and twelve cannon were dismounted close to the spot where he stood. An extraordinary event happened in the field, worthy of the magnitude of a conflict on which hung the fate of nations. The Saxon troops, to the amount of 8000, infantry and cavalry, with twenty-two pieces of cannon, were seen suddenly abandoning the French lines, marching over to the allies, and turning their guns against the corps of Regnier. England, too, had her share in this great encounter. A company of her artillery gave the first example of using rockets in the field; and such was the terror of those formidable instruments of havoc, that, on their first discharge, a French brigade threw down their arms. The French, now driven upon Leipsic, fought furiously for their last resource; the suburb Schoenfield was taken and lost five times. At length a sixth attack placed it in the hands of the Russians; it cost the French four thousand men. Night fell at last, on a plain covered with fifty thousand human beings, dead or dying. Such is the work of war, and such is the price of ambition. Has the tongue of man language to describe the guilt that provokes such horrors? or is there any condemnation less than the outpouring of the stores of divine vengeance, adequate to the punish ment of the atrocious heart which thus buys human distinction? Yet even this did not fill up the roll of sacrifices to the vanity of Napoleon. The loss of the French during the three days' battle and retreat, was not less than 60,000 men. The loss of the Allies was not less than 40,000. Of these 100,000 fellow-beings, every man might have been alive and uninjured, if such had been the will of the French Emperor, but three days before.

Next morning at daybreak, the Allies prepared to storm Leipsic; but the French were already in retreat. They were instantly pushed over the Elster. The original fault of the position now exhibited itself in the impossibility of escape by the single bridge across the river. The result was, that upwards of twenty generals, with nearly 30,000 prisoners, were taken; 250 pieces of cannon, 900 waggons and chariots, captured in the various conflicts, were the allied trophies. In the afternoon, the sovereigns, with their staffs, entered the city, and met

in the principal square. War never displayed a more consummate triumph, or a nobler scene. All was rejoicing among the people, and they glanced after the cloudy retreat of the French columns, as if they had seen the spirits of evil winging their way from the land, and the sky of Germany cleared for ever.

But we must uow close our sketch, by merely mentioning that the latter portion of the volume gives the narrative of those gallant achievements by which the British army swept Soult over the Pyrenees, and uncovered the "intangible" frontier.

The

In our remarks on the performance of the historian, we have scarcely alluded to the vividness and variety of his narrative. The public have already had sufficient evidence of the skill and animation of his style. Where we differed from his views, we differed with hesitation-where we agreed, we received additional conviction from the force and feeling of his philosophy. But we are simply speaking the fact, when we say, that we have read the whole volume with the interest of a fine romance. subject itself unquestionably administers largely to the enthusiasm of literature. The conflicts of nations; the tremendous powers of rival thrones urged into collision, like encountering planets; the prodigious ability displayed on all sides; and even the frightful havoc of human life, invest the whole subject with a wild and awful grandeur, that seems scarcely to belong to the transactions of our temporary world. We seem to be present at the convulsions of more than empires, and the final hours of more than dynasties; the struggles of those energies which exhibit themselves but faintly in their mortal representatives, and the rise and fall of mightier de positories of power, than wear the diadems of earth. We have never doubted that the French Revolution had a deeper birth than even the sullen bosoms of its homicides; and we as little doubt, that its extinction was wrought by influences as much superior in power and penetration to man, as its origin was profound, malignant, vast, and terrible.

Still, to have wielded such a subject with due mastery is distinguished praise, and we look with impatience for the next volume of Mr Alison.

"Jumenta vocant

AND we too are weary of Rome, of Cardinals, and Carnivals, and Easters! There is no place from which, when all is over, one more heartily desires to depart-hot weather is coming on with incredible rapidity, striped awnings are spread across the streets, coffee-house chairs are turned out of doors, lemonade booths, with their revolving ice-barrels, are taking up permanent summer stations, strawberries are at a discount, green almonds and other green things abound, and two or three minor fountains threaten to play no more for the season. Every house is now avowedly, but in a vain avowal, a lodging-house. Spilman will make no more mince-pies, nor English buns, for eight months to come; and even the English doctors are gone! The cunning Italian has parted with his last gem! his trashy mosaics and cameos are withdrawn from the windows; and two days hence the shops for English sauces and pickles will tempt no more! The last English sermon has been preached; no one is reading in the readingroom. Men with return pianofortes on their shoulders are met descending the Scalinata, and huge hungry dogs and unsaddled couriers are every where about the piazza; the sore hack, who has during the winter been galloped over the whole Latin wilderness, is left to graze upon it. The hotels are all but empty; the yellow fly-specked card-rack of the Novem

-eundum est."—Juv.

ber" arrivals," is no longer legible; and when one inmate goes, it can no longer be said, "simili frondescat virga metello." A few belated tourists may indeed drop in, hurrying on or back from Naples, and liable, if they don't take care, to be kept here longer than they intend, by a touch of malaria. The first batch of voituriers are already returned from Florence, and wait in very moderate hopes of contracting for a second journey thither. The premises of Grant, the English agent, are encumbered with purchases left to be forwarded. Fifteen very pale Cencis, all first-rate; ten Sybils, elaborately bad; the usual batch of Fornarinas; Fauns with, and Venuses without foliage; engravings, as untrue to art in general as to Rome in particular; body-colour eruptions of Vesuvius, and yellow illuminations of St Peter's; "Scipio's" tomb, in sizes for all purchasers, to collect dust on London mantelpieces; wild boars with pens stuck in their ears; green lizards opening their mouths for wet pens, and dwarfish obelisks the size of nine-pins. Quæ cum ita sint, we will take our last walk on the Pincian, all radiant as it now is with fire-flies, and leave Rome to the select few who, calling themselves old Romans, affect indifference to heat, and scepticism to malaria. To-morrow is the 30th April, and we intend to start for Venice and the Bagni di Lucca.

This fire-vaulted country, which heaves up its thousand monticules, the congealed waves of the quenched volcano, through which, impregnated with sulphur and bitumen, flows unwholesome water, and above which the curse of malaria has hovered for ages, with its grand bridges across the Tiber, and its lonely cut-throat locandas, well accord with Rome in

decay. As we traversed this region last autumn, in our way to that city of inferior shops and inconvenient dwelling-houses which have grown up among her ruins and swamped her antiquities, we thought the country tedious and barren. Surprising change! it now teems with interest, and with materials for many a striking picture; the herbage, then sear and seedy, and

to be copied only in umber and bistre, is now in its full but shortlived maturity of transitory verdure; nor could those noisy flutterers, the larks, drop elsewhere on a softer bed than is offered them by the slopes of young corn on either side of the road-such marvels can spring accomplish even in the most unpropitious furrows! The gun of the Roman sportsman popping in the month of May, sounds to our English ear not unwelcomely, and disturbs the tranquillity of the scene: but, alas! the small bird, whose wild notes we love, and whom we hail as the harbinger of the year, has other and more formidable foes. Above, in the blue firmament, we discern many a hawk, destined perhaps to hang in the Roman market beside his meditated victim; for of a surety, in the matter of birds, "Omnia Romæ cum pretio." Every thing in the altogether peculiar Campagna partakes of its wildness

we meet herds of swine, with bristly back and long-drawn snout, led on by sallow herdsmen, brandishing, like the halberdiers of some old armoury, their long spiked poles. Buffaloes, those scabrous fierce-eyed representatives of our domestic cattle, are also here, and huge hungry dogs, who scour the plain, or rush open-mouthed from some lone hovel at each passer-by, except, when daunted by the sight of a carriage, they retire growling. The very postboys, as if urged by some unseen spirit of the waste over which they drive, whip and spur as though pursued by furies, till, passing Nepi, they have borne you entirely beyond the haunts of banditti and the influence of malaria, when the country gradually goes on improving in cultivation and civilization, and Civita Castellana appears, pinnacled on its rocky ledge, where we intend to go to bed with Soracte in front of our window.

mu

We find ourselves in the little town of Narni, on the fete of St Juvenal, which last year was celebrated by the unusual exhibition of a bull-fight. This year the theatre tried its attractive powers: much scrubbing, whitewashing, and clearing away of bats and cobwebs to make way for the actors, whom we found yesterday unloading the Thespian waggon. "Warm work, sir!" said one of them, who, on due encouragement, proceeded to confide to us the sorrows of Italian strollers, which are the same, 66 tatis mutandis," every where. "Having housed our instruments, dresses, and music, surveyed the dimensions, and been damped by the pitiable condition of the house, (the dirt which had been partially removed, only rendering more apparent that which remained,) we took off our coats, and set to work with brush and broom till we were exhausted. After a hasty breakfast we went again to work, thinking all the while how we could best distribute the tickets, when a visit is announced from one of the lessees of the theatre, who came to tell us that he and certain joint claimants expected

fifty-six free admissions; after which he departed, wishing us as much success in filling the house as we had evidently obtained in cleaning it. To meet one of our difficulties, he promised to send us a scene-painter, ' good at need,' and particularly happy in trees. But as the rural Stanfield asked twelve scudi for a grove, and it was too late to send elsewhere for a 'selva selvaggia ed aspra e forte,' my friend there resolved to personate Dante, (for this was part of the bill of fare,) and leave the forest to be imagined. We had promised, or implied an orchestra; we soon found that fidelity to this engagement would eat up more than all the profits which our joint performance could possibly realize; so we engaged seven musicians, all too many, for they never kept five seconds in time." We consoled him, and promised to attend the next representation. The day was uncommonly warm, the evening equally close, and unsuitable alike to audience and actor. Nevertheless, we took our place in the pit, and had time to reconnoitre the house before it began. In a few minutes, and after a very few bars

from the orchestra, Signor A., grand pianist to &c. &c., issues from a sidedoor, comes forward with the most lively impressement, bows twice to the loud plaudits of two general clappings of hands, sits down, gets an attitude, and thunders off some very loud music, which rakes off every man's hat as by magic, and makes a sudden silence through the house. In five minutes we are heartily tired of him and it; the piano has at length discharged its last detonations, and the artist who directed them, at once tired and applauded, gives place to a young stranger, dressed decently, but not at all according to statute, who comes timidly forward, fiddle in hand. Poor fellow his gesture is somewhat awkward; but Apollo would not have looked graceful holding a fiddle to his chin. Embarrassed as genius often is, and pretension never, folks begin to buzz, stare, and wonder when he will begin, an ordeal which makes him still more shy. During this painful pause we had time to look at the old brown fiddle, which, half a century after the death of its maker, the celebrated Stradivarius, became the property of Paganini, and rose to be his favourite. Yes! the unimposing instrument before us had emitted 300,000 francs worth of music, and had lain voiceless on his death-bed. It now sounds a sweet plaint over his obsequies, and is sure to earn another large reputation for another child of song. It were trite to say that the fame of a violin maker is almost always posthumous; to mention an exception what Stradivarius was, Ghibertini is, or rather at the end of a long life begins to be; he has lived to see his violins celebrated, and coveted by connoisseurs, and bought up at ten times their original cost. But, to return to our text, we could almost have fancied the spirit of the old musician brooding over his lyre as his young pupil, fixing on it an affectionate gaze, and bending his all-attentive ear over its "bridge of sighs," begins a melody worthy of all admiration, and dedicated to his master by Mayseder. Scarcely had the young performer drawn his magic bow in a series of inconceivably light touches across the strings, when, as if so many enthralled spirits of melody were suddenly released, there came forth from the caverns below a flood of the most

delicious harmony. The motion of the bow was at once decisive of the master; tones, at first timid and exploratory, swelled out by degrees into a wave of woe, and so charmed the ear that a murmur of applause soon rose into an explosion of enthusiasm. We were thankful for a pause in which to luxuriate in the enjoyment which had been conferred on us, and the silence which ensues is not an interruption, but the consummation of the charm.

"The angel ended; but in Adam's ear So charming left his voice, that he awhile Thought him still speaking, still stood fix'd to hear."

The measure changes, and now the rapid fingers pluck the strings with the vivacity of sparks, and ask the eager question to be so eloquently answered at the other end of the instrument, by that same inimitable bow. This little dialogue was a masterpiece of legerdemain ; a third compo sition succeeded, in which each note not only charmed the ear, but excited appropriate sentiment in the audience. Hope warbled to us in eloquent persuasiveness; faith seemed to utter its own homily of sustained serenity; affections, emotions, sympathies, of which we knew neither the sources nor the claims, were raised, and quelled, and conducted, at his bidding, till at length a thrilling rhapsody left us powerless before its resistless appeal.

Do we imagine it, or has a change come over the artist himself? He seems taller certainly taller-is unquestionably more graceful; his movement is now unembarrassed, his eye is charged with music, and, when he makes his salutation and retires, what need he care for us, or our applause? His fiddle is carried off with him, to receive, we are quite sure, the endearments and caresses it deserves. Who would have thought that caterwauling puss had so much music in her skin, or have looked for bowels of compassion within the intestinal canal of that treacherous and carnivorous quadruped? of all instruments, give us the violin ! none other has so quick an intelligence of the master's hand. The horse does not better know his rider! Painful to hear, ungraceful to see, when guided or goaded by a vulgar wrist, how

Oh,

A country so flourishing as the plain from Narni to Terni, suggests, especially in the Roman States, enquiries into its agriculture, the laws between landlord and tenant, the value of labour and of land, the price of provisions, and the salubrity of the air. From the following details, collected on the spot, the man of slender income will learn how he may, without quitting Europe, live comfortably, and cultivate land of his own. With common attention, this favoured soil of the ancient Umbria will yield four crops a-year, if sowed in the following order: First, grain, (say wheat,) which, planted in October, is ready for cutting in June; then hemp ; and, during the remaining months, two crops of beans. Of these, we took from a seedsman in the town the names and prices of the most common; for a great variety of beans is cultivated here. Eschi, or large white; Zucchini, small ditto; Roman beans and haricots fetch 12 pauls per quarto, respectively. Occhini, or eye-beans, and Faggioli gentili, or French beans, cost 13-14 for the same measure. Quarantini, a small-sized bean-so called from its ripening in forty days-sells also at this price; as do Ciceri, (Italian pease,) and Lentili, the common lentile: but the broad bean costs much less, and sells at from 7 to 8 pauls per quarto. The follow

*

But, inasmuch as hemp makes greater demands upon the soil, the tenant has to pay to the lessee of the ground 60 pauls; whereas, if it be beans, he pays only 30 pauls.t

Two varieties of clover are in very extensive cultivation hereabouts. The seed of each kind averages 3 pauls per quarto; one grows to a great height, (for clover,) bears a fine crimson flower, and yields one crop a-year: this is sown in October, and cut in June; for if it be left to grow too long, it becomes dry, and is prejudicial, they say, to cattle. This kind they call nostrale. The other variety, also in large cultivation, is called the American clover here; it is very productive, yielding always three, and sometimes four crops a-year. The fennel-root will not grow here; every experiment to cause it to do so having proved abortive. Oil is generally abundant; accordingly, the tax on its importation from Tuscany or elsewhere is so high, as to amount, in fact, to a prohibition; and, when it is at all scarce, the Papal prohibition prevents its export. It is at this moment con