"Black Brunswickers." It is scarcely necessary to add, that the scene is in Germany: but although there is somewhat of darkness and terror in the tale, yet it is free from the charge of exaggerated horrors. We have still another German story in Der Kugelspieler, or the Emperor's Skittle-Ground,' and certainly not an unamusing one, though we suspect that the fastidious reader might be better pleased if there had not been so many coincidences between different writers as to the place where, to use a forensic phrase, they have laid their venue. We may remark, also, a sameness of subject, though with a difference as to the catastrophe, in a prose tale by the author of "The Subaltern," and a poetic Sketch from Life,' by the Rev. Mr. Dale, both bearing the same title, The Broken Heart.' They are both, however, excellent, particularly the prose composition, which is capable of touching the rudest heart.

ART. X. Transalpine Memoirs: or, Anecdotes and Observations, shewing the actual state of Italy, and the Italians. By an English Catholic. 12mo. 2 vols. 15s. Bath. Cruttwell. London. Longman and Co. 1826.

ON opening these volumes, and glancing at the motto with which this English Catholic,' has thought fit to usher them in,

we

"A curious sight,

And very much unlike what people write,"

were at first disposed to imagine, that his principal object was to vindicate his religion, as it is exercised in Italy, from the aspersions which several foreign travellers have flung upon it. But after the perusal of a few pages we found, that as to religion, the author, though a Catholic, has given the subject very slight attention, and that what he does say of it, partakes of that contradictory and discontented tone which presides, like an ill-omened bird, over all his various lucubrations. Proceeding by Leghorn to Rome, and from Rome to Naples, he appears to have made many discoveries which no former traveller had been so fortunate as to light upon; these discoveries he communicates to a Dear Friend," in the shape of letters, and in giving them to the world, he no doubt conceived that he was conferring an inestimable benefit upon all those, who are already conversant, or wish to be acquainted, with 'Italy, and the Italians.'

The principal discovery which our author has made, is, that every thing that Eustace and others have said of the grandeur of the" eternal city," and the luxuriant beauty of the garden of the world," is mere fiction-a series of poetical vagaries, which have no foundation whatever in truth. Ruins which we have hitherto been taught to venerate, are, if we may believe the present author, crumbling masses of stone, kept together in some instances

1

by new buttresses and bars of iron, and deserve only to be laughed at. Scenery, which all preceding travellers have conspired to praise, as the most enchanting in nature, is nothing more than a collection of parched fields and stunted shrubs, and miserable rills, not worth looking at. Cathedrals, which have attracted the admiration of the first men of taste in every age, since they were constructed, (not excepting even that embodying of the genius of Michael Angelo, the church of St. Peter's, at Rome), are so full of faults, so intolerable on account of one inconvenience or another, and altogether so contemptible in the estimation of this accomplished traveller, that we are henceforth to reverse all the ideas that we have conceived of them, and to dissipate for ever all the fine associations to which they gave rise. Even the vintage-that season of gratitude and gladness-with which we have been accustomed to connect, whatever notions we have of happiness in gathering the most precious and beauteous fruits of the earth, has no charms for this author's mind. If he happen to see peasants who are employed in the vineyard, throwing in their mirth clusters of the grape at each other, it only reminds him of the farmer's boys in England, making a similar use of-bunches of turnips! And if the youth and beauty of the village be occupied in treading out the purple heaps for the wine press, they do it-only to save their feet from chilblains!

A gentleman who could have set out upon his Italian travels with such a perverted taste as this, was little likely to derive much pleasure or benefit from them. Accordingly there is scarcely an object which he sees, that he does not find some fault with; his mind seems to be uniformly labouring under a mass of ennui and dissatisfaction, which no change of scenery, no succession of interesting objects, can dispel or relieve. The following description of a villa, which he occupied for the bathing season, at Leghorn, affords striking evidence of his disposition to avenge his native sulkiness upon every thing that he saw.

In this villa we experienced all the inconveniences attendant on an Italian country-house, placed, as those at Leghorn generally are, in the centre of a kitchen garden. Adjoining was the small cabin for the numerous family of the gardener: these rose at day-break, and made, with no little degree of noise, their preparations for appearing at the market of the town. Once or twice a week, but always on the hottest days, they opened a certain subterraneous cavern near the house, and carried to the cabbages under our window the manure it afforded. On Sundays and festivals they collected their friends, and either played at bowls on the even spot round the house, or, on more particular occasions, procured half a dozen geese, which they supended by their legs to the transverse beam of the gateway in front of our door; then, armed with a rusty old sword, each one in succession endeavoured to give a successful cut at the neck of the tortured bird, which, its head being once severed, belonged to him who had the skill to perform the feat; another goose was then fastened upon its place,

and ainsi de suite. Add to these nuisances, the incessant hum-drum tune, chaunted by the voices-not the most melodious-of the gardening girls, who, while at work, improvised to it verses, generally on the subject to them the most interesting-that of a courtship with a sailor. In the chorus, the sailor is supposed to answer,

"Lavora bella, fatti la dote;

Se Dio vuole, ti sposero."*

Such are the pleasures of Leghorn villas; yet how much might I make you envy my garden, geese, and subterranean perfumes, by giving you the usual description of these Italian peasant girls improvising a romance, as they sung, in sweet chorus, the tune to which the words were adapted.'— pp. 19, 20.

Nevertheless,' he says, immediately after, the summer passed more agreeably than you can imagine.' We dare say it did, and only wonder that he could have acknowledged as much, although it is well known that Leghorn is really, as he confesses in another place, 'the gayest summer residence in Italy.'

We were much amused with his ill-humoured description of the public walk at Leghorn. It is in the true style of an English cockney figuring on the Continent. In the evening,' he says, 'I sometimes drove to the Ardenza, a field of burnt grass and weeds, which, stretching along the broken, muddy shore, is the only public walk in the neighbourhood.' After this, we are not at all surprised at the effect that Rome and its mighty ruins produce upon his mind. As if to harmonize with his unlucky character, there was a drizzling rain, the first morning after his arrival, which made the streets still more tristes than they really were.' The first object that attracts his attention, is the church of S. Maria Maggiore, in which he proves that a vast number of architectural errors have been committed, and that it is a great deal too large! He next passed 'au hazard through a number of dirty streets,' in order to reach the Forum Romanum. Well, here surely he found something to sooth his phlegm! Let us hear:

'I needs must say, that here disappointment was the prominent feeling: and what a disappointment! Though well acquainted with every monument I was to meet with, I walked over the ground, astonished at finding them so much ruined. Columns falling from the ravages of time, but braced up with modern iron work;† walls tottering for want of this very iron work, torn away by the ancestors of those who now replace it; one half of a building destroyed to construct palaces for those whose successors now prop up the remaining half with the greatest care and attention; one race of men building altars in veneration of the victims slain for the amusement of a former race; the triumphal monuments of one age destroyed to adorn those of another too barbarous to suffice itself to itself, while other arches, raised to record other victories, are mutilated by the shabby and parsimonious attempts made at this moment to preserve

* Work hard, gain your dower; if it please God, I will marry you. + Temple of Jupiter Stator.

them; in short, "admire, exult, despise, laugh, weep, for here there is such matter for all feeling." The best description of the Roman forum is contained in that simple, historical, and at the same time, prophetic line

passimque armenta videbant

Romanoque Foro, et lautis mugire carinis."

More than this can be told you by a guide-book only. The Forum, though still used as an ox market, has in a great measure lost the denomination of Campo Vaccino.

'I returned along the Via Sacra, and went out at what is now the northern end of the Foro Romano. How much I had lost, but how much also I had acquired, during the short hour I had passed within its limits! All my "sixth form notions," all my enthusiasm, all my dreams, were broken in upon and vanished. I had entered it, exalted by the very thought of where I was; I had passed between the trees as if intruding on a ground sacred to classical recollections; I had hurried, with a feverish impatience, from one ruin to another; and I left it, myself, and every thing else lowered in my own opinion; discontented with myself for having conceived such high notions of the place; discontented with the place, for not having equalled the ideas I had been taught to form of it; regretting that I had come to Rome, since the knowledge of the reality had deprived me of my enthusiastic and more pleasing suppositions, yet pleased with being bereaved of them, and with being now unable to give way to others on the future; for the Roman Forum was the death-stroke to my curiosity, but gave a just level to my expectations.--vol. i., pp. 37-40.

So much for the classics! In this engaging disposition, our traveller walks on, and catches sight, with some difficulty, of the dome of the Pantheon. Indeed, if we are to credit his account of the matter, he encountered no trifling danger in exploring the way to it. It stands in a hole', and is scarcely to be discerned amid 'the small shabby houses which were built against it.' 'Of two narrow, filthy streets, I chose that on my right; and now reaching the edge of a short, but rapid descent, I found myself nearly on a level with the capital of the corner pillar of the portico: at the base of this pillar, lay a large reeking dunghill! It was this perhaps which gave our author an opportunity of elevating himself to a level with the capital of the corner pillar.' It was fortunate that he did not mistake the dunghill for the dome!

By the aid of many inquiries, and after going astray through all the rambling lanes of Rome, our author at length found out St. Peter's. Examining it in his usual judicious and critical manner, he finally asks himself- Why can I not give to this edifice the unbounded admiration it is almost entitled to claim? Why must I, in this church, blame what in other buildings might have my fullest praise? Now these are precisely the questions which we should have put to this learned traveller, though what satisfactory answer he could give to them, it is beyond the utmost stretch of our imagination to conceive.

VOL. IV.

H

Spirit of Rome! rise and hear how the noblest structure in the world is libelled!

The façade of the church I can only compare to a new-built hôtel de ville, town-hall, or some other public building; not to a church,—that is the last thing to which it can be assimilated. Pillars and pilasters placed one on the other; the intermediate space occupied by arched and oblong gateways, by square and long windows,-some with, some without balconies, and by mezzonini, sometimes open, sometimes blocked up with bass-reliefs, as if to save window tax; a small pediment rising over onethird only of the extent of façade; this pediment, and the rest of the entablature at each end of it, surmounted by a high wall, ornamented with pilasters and square windows, and supporting a stone balustrade, above the two ends of which arise two clocks, with pink-coloured faces, which themselves support a tiara and two keys; three domes, partly concealed by this wall and balustrade, even from the distant point from which I then viewed them, but which, as I approached nearer, entirely sunk behind this vile screen--such is the façade of S. Peter's.

'Passing through one of the gateways already mentioned, I then entered the long ante-room, called a portico; the use or beauty of this I could never discover. In it I sought for the two fountains, mentioned by Eustace, and found, with difficulty, two meagre squirts issuing from the wall.'-vol. i., pp. 46, 47.

Our ingenious traveller's criticisms on the interior of St. Peter's, are of a piece with these admirable remarks. It is worth mentioning, as a decisive proof of the calibre of his mind, that he avenges on the majesty of that splendid pile, an offence offered to his personal dignity by his own awkwardness. It appears that after lifting up the screen that closes over the doors of the church, he let it fall again before he got inside, and mark the result !— it struck against my hat, (a new one, no doubt), which I disembarrassed from it with no small difficulty.' This event,' adds the critic, would have been sufficient to put to flight all expectant enthusiasm, if such had oppressed me.' We have no doubt of it. It is exactly the sort of incident that would have discomposed a waddling John for a whole month. It is no wonder, after his new hat was put out of shape, that our traveller could furnish out nothing from the chambers of his brain, to which he could compare Michael Angelo's dome, save the cover of a pepper-box standing on stilts! The best of his discoveries however is this, that the dome is of no use! The conviction of its utter inutility pervades the mind, at the same time that the strained eyes, and distorted neck, give sensible proofs of the inconvenience of its situation.' That, therefore, which is unnecessary and useless, is devoid of its greatest claim to admiration!' Excellent reasoning, no doubt. much to be regretted, that Michael Angelo did not place the dome upon the ground, that our traveller might examine it without straining his valuable neck; still more is it to be lamented, that the architect did not convert his airy creation into a tailor's shop, in order that such a critic might be convinced of its utility.

It is