victim, reduced to the extreme of languor, by protracted and accumulated misfortunes. Let us, however, hope for better days; and that the sun of England's glory will, ere long, extend a portion of its generous rays to depressed Italy!

Indeed, I cannot help entertaining a belief, that the friends of suffering humanity will not relax an iota of their exertions, until the entire of that magnificent country shall have had its injuries redressed-a country, compared with which the much vaunted France is a mere warren, a cheerless desert, a bleak and hungry waste. Not that I mean to represent the latter kingdom as a barren wilderness, if duly cultivated I only wish to throw out, that France, and, generally speaking, the soil of all the other countries of Europe, are sterile, when brought in competition with Venetian Lombardy, and other portions of the territory of the former Queen of the terraqueous globe. During the summer season, almost every tree in it is loaded with fruit of the most delicious quality. In despite of neglect, and of obstacles of all sorts, the earth teems with every blessing which Providence, in his bounty, has bestowed on his creatures; and that in such abundance, as to astonish every traveller coming from beyond the Alps.

But, "for whose use," I ask, is the sky of Italy so pure-its air so mild and serene-its earth so prolific? Hear the answer of Austria:

"'Tis for mine;

For me kind Nature wakes her genial pow'r,
Suckles each herb, and spreads out ev'ry flow'r;
Annual for me the grape, the rose, renew
The juice nectarious, and the balmy dew;
For me the mine a thousand treasures brings,
For me health gushes from a thousand springs;
Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise;
My footstool earth, my canopy the skies."

O, what delightful country seats could the English, with their excellent taste for laying out grounds, erect in Italy; where it is quite common to see bowers formed of the lime-tree and the vine, bending under a superabundant product! In proof of my assertion, I appeal to every one who has been fortunate enough to see the grounds of the English gentry settled in Italy; for instance, the gardens of my friend and countrywoman, the Countess de Durfort, who resides at a short distance from Venice.

And then, again, as to paintings and the other productions of the fine arts; more of them are to be met with in any one of the great cities of Italy-Rome, Florence, Venice, &c.,

than in all France-throwing Germany into the bargain!

To behold regions on every side thus rich and populous, groaning under a yoke forged for them by hordes of drowsy, lubberly Austrians, who come down in droves from the Tyrolean mountains, at all seasons of the year, with packs on their backs, containing scarcely a second garment, to the dismay of the poor Italian, who therein foresees, with renewed anguish, the augmentation of his own miseries, and the metamorphosis, in the space of two or three years, of these beggarly intruders, into stern, and hard-hearted, and wealthy proprietors to behold, I say, this fine, intelligent people mixed up with the dull, clod-hopping Germans, reminds one of the amalgamation of lead with quicksilver; the jumbling together of masses the most heterogeneous. We often hear of the marriage of a beautiful and accomplished female to a clumsy boor or a drunken sot; and of the union of a man of sober disposition and enlightened understanding with a fiery virago, a very Zantippe, who stamps and storms about the house, while the worthy husband is calmly occupied in solving some difficult problem appertaining to the regions of intellect—recalling to our recollection the actual existence of the

iron age, and the wars of the Titans against heaven-the attempt, in short, to repress and subdue spirit by gross and inert matter.

Of the various nations of Europe, the Germans are the most doltish, the Italians the most sprightly; and the approximation of the two affords a fresh instance of the contact which frequently takes place between extremes. Such a state of things, however, is never lasting. Either an amelioration of condition, or an entire separation between the parties must take place. And, confident I am, that the very first Englishman who shall fly to the rescue of the fair dames of Italy, will find them impatient for flight, and eager to escape from the tobacco fumes, and the gin, and the sauer kroute, and the other German messes; not to mention the innumerable restraints, past all endurance, imposed on them by their detested paramours.

For my part, I am at all times inclined to trust very much to national character; and, as Englishmen are well known to be as prompt in lending their assistance to suffering humanity, as they are alive to the slightest rumour of delinquency, we may reasonably look for the beneficial interference of the British Government, as soon as it shall become truly instructed, with respect to the real condition of Italy, and

the miserable plight to which a horde of unrelenting tyrants have reduced her, by their unheard-of cruelties and their most atrocious exactions.

CHAPTER XV.

VENICE.

German Attempts to improve Italian Edifices......Enumeration of the Distresses occasioned at Venice by the wretched state of the Coinage.

ONLY the other year all Venice was in a state of agitation, from the Austrians having taken it into their precious noddles to place the entire city on fresh legs. In other words, the wiseacres discovered, that some of the houses stood in need of new foundations. And, sure enough, the streets have assumed an appearance at once straight, formal, and monotonous-stiff as a file of musketeers, and (to give Old Nick his due) certainly somewhat more cleanly than they were accustomed to be. But, why these same external alterations should have been set on foot, while the means of replenishing the inside of the habitations were unfeelingly with