Finis coronat opus: i. e. the conclusion of our XXXVIth Volume is its crown, and thus dignified, it comes forth, the honest representative of our six months' labours for the benefit of the reader (and we hope, in some respects, of the country), who will therein find the flight of time arrested in its sweeping course—the past rendered as it were present—and the future occasionally anticipated by the analogical inference of like effects from similar causes.

From this general or bird's eye view of the Volume we shall now descend to a more close and particular consideration of its various contents. Our Biography is less varied than usual, but we trust it will be found not less interesting, as the record of, probably, all that will ever be known of our worthy but ill fated countryman, Captain Wright—we felt it a duty especially incumbent on us, to vindicate his character (now all that remains with us of him) from the aspersions of his enemies, we had almost said his friends—and we have availed ourselves for the purpose, more of facts than argument.

In our Nautical Selections, page 458, we have given an extract from the recent publication of Dr. Warden, late Surgeon of the Northumberland and medical attendant on Buonaparte, in which will be seen an attempt by the latter to wash his hands of that blood, but so weak, that it would seem there is “the smell of the blood still.”