scholar of Virgil, impressed the written speech of his contemporaries with an indelible Roman brand; and the great Florentine's successors completed the work he had begun by almost fanatical obsequiousness to the canons and phraseology of Cicero and Virgil. But the language of the Divina Comédia, of the Decamerone, and the Gierusalemme, is too much a written language-a compromise between rival dialects for the purposes of the philologer; and he consults rather the current patois than the stereotyped phrases of literature. But

the spoken Italian departs in many essential respects from the written language of Rome, however it may have resembled the real utterances of the faex Romuli, in the Suburra, or the provincialisms of the Campanian vine-pruners. Dr. Donaldson sets up the claim of modern French to be regarded as the most genuine offset of the language of Rome; and as the following passage states his argument almost as briefly, and much more cogently than we can represent it by condensation, we lay it entire before our readers :—

It will not be expected that I should here show at length how the Romance languages were formed from the Latin. It will be sufficient to point out some of the reasons for believing that the French language is a better living representative of the pronunciation of the ancient Italians than the language which is now spoken in the Peninsula itself; and in conclusion to state briefly what was the process of the disintegration, and in what degree the modern differed from the ancient form.

As the Romans successively conquered the different nations which formed the population of Italy, they generally included within the limits of a single empire a number of different tribes, who spoke idioms, or dialects, differing but

631

little from the language of the Romans themselves. It is not, therefore, surprising that a gradual amalgamation should have taken place, and that every Italian should have spoken, with only slight variations of accent, one and the same Latin language. The language of Rome itself the language of Government, of literature, of law-would of course be independent of these minor differences. Every educated man, and every public functionary, would refer to this unvarying standard, and would speak or write, in some cases with pedantic accuracy, the language of the Accordsenate-house and the forum.

ingly the inhabitants of the provinces, or the foreign subjects of the empire, would hear nothing but pure Roman Latin; and if they learned the language at all they would at least learn it in the best form. Their position in this respect differed materially from that of colonists, even in ancient times. The colonists of our day, and especially the English emigrants, present a material contrast to the case of the Roman provincials. For, while the colonists who sailed from Corinth or Athens were of all classes, our modern colonists are generally those who are either not able to live at home, or at all events who practise trades inconsistent with a high amount of educational polish. We find, therefore, that colonial English represents only the vulgar colloquial language of the mother country, whereas the Roman provincials spoke a language derived-imperfectly it might be, but still derived from the polished and elegant diction of proconsuls, jurisconsults, negotiators, and publicani.

The Gauls, in particular, were remarkable for their tendency to assimilate themselves, in their language and usages, to the Romans. In an inconceivably short space of time the province Gallia was completely Romanized.

Their own language was out of the pale of civilization; in fact they had no mother-tongue to struggle for. A language is only dear to us when we know its capabilities, and when it is hallowed by a thousand connexions with our civilization, our literature, and our comforts. So long as it merely lisps the inarticulate utterances of half-educated men, it has no hold upon the hearts of those who speak it; and it is readily neglected or thrown aside in favour of the more cultivated idiom, which, while it finds names for luxuries of civilization before unknown, also opens a communication with those who appear as the heralds of moral and intellectual regeneration. The Greeks and Jews had good reasons for loving the language of their ancestors, and could never be induced

THE distance from Sydney to Ba

thurst is 120 miles, and the road leads over the Blue Mountains,' which for many years bounded the settled lands of the colony. The scenery in the mountains, which I had heard a good deal of, disappointed me. They are not lofty (the highest not above 3000 feet), and peculiarly tame in outline. The forests, too, with which they are covered, being composed almost entirely of the eternal eucalyptus, are as unpicturesque as forests can be. There is one striking pass, where the road suddenly emerges from the hills, through which it has been winding for fifty miles, and plunges, with a rapid descent of about three miles, upon the plain. This is called the Victoria Pass. What struck me most on the journey through the hills was the numberless caravans, as I may call them, of wool-drays, camping in the forest along the sides of the road. When the day declines, the teams are halted, at some place, if possible, where there is water; the bullocks are unyoked, hobbled, and turned loose with bells about their necks, to shift for themselves. The drivers light their fire, cook their supper, boil their tea-kettle, and finally betake themselves to sleep under their drays. We passed so many of their encampments, that we saw them in every stage of these operations; and, especially after nightfall, there was something very wild and picturesque about the effect which they produced, seen through the glades of the forest. All along the road we passed the bodies of dead bullocks, in various stages of decomposition, and sometimes, though rarely, of horses. I was in hopes that I might have seen kangaroos, of which a good many still haunt these mountain solitudes; but we were not so lucky. I saw many birds that were new and strange to me, especially parrots of various kinds and very brilliant plumage, white cockatoos, a very pretty species of pigeon, called the bronzewing, and a most grotesque and hideous kind of king-fisher, com

monly called the laughing jackass,' which makes the woods absolutely ring with its horrible chattering merriment. Most of the Australian trees are flowering (a redeeming point which their inferiority in beauty requires), and the blossoms have a very pleasant smell. Sometimes, for many hundred yards together, you enjoy gales reminding you of an English beanfield.

The character of the country on the western side of the mountains is very different from that in the neighbourhood of Sydney. There is a good deal of cultivation wherever there is water, the vegetation is richer, and everything indicates a better soil. On the other hand, the climate is said to be hotter in summer, the regular sea-breeze, which is such a consolation at Sydney, being of course unfelt in the interior, and it is also more subject to droughts than the coast. It is curious that, from the time one crosses the mountains, one is free from the plague of mosquitoes; in its place comes a plague of flies-the common English flies which swarm so as to blacken and defile everything. Everybody in the interior wears a short veil, or rather fly-flapper, made of net, round his hat, to keep them off the face. After we had passed the mountains, the rain ceased, and in its stead we had to suffer from the worse evil of a broiling sun and blinding dust. I don't know how I should have borne the 'box-seat' during the day; but most fortunately, at the place where we breakfasted, I found that a spare horse, belonging to the proprietor, was just starting for Bathurst, and I induced the man who was to ride him to change places with me. I thus got a solitary ride of thirty-five miles, which I enjoyed extremely, notwithstanding the heat and dust, instead of being jolted to death on that purgatorial mail. At the last stage, ten miles from Bathurst, I took my old place again, and we drove in at a good pace, over a country perfectly different in character from anything I had yet seen

1853.]

Both

in New South Wales. This, in fact, was the beginning of the western pastoral country, which was discovered about twenty-five years after the foundation of Sydney, and which now extends three hundred miles back from the coast-as far back, in short, as there is to be found water. For about ten miles round Bathurst, the country is level plain, like the prairies of New Zealand, but the general character of the district is that of open forest, the trees standing about as far apart as in an English orchard. sheep and cattle like this sort of country, I am told, better than the open plain; and it certainly has great advantages in the supply of wood and shelter. Bathurst is a little town, of some 2000 inhabitants, with a church, a gaol, a court-house, and a market-place, on the Macquarrie side. It has increased, of course, greatly in wealth and importance since the gold discoveries, of which it is the centre, but not in size; for the same reason that Sydney does not increase-i.e., want of labour.

I went to a very tolerable inn, to which I had been recommended, and where I got, by dint of vigorous pleading, a room to myself. At the time I arrived, Bathurst was in a state of great excitement, news having just come in that the Turon was in a state of revolt, or nearly so, against the new gold regulations; and on the other hand, a detachment of forty men, of the 11th regiment, being daily expected from Sydney, to aid the civil power-we passed it on the road in the night, bivouacking in the forest among the Blue Mountains. At Bathurst I hired a tolerable horse for 10s. a-day; and I got a mounted policeman, who happened to be returning to the Turon with despatches, to ride with me, and show me the way. The ride (of thirty miles) turned out pleasanter than I expected. There was a regular Australian "hot wind," which I found very oppressive, but it blew across the road, so that we did not suffer much from the dust, and after the first five or six miles we got into the forest, where we enjoyed as much shade as an Australian forest generally gives-not much, indeed, but still better than nothing. The road is, like all Australian roads-except

VOL. XLVIII. NO. CCLXXXVIII.

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that from Sydney to Paramattaa mere track, or rather system of tracks diverging from each other and uniting again, like the tracks of navigators on a chart. Whenever a driver thinks he can make a better course' by taking a new line, he does so, and at any rate he has the advantage of escaping the ruts of the old one. The worst roads are those near the towns, where, from the land on each side being appropriated and enclosed, all the traffic is concentrated on one track, which is proportionably cut up. The road from Bathurst to the Turon is at this season tolerably good; at least the ruts are not so inevitable, though they are as deep as those on the mountains. country is composed of low hills, with fertile valleys between them, which, until the gold was discovered, were extensively cultivated, so as to make the Bathurst district a comparatively cheap and plentiful one, so far as farm produce was concerned. Within the last two years, however, the consuming population has of course so far outrun the producing one, that the district draws largely for its supplies both on the Hunter River and on the port of Sydney.

The

Late in the evening I arrived at the top of the hill overlooking the village of Sofala, and looked down on the celebrated valley of the Turon. The hills which inclose it are high, but not steep, covered with open forest; the bed of the river is, as usual in Australia, a world too wide for its shrunk' stream, except at rare intervals of flood; its banks, the sides of the hills, and the bed of almost every creek and watercourse for miles round it, are now cut up into diggings-that is, into round holes or pits, like the mouths of wells, varying in depth to an indefinite extent. These are the 'dry diggings.' The bed claims,' which can only be worked in very dry weather, have a different appearance, the pits being much larger, more like quarries, and being fitted with a machinery of pumps and pipes, to remove the water which is constantly flowing in. AH this is observable at the first glance that one gets from the top of the hill. Overlooking the river is the village, a most strange and picturesque

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