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much for the picturesque: and as for the substantial, John Bull will infallibly gather from his travels, that the best wine he ever tasted, was that which he paid for at home. Few will deny the olive to be the ugliest of all evergreens, and of the fruit we are not much enamoured. So much for the two shrubs that have such an effect on our imaginations. Were we to believe our poets, we should suppose that the soil of Italy was covered with flowers, whereas those gifts of gay nature are more rare here than in any country I know of. In summer there is not a blade of green grass in the field, much less a flower in the garden, and in more temperate months I have seen two shillings given for a rose. And this country has been called, not in irony, the garden of Europe, a country, burned to aridity six months of the year, and a great part of it frozen during its winter with a cold more rigid than ours, a country, one half of which is by nature incapable of cultivation, and a remaining quarter, perhaps, without it, from the ignorance and laziness of its inhabitants.

The sights of Florence are its churches and galleries. Of the former, though all are magnificent in plan, there is scarcely one finished; and the three principal churches are without fronts, and have exhibited for centuries the same mean, ragged brick-work.

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Santa Croce, in spite of its beggarly front, is the real cynosure of travellers:

"Here repose

Angelo's, Alfieri's bones, and his,

The starry Galileo, with his woes;

Here Machiavelli's earth, returned to whence it rose."

What wretched tomb-builders we are in England! After Santa Croce and St. Peter's, who can think of our Poet's Corner without blushing? When we come from England with the memory of our tablets, squares, and parings of marble, we are struck with the massy magnificence of Italian monuments-indeed the flowing drapery of one of the figures in any of Canova's monuments, might furnish forth marble sufficient to record and illustrate a million of our illustrious dead. However, in this there is often an excess, especially at St. Peter's; and even the tomb of Alfieri here appears, from its mass, heavy without ornament, yet not simple. Nothing is fit in the monument of Alfieri, but the place of his burial. Santa Croce was his favourite haunt, especially at vesper hour; as a living poet of Italy has described in one of his finest passages:

"A questi' marmi

Venne spesso Vittorio ad ispicarsi.

Irato a patrii Numi, errava muto

Ove Arno è più deserto, i campi e il cielo
Desioso mirando: e poi che nullo
Vivente aspetto gli molcea la cura,
Qui posava l'austero."

FOSCOLO.-I SEPOLCRI.

Here also lies Aretin, the first of wags. But altogether, when we recollect that this is the chosen temple, where the Florentines record their gratitude towards those citizens that honoured their name, the paucity of monuments, and their date compared with the death of their subjects, do but recall the ingratitude, bigotry, and indifference of the ci-devant republic

See nations slowly wise and meanly just,

To buried merit raise the tardy bust.

Dante, Petrarch, and Boccacio were Florentines; but where repose the all Etruscan three? How long was it ere friendly perseverance could raise a monument to Galileo, who dared to preach that the sun stood still? I cannot look on Santa Croce, but as a kind of ironical comment on Sismondi and the upholders of Etruscan heroism.

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Florence, besides the public libraries, which are numerous and celebrated, possesses an excellent reading-room, where we exiles devour English papers and periodicals. Liked the Quarterly's cold and clever review of Byron's tragedies. By the bye, I saw a bust here, which his lordship sat for not long since. He seems, like Napoleon, to get fat upon renown; it is to be hoped, that his spirit will not, like Nap's, partake of his engourdissement. To look on the pictures and busts that we have of Byron, it is difficult not to recall the end he anticipates for the bard,

“A name, a wretched picture, and worse bust."

Thorwalsden's bust of Byron, you would mistake for that of a lady -it is so very feminine, and withal unmarked and inane; yet Matthews vowed it very like. The canvas of Messrs. Harlowe, Philips, and Westall, tells a different story-however, it should be remembered, that Thorwalsden is about the worst bust-builder in Europe.

Florence can boast the most liberal periodical work in Italy. Although the Biblioteca of Milan reckons Monti and other celebrated names amongst its contributors, yet the Austrian censorship is a weight too oppressive for any degree of genius; so that the poor Biblioteca has become a mere snivelling dilettanti. The Antologia of Florence, though still weak and infantine, takes a stronger tone of respectability every day; and the mild government of Tuscany allows lucubrations to pass unchecked, that would raise a hue and cry in any other part of Italy. An article that appeared in it lately, examining a miracle just performed at Areggo, has not a little astonished and enraged the monks, whom the government has not indulged by granting their "measure of revenge." But periodical works in a country where there is no thought, no education, nor press, nor life, nor interest, are but vain endeavours. The men of letters begin thus at the wrong end. But they wish to excite serious thought, say they, and to awaken VOL. III. No. 13.-Museum. L

an interest for grave and important subjects; and, in consequence, indite terrible long essays on agriculture and political economy. they are very devils, too, at morality, and flatter themselves with having concocted a strong number, when they have crammed it half full of ethics-after this comes a desert of antiquities by way of relief-they print, and marvel that their dandies won't subscribe, and that ladies won't read them. The literary circle of Florence is rather more liberal towards foreign literature than the rest of Italy; and Leoni, who is for ever translating our best authors, supplies this taste of theirs with sufficient food. On the contrary, Pesticari and his society of pedants were deadly averse to all innovations, and hated translations from foreign tongues, more even than they hated their enemies, the Cruscans; and while all the rest of Italy hastened to read, and admire, and welcome the Italian translations of the Scotch Novels, the Giornale Arcadico, which Pesticari had established at Rome, assailed not only the novels, but Sir Walter Scott, the supposed author, with gross abuse, calling him a cold-blooded Scotchman, whose genius and productions were, notwithstanding, quite good enough for the "Ultimi Boreali" he wrote for. Among the Cruscans, there is none of this bigotry and barbarism; they know how to appreciate the literature of other nations, without being blind to the merits of their own; and if they do not reckon among their number a partizan of merit equal to Monti, they are not disgraced by a character so venal and base. Florence, indeed, though of late preeminence has been denied to her, is still the Athens of Italy; and in the three-fold night, that distraction, ignorance, and misfortune, have spread over this ill-fated peninsula, she raises herself as the most civilized, the most Italian, the most liberal, and also the most happy among her sister cities.

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Six weeks of everlasting rain, fog, and ennui, had put the finishing stroke to my disgust of Italy, for which even the vaunted Carnival could offer no remedy. The Italians are the worst and most witless maskers imaginable. They disguise themselves, not for the love of fun or amusement, but with the most serious intention of admiring themselves. Of a joke or repartee they have not the slightest idea. Even the vulgar wit of the populace does not exist among them, if we except, perhaps, the Lazzaroni of Naples. Routs and balls, Rome has enough during Carnival; but what a dull fête, and often worse than dull! English aristocrats acting the connoisseur, hunting studios and talking vertu-Italian princes Englified even to the scrupulous fold of the cravat-and Italian ladies preferring the springing grenadier step of the English belle, to the winning gait of the more elegant Parisian. But there is a numerous class of English in Italy, that to me is more disgusting than that of any nation-Turk or Jew. It is singular how much the individuals resemble each other-sleek, small fortuned, middleaged men, who have spent the better part of their lives in the

taverns of London; and who, in English society, never arrived further than the Burton ale-house and the brothel. How these fellows found their way to Italy, Heaven knows! but in Florence they swarm, and at Rome during Carnival. In England, their profession was Corinthianism, when that sect was in its glory; but now they scorn the bottle; real pleasures are too low for their refined appetites-women are all their aim-and they here reckon Countesses and Marchionnesses on their fingers' ends with the same ostentatious memory, that formerly registered the nightly visitants of our upper boxes. To hear these owners of one coat and two ideas enumerating their conquests among Italian matrons, and making their calculations for fresh ones, with that cold-blooded brutality, that in general distinguishes and debases, beyond all other people, the immoral Englishman, is enough to make one heartily join Byron, though from very different reasons, in his disgust towards our countrymen in Italy.

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I quitted Rome in the midst of rain, which had already lasted a fortnight, and which continued for a month longer. What a delightful climate!-Broiled one half of the year, and basted the other. We could get nothing to eat the first night of our journey but thrushes, the favourite and most esteemed game of Italian sportsmen. We spoke indecently (that being the mode of swearing here,) to mine host-all in vain-the country produced nothing but thrushes. Next day presented us the lake of Bolsena, famous for eels and the picturesque. Some pope, as Dante records, died of the former. The wine at Monte Fiascone is good, and the people honest. I forgot my watch there, and they forwarded it on to me to Florence. Acquapendente is singular: The rocks on which it is perched are crowned and festooned with myrtle, which, in this winter month, forms an agreeable contrast with the bleak Appenines, the torrents, and the cold-Passed the summits of Radicofani, covered with snow. What a villanous country! Barren, bleak, hilly, yet insipid. But we enter Tuscany-the inns grow better, the damsels prettier, and the heart rejoices at having escaped from the empire of the priesthood

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Genoa is a city of palaces, picturesquely and beautifully situated, if the mountains immediately over and around it were not completely bare. The women are certainly the healthiest, best formed, and handsomest of Italy. But fair complexions are so frequent, that one is inclined to deny their Italian origin.

"Ahi Genovese, uomini diversi,"

says Dante, and a great sea-port must produce that mixture of

race

"Which spoils the blood, but much improves the breed."

Lady Montague asserts, that cicisbeism, or, as she spells it according to Genoese pronunciation, cizibeism, began in Genoa-I know not how true. She also says, "The ladies affect the French habit, and are more genteel than those they imitate." She is right; for if there be danger in ladies' eyes, there is no more perilous pass than the Strada Balbe.

SHERIDAN.

Mr. Sheridan always lived and acted without any regular system for the government of his conduct; the consequence was, as might have been expected, that he became the sport of capricious friendship, and when the winter of his days approached, he experienced the mutability of political connexions, and the folly of neglecting those resources which can alone support the mind in every exigency, and minister to its comfort in the dreariness of solitude. Home, though the abode of domestic virtue and affection, was no longer safe to a man so long known and so much courted by numerous applicants, to avoid whose troublesome inquiries, and to gain a respite from anxiety, he passed much of his time in coffee-houses and taverns. Frequent inebriety was the result of such a course of life; and the effects of it upon his constitution, which had been naturally a very robust one, soon appeared in his countenance and his manners. Yet, sinking as he now was into the lowest state of human declension, occasional sallies of humour escaped him, even when he was unable to stand, or scarcely to articulate. Coming very late one night out of a tavern, he fell, and being too much overtaken with liquor to recover his feet, he was raised by some passengers, who asked his name, and place of abode; to which he replied, by referring to a coffee house, and hiccuping that he was Mr. Wil-ber-force.

The first article in Blackwood's Magazine for March, is entitled Candid, No. 2, and is a review of the second number of the Liberal. Letters from Italy, Nos. 5 and 6 have furnished us with an article for this number. From Valperga and Cibber's Apology we have made extracts for next number. The next article is a favourable review of Rose's Orlando Innamorato-with specimens.—Next is a dramatic representation, entitled King Jamie and the Sleeping Preacher, in which his majesty detects the falsehood of the preacher's claims to the miraculous gift, which, in our own country, belonged to Miss Rachel Baker. The following is the successful apology.

"Haddock. Your Majesty is, I understand, aware that I am a fellow of Exeter College, in Oxford. Now, I have an uncle, down in the West, from whom I expect an ample patrimony, but he has ever been so bent on my obtaining the reputation of a good preacher, and especially among my colleagues at the University,

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