were rubbed, as a final process, with the water in which the tools were sharpened. The polish of the hair is different from that of the flesh, and that of the drapery differs from both. Even the colour of the marble is slightly different; the flesh has a slight tinge of cream colour, while the drapery is pure white. This, however, must not be understood as being at all like the preposterous wigs and cloaks of coloured marble applied to some of the antiques. The marble cosmetic of Canova is, I understand, permanent. We scarcely could withdraw our eyes from a terra-cotta model of a Santa Madalena, kneeling, or rather half-sitting on her heels, a cross of rough sticks lying across her lap, held in both her hands, and a death-head by her side. I never saw feelings of despondency, humility, and repentance, expressed in a manner so extremely simple. It is the fashion to see the Museum by torch-light, and a number of us tourists having mustered together, we proceeded last evening, in great form, to the Vatican. The custode had been apprised of our visit, and stood at his post, ready for the picturesque operations. A large half-circular tin skreen, like a meat roaster, stuck on a long pole, receives a bunch of lighted tapers. This machine is carried along the rows of chef-d'œuvres, the open side towards them, and the dark side towards the spectators. Thus provided, we began our round, which lasted from six o'clock till ten. The night was cold, the marble pavement colder, and the very sound of the fountains for ever splashing about the courts imparted a sort of aguish yawn and shivering. The custode dwelt an unconscionable time before marbles which some of us did not think worth it, and passed rather too rapidly before others. Nobody liked to speak, for fear of abridging the raptures expressed by others, or appearing behind hand in point of taste if they showed impatience, or for fear of protracting a process already too long by desiring to stay. The torches reached about the height of the larger statues, casting a level light, glaring without shadow. The effect was much better upon the low busts; but I thought, upon the whole, the sky-light of the day preferable. I do not know how other people feel on such occasions, but I must have my own time and my own way to admire. The slightest constraint extinguishes enjoyment; and I know few pleasures that can bear so many witnesses and so much preparation. Music rarely pleases me at an opera, but I have more than once followed an organ-grinder street after street on a winter night, scarcely knowing whether I were in heaven or on earth. Should I ever be induced to visit the galleries of the Vatican again at the same hour, I would rather be alone with a dark lantern, than with forty fellow-tourists, the custode, and torches. -I have learned that two of our fellow-tourists of the Vatican passed twenty-four hours after this cold expedition of the statues, a still more uncomfortable night. They had set out in the morning for Naples, and travelling, very foolishly, night and day, found themselves at night between Terracina and Fundi, a noted stage, and were there attacked by ban'ditti, who, without previous notice, fired at the postilion, who fell, and proceeded to rifle the travellers. While they ransacked the carriage, they obliged them to lie on the ground, with their legs under the wheels, a whimsical piece of cruelty or precaution. One of the travellers who had lost a leg, and wears a patent wooden one, boasted afterwards that he put the sham member only under the wheel, and kept the other out. It does not often happen that a traveller is so well provided against such adventures. There are picquets along the road every two or three miles, but the banditti waylay the travellers in the intermediate spaces, by night at least, and retire unmolested to their own homes, for they are peasants. All the inhabitants of the mountains of that part of the country have always been addicted to these sort of things. The French took very energetic modes of destroying the practice, and scoured the mountains with a great military force; but they could find none but common peasants, the robber being at the plough. The numbers, indeed, increased under them, from the strong police they maintained at Naples, where any man found with the forbidden knife about his person was instantly shot. Thus driven from Naples, they retired in numbers to the mountains. They have lately adopted a new mode of levying contribution; they carry off the rich inhabitants of neighbouring towns, and ransom them afterwards. A few days ago, a bold attempt was made to carry off in this manner Lucien Bonaparte from his country-house near Frescati. The story was variously told at the moment. I shall repeat here what I heard from the servants of the house, when I visited the spot three months after. mime. He ran and laid himself flat on his belly, as the Prince had done, at the foot of a low wall covered with flower-pots, not five feet and a half from the door through which the banditti passed with their prey, within twenty-five feet of the spot where the Prince lay hid from view by a thin laurel hedge. He heard the cries of the captives, and the threats of the banditti, but he never stirred; they might have been his wife and children, for aught he knew, who were carried off, and they infallibly would have been so, if the artist had not been mistaken for the Prince. The poor painter was detained three days before he could persuade the banditti he was no Prince, and, among other proofs, he painted them all in miniature, and reports that they were fine-looking fellows. They cross-questioned the servants, and at last agreed to take 500 scudi for his ransom, which the Prince paid. Had they had him in their power, they meant to have taken no less than 50,000 scudi, which he might have found it difficult to raise, being already in debt to the banker Tortonia at least 80,000, unless Madame Mere, who is very rich, had come to his assistance, which is doubtful. The negociations on these occasions are carried on in this manner: A letter from the captive, very urgent, of course, being a matter of life or death, to his friends, is delivered to some countryman who is found on the road going towards the place, and a messenger is sent back afterwards with the money to an appointed place. The messenger is never robbed, but sent back in safety along with the prisoner, provided the terins have been complied with; if not, the prisoner is dispatched. Towards the latter end of November, just before the return of Lucien to town, one of his guests, a Monsignor Cunio, having walked up to the ruins of Tusculum before breakfast, was suddenly seized upon by six banditti, when he had the presence of mind to say that he was a poor priest who had come to La Ruffenella to say mass, and had strolled out to see the ruins. He imposed upon them so completely, that they let him go, on condition that he would conduct them to a back gate, and procure it to be opened. As he had been detained some hours, and his absence noticed, Monsignor's voice was no sooner heard than a servant ran and opened the gate. He was instantly seized, while Monsignor ran off, and the banditti, hastening to the house, drove the servants into a corner of the hall, and asked for the Prince. The Prince, however, who was up stairs with his wife and children, having received notice of what was going on below through a maid-servant which had escaped unperceived, flew instantly by a back-door out of the house, and hid himself behind a low wall among some bushes, leaving the rest of the family to shift for themselves. The ladies locked themselves up in a bedroom. In the mean time, a M. Chauton, a painter, who had spent some time in the family, happening to come into the hall, unaware of what had occurred, and speaking authoritatively to the intruders, was supposed by them to be Lucien himself, and they immediately laid hold of him. At- ON THE DEATH OF JOHN SUNDERtempting to resist, he received a blow on the head with the butt-end of a musket, which knocked him down, and, while in a state of insensibility, he was carried off, together with three or four of the servants. Our guide, in order to be better understood, performed the whole scene in panto These robbers lead a very hard life, often bivouacking in the woods and mountains. Their best quarters are with the charcoal men. The shepherds are their scouts, and they pay informers very well. LAND, STUDENT OF CLARE-HALL. Whitehead, afterwards Poet Laureate, was [THE following unpublished poem of written when he was at college, on the death of a companion. We have received the following account of the circumstances connected with it, from a respectable correspondent. Forget the angel, and the mortal mourn. Such be our grief, but ah! what words can show The poor lost parent's doubled weight of woe? Here, from thy heav'n, thy tend'rest cares employ, Sooth his swoln breast, and tune his soul to joy. Then oh! (for sure amongst the sons of light, Not all shine forth, like thee, supremely bright,) Bid some inferior power awhile forego low. Happy in well-earn'd fame so lately Of all, which loveliest in our life hath been! Who, far from thee, (for whom his fancy He snatch'd the cup of honour; and be wrought New schemes of bliss in luxury of thought,) hung On the last accents struggling on thy tween None came to dash it from him :-he The gifts which, though they deck'd him, could not save? Wit, talents, beauty, strength, lie with him in the grave. "They say, a mother gaz'd upon that youth With most maternal fondness; and would pray, That, turning all her dearest hopes to truth, His rising honours might her cares repay, And, ever strength'ning, shed a brighter ray, To warm the frost of her declining soul, And gild its darkness !-Ye vain thoughts, away! Those fond desires shall never reach their goal; But cheerless to their end her wintry years must roll! "Yet died he, as the wise might wish to die, With his fresh fame upon him, while THE IPHIGENIA OF TIMANTHES; A PRIZE POEM. And bade in colour's magic radiance rise, Grief, pity, terror,-all that shakes the mind The mighty master pour'd; and o'er the piece In weeping silence hung enraptur'd Greece. Yet oft will fancy every touch renew, Bright as the rainbow, and as fleeting too: For mark at Dian's fane, where powerless, pale, Not glittering now in Hymen's roseate veil, Not with light step, that shows the careless breast, Nor youth's gay cheek in smiles unclouded drest, But-all her fates worst, darkest hues reveal'd Without one hope to cheer, one friend to shield, In speechless gaze Iphigenia stands, And clasps at death's dread shrine her pleading hands: Yet on that cheek, bedew'd with beauty's tear, Still heroine firmness strives with female fear, And her last glance of life a ray shall throw Of pitying pardon on a father's woe. See all around the sad contagion spreadSurvey the pensive form, the drooping head save, (Recited at the Theatre, Oxford, June Unless a parent spare the life he g 23, 1819.) gave. "Tis vain-no aid offended heaven allows, The fillet binds the human victim's brows Edg'd is the murderous steel, and crown'd the shrine, Death only waits the monarch's fateful sign! Cythnian enough! thy art has rack'd the breast, Drain'd every grief, each passion's change exprest In mercy stay thy harrowing touch-nor trace Weak Nature's strife in Agamemnon's face Yon close-drawn robes convulsive folds de- EXTRACTS FROM FULLER'S HOLY STATE. [Fuller is one of the greatest masters of that quaint style of composition, which seems to have been thought so ornamental among the old English writers. Nothing is so perfect as these writers, on many oc casions, for the utmost simplicity of lan guage, but they commonly affected a re- Of Jesting. HARMLESS mirth is the best cordial against the consumption of the spirits: wherefore jesting is not unlawful, if it trespasseth not in quantity, quality, or season. It is good to make a jest, but not to make a trade of jesting. The Earl of Leicester, knowing that Queen Elizabeth was much delighted to see a gentleman dance well, brought the master of a dancing-school to dance before her. "Pish !" said the Queen, "it is his profession, I will not see him." She liked it not where it was a master-quality, but where it attended on other perfections. The same may we say of jesting. Jest not with the two-edged sword of God's word. Will nothing please thee to wash thy hands in, but the font? or to drink healths in, but the church chalice? And know the whole art is learnt at the first admissions and profane jests will come without calling. If, in the troublesome day, of King Edward the Fourth, a citizen in Cheapside was executed as a traitor for saying he would make his son heir to the Crown, though he only meant his own house, having a Crown for the sign, more dangerous it is to wit-wanton it with the Majesty of God. Wherefore, if, without thine intention, and against thy will, by chance-medley thou hittest Scripture in ordinary discourse, yet fly to the city of refuge, and pray to God to forgive thee. Wanton jests make fools laugh, and wise men frown. Seeing we are civilized Englishmen, let us not be naked savages in our talk. Such rotten speeches are worst in withered age, when men run after that sin in their words which flieth from them in the deed. Let not thy jests, like mummy, be made of dead men's flesh. Abuse not any that are departed, for to wrong their memories is to rob their ghosts of their winding-sheets. Scoff not at the natural defects of any which are not in their power to amend. Oh it is cruelty to beat a cripple with his own crutches. Neither flout any for his profession, if honest, though poor and painful. Mock not a cobbler for his black thumbs. He that relates another man's wicked jest with delight, adopts it to be his own. Purge them, therefore, from their poison. If the profaneness may be severed from the wit, it is like a lamprey; take out the sting in the But back, it may make good meat. if the staple conceit consists in profaneness, then it is a viper, all poison, and meddle not with it. He that will lose his friend for a jest deserves to die a beggar by the bargain. Yet some think their conceits, like mustard, not good except they bite. We read that all those who were born in England the year after the beginning of the great mortality 1349, wanted their four cheekteeth. Such let thy jests be, that they may not grind the credit of thy friend; and make not jests so long till thou becomest one. No time to break jests when the heart-strings are about to be broken, |