding name and title were ever to be found in his train, thereby giving real counte-. nance to one from whom they fancied that they themselves derived celebrity ; thus enabling him to effect a lodgment in the outskirts of aristocracy : but he could not penetrate inland, so to speak, any more than foreign merchants can advance further than to Canton in the dominions of the Emperor of China. He was only tolerated in the regions of real aristocracy ; a fact of which he had a very galling consciousness, though it did not apparently disturb his equanimity, or interrupt the systematic and refined sycophancy by which alone he could secure his precarious position.

THE FASHIONABLE PREACHER.

'Twas a fashionable chapel, a chapel of ease ; rightly so called, for it was a very easy mode of worship, discipline, and doctrine, that was there practised and incul- cated. if I may not irreverently adopt the language of Scripture, but apply it very differently, I should say that Mr. Morphine Velvet's yoke was very "easy," his burden very " light." He was a popular preacher ; middle-aged, sleek, serene, solemn in his person and demeanour. He had a very gentlemanlike ap- pearance in the pulpit and reading-desk. There was a sort of soothing, winning elegance and tenderness, in the tone and manner in which he prayed and besought his dearly-beloved brethren, as many as were there present, to ac- company him, their bland and graceful pastor, to the throne of the heavenly grace. Fit leader was he of such a flock. He read the prayers remarkably well, in a quiet and subdued tone, very distinctly, and with marked emphasis and intonation ; having sedulously studied how to read the service, under a Fuck theatrical teacher of elocution, who had given him several "points"— in fact, a new reading entirely of one of the clauses in the Lord's Prayer, and which, he had the gratification of perceiving, produced a striking if not indeed a startling effect. On the little finger of the hand which he used most, was to be observed the sparkle of a diamond-ring; and there was a sort of care- less grace in the curl of his hair, which it had taken his hairdresser at least half an hour before Mr. Velvet's leaving home for his chapel to effect. In the pulpit he was calm and fluent. He rightly considered that the pulpit ought not to he the scene for attempting intellectual display : he took care, therefore, that there should be nothing in his sermons to arrest the understanding or un- profitably occupy it; addressing himself entirely to the feelings and fancy of his cultivated audience, in frequently interesting imaginative compositions.

THE COUNTRY PARSON.

'Twas about four o'clock in the afternoon of a frosty day in the early part of December, and Dr. Tatham was sitting alone in his plainly-furnished and old- fashioned little study, beside the table on which Betty, his old housekeeper, had just laid his scanty show of tea-things—the small, quaintly-figured, round silver tea-pot, having been the precious gift, more than twenty years before, of old Madam Aubrey. On his knee lay, open, a well-worn, parchment-covered Elzevir copy of Thomas d Kempis, a constant companion of the Doctor's, which he had laid down a few moments before, in a fit of musing ; and he was gazing in the direction of the old yew-tree, a portion of which, with a gray crumbling corner of his church, at only some two dozen yards distance, was visible through the window. On one side of his book-shelves hung his surplice OD one peg, and on another his gown ; and on the other his rusty shovel-hat and walking-stick. Over the mantelpiece were suspended two small black profile likenesses of old Squire Aubrey and Madam Aubrey, which they had themselves presented to the Doctor nearly thirty years before. Though it was very cold, there was but a handful of fire in the little grate ; and this, together with the modicum of coarse brown sugar in the sugar-basin, and about two tea-spoon- fuls of tea, which lie had just before measured out of his little tea-caddy into his tea-cup, in order to be ready to put it into his tea-pot when Betty should have brought in the kettle, and four thin slices of scantily-buttered brown bread; all this, I say, seemed touching evidence of the straitened circumstances in which the poor Doctor was placed. His clothes, too, very clean, very thread- bare, and of a very rusty hue, down even to his gaiters, suggested the same re- flection to the beholder. The five pounds which he had scraped together for purchasing a new suit, Mr. Titmouse, it will be remembered, had succeeded in cheating him out of. His hair was of a silvery white; and though he was evi- dently a little cast down in spirits, the expression of his countenance was as full of benevolence and piety as ever.

Even from these passages it may be inferred that the author possesses faculties of observation and reflection of no mean kind. His style is often distinguished both for strength and delicacy; but power—nervous power—is his main characteristic. Unlike the herd of magazine-scribblers, who cover whole sheets with tumid inanity or with verbal conceits, he is full of his subject, uses words only for the purpose of expressing ideas and telling his story : he is sometimes loose, often redundant and extravagant ; but never flimsy, feeble, or affected. These sterling qualities make it a matter for regret that their possessor should so misapply them.