by illness-had occasion to send a bill to his banker's to be cashed; on which errand he employed the servant of Monsignore. As it has been imputed to Italian bankers, that they sometimes mis-count dollars, he took the precaution to examine immediately the contents of his bag. Finding that there was a deficiency of twenty dollars, he summoned the servant and being unable to get any explanation, he was preparing a note to the banker to institute an inquiry, when the man confessed that his master had stopped him, upon his return, and taken twenty dollars out of the bag;-trusting, as it seems, to the proverbial carelessness of our countrymen. If a bishop will do this, what might we not expect from the poorer classes of society? and yet I must confess, I have never met with any such dishonesty in the lower orders, except amongst the pick-pockets in the Stradu di Toledo.

In an arbitrary government, like that of Naples, a stranger is surprised by the freedom of speech, which prevails on political subjects. The people seem full of discontent. In the coffee-houses, restaurateurs, nay even in the streets, you hear the most bitter invectives against the government, and tirades against the royal family.

One would imagine, from such general complainings, that the government was in danger,-but all seems to evaporate in talk; and indeed Gen. Church (an Englishman) at the head of a body of 5,000 foreign troops, is engaged in stopping the mouths of the more determined reformers; which may probably explain the secret of the stability of the present system.

It must be owned that the people have some grounds for complaint, for, the king has not only retained all the imposts, which Murat, under the pressure of war, found it necessary to levy, but he has also revived many of the ways and means of the old regime. The property tax alone amounts to twenty-five per cent.; and there is a sort of excise, by which

every roll that is eaten by the beggar in the streets, is made to contribute a portion to the government purse.

The military, both horse and foot, make a very respectable appearance. To the eye, they are as fine soldiers as any in Europe; and the grenadiers of the king's guard, dressed in the uniform of our own guards, might be admired even in Hyde Park. But, it appears that they do not like fighting. The Austrian general Nugent married a Neapolitan princess, and is now commander in chief of that very army, which under Murat, ran away from him like a flock of sheep.

It is the fashion to consider soldiers as mere machines, and to maintain, that discipline will make soldiers of any men whatever. This may be true as a general rule;-but may not a slavish submission to a despotic government for a long period of years, and confirmed habits of effeminate indolence, on the part of any people, produce an hereditary taint in their blood,-gradually making what was habit in the parent, constitution in the offspring, and so deteriorate the breed, that no immediate management or discipline shall be able to endue such a race with the qualities necessary to constitute a soldier? If this maxim need illustration, I would appeal to the conduct of the Neapolitan army in Murat's last campaign.

ART. VI.-Blackwood's Magazine on Washington Irving. A late No. of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, contains a review of 'Diedrich Knickerbocker's History of New York,' from which we take the following, for the purpose of showing the favour that our countryman, Washington Irving, has gained at the hands of the Scotish critics.] 'We are delighted to observe, that "the Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent." has at last fallen into the hands of Mr. Murray, and been republished in one of the most beautiful octavos that ever issued from the fertile press of Albemarle street. The work, indeed, is still going on at New

i

York; but we trust some arrangement has been entered into, by virtue of which, the succeeding numbers of this exquisite miscellany may be early given to the English public; who, we are sure, are, at least, as much inclined to receive them well as the American. Mr. Washington Irving is one of our first favourites among the English writers of this age→ and he is not a bit the less for having been born in America. He is not one of those Americans who practise, what may be called, a treason of the heart, in perpetual scoffs and sneers against the land of their forefathers. He well knows that his "thews and sinews" are not all, for which he is indebted to his English ancestry. All the noblest food of his heart and soul have been derived to him, he well knows, from the same fountain-and he is as grateful for his obligations as he is conscious of their magnitude. His writings all breathe the sentiment so beautifully expressed in one of Mr. Coleridge's Sybilline Leaves.*

Though ages long have past

Since our fathers left their home,
Their pilot in the blast,

O'er untravell'd seas to roam.

Yet lives the blood of England in our veins;

And shall we not proclaim

That blood of honest fame,
Which no tyranny can tame

By its chains?

While the language free and bold
Which the bard of Avon sung,

In which our Milton told

How the vault of heaven rung

When Satan, blasted, fell with all his host;
While these with reverence meet,

Ten thousand echoes greet,

And from rock to rock repeat

Round our coast.

*These fine verses were not written by Mr. Coleridge, but by an American gentleman, whose name he has concealed, though he calls him ‘a dear and valued friend.' His name should not have been concealed. C. N.

While the manners, while the arts
That mould a nation's soul,

Still cling around our hearts,

Between let ocean roll,

Our joint communion breaking with the sun;—
Yet still from either beach,

The voice of blood shall reach,

More audible than speech,
WE ARE ONE.'

"The great superiority, over too many of his countrymen, evinced by Mr. Irving on every occasion, when he speaks of the manners, the spirit, the faith of England, has, without doubt, done much to gain for him our affection. But had he never expressed one sentiment favourable to us or to our country, we should still have been compelled to confess that we regard him as by far the greatest genius that has arisen on the literary horizon of the new world. The Sketch Book has already proved, to our readers, that he possesses exquisite powers of pathos and description; but we recur, with pleasure, to this much earlier publication, of which, we suspect, but a few copies have ever crossed the Atlantic, to show that we did right when we ascribed to him, in a former paper, the possession of a true old English vein of humour and satire of keen and lively wit-and of great knowledge and discrimination of human nature.

'The whole book is a jeu-d'esprit, and, perhaps, its only fault is, that no jeu-d'esprit ought to be quite so long as to fill two closely printed volumes. Under the mask of an historian of his native city, he has embodied, very successfully, the results of his own early observation in regard to the formation and constitution of several regular divisions of American society; and in this point of view his work will preserve its character of value, long after the lapse of time shall have blunted the edge of these personal allusions which, no doubt, contributed most powerfully to its popu larity over the water. New York, our readers know, or

ought to know, was originally a Dutch new settlement, by the style and title of New Amsterdam, and it was not till after it had witnessed the successive reigns of seven generations of brig-breeched deputies of their high mightinesses that the infant city was transferred to the dominion of England, in consequence of a pretty liberal grant by Charles II. to his brother the duke of York, and the visit of a few English vessels sent to give some efficacy to this grant, in partibus infidelium. Diedrich Knickerbocker, the imaginary Dutch Herodotus of this city, of course, considers its occupation by the English forces as the termination of its political existence, and disdains to employ the same pen that had celebrated the achievements of Peter the Headstrong, William the Testy, and the other governors of the legitimate Batavian breed, in recording any of the acts of their usurping successors, holding authority under the sign manual of Great Britain. To atone, however, for the hasty conclusion of his history, he makes its commencement as long and minute as could be desired-not beginning, as might be expected, with the first landing of a burgo-master on the shores of the Hudson, but plunging back into the utmost night of ages, and favouring us with a regular deducement of the Batavian line through all the varieties of place and fortune that are recorded between the creation of Adam, and the sailing of the good ship Goode Vrouw for the shore of Communipaw. The description of the imaginary historian himself has always appeared to us to be one of the best things in the whole book, so we shall begin with quoting it. We are not sure that it yields to the far-famed introduction of Chrysal. Our readers are to know that Mr. Diedrich Knickerbocker composed his immortal work in the Independent Columbian Hotel, New York-and that having mysteriously disappeared from his lodgings, without saying any thing to the landlord, Mr. Seth Handyside, the publican, thought of publishing his MSS. by way of having his score cleared. The