examine his authorities, and learn for themselves whether or not Virgil describes black night as brooding on the waters. Were it not that the other parts of the book contradict such a suspicion, we should have thought that these quotations had been "looked up" for Mr. Marvel, by some village pedagogue in a clavis.

As we have commenced finding fault, we will finish. Mr. Marvel is so strong an admirer of Sterne, that he sometimes becomes an imitator. The description of ill-health dogging him through England, is too much like Sterne's race from death.

Then, by heaven! I will lead him a dance he little thinks of; for I will gallop, quoth I, without once looking behind me, to the banks of the Garrone; and if I hear him clattering at my heels, I'll scamper away to Mount Vesuvius, from thence to Joppa, and from Joppa to the world's end." So too the purchase of gloves from the grisette reminds one of Yorick's admirable description of a similar incident, and has the bad effect which an apparent imitation always has, though it be unintentional.

Mr. Marvel occasionally indulges himself in the use of quaint and unusual words, and sometimes coins them to suit occasion. We can generally guess at their meaning, and yet we prefer words which can be found in the dictionary. Thus he speaks of an "insinuous breeze;" insinuating, we suppose that he meant, for we cannot find that "insinuous" has English, French, or Latin authority. Thus too we read of the "glisten of the waves;" an expression which one of the Reviews proposed to change into "glister of the waves." If, as Webster says, "glister" is only another form for "clyster," we cannot think that the change would be an improvement to our author's meaning. With the same taste, he must needs speak of buildings "cropping," "lifting," and "toppling," meaning by these words very little more than simply rising.

But to return: Mr. Marvel spends a month or two on the Island of Jersey, at the little cottage, La Solitude; a place which, from his description, we do not wonder that he loved.

"The very first time that I swung open the green gate that opens on the by-way, and brushed through the laurel bushes, and read the name modestly written over the door, and under the arbor that was flaunting in the dead of winter, with rich green ivy leaves, my heart yearned towards it, as toward a home." "The noise from the road turned into a pleasant murmur before it reached the cottage, for it had to pass over the high walls of my neighbor's garden, and over his beds of cauliflowers, and his broad alleys trimmed with box."

Then we find him in Paris: and this is decidedly the best part of the book. His descriptions of Parisian life are novel and picturesque; and though he is upon an old field, his motto is a true one; "I will make mention of what others have not touched upon." We cannot refrain from extracting some passages; and as one we

select this description of the maisons garnies and their mysterious

ness.

"Sometimes you meet the garçon of a cook or baker in the court, with a cover in his hand that smells of dinner: he disappears down one of the corridors, you never know where. Sometimes you meet a fair-faced girl, and she goes tripping up the slanting and crooked stairway a long way before you, and as you pass, the doors are all shut, not a lock stirs, not even her light foot-fall is to be heard. Sometimes in the flush of the morning you may hear steps passing your door-perhaps whispers you dress in haste to have a peep through the key-hole-the gray corridor is empty, and still as death-you look out the window, if by chance it looks upon the court; nothing is stirring. You go down stairs at your breakfast time, in half expectation that your concierge's look will be full of revelations: he bids you good morning with the same nonchalance as on the first day you saw him, and takes your key and hangs it on its nail, and you stroll down the court biting your lip. Sometimes, late at night, when you have been two hours asleep, you hear a heavy tramp come up the stairway, and a heavy foot go shaking the corridor: tramp, tramp; it mounts the stairs at the end; tramp, tramp; along the corridor above: who it is, where it goes, you know as little when you come away, as when you enter a hotel garni. The month or year ended, you pay your bill, nobody is looking to see you off, nobody knows you are going, nobody knows you had come; the concierge bids you bon jour, hangs your key on its peg, and all goes on as strangely, as silently, as mysteriously as before."

Can any thing give a better notion than this, of the peculiarities of Parisian lodging-houses? And if one would know where the lodger in such a house is to get his meals, let him read the lively description of the cafés and restaurants of various grades, from the Trois Frères down to the

"Huge pot, boiling from twelve to six, filled with such choice. tit-bits, as draw every day, scores of adventurers. A huge iron fork lies across the mouth of the cauldron, and whoever wishes to make the venture, pays two sous for a strike. If he succeeds in transfixing a piece of beef, (or what passes for beef in the dialect of the quartier,) he has achieved his dinner, and at a low rate: albeit he has it in his fingers without sauce or corrective."

Well may Mr. Marvel (if he writes from observation in all cases,) triumph in the liberty which one possesses who travels, as he did, alone: the freedom from incumbrances, and aristocratic pretensions. And well may he rejoice in the independence with which he used that freedom, throwing off the flimsy rôle of respectability, and wandering over the city in a pair of stout English shoes. How few among the many of our young men who visit Europe, follow this example. They travel through France and Italy; are absent a

year or more, to the great detriment of their purses, or their fathers' and too often come back with-what-a Parisian coat, and a gross of white kid gloves; fortunate if they bring back nothing worse. They value their journeying as they do their dress, by the price it costs them; and think that the more they pay for it, the better it must be. And thus travel which should enlarge and liberalize their minds, fills them, in fact, with nothing but the recollection of Parisian tailors, and Parisian dissipation.

With a brief quotation, describing the extensive and permeating (if we may use the word,) power of the Prefeit of the Police, we must leave Mr. Marvel's description of Paris, regretting, however, in passing, that so good a farmer, and so graceful a writer, as he is, should ever "winnow sermons through a colander," as he does in his remarks on the religion of the gay city.

"If you drive a cabriolet, he (the Prefect of the Police,) tells you what is to be paid; if you ride to the Opera, he tells you the streets you are to pass through; if you lose your way, he puts you right; if you lose your money, he finds it for you; if you break a law, he slips his arm in yours, and walks with you down to the Palais de Justice; if you are trampled down in the street, he plucks you up, and gives you over to his surgeon; if you tumble into the Seine, he kindly fishes you out, and carefully lays your body upon one of the slanting tables in La Morgue."

From Paris we follow Mr. Marvel through some of "the country towns of France," Lyons, Rouen, Marseilles, and others; and then start in "a gallop through southern Austria. Here, in a visit to the cave at Adelsberg, two miles within the mountain, he makes his guide, Boldo, tell a very tragical story, which, be it true or not, is, we confess with Cameron, "a devilish good story." The accidental extinguishment of the torch, as the party stood on the edge of the precipice above the roaring waters, in the heart of the mountain, forms a very dramatic epilogue to the story.

In middle Austria, Mr. Marvel meets what seems to him an old friend-one of Norris's Philadelphia locomotives. American locomotives in England, in Russia, in Austria, and soon, probably, in Rome, whizzing up to the Vatican! It is a thing to be proud of, more than of Mexican victories, that this young country, where the stumps of primæval forest trees still make the plowman's furrow crooked; where are no resources but such as strong hands can wring from a strong soil, whose greatest cities, and stateliest buildings, are humble in comparison with the magnificence of the Austrian capitol; that this young country can turn aside from its labor of subduing the forests, and send a huge locomotive three thousand miles across the ocean, and then still farther into the very centre of Austria, to scream through the rugged defiles of Styria, amid thatched cottages and ruined castles, and carry the subjects of the proud house of Hapsburg, from ancient Gratz to where once stood the Roman station, Vindobona, and now stands princely Vienna.

It is more than a thing to be proud of, it is a thing to rejoice over, for it strengthens the bond of mutual dependence between nations; a surer guaranty of peace and brotherhood, than paper treaties, or national faith.

From Austria Mr. Marvel goes to take "a pipe with the Dutchmen," through Dresden and Hamburg, Bremen and Amsterdam, interspersing his descriptions of the quiet burghers, with several old legends, well told, and well worth the telling. We wish that we could find room for the few pages upon the little town of Broek, 'where eight hundred neighbors live, and make things so neat, hat strangers come a thousand miles for a look at the wondrous nicety; where "little yards were before the houses, and these stocked with all sorts of forms, and so clean-walks, beds, and flowers-that a passing sparrow could not have trimmed his feathers in the plat, without bringing out a toddling Dutch wife with her broom." What would one of the inhabitants of that neatest of all places think to see some of our cities, which, except before elections, are never cleaned by any other scavengers than swine! But we cannot delay, and must float back from Broek with Mr. Marvel along the canal, at evening twilight, and catch a glimpse of Dutch county life.

"The women were seated at the low doors knitting, or some belated ones were squatting like frogs on the edge of the canal, scrubbing their coppers, till they shone in the red light of sun-set, brighter than the moon. Our skipper, with his pipe, sitting to his tiller, would pass a sober good "eben" to every passer on the dyke, and to every old Dutchman smoking at his door; and every passer on the dyke, and every smoking Dutchman at his door, would solemnly bow good "eben" back. Nothing more was said. One could hear the rustling of the reeds along the bank as our boat pushed a light wave among them. Far in advance-a black tall figure-the boy was moving on his horse, but he did not break the silence by a word. The man in the bow was quiet, and we were so still behind, that I could count every whiff of the skipper's pipe. The people were coming up through the low-meadows from their work, and occasionally some old women harnessed to a boat load of hay in a side canal."

It is with regret that we close this volume. Though it can hardly be considered a regular book of travels, and though it would never answer for a guide-book, yet it is so full of agreeable descriptions, old legends, and historical allusions, that since "Eothen," we have not read any book of its kind with greater pleasure. Its charm is, (as the charm of every such book must be,) that the author's heart is in it. His enthusiasm is not whipped sylabub. He has treasured up in his inmost soul the memory of those sweet English cottages, to which his heart yearns; and of the old inn at Ermebridge, with its pheasant wood, where the pheasants steal out and "stretch out a wing or leg to sun on a soft bit of the gravel;" he

has felt the charm which history gives to places made memorable by great deeds. And he has felt this as, we fancy, no one but a traveller from this young land, can feel it. We have here no antiquities, and we are so far separated from the scenes of European history, that the England and France of former times seem to us almost to belong to another planet, and to have no connection with the England and France of our commerce. But to stand on the very spot to say here reigned Louis XIV.-here streamed the guillotine here gathered the armies for Waterloo-this has a fresh charm for the traveller who comes from our infant country, which no one can feel who is familiar with places long renowned in story.

We are indebted to Mr. Marvel for some happy hours. He has brought vividly before our minds many foreign scenes, and has brightened some old recollections. Under the magic of his volume the dull walls and dusty books around us have faded away, and we have seemed to be walking with him and Sidney under the trees of the Boulevards; or sauntering with them under other trees where the adjoining buildings were not of stone, but of dirty brick; and where sergent-de-ville or trim grisette would have seemed to be a being from another world. But this day dream is soon over, and leaves us only the sigh

Eheu! fugaces, Postume, Postume,
Labuntur anni.

GLEANINGS FROM MY JOURNAL.

A NIGHT IN MILAN.

BY BLUE JOHN.

"Well, here we are at Milan, sir! pray what hour may it be?" asked one of my fellow-travellers, touching me familiarly upon the back. "Just half-past eleven," I answered, moving towards a lamp to get sight of the dial of my watch. "A beautiful timepiece, that!" exclaimed the querist, peering over my shoulder; then as if a sudden idea had broken in upon him, "ah! and where do you put up to-night?" "I'm a stranger in Milan, and have fixed upon no particular hotel." "What say you to the Ainn?" suggested in an off-hand way my neighbor, drawing me a few paces from the now fast-dispersing group of travellers. Casting a hasty look at his keen black eye, and hairy face, I hesitated, he turned to button up his coat, and while so doing, the handle of a dirk protruded from his breast, our eyes met, and half-ashamed No. 4.

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