On the Prejudices and Superstitions of the Livonians. 331 and point them out. Perhaps, the magical charm of both consists in the appearance of animated and fervent sincerity, which accompanies the sentiment of what they are delivering; which is not a little aided by the angelic, but somewhat vague and unmeaning smile, which is almost always playing about the lips of both. Finally, it must be confessed, that we are apt soon to get satisfied, if not satiated, with the hearing of both. They surprise and delight us for a time, but are too much beyond our reach, and, perhaps, interfere too much with our self-love, to create a permanent sympathy. Nothing but the exquisite simplicity, and appearance of good nature and sincerity, accompanying both, has permitted them to be tolerated so long as they have." GAIETY. THERE are two kinds of gaiety. The one arises from want of heart:-being touched by no pity, sympathizing with no pain, even of its own causing, it shines and glitters like a frost-bound river in the gleaming sun. The other springs from excess of heart -that is, from a heart overflowing with kindliness towards all men and all things; and, suffering under no superadded grief, it is light from the happiness which it causes-from the happiness which it This may be compared to the same river, sparkling and smiling under the sun of summer-and running on to give fertility and increase to all within, and even to many beyond, its reach. sees.' WRITTEN IN A VALLEY IN GERMANY. Time was, when I had gladly dwelt But now I need the bustling world, To feel how needful 'tis to me. FROM THE LONDON LITERARY GAZETTE. On the Prejudices and Superstitious Ideas of the Peasants of that part of Livonia called Lettland (Lettonia). (In a Letter from Count Bray, Minister from the King of Bavaria at St. Petersburgh.) AT the return of spring, the Lettonian peasant takes care not to expose himself to hear the cuckoo for the first time, either when he is fasting or has no money in his pocket. If this should happen to him, he would believe himself in danger of famine and want for the rest of the year. This is what he calls being bewitched by the cuckoo; he therefore is very guarded to have money about him, and to eat something very early in the morning before he leaves 332 On the Prejudices and Superstitions of the Livonians. his house He has the same fears, and takes the same precautions, on the first arrival of the lapwing. When a hare or a fox crosses his path, he considers it as a bad omen; but if it is a wolf, the omen is favourable. When the Lettonian peasant has taken his fowling piece, and on going out of his house the first person he meets is a woman or a girl, it is a bad sign, and he will have no sport; he therefore returns, and does not proceed till, on going out again, the first he meets is a man or a boy. If he goes out fishing alone, he does not communicate his intention to any body, as that would bring him ill luck. It is only when he wants an assistant that another person, besides the latter, may be informed of it without doing any harm. If he is angling, and having laid his line on the ground somebody treads upon it, he is convinced that he shall never catch any thing with that line. The peasant does not allow any person to admire or praise any thing he possesses, especially his flocks, his poultry, his corn, &c.; he is convinced that every thing so praised will perish. If his cattle are affected by any disease, he does not fail to attribute it to the witchcraft and malevolence of some neighbour: he then takes care to perfume his stables with asafoetida. Their hives are usually placed on the largest trees in the forest, or they make holes in those trees where the bees have settled of themselves. They always take a companion to gather the honey, and they divide the honey and wax with the most scrupulous equality, being convinced that the slightest fraud would cause the bees to emigrate or to die. They ascribe a particular virtue to all plants gathered on Midsummer Eve, for which reason they carefully preserve them, to give to their cattle in case of sickness. Before Midsummer they pluck up all the grass which they give to their cattle in the stable: they are persuaded that if it were cut with a scythe it would make the cows lose their milk. After Midsummer Eve they use the scythe without fear or scruple. On this same Eve, which is more important to them than the holiday itself, no family neglects to bring from the garden and the fields a stock of pot-herbs for the winter. When they happen to find in a field ripe ears of corn crossed in a particular manner, or united in bunches, they ascribe it to the malevolence of some envious person, who has endeavoured to draw sorcery upon their crop. The reaper takes care not to touch such bewitched ears, and passes without cutting them. A great number of the peasants, unfortunately, still entertain the superstitious notion that fire kindled by lightning is not to be extinguished. When such an accident happens they are discouraged, and do hardly any thing to check the progress of the flames. A funeral must never pass through a tilled field, not even in winter, though it might considerably shorten the way. The peasant is fully persuaded that a field through which a funeral has passed becomes barren. Except on extraordinary occasions, no funerals are allowed on Mondays and Fridays. A peasant who is in search of a wife, never goes, except on a Thursday or Sunday, into the house where he expects to make his choice. The bride and bridegroom are not to give their bare hand to any body, on the day of their marriage, except to each other at the altar; otherwise they are threatened with poverty during the whole course of their union. It is also a very bad sign, if when the bride returns from church, she finds any body on the threshold of her door. When a young girl finds a leaf of trefoil divided into four instead of three parts, it is a sign that she will be married within the year; at all events she carefully preserves this leaf till her wedding day. If on the 1st of February the sun shines only so long as is necessary to saddle a horse, they expect fine weather for hay-making. On Christmas Eve the countrymen are accustomed to drive about a great deal in sledges: they think that this will cause their hemp to be more abundant, and higher: they do not fail to visit the alehouse, and to drink heartily, the same evening, being convinced that this is a way to make them look well till the following Christ mas. In summers when flies are abundant, they expect an ample crop of buckwheat; and if the prunus padus is thickly covered with blossoms, they expect a very rainy summer. The Lettonians never destroy crickets by fire, being persuaded that those which escape will destroy their linen and clothes. When a peasant loses his way in a wood after sunset, he avoids calling any person to show him the way, being convinced that in that case the evil spirit of the forest would cause him to plunge still deeper into its recesses. When the peasants intend to build a house, they carefully observe what species of ant first appears on the spot, or seems to be common in the neighbourhood: if it is the common large ant (formica rufa, Linn.) or the black ant, they build without difficulty; but if it is the little red ant (formica rubra, Linn.) they choose another place. NAPOLEON, as first Consul of the French Republic, took his place among the sovereigns of Europe.-As such, his character and actions now form one of the most interesting topics in the range of historical investigation. When a deputation from the town of Capua waited upon Terentius Varro, with an address of condolence upon the defeat at Cannæ, the beaten Consul, in his reply, implored them to be firm in their fidelity to Rome, and among other arguments, did not omit to assure them that Hannibal was altogether a most fiendlike personage -that he was in the habit of building bridges and mounds of human bodies, and had actually initiated his savage troops in the practice of feeding upon human flesh. During the fourteen years of Napoleon's formidable ascendancy, it was a standing point of policy to cheer the efforts of his enemies by similar calumnies: in proportion as we became alarmed, we became abusive; every new victory, or master-stroke of policy on his part, was the signal for fresh levies of libels upon ours; and to such an extreme of contumely had we arrived, and so popular had this mode of carrying on the war become, that ten years ago every man who wished to be considered a friend to his king and country, felt bound to admit that Bonaparte was a monster in human shape-that he poisoned his soldiers, murdered his prisoners, betrayed his friends, was brutally insulting to subjugated kings and queens-in a word, that he was so irretrievably and inordinately vicious, that, for example sake, no well-conducted person should ever mention his name without a thrill of execration. Bút he has since fallen, and is now in his grave, and his character and actions may at length be spoken of with something like the impartiality which the future historian will not refuse the most extraordinary being of the modern world. Napoleon's talents have been seldom questioned. They were of so high and rare an order, that finding no one of his own age with whom to compare him, we must resort to the few great names of the human race-Hannibal, Alexander, Cæsar, Charlemagne-conquerors, legislators, founders of empire-men of universal renown. The conspicuous qualities of his mind were energy and sagacityintellectual hardihood to conceive vast designs, and boundless fertility in creating and applying the means to attain them. He was equally eminent in war and policy; and his achievements in both were marked by far less of accident and adventurous experiment than was once imagined. He went into battle with an assurance of success founded upon previous, and for the most part unerring calculations. This was the secret of his confidence in his fortune. He compared, as if it were an abstract scientific question, the physical and moral forces of his troops with those arrayed against him, and where he found the former preponderate, gave the word to march and conquer. The most unskilled in military science may collect this from the general tenor of the volumes before us. Throughout, when discussing the various battles he had won, he appears to claim credit, not so much for having been actually victorious when once the conflict had begun, as for having by previous arrangements and combinations brought the certain means of victory to the field. He was persuaded, and could not afterwards divest himself of the conviction, that he had done this at Waterloo; and hence his expression, so much ridiculed by those who mistake its real import, that he, and not Wellington, ought to have gained the day. The same qualities of mind, the same preparatory forethought in speculation, and energy in action, and for a long time the same success, distinguished him as a statesman. His boldness here, as in the field, was the result of profound calculations, through which none but the most penetrating and combining intellect, could have passed. His saying was, that in all his great measures, "he marched at the head of large masses of opinion." This military allusion illustrates the genius of his civil policy. In all his projects, whether foreign or domestic, he marshalled the passions and opinions that sided with him, computed their numerical and moral force, and where he found they must prevail, advanced at the charge-step to his object. In a word, he manoeuvred the national mind as he would a great army; and having had the art of persuading the citizen, as well as the soldier, that he was leading him on to glory, he exacted alike from both, and met with the same measure of discipline and subordination. po Under Napoleon's government there was a suspension of political liberty in France. His maxim was that the few should plan, and the many acquiesce and execute. He established and encouraged free discussion in the cabinet, but he discountenanced all pular interference in state measures, as he would a spirit of mutinous dictation in the camp. We are no advocates for this mode of rule; but in speaking of the despotism of Napoleon as a personal crime, we should in fairness remember that he was accountable for it to his subjects and not his enemies, and that they were content to overlook its rigour for the many benefits it imparted. He asserts that his government was "eminently popular." He surely did much to make it so. He rescued France from the sway of the demagogue. He consolidated the national energies, and forced them into channels that led to national objects. He made talent the surest road to distinction. He was the patron of unbounded religious toleration. Under his reign no Frenchman could be molested and degraded upon the fantastic doctrine, that certain dogmas had certain remote and influential tendencies which should disqualify for the enjoyment of civil rights. He framed a comprehensive and intelligible code of laws (the greatest want of modern nations), in which he justly gloried as a lasting monument of his concern for the public good. These and his other great acts of general utility attached the French to his government, despotic as it was, and rendered them the willing instruments of his schemes of aggrandizement, in the products of which they were themselves to share. We have stopped to offer these remarks, because we feel that it is not to the glory of England to depreciate this extraordinary man. Her real glory consists in having withstood the shock of his genius -in having so long resisted his imperial pretensions and asserted her own against a confederacy of hostile powers, such as no people uninspired by the pride and energy of freedom could have braved |