ped, oppressed as it were, with delight, saying to myself: Oh how fine is this!... Or, contemplating those hills covered with trees, which come up close to the town, illumined by that lovely orb which shone in the midst of the sparkling heavens, tears have even come into my eyes while I have said: My God! how happy am I to have come into Italy!' p. 200.

We might sympathize more in all this happiness, did it not appear to be the result of sensation, rather than of feeling; but if the fine eyes, and fine air, and fine objects of Italy produce as intoxicating an effect on the senses of all who are exposed to them, as they seem to do on that of our susceptible Frenchman, we would advise our countrymen to leave such dangerous allurements, and return to their fogs, their fire-sides, and that domestic felicity which the Count de Stendhal gives us credit for preserving in a degree of purity beyond that of any other people except the Genevese, though he remarks somewhat unblushingly, that the bonus of ennui with which it is purchased, is a little too powerful; adding, Give me rather Paris, with all its faults.' We cordially join with him in this wish; let Paris and its faults remain peculiarly appropriated to such as can delight in them! We must not close our account of the opinions of this Writer, without giving some of them upon the subject of the English whom he met with in abundance during his rambles. For their simplicity of manners, and an air of consciousness of national greatness about them, he is inclined to give them full praise; but he counterbalances it, by remarking that they seldom seem to know what they have come abroad to see, and acquire very little idea of the real character of the people they visit. The women he considers, those among them who are handsome, all as divinities on earth, from their fine complexions, and their air of innocence and modesty;' still, by a strange contradiction, he finds fault with the very qualities in themselves, the appearances of which he so much admires, because they lead to timidity and reserve.

Would you have a portrait of one of the charming Milady's that we have here, take it. Lady Ris twenty six years of age; she is not ugly, very mild, and passably polite; it is not her fault that she is not more amusing, it is the result of having seen so little'; for she has good sense, is very natural, and not at all assuming, her tone of voice is mild, and even approaching to something like; silliness; if she had been educated in France, she would have been delightful. I drew her into giving me an account of her mode of life she is wholly occupied with her husband and children, without austerity, or ostentation. She might be pleasing, she is ennuyeux. p. 179.

He says afterwards, that no character is so tiresome as that of a good wife, and mother of a family. We only hope that it

sone which our fair country-women will never learn to underrate on their travels, and we heartily wish they were all at home again, to perform in it, to the delight and happiness of every circle over which their influence may extend.

The Count de Stendhal's remarks are not all on the frivolous subjects of gallantry and public places: his opinions on subjects of literature, and politics, and society, on a more enlarged scale, are all clearly conceived and well expressed. His criticism on Alfieri, in particular, is excellent. He has dived to the very bottom of that singular man's soul, and has discovered the prejudices and peculiarities lurking there, which give their dark hue to his genius, with all the sagacity of one accustomed to consider mankind in real life, and not solely from the reflections of philosophers upon its general characteristics. He makes also some good remarks on the Italian language, and the corruptions it is daily subjected to, by the adoption of synonyms from the various states, which in turn, as fortune has rendered them victorious over their neighbours, have made their dialect at least for a time, pre-eminent over the others.

In the fourteenth century,' says he, the principal towns of Italy, as Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples, Milan, and the province of Piedmont, spoke different languages. The country which was blessed with liberty furnished the finest ideas; thus it must be, and its language became the principal one.

Unfortunately this conqueror did not exterminate its rivals; the written language is therefore only the same as the oral one at Florence, and at Rome. Every where else, in conversation, the commen dialect of each respective country is used, and to speak Tuscan any where but at Rome or Florence, would be thought ridiculous.

A man who writes a letter, opens his dictionary, and can never find words sufficiently strong or pompous. Hence naïveté, simplicity, or natural modes of expression are things unknown in writing Italian; if any one wants to express sentiments of this kind, he has recourse to the Venetian or Milanese dialect. To foreigners, people always speak Tuscan, yet, if the speaker would express an energetic idea, he is forced to seek some word from his own dialect. Three fourths of the attention of an Italian writer rests upon the physics of his language; he must not use a single word not to be found in the authors cited by the Dizionario della Crusca.

To what a terrible dilemma then is any one reduced who has to express ideas unknown in the fifteenth century: in such a case the Italian writers fall into the grossest absurdities. M. Botta, in his History of America, when he would express the Congress of the inhabitants of Dominica, writes Il Convento de' Dominicani, which, in fact, signifies the convent of the Dominicans.

It is impossible to speak fast in Italian: this is a defect, which never can be remedied. In the second place, the Italian language is essentially obscure, and that for two very obvious reasons, that for three centuries, no one has any encouragement to write clearly

upon difficult subjects, and because every one of the conquered languages, has brought synonyms into the victorious ones and what synonymes? Gracious heaven! they have often a sense directly opposite. People of the provinces believe themselves speaking Italian when they are speaking only their own dialect. The most simple things have different names. At Rome, a street is called via, at Florence strada, at Milan contrada.-Villa signifies at Rome a country house, at Naples it means a town. Still further, the turns by which the shadings of sentiment are expressed, are very different; at Milan a friend addresses me ti, at Rome voi, at Florence lei. If my friend at Milan addressed me voi, I must conclude that he had quarrelled with me.

Alfieri himself wrote in a language which was to him a dead one; hence his liberal use of superlatives. We may add that a Venetian, a Bolognese, or a Piedmontese pique themselves exceedingly uponi writing the Tuscan well; and, as the height of absurdity, it must be observed, that the most serious writers will study the Tuscan in the Canti Carnavaleschi, in the Tancia of Buonarotti, and other books compiled for the amusement of the lowest rabble in Florence; it is as if Montesquieu had borrowed the language of the hair-dressers of Paris.' p. 149.

When we consider how little the English, from their insulated situation, are in the practice of speaking any language, except their own, however they may acquire the reading and writing of others, as a branch of polite education, and for the purposes of literature, we may easily imagine the embarrassment they must often feel in a country where there are at least twenty different dialects in common use, and where every distinct province feels itself offended by the adoption of an idiom foreign to its own. The consequence is such as must be foreseen they take refuge among themselves; they use their eyes more than their ears. They become acquainted with the different aspects of nature in the places through which they pass; but the different characters of the people who inhabit them, with all the minute shades of peculiarity in their habits and manners, remain uninquired into, or inaccurately guessed at. In Italy perhaps, above all other countries, the attention of a traveller is diverted from the inhabitants themselves, by the varieties of nature, and the master-pieces of art with which they are surrounded. We must not, however, be guilty of such injustice to our countrymen, as not to state that some of the best remarks upon society in this work, are put into the mouth of an Englishman; but then they are remarks upon French society, and upon that period of it so dear to wits and men of gallantry, when D'Alembert was a model of philosophers, and Madame de Flaviareus a model of the Graces. His contrast with the manners of that time, and those which be found on his return to Paris in 1815, after the battle of Waterloo, is sufficiently amusing; the difference between the

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character of the French nation and our own, is likewise nicely scrutinized, and the opposite habits which it induces, are distinctly marked.

We could from these pages introduce Lord Byron at Venice Ito our readers; but the mention of him is attended with so many misconceptions as to the cause of his wanderings, that we do not like to retail what would have the appearance on our parts, at least, of deliberate scandal. We will therefore here take our leave of our Author, whose vivacity has tempted us into a longer notice of him than-we at first intended, and whom even now we part from with some reluctance. Though the majority of his remarks are on subjects too frivolous perhaps to detain the attention of a very reflecting mind, yet when he comes to more important matter, there is a vigour and clearness in them which makes up for other deficiencies. He has one quality which we do not often find in modern tourists, he gives his readers materials for thinking. He does does not wire-draw his own reflections; he places them in a forcible point of view, and leaves others to dilate upon them, as they please. The translation of this work betrays some blemishes which ought to be corrected, as they injure the general effect of the style, which is otherwise easy and correct. Bien instruit, for instance, is rendered instructed, instead of well informed. Assassinated is used instead of stabbed. It is not very usual for a man to relate the particulars of his being assassinated. Thence is likewise continually put in the place of hence, and there are a few other slips which might easily be altered in a future edition.

Art. VII. Cœlebs Deceived. By the Author of "an antidote to "the Miseries of Human Life," "Cottage Sketches," &c. &c. 2 Vols. 12mo. pp. 374. Price 8s. London, 1817.

W E will confess that it is not without reluctance that we discharge our duty to the public, in the case of what we are constrained to regard as at least a partial failure of excellent intention, in a writer possessing claims to general estimation. The Author

of the works mentioned in the title-page we have just transcribed, deserves so well of the religious public, her former publications display so much good sense and correct feelings, conveyed in a style of feminine sprightliness, that we exceedingly regret being compelled to modify our recommendation of these volumes, by expressing an unfavourable opinion as to the tendency of one of the leading incidents. It is possible, that the Author may have been misled into the impropriety we allude to, by having met with some fact in real life similar to the circumstances she introduces ; bat though this would exonerate her from the ungracefulness of

the fiction, we should still have to object to her management of the incident.

6

Celebs, the Reverend Calebs, of whose confessions this narrative consists, is represented as having become a convert to the notion, that a plurality of wives is allowable by the law of God, in consequence of the perusal of a publication in favour of that sentiment; and he had, it seems, also taken up the resolution, owing to his having been once deceived, never to entrust his happiness to the precarious turns of female constancy. The amiable,' the excellent' Maria, meets with the same publication, avows her approbation of it, and, (will the reader be surprised?) consents to accept the name of Cœlebs, 'unsanctioned by the legal tie they had both learnt to despise.' Twelve months elapse, at the expiration of which, the lady proposes setting off by herself on a visit to an aged aunt at a considerable distance, from whence she writes a long letter of contrition to her friend,' representing with what internal suffering she had been struggling all the past year, and declining to return, on the ground that she had ceased to love him and gradually lost every sentiment of regard amounting higher than the common estimate of friendly esteem.' This chilling paragraph' alarms our hero exceedingly, who resolves immediately on the presentation of his hand in marriage. This offer is made and rejected; and Maria's fixed purpose is ascribed to strong religious impressions! Celebs submits, and in the course of the narrative thinks of another love, and Maria's case is represented as singular only its happy termination!!

Now, without insisting on the tissue of gross improbabilities of which this narrative consists, and which, could we believe them to have had any counter-part in reality, we should still wish consigned to endless oblivion, we must suppose that our Author has attributed to the imaginary Maria, a resolution the very reverse of what her ideas of duty, of decorum, to say nothing of Christian morality, would lead her to recommend to a 'frail sister' under similar circumstances. Were the pretence of religious motive urged by such a person, as a reason for adding to her crime that of deserting the man she had received. as a husband, the Writer would doubtless, were the facts fairly before her, regard such conduct as only an aggravation of delinquency. It was surely unnecessary to have recourse to such an incident, as an illustration of practical Antinomianism. Our Author's design was, we doubt not, good; but we are at a loss, in this instance, to comprehend it. There are many excellent remarks in the volumes, to which we should have pleasure. in adverting, did we consider them in their present form, as a; desirable work to be put into the hands of young persons.