notice talents of the highest order. An oppor. tunity is also thus afforded of witnessing the surprising operations of the faculty of improvisation. At one of the Performances in May, Signor Pistrucci gave very extraordinary proofs of his ability, in various kinds of verse, on subjects suggested at the moment. The manner in which he treated the theme "Intrigues of the Opera House," afforded a wonderful display of skill and facility in extemporaneous poetical declamation

PLAIN EATING. There may be patients with callous appetites and hebetated tongues, who have lost the delighted sense of swallow, and are consequently such complete citizens of the world, that they know no distinction between French ragout and Welch rabbit, Italian ma caroni or Scotch rumbletethumps; but if palate and tongue be sound, then the man who says he cares nought about eating and drinking, is obviously such a monstrous and prodigious liar, that we only consider why the earth does not open its jaws and swallow him on the spot. Only look at him lunching when he fondly sup poses himself in privacy, and what a gormandizer! Look and you will see the large dew. drops on his forehead-listen, and you will hear his jaw or cheek-bones clanking; and that is the black-broth Spartan who is indiffe. rent about what he eats or drinks! An ugly customer at an ordinary! a dangerous citizen in a beleaguered town! If bred to a seafaring life, the first man to propose, when put on short allowance, to begin eating the black cook and the cabin boy!

There is another class of mistaken men, who bestow upon themselves the philosophi cal and eulogistical appellative of Plain-Eaters. Now, strip a Plain Eater of his name, and in what does he essentially differ from his brethren of mankind? He likes roast, and boil, and stew. So do they. He likes beef and veal, and venison and mutton, and lamb and kid, and pig and pork, and ham and tongue. So do they. He likes (does he not?) goose and turkey, and duck and how-towdy, and grouse and partridge, and snipe and woodcock. So do they. He likes salmon and cod, and seatrout and turbot, and every other species of salt-water fish. So do they. He likes, or would like, if he tried it, A HAGGIS. So do or would they. He likes pan-cakes, and plumb. pudding, and brandy-nans. So do they. He likes Suffolk and Cheshire Cheese, Stilton and weeping Parmesan. So do they. He likes grapes and grozetts, pine apples and jargonels

[July.

So do they. He likes anchovies, and devilled legs of turkies. So do they. He likes green and black teas of the finest quality, rather sweet than otherwise, and sugar-candied coffee, whose kuown transparency is enrich ed with a copious infusion of the cream of So do they. He likes at supper, the "relimany Ayrshire cows, feeding upon old lea. quias Danace," that is, the relics of the dinners, presented in metamorphosis.

So do they He thinks that nuts are nuts. So do they. If the crackers are engaged, he rashly uses his teeth. So do they. He has been they. Once he has had a surfeit. So had known to pocket the leg of a fowl. So have they. Then he was very sick. So were they

In all things the similitude-nay the identity tude-or all the world goes up stairs to himis complete-either he descends from his altimankind at large devour but one dish, or he is a Plain-Eater no more.

The truth is, that it is as impossible to define a simple taste in eating, as in writing,architecture, or sculpture. A seemingly Doric dish when analyzed, is found to be composite. We have seen a black-pudding with a Corinthian capital, eaten in truly attic style. Perhaps there exists not, except in abstraction, such a thing as a perfectly plain dish. A boiled po. how rarely indeed is it eaten without salt, and tatoe seems by no means complicated. But butter, and pepper, if not fish, flesh, and fowl! Reader! lay your hand on your heart and say, have you ever more than thrice, dur ing the course of a long and well-spent life, eaten, bona fide per se, without admixture of baser or nobler matter, a boiled mealy or waxy? We hear you answer in the negative. Look on any edible animal in a live state, from an ox, to a frog, and you will admit, without father argument, that he must undergo changes great and manifold, before you can think of eating him.

Many is the honest man, who, while he has been supposing himself enacting the character of the Plain-Eater, has been masticating a mixture composed of elements brought from the four quarters of the habitabie globe. That he might eat that plain rice pudding a ship has gone down with all her crew. The black population of the interior of Africa have been captivated, fettered, driven like hogs to the field, and hanged by scores, that he, before going to bed with a cold in his nose, and a nasty shivering, might take his-gruel.

Christopher North.

You cannot conceive the various attractions of this lovely city and its environs. That you may endeavour to fancy them, walk out with the fair Emma, by the light of the moon, and then fall asleep, if you can, under the united influence of Love and Laudanum; yet your visions of splendid cities and charming solitudes will be as nothing to Naples and the "campagna felice."

Here am I, a wild man (but not "homo silvestris ") from the Cape of Cods, on one day lighting my segar at a stream of Lava, and on the next, breathing the airs of heaven at Capo di Monte.

Let me imagine you to be landed at Naples, "last from Provincetown," green as a leek, and red-hot with curiosity and anticipation. I can follow you in fancy making your way from the mole through such savages as Gay-head never sent forth,. (Lazzaroni naked and bronzed,) to the hotel of the Signore Baldi. On your way you wil see palaces whose splendor will VOL. II.-No. 2.

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make your eyes ache, and Ladies that will produce a similar sensation at your heart,

"If it be made of penetrable stuff."

Look upon that edifice with a portico of Corinthian columns.— It is San Carlo, the most splendid theatre in Europe; and there, you may see, among fifty others, a little dancing Signora who seems to scorn the earth-touching the ground with but a single toe, like "Mercury on a heaven-kissing hill,"-Ned, keep yourself without the circle of that woman's attractions, for although young, she may yet prove too old for a man from the Cape.

Bend thy stiff neck and look at that castle in the air. It is St. Elmo, on a lofty mountain and instar montis itself. Now enter we (for I am your cicerone) this splendid avenue, the Toledo. Here on the left is the palace of the liberal king of the two Sicilies; who is a dead shot at a boar in Astroni, and who is thought to be a dead bore himself. This crowned gentleman, however, delights less in the chase than in the death-for the game is driven to his stand, from whence he makes a magnanimous and kingly carnage.

In front of the king's house, as we say at home, is a regiment of dragoons in red jackets and black whiskers, and from its commotion, the man with the diadem seems about to emerge Procul, o procul este Lazzaroni! here he comes drawn by six English blood orses. At his approach the populace uncover their knowledge-boxes, yet will not I salute upon uncertainties-I am punctillious as an Admiral. At Genoa I touched felt to old Carlo Felice, without return of civilities, so hereafter will I bow first to no King but Rufus. The distich of the Boston Judge D. applies not to me and the King of the Anchovies,

"I nod to you, you nod to me,

I'm the nodder, you the noddee."

Having passed the palace, turn we here at Santa Lucia to take a view of Vesuvius. There he stands, a mighty Pharos to the mariner, a theme for the poet, a subject for the painter, and to all a "marvel and a show." That dark curtain like a cloud stretching far to the eastward is but the smoke of the burning; in New England you would take it for a cloud, but not such are the vapors of Italian skies :-they are clouds of glory. The setting of the sun converts the sky into one entire rainbow, and when he rises, it is like the opening of the gates of heaven.

This is your hotel, where you will be mulcted in the sum of a pistareen a day for your apartment,-and you may eat and drink whenever hunger and thirst overtake you. You will take kindly to the Lagrima wine, which is like an infusion of youth and innocence, making the limbs active, and the heart glad,— or, for three coppers, you may have a thimble-full of rum, which these poor heathens call Giamaica.

Now lock your door (always do that) and take with me a squint (like another Boston Judge W.) at the Bourbon Museum.-On the way up the Toledo you will see splendid edifices, shops, and equipages--princes, beggars, priests, soldiers, Greeks, Turks, Jews, and Englishmen with strides that amount almost to a swagger. The children, you remark, are dressed exactly like their parents,--so that the girls look like Parisian dolls, and the boys like colts in harness.

At that corner of San Giacomo I once saw a man dying, as I verily think, of hunger. The coroner's inquest, were it known here, would call such a catastrophe the visitation of God:but it is the visitation of iniquity,-'T is the government of the ignorant and cruel, over the idle and degraded ;-it is the system whose tendency is to produce want the most wreched, and crimes the most foul.

This immense edifice is the Museum. Leave your stick with the Custode, and enter with me this hall on the left. In statuary you have seen William Penn, on the good ship Philadelphia, or at a tobacconist's you may have admired the Hottentot Venus; at a tea shop perhaps you have seen a Mandarin of China, or at a nautical bookstore a jack-tar with a quadrant, taking the sun at meridian: now, look through that vista of figures, terminated by a majestic horse, upon which sits a truly Roman person, M. N. Balbus. These animated figures on either side are heroes, poets, philosophers, emperors, warriors, gladiators, satyrs, fauns, nymphs, gods, and goddesses, and the pleasure that you will hereafter take in them will be equivalent to that of another sense. The impression left upon your mind after having seen the statutes of Julius, Titus Aurelius, and Caracalla, (the wretch,) will be as vivid as if you had seen the men themselves, and you will recall to memory hereafter their most minute expression. But we must delay not here; we have books, vases, gems, paintings and utensils, and manuscripts from Herculaneum and Pompeii to examine yet ;-but to-day we can bestow upon them only a passing glance. Well-tip the Custode a Carlino, and wend we our way again to the mole :-passing by

the Largo del Mercatello, where you see that long edifice surmounted with so many images. The images are representatives of the virtues of a former king, which, probably, had no existence but in fancy or in marble. The next square, is del Castello, then comes the quay, where the population is that of an ant-hill when invaded; emmets running to and fro; and pismires in altercation high.

You expected to find music in an Italian voice, but every tone of the Lazzaroni seems modulated upon a handsaw and file, but before you quit Naples I will carry you where you will hear and feel the "dulce loquentem." The language is that of love, and has therefore a formidable charm when flowing from the lips of beauty ;-it affords so many kind and loving appellations that it is almost a painful delight to be the object of them. Yet it is the language of Italy and belongs to this country as much as the skies and the mountains-it loses half its charms when removed from the external objects upon which it was founded.

Look not upon these fellows on the right--if they attract your attention they will surely beg, and let me tell you they are not easily turned aside-and yet some of them are so miserable that relief is charity, especially when they appeal to the Madonna, from no less a person than your Excellency ;—for this will be your title at Naples. There is in this city a place called the street of the Queen of Heaven, and I bave there twice seen a man at his post and upon his knees, who said in English "for the love of God, sir, give me a trifle." I believe from his face that he is English, but no other words in that language would he speak.-If you ride into the country you will be waylaid by the blind, the lame, and the aged, no less than in the city-the blind will even run at full speed in a strange gait at the side of your coach, and boys will cut divers indescribable capers, before your horses, and almost under their hoofs, till you come down with a gratuity. A fellow once humbly besought permission to ride behind my gig, yet at parting, with great gravity asked a reward for his company.-Where shall we go to-morrow?-there is not upon the earth a circle of 25 miles diameter half so interesting as that of which Naples is the centre.Very near to the city are Baia, Cumæ, Avernus, The Elysian Fields, Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Vesuvius,-and at a distance a little greater are Capri, Capua, Lorrento and Pæstum. Bu there comes a friar of the order of Capuchins, who has ap