romances, in all the portraits of manners, but it is even more honoured than candour. There is in the writers of the Germanic nations, a tone of frankness and honesty, an openness of heart, which we should vainly seek for in all the books of Spain. History, even more than literature, verifies this charge of profound dissimulation, which affects all the people of the south, and supposes the existence of a duplicity which their point of honour, their religion, and the morality fashionable in society authorise. No history is tarnished with more perfidies than that of Spain; no government has sported more with its oaths and most sacred engagements. From the reign of Ferdinand the catholic, to the ministry of cardinal Alberoni, all the wars, public negotiations, and relations of the government with the people, are marked with odious treachery; yet adroitness has obtained the admiration of the world, and the point of honour is absolutely separated from honesty. **

As to the Spaniards, in all we have yet seen of their literature, we may have remarked that it was much less classical than that of other nations; that it was much less on the model of the Latins and Greeks, that it was above all much less enslaved to the laws and criticisms of the jurisconsults of literature; and that it had preserved a character more original and more independent. It is not that the Spaniards did not also take models, or that they were not in their turn imitators: their first masters were the Arabs, from whom they have taken their ancient poetry. In the sixteenth century, their mixture with the Italians, had in some degree renovated their literature, and changed its spirit and rhythm; but what is remarkable is, that those who introduced foreign riches into the Castilian language, were not men of letters, but warriors. The Spanish universities, numerous, rich and powerful by their privileges, remained under the monastic influence. The principal of their privileges was, and is at this day, the right of not following the progress of science, and of maintaining all the ancient abuses and ancient form of instruction, as a precious patrimony. Spain had no share in that zeal for the erudition and poetry of antiquity, which gave so much life to the sixteenth century; none of their poets who have distinguished themselves, have the reputation of being erudite, or great Latin or Greek poets; in return, all of them are soldiers, whose active and elevated souls, sought other incitements than those of arms. Boscan, Garcilaso, Diego de Mendoza, Montemayor, Castilejo, Cervantes, had fought with distinction. Don Alonso de Erçilla, traversed the Atlantic and the streights of Magellan, to seek glory and danger in another hemis phere. Camoëns, a Portuguese, was also a navigator and soldier, as well as a poet. *

*

Lopes Felix de Vega Carpio, was born at Madrid in 1562, fifteen years after Cervantes; his parents, noble but poor, gave him a literary education. Never did any poet during his lifetime, enjoy so much glory. Wherever he showed himself in the streets, the crowd surrounded him and saluted him with the name of prodigy of nature. It is calculated that he wrote more than twenty-one million three hundred thousand verses, on one hundred and thirty-three thousand two hundred and twenty-two sheets of paper.

In his portraits of morals, the truth of which is above suspicion, there is a feature striking and always inconceivable; it is the

M

susceptibility of the Spanish point of honour. The least coquetry in a mistress, a wife or sister, is an affront to the lover, husband, or brother, which blood alone can wash out. This furious jealousy was communicated to the Spaniards by the Arabs; but amongst the lat ter and all the Orientals, we can comprehend it, as it is in accordance with the rest of their habits. They keep their women shut up; never pronounce their names, and never seek a connexion with them until they have them in their power, and thinking of love and jealousy only in their harem, they seem in the rest of their life, entirely to forget the whole sex. The Spaniards conduct themselves differently; their whole life is consecrated to gallantry: each of them is the lover of a woman who is not in his power; and all, on account of their love, allow themselves to engage in intrigues often but little delicate. The most virtuous heroines give rendezvous by night at their windows; they receive and write billets-doux; they go out masked, to meet their lover in some third house; and the chivalric spirit so protects gallantry, that when a married woman is pursued by her husband or father, she calls on the first man she meets, without knowing him, and without making herself known, she demands of him to protect her against the pursuer; the person thus invoked, cannot, without being dishonoured, refuse drawing his sword, to procure for this unknown female a liberty perhaps criminal; and yet he who has thus fought to secure the escape of a coquette, he who has received and written billets-doux, who has obtained these rendezvous, betrays the most furious rage on learning that his sister has inspired love, or is herself in love, or that she has taken any of those liberties which universal custom authorises: it is a sufficient motive in his eyes to poniard both the sister herself, and the person who has dared to speak of love to her.

The whole Spanish theatre shows us this singular legislation on the point of honour, put into practice. Several of the pieces of Lopes de Vega, some of those of Calderon, among others the Lady's Ghost, and the Devotion of the Cross, place in open view, this contrast between the jealous rage of husbands or brothers, and the protection which they accord to a handsome mask, whom they would often have the greatest interest in detecting, if they knew the culprit. But I find something still more remarkable in the motive which induces a Castilian philosopher to raise his voice against these sanguinary manners, in an anonymous comedy of the court of Philip IV. It is a judge speaking of a husband who had killed his wife: "He "has obeyed the laws of mundane honour, but not those of heaven. "My wife is my other self, and since I cannot commit suicide, it is "clear that I cannot put her to death. It is true, that it is very rare "that we find one who is master of his first impulse." Strange morality, which only forbids murder, because it resembles suicide.

Those persons for whom the Spanish theatre, in its infancy, is without interest, cannot be indifferent to the character of a nation, which at that period, was arming for the conquest of the world, and which, after suspending a long time the destinies of France, seemed on the point of bringing her under the yoke, and of forcing her to receive its opinions, laws, customs and religion.

A remarkable trait in all the Spanish chivalric pieces, is the little horror or remorse which murder inspires. There is no nation which

has shown so much indifference for the life of an individual; none among whom duels, armed rencounters and assassinations, caused by the most trivial motives, and accompanied by no shame or repentance, are more frequent. All the heroes of the theatre, at the outset of their history, have invariably killed a powerful man and are obliged to fly. After a murder, they are, it is true, exposed to the vengeance of relations, and to the pursuit of justice, but they are protected by religion and public opinion; they fly from convent to convent, and from church to church, until they find a place of safety; and it is not a blind compassion alone which favours them; the whole clergy enjoin it on the faithful as a duty, from the pulpit and the confessional, to show charity to the unfortunate person who has yielded to an impulse of rage, and to assist the living before the tribunal of justice, in abandoning the dead. The same religious prejudice prevails also in Italy; an assassin is always sure of being protected in the name of christian charity, by all who belong to the church, and by all that portion of the people which is more immediately under the influence of the priests; thus in no countries in the world, have assassinations been more frequent than in Italy and Spain. In the latter, there is scarcely a village festival at which a man is not killed. And yet this crime ought to appear much more heinous to a superstitious people; since, in their creed, the eternal judgment depends not on the general course of life, but on the state of the soul at the moment of death; so that he who is slain being almost always at the moment of the quarrel in a state of impenitence, they do not doubt but that he will be condemned to eternal flames in hell.

But neither the Italians nor Spaniards, ever consult their reason in their moral legislation; they confide blindly, in the decisions of casuists, and when they have undergone the expiations imposed by their confessors, they believe themselves purged of all crimes. And these expiations have been rendered easy in proportion to the riches which they produce to the clergy. Masses for the soul of the defunct, a gratuity to the church, or in fine, a sacrifice of money, however unequal to the wealth of the guilty, are always sufficient to efface the stain of blood. The Greeks in the heroic days, also exacted expia. tions, before the murderer was permitted to re-enter the temples; but these expiations far from enfeebling the civil authority were de vised to enforce it; they were long and severe; the murderer did public penance, and he felt himself sullied by the blood he had shed. Thus among an impetuous and semi-barbarous people, the authority of religion, in accordance with humanity, arrested the effusion of human blood and rendered assassinations more rare in all Greece, than they are in a single village of Spain.

There is not, perhaps, one piece of Lopes de Vega, which cannot be cited in support of these statements; which does not manifest a contempt for the life of others, a criminal indifference to the commission of sin as soon as it can be expiated in the church; the alliance of devotion with ferocity, and a public admiration of those men who have made themselves notorious by their numerous homicides.

(that we may sin on the safe side) | distance the buyers finding little still it follows, that

inconvenience or delay in going to the former to make their purchases.

The following statement of distances, fare, expenses, and time of travelling from Philadelphia to Quebec, will fully illustrate our remark, and may be of some use to the traveller.

Expense. Hours. Miles.

From Philadelphia to N. York,
by steam boats &
say dollars

stages,

New-York to Albany by} 7

steam-boat,

Albany to Whitehall, by
stages, fare five dollars,
expenses three dollars,

Whitehall to St. Johns, by}

steam boat,

9

25

136

3

4

37

24 186

St. Johns to Montreal,
Montreal to Quebec, by 10
steam boat,

Dolls. 47 103 699

Thus a person may travel seven hundred miles in a little more than four days, at an expense of fifty dollars, or about seven cents per

Albany, September 2.-It gives us pleasure to learn from Captain Roorbach, of the steam-boat Car of Neptune, who made an experiment of coal in his last trip from New-York, that he is perfectly satisfied of its answering all the purposes of wood in propelling steam-boats. The Car, notwith-mile, and sleep comfortably on the standing her having met with much detention in a first experiment, performed the route in 35 hours. As the use of wood on board our steam boats has greatly enhanced its price both in this city and New-York, it will have a tendency to make this necessary article cheaper, should coal in future be substituted.

The facility and economy of travelling, produced by the introduction of steam-boats into our waters, is matter of surprise and felicitation. Routes that formerly required weeks to travel, are now performed in about as many days, with infinitely more ease and less expense. We have heard the remark often made, that steam-boats have brought New-York to within thirty miles of Albany; and that the wholesale business of our merchants has decreased in a ratio proportionable to the decrease of

way. The arrival and departure of the stages and steam-boats are so arranged, that the above route may be performed in about five and a half successive days, and the traveller tarry six hours in NewYork, nine hours in Albany, nineteen at Whitehall, and six at Montreal. Such expedition in travelling we believe cannot be equalled in any other country on the globe.

Three steam-boats ply from Montreal to Quebec, once a week, and start Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, at 2 A. M. Two ply on lake Champlain twice a week, and exchange passengers at Ticonderoga. One starts Wednesday and Saturday, at 2 P. M. from Whitehall; and Tuesday and Friday, at 8 A. M. from St. Johns. A steam-boat leaves Albany for New-York, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, at 9 A. M. and New-York for Albany the same days at 5 P. M. Boats start from