would embody the bright casualties of nature in her moments of glory! Poor cobweb, at least in common hands,-yet I have it in my heart, and in my fancy; but when I try to fix it, it flies off, and will not be whistled back again.'

'No words can arrest the shifting aspects, or present a living likeness of the exquisite combinations of nature. We say "this is beautiful, that is superb," we exhaust the vocabulary of superlatives, without conveying to others the image with which we are ourselves impressed, even in its faintest tracings. The pencil is more effective than the pen. While the most laborious details and the truest local colouring fail in giving individuality to a description, the scenery of the Mediterranean ports, and the ineffable colouring of Italian skies have been thrown with such bright fidelity upon canvass, that the eye at once acknowledges the living originals of all which the pencil of Claude has imbedded in the memory. The same light dances on the waters, the same delicious coast brightens in the same golden sunbeams. It is not that objects are recalled, they are recognised, just as at Venice, where one finds that to be familiar with Canaletti's views, is almost to have seen the thing itself. In short, painted scenery, if faithful, is like a well-executed portrait, and description like a black profile; it may serve to recall a well-known face, but can convey no idea of one to which we are strangers.'

One of the captivating qualities of this work, is the hearty spirit of enjoyment with which the writer enters into the pleasures of travelling; and especially of that elevated species of pleasure which springs from the contemplation of natural scenery. There is an acute sense of the ridiculous and the disagreeable, but there is also an intense appreciation of the grand and beautiful. If we do not always agree with the authoress on points of taste, we can never accuse her of morbid fastidiousness; nor do we find that she ever seems ashamed of admitting how thoroughly she has been pleased. See, for example, this glowing narrative of a day passed in one of the most enchanting spots that even Italy can produce :

Passed the whole day and such a day!–in the Serbelloni gardens. My brother brought up his sunny mind and charming susceptibility of enjoyment, Mr M his store of thought and knowledge, and we our happy hearts and joyous feelings. Our host of Belaggio, too, brought up something rarely overlooked, even in the most sentimental moments; an excellent dinner, which we were kindly allowed to place in a saloon looking on both branches of the lake, and all the necromancy of its shores. Three large windows open upon beds of flowers, and arcades covered with the foliage of plants that are exotics with us; beyond these gay parterres a bank swells upward, hung with the contrasting verdure of the oak, the olive, the tall spare cypress, and the softer green of many summer trees; and higher than all, the feathery outline of the Scotch fir, appears firmly traced on a clear blue sky, while its bark glows and reddens in the evening sun.

A door opens from this charming saloon on a truly Italian vista. Stone steps rising in perspective, and shaded by broad laurels, through which the sunbeams dart slantingly, chequering at intervals the grassy openings. Large vases, from which cape jessamine and heliotrope diffuse their foreign odours, are placed at regular distances. Aloes grow as weeds do with us, and many of the sharp and broad-leaved things, which we cherish in our hot-houses, shoot out or trail along here with an untutored luxuriance that shows them indigenous. Indeed all rare and beautiful things seem to be so in this soft Arcadia.

What a spot to sit in, and talk over happy subjects, as we did. Mr M- dwelt on our village ramble with delight; it had interested him, as simple scenes of strong character always interest highly intellectual minds. All the fine things about us had sharpened our appetites; we found our carp and beccaficos, our grapes and truffles, figs and coffee, the most delicious that we had ever tasted, and sat talking down the sun until the sweet evening air tempted us out again,-and then we lingered amongst the vineyards, and on the platform before the old castle, till the bats came wheeling round us, and the red lights had faded entirely from the tops of the mountains;-when we descended to our sleeping quarters, some running, others lagging, but all agreeing that we had passed a day not soon to be forgotten.

While the scenes of this morning are yet impressed in all their living sweetness on my memory, I sit at my window and think what a summer paradise this would be to live in. Better even than Interlacken,— more uninterrupted quiet, and a softer colouring. Nothing ever approached the colouring of the hill countries in Italy. In Switzerland, nature cuts with a harder chisel,-grandly,-magnificently,-but perhaps too distinctly. Here the undefined outline melting into the sky and mingling with it, takes the vague shading which may be called the sentiment of landscape,-the poetic distance, that gives an impulse to the mind, and sends it bounding forward far beyond the narrow sphere of actual vision. How delightful it would be to live like sea gipsies, floating all day long upon the lake,-steering up to Gravedona, and growing poetical amongst the mountains,-cheating the hot hours in the shades of Luchino, where the sun never shines, or under the fig-trees of Cavagnola, or loitering out the cooler ones on some of those balmy terraces "où les citronniers fleurissent." Then, if the gay fit prompt, or the musical one, dropping down to Como, and passing the evening with Tancredi, or the gentle Desdemona; and should this whet the appetite for finer things, driving on to Milan, to meet them again on higher ground, or to shudder with La Pallarina, or sit down before the Hagar of the Brera, and think what hard hearts they had in Canaan. Delightful it would be, with health to enjoy and friends to share it ;-with such blessings, O, what a gift is life! when we are wise and grateful enough not to abuse it.'

We have mentioned with commendation the occurrence of passages interspersed with reflections arising naturally from the circumstances narrated, and giving at once elevation and variety to

the general character of the narrative. Take, for example, the following on the love of nature :—

'I always find the rhetoric of nature more heart-stirring than that of the schools, and I believe the love of nature is one of the affections which lingers longest in the heart. How strongly, as we advance in life, is the vanity of those things which we most prized in youth made manifest; what importance have we given to untried joys and distinctions, and even to the lightest trifles,— -a little while, and the most solid amongst them seem like old toys not worth playing with. We find that feelings, opinions, modes, and even hearts change,-every thing but nature; she alone is immutable, and for that reason her spells are often the last broken. We confide in her promises, and know that she will never deceive us; every thing may be false-hope, love, beauty, friendship, fame, but nature never. If we sow an acorn by the side of a grave, we are sure that an oak will overshadow it; if we return to the country of our birth, changed and forgotten, we find the same hills and streams, and even the same flowers-if man has not disturbed themwhich we loved in childhood. Pæstum has still its roses, though its These are

tombs have long been swallowed up in the general oblivion. the reasons why the love of nature has been known to ripen in the heart amidst the ashes of other, and once warmer, feelings. We love, and lean on things that we know will not break down, or forsake us. Of others-even those which flatter us most-we can too often spell the duration; but we are sure of nature, for she must outlive ourselves,' Such, too, are these brief comments upon natural scenery :-

'Light is the physiognomy of scenery; a landscape is like a regular set of features, both may be good, but neither speak, unless the light of nature or of the mind brighten on them.'

Montesquieu was right: the monotony of contrasts becomes at the long run as fatiguing as that of symmetry. The power of contrast consists in the shock, or charm, of opposition, and the excitement of surprise; but when its effects are too regularly repeated, they weary like the voice of an echo, which at first astonishes and delights, but soon loses its charm when we become aware of its unfailing return. It seems ungrateful to find fault with nature in this divine country, but the oppositions of colouring (for instance) fatigue like sameness, and in the end

become so.'

An incident witnessed in an Italian church, introduces remarks which, if not original, are at least just and well expressed :

I love the Italian churches, with their broad aisles, vast and unfrittered, -no pews, no divisions, no aristocratical screenings; all kneeling together, the high and mighty and the lowly, on the same pavement; all sending up their thanksgiving, or their prayer, to the same great being in whose eyes all are equal. No dread of vulgar contact, no elbowing of the tattered penitent. I shall never forget the impression made upon

me, on my first visit to St Peter's at Rome, by a young lady who came into the church, folded up in a cachemere, and followed by a servant in gorgeous livery: her appearance was that of a petite maitresse, as far as dress was concerned, but her air was devout and collected; she passed on slowly to the illuminated shrine of the saint, and inserted herself amidst a group of masons in their working dresses, kneeling with them on the pavement, and praying earnestly. This was beautiful, and similar acts of humility are performed every hour in the day in every church in Italy.

Principles are better things than impulses, even when both are good. Religion in this country seems less a principle than a feeling; it does not appear to influence the moral conduct,—but for the period during which its forms are exercised, the abstraction seems deep and real. Whether the visible image of the Saint or Virgin then implored be not the paramount object of adoration, may be questioned, and probably the zeal awakened through the medium of the imagination can only be sustained by the same means. The interceding Saint, protecting Madonna, or familiar image, long known, and long revered,-implored in sorrow, and relied upon in repentance, receives the fervent homage of the tender and devout. The enlightened may see in these palpable forms only a memorial, and while kneeling before a terrible crucifix, may lift up their souls to the Divine Nature, triumphing over sin and death, or send out their thoughts from the foot of the decorated altar to him whose " way "is on the sea, and his path on the great waters." But the vulgar,— "the great vulgar and the small,"-do they look beyond the identical picture or statue (always invested with miraculous powers)?—I should doubt it.'

She has been alarmed by a false report, and says,

man.

All well to-day, "pas un mot de Caron," the canon died of an old invincible phthisic, and the raging fever was the invention of our showThe vulgar in all countries love to frighten the credulous. It is an exercise of power,-an indulgence prohibited in general by their position in society,-and they particularly love to exert it over minds, to whose will they are by their condition subservient.'

The three principal personages in the Nouvelle Heloise, are well characterised as that philosophical, rhapsodical, unnatural, and 'most eloquent trio, who discussed virtue as a problem, and found that its solution was a vice;' and Rousseau's eloquent exaggerations are thus amusingly noticed :

• When that illustrious visionary, Jean Jacques, got hold of an idea, how he hugged and fondled it, and dressed it up in colours snatched from that palette which now lies buried, with all its dewy freshness, in his tomb. No one since has found it; other writers use live tints, and bright ones too, but his touch was magical. The poor Valaisannes on whom he lavished his delicious colouring, are wretched realities, and may take rank amongst the least dangerous of the fair sex. One comes amongst them, seeking under every little hat for the charming

face; and peering at every tinselled jacket for the light shape, which St Preux, even while the fair form of the impassioned Julia floated before his mind's eye, found so perplexingly lovely, and a squalid halfawake race, disfigured by goîtres which they show off as our women do white teeth or ivory fingers, presents itself. I should think the most fire-and-tow garde-du-corps in the service of his majesty Charles Dix, might dine in perfect tranquillity of heart, though waited upon by a legion of such damsels as the leaden-eyed she, who is at this moment laying a log of wood upon the fire.'

National characteristics appear to have been acutely observed; and we find the following lively and sensible remarks upon the difficulty of estimating them correctly :—

Joined the table d'hôte party to-day upon principle, wishing to see a little of the manners of Heidelberg, though it must be confessed that its usually mixed society can afford but an imperfect criterion. However, if it does not give us the Corinthian capitals, it at least offers flying sketches of men and manners, and those are all that a stranger can ever hope to seize. In fact, we birds of passage can form no positive judgment on any point susceptible of fluctuation. We look at society through a kaleidoscope; a jog to the right or to the left scatters our materials just as we are preparing to sketch from them, and no twisting or turning can bring back the same pattern again; while stationary people fix their microscopes firmly, fasten their subject before them, and dissect it at their leisure. After all, our grand error is, that, instead of looking through our own eyes and judging by our own impressions, we run to our books of reference, pinning our faith on other men's sleeves, without considering how time and season, sunshine and rain, bile and blue devils, alter matters. It is like judging of a nation by an individual, a thing so often done dictatorially and senselessly too. "He's knight o' the shire, and represents them all," is a common presumption, and always goes down?

Here follows a sketch of German students, and a comparison of them with the same class in France,—

An eye of defiance, an exulting step, an intrepid carriage, are the marks and tokens of a German student. This audacious bearing is strengthened and set off by the open collar, short frock (generally of Lincoln green, and of Robin Hood's own cut), small casquette, the point pressing flatly on the forehead, and hair cropped like Giotto's or Cimabue's apostles, floating or bristling at each side of the face. These "chartered libertines," for such they are during their collegiate life, run a course of unbridled riot, mastering the quieter classes of society by their force and number: to be formidable seems their point of honour, and they sustain it fiercely. Many of these swaggerers are certainly of an age to have long since finished their studies, and others curl their angry mustaches as if they had already smelt powder, and were for treason, stratagem, or strife." Indeed, their general appearance is more that of lawless desperadoes, robbers of the cave and forest, than of

"fit