of which the ruins extend as far as the eye can reach for several miles beyond the walls. Cicero says that, on leaving the gate, the first tombs you meet are those of Metellus, the Scipios, and Servilius. The tomb of the Scipios has been discovered in the very place which he describes, and transported to the Vatican. Yet it was, in some sort, a sacrilege to displace these illustrious ashes; imagination is more nearly allied than is generally imagined to morality; we must beware of shocking it. Some of these tombs are so large, that the houses of peasants have been worked out in them, for the Romans consecrated a large space to the last remains of their friends and their relatives. They were strangers to that arid principle of utility which fertilizes a few corners of earth, the more by devastating the vast domain of sentiment and thought.

"You see at a little distance from the Appian Way a temple raised by the Republic to Honour and Virtue; another to the God which compelled Hannibal to remeasure his steps; the Temple of Egeria, where Numa went to consult his tutelar deity, is at a little distance on the left hand. Around these tombs the traces of virtue alone are to be found. No monument of the long ages of crime which disgraced the empire are to be found beside the places where these illustrious dead repose; they rest amongst the reliques of the Republic.

"The aspect of the Campagna around Rome has something in it singularly remarkable. Doubtless it is a desert; there are neither trees nor habitations; but the earth is covered with a profusion of natural flowers, which the energy of vegetation renews incessantly. These creeping plants insinuate themselves among the tombs, decorate the ruins, and seem placed there solely to do honour to the dead. You would suppose that nature was too proud there to suffer the labours of man, since Cincinnatus no longer holds the plough which furrows its bosom; it produces flowers in wild profusion, which are of no sort of use to the existing generation. These vast uncultivated plains will doubtless have few attractions for the agriculturist, administrators, and all those who speculate on the earth, with a view to extract from it the riches it is capable of affording; but the thoughtful minds, whom death occupies as much as life, are singularly attracted by the aspect of that Campagna, where the present times have left no trace; that earth which cherishes only the dead, and covers them in its love with useless flowers-plants which creep along the surface, and never acquire suf

ficient strength to separate themselves from the ashes, which they have the appearance of caressing."— Corinne, 1. v. c. 1.

How many travellers have traversed the Appian Way, but how few have felt the deep impressions which these words are fitted to produce!

"The churches of modern Rome," continues the same author, 66 are decorated with the magnificence of antiquity, but there is something sombre and striking in the intermingling of these beautiful marbles with the ornaments stripped from the Pagan temples. The columns of porphyry and granite were so numerous at Rome that they ceased to have any value. At St John Lateran, that church, so famous from the councils of which it was the theatre, there were such a quantity of marble columns that many of them were covered with plaster to be converted into pilasters-so completely had the multitude of riches rendered them indifferent. Some of these columns came from the tomb of Adrian, and bear yet upon their capitals the mark of the geese which saved the Roman people. These columns support the ornaments of Gothic churches, and some rich sculptures in the arabesque order. The urn of Agrippa has received the ashes of a pope, for the dead themselves have yielded their place to other dead, and the tombs have changed tenants nearly as often as the mansions of the living.

"Near to St John Lateran is the holy stair, transported from Jerusalem. No one is permitted to ascend it but on his knees. In like manner Cæsar and Claudius ascended on their knees the stair which led to the temple of Jupiter Capitolenus. Beside St John Lateran is the Baptistery, where Constantine was baptized-in the middle of the place before the church is an obelisk, perhaps the most ancient monument which exists in the world-an obelisk contemporary of the War of Troy -an obelisk which the barbarian Cambyses respected so much as to stop for its beauty the conflagration of a city-an obelisk for which a king put in pledge the life of his only son. The Romans in a surprising manner got it conveyed from the depths of Egypt to Italy-they turned aside the course of the Nile to bring its waters so as to convey it to the sea. Even then that obelisk was covered with hieroglyphics whose secrets have been kept for so many ages, and which still withstand the researches of our most learned scholars. Possibly the Indians, the Egyptians, the antiquity of antiquity, might be revealed to us in these myste

rious signs. The wonderful charm of Rome consists, not merely in the beauty of its monuments, but in the interest which they all awaken, and that species of charm increases daily with every fresh study." Ibid, c. 3.

We add only a feeble prosaic translation of the splendid improvisatore effusion of Corinne on the Cape of Mesinum, surrounded by the marvels of the shore of Baia and the Phlegrian fields.

"Poetry, nature, history, here rival each other in grandeur-here you can embrace in a single glance all the revolutions of time and all its prodigies.

"I see the Lake of Avernus, the extinguished crater of a volcano, whose waters formerly inspired so much terrorAcheron, Phlegethon, which a subterraneous flame caused to boil, are the rivers of the infernals visited by Æneas.

"Fire, that devouring element which created the world, and is destined to consume it, was formerly an object of the greater terror that its laws were unknown. Nature, in the olden times, revealed its secrets to poetry alone.

"The city of Cumæ, the Cave of the Sibyl, the Temple of Apollo, were placed on that height. There grew the wood whence was gathered the golden branch. The country of Æneas is around you, and the fictions consecrated by genius have become recollections of which we still seek the traces.

"A Triton plunged into these waves the presumptive Trojan who dared to defy the divinities of the deep by his songs -these water-worn and sonorous rocks have still the character which Virgil gave them. Imagination was faithful even in the midst of its omnipotence. The genius of man is creative when he feels Natureimitative when he fancies he is creating.

"In the midst of these terrible masses, grey witnesses of the creation, we see a new mountain which the volcano has produced. Here the earth is stormy as the ocean, and does not, like it, re-enter peaceably into its limits. The heavy element, elevated by subterraneous fire, fills up valleys, rains mountains,' and its petrified waves attest the tempests which once tore its entrails.

"If you strike on this hill the subterraneous vault resounds-you would say that the inhabited earth is nothing but a crust ready to open and swallow us up. The Campagna of Naples is the image of human passion-sulphurous, but fruitful, its dangers and its pleasures appear to grow out of those glowing volcanoes which

give to the air so many charms, and cause the thunder to roll beneath our feet.

"Pliny boasted that his country was the most beautiful in existence-he studied nature to be able to appreciate its charms. Seeking the inspiration of science as a warrior does conquest, he set forth from this promontory to observe Vesuvius athwart the flames, and those flames consumed him.

tance.

"Cicero lost his life near the promontory of Gaeta, which is seen in the disThe Triumvirs, regardless of posterity, bereaved it of the thoughts which that great man had conceived-it was on us that his murder was committed.

"Cicero sunk beneath the poniards of tyrants-Scipio, more unfortunate, was banished by his fellow-citizens while still in the enjoyment of freedom. He terminated his days near that shore, and the ruins of his tomb are still called the

Tower of our Country.' What a touching allusion to the last thought of that great spirit!

"Marius fled into those marshes not far from the last home of Scipio. Thus in all ages the people have persecuted the really great; but they are avenged by their apotheosis, and the Roman who conceived their power extended even unto Heaven, placed Romulus, Numa, and Cæsar in the firmament-new stars which confound in our eyes the rays of glory and the celestial radiance.

"Oh, memory! noble power! thy empire is in these scenes! From age to age, strange destiny! man is incessantly bewailing what he has lost! These remote ages are the depositaries in their turn of a greatness which is no more, and while the pride of thought, glorying in its progress, darts into futurity, our soul seems still to regret an ancient country to which the past in some degree brings it back.”Lib. xii. c. 4.

Enough has now been given to give the unlettered reader a conception of the descriptive character of these two great continental writersto recall to the learned one some of the most delightful moments of his life. To complete the parallel, we shall now present three of the finest passages of a similar character from Sir Walter Scott, that our readers may be able to appreciate at a single sitting the varied excellences of the greatest masters of poetic prose who have appeared in modern times.

The first is the well-known opening scene of Ivanhoe.

"The sun was setting upon one of the

rich grassy glades of that forest, which we have mentioned in the beginning of the chapter. Hundreds of broad-headed, short-stemmed, wide-branched oaks, which had witnessed perhaps the stately march of the Roman soldiery, flung their gnarled arms over a thick carpet of the most delicious green sward; in some places they were intermingled with beeches, hollies, and copse wood of various descriptions, so closely as totally to intercept the level beams of the sinking sun; in others they receded from each other, forming those long sweeping vistas, in the intricacy of which the eye delights to lose itself, while imagination considers them as the paths to yet wilder scenes of silvan solitude. Here the red rays of the sun shot a broken and discoloured light, that partially hung upon the shattered boughs and mossy trunks of the trees, and there they illuminated in brilliant patches the portions of turf to which they made their way. A considerable open space, in the midst of this glade, seemed formerly to have been dedicated to the rites of Druidical superstition; for, on the summit of a hillock, so regular as to seem artificial, there still remained part of a circle of rough unhewn stones, of large dimensions. Seven stood upright; the rest had been dislodged from their places, probably by the zeal of some convert to Christianity, and lay, some prostrate near their former site, and others on the side of the hill. One large stone only had found its way to the bottom, and in stopping the course of a small brook, which glided smoothly round the foot of the eminence, gave, by its opposition, a feeble voice of murmur to the placid and elsewhere silent streamlet."

The next is the equally celebrated description of the churchyard in the introductory chapter of Old Mortality.

"Farther up the narrow valley, and in a recess which seems scooped out of the side of the steep heathy bank, there is a deserted burial-ground which the little cowards are fearful of approaching in the twilight. To me, however, the place has an inexpressible charm. It has been long the favourite termination of my walks, and, if my kind patron forgets not his promise, will (and probably at no very distant day) be my final resting-place after my mortal pilgrimage.

"It is a spot which possesses all the solemnity of feeling attached to a burialground, without exciting those of a more unpleasing description. Having been very little used for many years, the few hillocks which rise above the level plain are co

vered with the same short velvet turf. The monuments, of which there are not above seven or eight, are half sunk in the ground and overgrown with moss. Νο newly-erected tomb disturbs the sober serenity of our reflections by reminding us of recent calamity, and no rank springing grass forces upon our imagination the recollection, that it owes its dark luxuriance to the foul and festering remnants of mortality which ferment beneath. The daisy which sprinkles the sod, and the hair-bell which hangs over it, derive their pure nourishment from the dew of Heaven, and their growth impresses us with no degrading or disgusting recollections. Death has indeed been here, and its traces are before us; but they are softened and deprived of their horror by our distance from the period when they have been first impressed. Those who sleep beneath are only connected with us by the reflection, that they have once been what we now are, and that, as their relics are now identified with their mother earth, ours shall, at some future period, undergo the same transformation.'

The third is a passage equally wellknown, but hardly less beautiful, from the Antiquary.

"The sun was now resting his huge disk upon the edge of the level ocean, and gilded the accumulation of towering clouds through which he had travelled the livelong day, and which now assembled on all sides, like misfortunes and disasters around a sinking empire, and falling monarch. Still, however, his dying splendour gave a sombre magnificence to the massive congregation of vapours, forming out of their unsubstantial gloom, the show of pyramids and towers, some touched with gold, some with purple, some with a hue of deep and dark red. The distant sea, stretched beneath this varied and gorgeous canopy, lay almost portentously still, reflecting back the dazzling and level beams of the descending luminary, and the splendid colouring of the clouds amidst which he was sitting. Nearer to the beach, the tide rippled onward in waves of sparkling silver, that imperceptibly, yet rapidly, gained upon the sand.

"With a mind employed in admiration of the romantic scene, or perhaps on some more agitating topic, Miss Wardour advanced in silence by her father's side, whose recently offended dignity did not stoop to open any conversation. Following the windings of the beach, they passed one projecting point or headland of rock after another, and now found themselves under a huge and continued extent of the precipices by which that iron-bound

coast is in most places defended. Long projecting reefs of rock, extending under water, and only evincing their existence by here and there a peak entirely bare, or by the breakers which foamed over those that were partially covered, rendered Knockwinnock bay dreaded by pilots and ship-masters. The crags which rose between the beach and the mainland, to the height of two or three hundred feet, afforded in their crevices shelter for un

numbered sea-fowl, in situations seemingly secured by their dizzy height from the rapacity of man. Many of these wild tribes, with the instinct which sends them to seek the land before a storm arises, were now winging towards their nests with the shrill aud dissonant clang which announces disquietude and fear. The disk of the sun became almost totally obscured ere he had altogether sunk below the horizon, and an early and lurid shade of darkness blotted the serene twilight of a summer evening. The wind began next to arise; but its wild and moaning sound was heard for some time, and its effects became visible on the bosom of the sea, before the gale was felt on shore. The mass of waters, now dark and threatening, began to lift itself in larger ridges, and sink in deeper furrows, forming waves that rose high in foam upon the breakers, or burst upon the beach with a sound resembling distant thunder."

Few objects are less beautiful than a bare sheet of water in heathy hills, but see what it becomes under the inspiration of genius.

"It was a mild summer day; the beams of the sun, as is not uncommon in Zetland, were moderated and shaded by a silvery haze, which filled the atmosphere, and, destroying the strong contrast of light and shade, gave even to noon the sober livery of the evening twilight. little lake, not three-quarters of a mile in circuit, lay in profouad quiet; its surface undimpled, save when one of the numerous water-fowl, which glided on its surface, dived for an instant under it.

The

The depth of the water gave the whole that cerulean tint of bluish green, which occasioned its being called the Green Loch; and at present, it formed so perfect a mirror to the

bleak hills by which it was surrounded, and which lay reflected on its bosom, that it was difficult to distinguish the water from the land; nay, in the shadowy uncertainty occasioned by the thin haze, a stranger could scarce have been sensible that a sheet of water lay before him. scene of more complete solitude, having

A

all its peculiarities heightened by the extreme serenity of the weather, the quiet grey composed tone of the atmosphere, and the perfect silence of the elements, could hardly be imagined. The very aquatic birds, who frequented the spot in great numbers, forbore their usual flight and screams, and floated in profound tranquillity upon the silent water."

It is hard to say to which of these mighty masters of description the Scott is palm should be awarded. more simple in his language, more graphic in his details, more thoroughly imbued with the character of the place he is desirous of portraying: Chateaubriand is more resplendent in the images which he selects, more fastidious in the features he draws, more gorgeous from the magnificence with which he is surrounded: Madame de Staël, inferior to both in the powers of delineating nature, is superior to either in rousing the varied emotions dependent on historical recollections or melancholy impressions. It is remarkable that, though she is a southern writer, and has thrown into Corinne all her own rapture at the sun and the recollections of Italy, yet it is with a northern eye that she views the scenes it presents-it is not with the living, but the mighty dead, that she holds communion-the chords she loves to strike are those melancholy ones which vibrate more strongly in a northern than a southern heart. Chateaubriand is imbued more largely with the genuine spirit of the south: albeit a Frank by origin, he is filled with the spirit of Oriental poetry. His soul is steeped in the cloudless skies, and desultory life, and boundless recollections of the East. Scott has no decided locality. He has struck his roots into the human heart-he has described Nature with a master's hand, under whatever aspects she is to be seen; but his associations are of Gothic origin; his spirit is of chivalrous descent; the nature which he has in general drawn is the sweet gleam of sunshine in a northern

climate.

In our next we shall consider Madame de Staël and Chateaubriand as political writers and historical philosophers, and contrast their ideas with those of Fénélon and Bossuet at the close of the seventeenth century.

AMONG the arrivals which are to enliven the great metropolis during the summer (when the summer shall condescend to come), are two rhinoceroses. They are announced as hav. ing already rounded the Cape, being in capital health and spirits, and eating half their own bulks of rice and hay per diem. The naturalists, and all that race, who, as they conceive it, cultivate natural science, are delighted at the prospect; and unless the bargain has been made already, we shall see fine bidding for the brutes by the purses of the Zoological and Surrey Gardens.

We altogether dislike the spirit, system, and fooleries which are couched under a great deal of what is called natural science; and this affair of the exhibitions of unfortunate animals is not the part most to our taste.

We admit, as fully as the most resolute impaler of butterflies on pins, that a great many beautiful and a great many curious discoveries are to be made by minds really intelligent, in every province of nature. So be it. But we do not believe that Providence ever said, let science be followed at all risks of cruelty. A large portion of the researches into comparative anatomy are extremely cruel, and every surgeon's apprentice thinks himself entitled to find his way into the arcana of nature, by scalping cats and rabbits to see where their brains lie. The transactions of the college of the medical craft, in this sense, would convict them before a convocation of Ashantees. But in this there is, at least, comparative use, and comparative mercy; if the wretched animals are suffocated, scalped, scraped alive into skeletons, stewed, and minced, they are at least speedily put to death. The air-pump, the knife, and the cauldron, are torturing affairs enough; in common justice they ought to be experimented on the experimenters, but at least they do not keep the wretched animals in torture for months together. And when the French professor, a year or two since, fastened a dog to his surgical table by driving nails through his feet; and this piece of ingenuity brought down upon the man of science the reprobation of the Eng

lish newspapers (for in France science is a charm for all things), the exonerating answer was, that the same hammer which had fastened his feet, knocked him on the head.

A return has been published, stating the number of deaths in one of those zoological exhibitions. Within three years it was 36 of the larger animals, including seven lions, four tigers, &c. Now, we ask for what ostensible purpose was the Zoological Society in the Regent's Park formed? It was, for so said its prospectus, for the twofold purpose of increasing the knowledge of natural history, and of domesticating animals of other countries. We more than doubt that the former object has been attained, or is attainable in any important degree by the existence of animals under circumstances so to. tally different from all their natural haunts and habits. How are we to know any thing of the life of an animal whose whole life is spent in the utmost activity, in flight or pursuit, in climbing hills, bounding over the tops of forests, or plunging from rocks, by seeing it in a cage, or at best a paddock of half a dozen square feet, in the Regent's Park? Of the lions, tigers, panthers, and other lords of the forest and the desert, we can see nothing in the menageries, but heavy masses of flesh in striped and dun-coloured hides, sleeping all day. The fact is, that a single page of description by any traveller who has seen any of those fine, however formidable, productions of the wilderness, sweeping across the landscape, would give a better idea of all that is worth knowing on the subject, than all the promenading and parading about the cages where the unfortunate brutes lie imprisoned, to make naturalists of our generation of five-years-old and upwards.

The domestication we entirely allow to be a rational purpose. But after the vast sums of money which the public have lavished on these institutions, we have every right to ask, what advances have been made towards this purpose? Has a single domestic animal been added to the servants of man in this country, in the last half dozen years? Are we the better for