in one of the best English inns
may be had, but at a truly English price; the low public houses and the
grog shops are of the vilest description. An active and vigilant police
has been recently reorganised, under the superintendence of two officers
from England, whose exertions are already attended with the most
beneficial results.
"The climate is most salubrious, the mean temperature being 60 deg.
Fahrenheit; the extremes, 36 deg. 80 deg. The spring usually commences in
September; the summer in December; the autumn in April; and the winter,
seven weeks of which is very severe, in June."
The Panorama is well executed throughout, and in parts, with much delicacy
and finish. The distant country, bays, and points, are for the most part
delightfully painted. Here and there are spots which almost remind us of
Virgil's
--locos loetos, et amoena vireta,
Fortunatorum nemorum, sedesque beatas:
and, without any view to a transportable offence, a man might well wish to
settle himself here "for life."
Mr. Burford's "Descriptions" are perhaps better drawn up than those of
exhibitions in general. In the Keyplate before us, fifty-two points or
objects are denoted, and further illustrated by half-a-dozen pages of
letter-press.--In the town are seen the barracks; the governor's,
commissary's, and judges' residences; hotel, jail, lime-kilns, church,
court-house, bank, hospital, treasury, pier, &c., and Mrs. Midwood's
seminary. Groups of convicts enliven the picture--we had almost said
en_lighten_ it, from recollection of the picking propensities to which
hundreds of them are indebted for their abode here. They are deplorable
specimens of fallen nature--such as may be seen in droves slinking to
their work in the dock-yard at Portsmouth, or elsewhere, and still bearing
the front of humanity in their begrimed features, but harrowing the
spectator with painful recollections of their moral abandonment. One of
the groups is a chain gang at work--breaking stones for the road--or, a
last effort at self-improvement, by mending the ways of others. How
different would these worthies appear in a rabble rout at a London fire,
or in all the sleekness of civilization, as exhibited in the sundry
avocations of picking a pocket, in easing a country gentleman of his
uncrumpled or bright dividend, or studying our ease and comfort by helping
themselves to all our houses contain without the rudeness of disturbing
our slumbers. A neighbouri
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