district, for a sum payable either in money, or in kind, or perhaps in both. The agreement goes still farther; for in very dry seasons he must reverse the business, and pump water from the opposite side of the dike into the ditches of the meadow grounds, for the purposes of irrigation, and for the use of cattle.

After having made these observations, I may now inform you that we returned to Rotterdam, and in passing a jeweller's shop in one of the principal streets, we met with a party of our friends purchasing some trinkets from a Jewess, who was not only one of the most polite and beautiful of her cast, but who, in the course of her dealings, gave proofs of integrity far beyond what is usually attributed to her nation. So true is it, that we ought not to look to a man's professions, but his actions, in order to estimate his moral

worth.

It was now drawing nigh to dinner time, and as a few of our Rotterdam friends had been invited on board of our little ship lying at anchor off the Bath hotel, where she was conveniently moored with head and stern ropes to two stately elms on the margin of the river Meuse, we repaired thither to meet them, remarking, as we went, upon the great number of Jews in Holland, and the strangely degenerated state of the Jewish nation in all quarters of the world.

The dinner party consisted of 15 gentlemen. You know our accommodation on board is but small; a temporary table was therefore set upon deck, and an awning of canvas, lined with the vessel's flags and colours, having been fitted up, we found our selves seated in a very excellent tent, and a band of Savoyards having come on board upon a very slender invitation, all the favourite tunes of the Dutch, and some of the English were played, among which we had Wilhelma, the national air of Holland, and God save the King, upon the healths of the respective kings of the Netherlands and England being given, and the dinner went off with great eclat. About 9 o'clock, however, when coffee came to be served up, the decks were visited with successive flashes of the most vivid lightning I ever be

held. These were followed with peals of thunder so loud and so very sharp, that I could not help thinking I felt as if it had touched me in every direction. From this disturbing cause in the still and peaceful atmosphere of Holland, at all times much charged with humidity, there followed such a fall of large hailstones, accompanied with a torrent of rain, that in a few minutes the decks were set afloat, and the party was forced to take shelter in the cabins below. This, though very unpleasant for the moment, is a circumstance of no uncommon occurrence in Holland, and had it not been for the inconveniency of the rain, our friends treated very lightly what seemed to us tremendous, in the form of thunder and lightning.

Notwithstanding the aTuesday, larming state of the wea 5th Aug. ther last night, it soon improved, and the forenoon of this day was employed in making calls, and in examining some of the embankments connected with the drainage and safety of the country. Upon the invitation of one of the few noblesse who inhabit the great commercial city of Rotterdam, the party went in the evening to what is called a Kraam booth, which, at this season, is a common pastime with all ranks of people in Holland. The principal streets of the city were fitted up, for the ap proaching Kermas, or Kair, with numerous temporary houses built of timber, which are usually divided into one or two small apartments for the reception of company, having also a kind of bar-room and kitchen. From this description, you may easily imagine that the accommodation was not spacious, but the entertainment lacked nothing in hospitality, or the most polite civilities. The repast consisted of choice wines and cordials, served up with fruit and waffel cakes, a kind of thin crisped pancake. I shall only observe, en passant, that the Kermas or Lammas fair is numerously attended in all the considerable towns on the continent. It is also the chief fair of the Orkney Islands, where the name of Kermas is still kept up, and where they have also the waffel or kermas cake.

(To be continued.)

S.

two other persons (not cardinals) kissed the toe. The prominent expression on the holy father's countenance, during all this time, was, as I thought, a certain impatience to have done; his motions were rather abrupt; his utterance, for he read something, clear and distinct, but quick. He is evidently not a dramatic man, and takes no delight in representation; at the end of the marches and countermarches of each cardinal, his ample robe was spread out by his attendant, from the tail shape it had before, to the wing shape, and then crossed before over the knees becomingly-his eminence humouring the arrangement by a gentle shake of his whole person, to throw the drapery into natural and easy folds. His eminence, Cardinal Fesch, was more particularly an object of attention to foreign spectators, and all could vouch for his exemplary devotion;-none prayed with more fervour;-I heard him muttering over his book most part of the time, with great onction, lifting up his eyes at intervals, and casting them down again on his book with out ever glancing aside to the right or left, and crossing himself very often. Notwithstanding all this, he is in surveillance, having rather slyly eloped during the hundred days to join his nephew in France.

At last the sovereign pontiff descending from his throne, went to wards the altar, and kneeling on a prie Dieu, remained sometime at his devotion; and, finally, ascending the great arm chair in which he had been brought, was lifted on high, and borne away with the same cortege, great fans of peacock's feathers, and music, and so it ended. I omitted to mention that the tiara was taken off and put on the pope's head fifteen or twenty times during the ceremony: under it his head was covered with a small calotte of white satin. Although the attendants were very careful in replacing securely the triple diadem, yet the pope was obliged to raise his hands to it each time to make it fit completely; and all this awkward anxiety had rather a childish effect. A young boy, who had been an attentive spectator, remarked on the occasion, that he thought all these people were much too old to play a whole morning. The papal chair was surrounded with prelates, which does

not mean bishops, but mere expectants for some of the good things of the church, much like the abbés in France formerly. Three men, dressed in violet, sat in the lower step of the throne, and they appeared as if seated on the floor in the cross-legged attitude of tailors.

Cardinal Fesch has a very fine collection of pictures, one of the most valuable in Rome; the best Rubens I ever saw,-many fine Rembrandts, Vandykes, Murillos, a beautiful Titian: I shall not describe any of them. The cardinal happened to be at home when I visited his collection, and there were several other strangers present. He joined in the conversation,

talked about pictures like a man who knew the language of connoisseurship, was very merry and jocular, and, in short, was as lively as he had been demure the day before. "C'est (to use the words of Bartho lan, in the Barbier de Seville) un petit vieillard gros, court, rond et vermeil," good humoured, rather vulgar in his manner, and in perfect health. He wants to sell his pictures for a life annuity of three thousand guineas.

He means to live twentyfive years! We saw on a marble table a bust of Bonaparte crowned with a golden wreath of laurel; it is all right, proper, and manly. Fesch should not deny his fallen benefactor; and this is the only time I have looked at a bust of that man without disgust. Fesch was a sort of factotum of his nephew's household during his first Italian campaign, and the person to whom his staff complained when dinner was not punctually served ;-then a

contractor-then a connoisseur and purchaser of pictures,-a cardinal and an archbishop of Lyons. He has certainly acquitted himself very well in two of these capacities; he was a good archbishop, and a skilful connoisseur; and even if it were proved against him that the general's dinner was not well cooked, or served cold, such blemishes may be overlooked and forgiven. Bonaparte used to laugh at the idea of Fesch turning connoisseur.

There is quite a colony of Bonapartes here; they live almost entirely among themselves, shunned by the Roman bonne compagnie, who are very inveterate in their dislike to the Imperial Family, and visited only by some Jacobinical English and Ameri

cans. Madame Mere, however, hates mortally her daughter-in-law Princess Lucien. She lives with Fesch, and is immensely rich. Lucien is a ruined man, deeply in debt to Tortonia and others. He has lately married one of his daughters to an Italian. Louis is here also, and La Borghese, separat ed from her husband, and living in a separate part of the hotel. Much has been said of Canova's statue representing this princess nearly naked, and just out of the bath, and reclining on a couch. It is not shown to the public, and I have not yet been able to see it. She was very beauti ful at the time this statue was ex ecuted, and well known to have been a perfect model for female form, and is said to have actually sat as the model to Canova. "Est-ce que vous avez reellement posé comme vous etes la?" said the D. of A. to this beautiful princess. (I have it from herself.) Oh, l'air de Rome est si doux, vous savez, d'ailleur il y avoit du feu!" was the ingenuous reply. The Prince Borghese himself is a sort of gambler, -fat and fair,-without talent,-a prodigal as to dogs and horses,-avaricious in every thing else. With an immense fortune and high rank, he joined early the Revolutionary party, like Egalité, from a sort of instinc. tive love of disorder, to which the vices of courts do not suffice, and which aspire to those of the populace. During the Revolutionary rage, he made a show of burning publicly his charters and titles in the streets at Rome, but they were false, he had taken care to secure the real ones.

1st January. The pope officiated at the Quirinali this morning, and his music was very fine, as usual. I do not exactly know what the particular business of the day was, the bestowing of a cardinal's hat, I believe, but the cardinals appeared very happy on the occasion, and were certainly very loving. They were, as on former ce lebrations, seated in a semicircle, or rather in three sides of a square, before the papal chair. The cardinal on the right of the pope got up in a solemn manner, placed his two hands on the breast of his neighbour on the right; their reverend heads inclined to each other cheek to cheek, and then to the other side. The kissed cardinal getting up in his turn, laid his hand on his own breast for a mo

ment, wrapped in conscious bliss, and crossed himself; then assuming the active, instead of the passive part, he turned, full of heavenly love, towards his unkissed neighbour, who stood ready for the fraternal embrace. Their eminences fell into each other's arms cheek to cheek twice over, and thus the rapture passed along, kissed and kissing in turn, from one end of the line to the other. Cardinal Fesch was there, and acquitted himself admirably; none kissed with more fervour, or crossed himself so often, or with a better grace. This running fire continued a good hour, and no wonder, considering there were about sixty of their eminences, and none of them very young or active. The pope, however, looked horribly tired, and so were we, I must say, and heartily glad when all was over. I never saw such a display of equipages on any other occasion at Rome. The vast court of the Quirinali was all in a blaze with gold and scarlet, for the coaches of the cardinals have all gilt springs and perches; and the mountings and trappings of the black full tailed horses are all red, with red plumés, red reins, &c. &c.

In this travelling age, all the world has seen the Belvidere Apollo, and the Belvidere Apollo has seen all the world; while nations visited foreign countries, en masse, cumbrous marbles travelled post over the Alps and back again with bronze horses gallopping after them; the works of Grecian art have been carried off to and fro in the wantonness of successful violence, out of pride, pique, and spite, and frequently, I verily believe, without either side caring a pin about them. Many a Roman talks feelingly about the restitution of the Laocoon, who scarcely ever saw it before it went or since its return; and I have known citizens of Paris inconsolable for the loss of this chef-d'œuvre, who admitted that they had not once been at the Museum for the last ten years. Those who have not seen the original marbles have probably seen plaster casts; and, whatever connoisseurs may say about an abstract interval between the original and the cast fatal to the perfection of the latter, and about the breathing and living transparency of the Carara marble, men of untaught taste may do very well with good

casts. Antique marbles, indeed, have generally a shining polish, which has a very bad effect; this is particularly the case with the Apollo, the Laocoon, and the Gladiator, and the dull surface of the plaster is, in that respect, better than the crystal brightness of the marble. But I shall not describe antique statues. I admire the best of them truly and honestly, but admiration is but a dull thing at secondhand, and such descriptions a thankless task. Many are the antique marbles only fit for the lime-kiln; and how should it be otherwise, when any thing coming to light after fifteen centuries of inhumation is entitled to the honours of the Museum, and objects of art rank according to heraldic quar

ters.

Canova, sensible of the bad effect of the glossy polish of the ancient marbles, has contrived to give to his a sort of harmonious dimness truly admirable. His marbles do not shine at all, yet are perfectly smooth; every idea of stone disappears, and, without any other merit, the enchanting softness of his works would be sufficient to ensure high celebrity; for there is expression in their softness, not of mere life, but of life animated by pas sions, for any touch of hardness tells by the contrast, as light comes out of shade. The Museum of the Vatican is already open to Canova's works, -an honour which no artist has received in his lifetime before. One of the rooms is decorated with his Perseus, which has so nearly the attitude and action of the Apollo Belvidere, as to be considered a close imitation. Perseus holds up the head of Medusa by the hair, and that head is admirable; the hand of death is on its beautiful features, on the hanging lip, and the half-closed eye, yet a faint expression of remaining life lingers there of such profound sadness, that it goes to the heart to look at it. The head of the hero is not half so fine as that in his hand; it has the air of a mere boy or an insipid pretty woman; the body is lovely too, but not more heroie than the head. The Two Pugilists stand fronting each other on opposite sides of the same room; they are colossal, full of muscle and strength, ready to close in deadly combat. The one on the left, a handsome young man, stands in bold defiance, disdainful and careless, like a man accustomed

to victory. This rash confidence might soon be fatal to him; his uplifted arm leaves his body wholly unguarded. In an English ring, a novice in the art would double him with a stomacher. His adversary is of a more sturdy make, with the barbarian cast of countenance, expressive of brutal ferocity, with his right leg forward, his left bent under him, stooping low, with his right arm drawn back, just going to spring on his enemy, and bury the murderous hand in his defenceless side. This is founded on an ancient anecdote, as I understand. One of these athleti is of the make of the Gladiator, and the other of the Hercules.

I have been introduced to Canova in his studio, where only he is to be seen, mixing rarely in general society, although sure of meeting everywhere the most distinguished reception. He is a short active man, above fifty, with a very sensible expressive countenance, and good-humoured animated conversation, perfectly simple and unassuming. It is impossible to enjoy a fairer or a higher character. Singularly liberal and generous, particularly to artists, envy itself can find no room for detraction. He has now enjoyed his high standing for thirty years; it would take thirty years more, I understand, to execute the works solicited, at his own price, by all the princes of Europe.

Canova excels in the female form. The Medicean Venus has now several rivals, to some of which I should, perhaps, give the preference, although none of them equal in simplicity of expression to the antique. I do not think him always successful in his draperies, certainly not in the drapery of his Hebe, which is quite metallic. The lower part behind is an imitation of the drapery of the Niobe, which appears to me really bad. The modern Phidias knows his forte as well as his foible, and his female figures are not frequently encumbered with drapery; but another objection awaits him there, they are really too beautiful for public exhibition. This may be said of his Venus of Florence, his group of the Graces, his reclining Venus, the latter made for the Prince Regent, and the former for the Emperor Alexander. Speaking to Canova of the peculiar softness of polish of his marbles, he told me that they