closures are neat ;-rows of elms, poplars and mulberries, with the sweet acacia, traverse every field at intervals of fifty or sixty feet; while the slender vine reaches from tree to tree, "trained in elegant or fantastic festoons, and bending to the earth beneath a load of the most delicious grapes." How does the appearance of the people correspond with this picture of plenty, fertility and beauty? The characters of sickliness, indeed, are less apparent on the southern than upon the rice-grounds on the northern side of the Po, but even there," the marks of malaria are indelibly imprinted on every face;" and poverty, disease and depression are to be traced in every feature.

The objects which attract the attention at Bologna, are its black, square, ugly, leaning towers,-endurable only as affording from their summits one of the most magnificent panoramas to be met with, even in this land of beautiful prospects; the university with its extensive museum; the gallery of paintings, and some of its churches. Among these, the Pinacoteca stands pre-eminent. It is one of the best galleries of paintings in Italy, and is particularly valuable and interesting, as affording the best materials for studying the works of the Bolognese school. The prevailing subjects of the Italian painters, are taken from scripture. "Wherever we look, crucifixions, sepultures, resurrections, descents from the cross, and ascents into the clouds, are mingled with mysterious conceptions, virgin mothers and infantile Christs." Of the effect of this multiplication of religious representations, upon the religious feelings, Dr. Johnson, as we conceive, judges correctly. The impression made on his mind, is much the same with that made on the minds of most intelligent travelers. "I may be wrong, but I suspect, that the infinite variety in the delineation and personification of these hallowed truths, weaken and destroy the unity and solemnity of those ideas that ought to be attached to them. The eternal virgin and child, under every form, and in every kind of situation which the genius of a Caracci, Guido, Guercino, Giovanni, Domenichino, etc. etc. could imagine, down to the rude daubs and carvings on every sign-post, finger-post, wall and pig-stye in Italy, may create or strengthen devotion in the minds of others, but I confess they had no such salutary tendency on my own mind." In regard to the propriety and tendency of some of these subjects, there can be no question. Created objects may perhaps furnish fit and proper themes for the artist's pencil, but to attempt to delineate and paint the Almighty Creator himself,-reduce his infinite, incomprehensible nature to the canvas, and set out his high attributes in colors, seems altogether transcending the province of man, and violating, indeed, the express commands of Jehovah. Yet the eye is often revolted and shocked with these impious representations. Even the chaste and pure taste of a Guido Reni, has not

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been able to escape and rise above this corrupt taste of his age. The very mystery of mysteries, the Trinity, he has deemed not too lofty a theme for his daring pencil. To describe these paintings would be to increase the evils of the representation. It would be to degrade and sensualize our conceptions of the Infinite Spirit. A night on the top of the Appenines, at an inn, where rumor and even historic record says, there dwelt, and for aught that they testify to the contrary, there still dwells, a society, whose law is, to "murder all the passengers they stopped,-to kill and bury the horses, burn the carriages and baggage, reserving only the money, jewels and watches," prompts to a remark or two, on the safety of traveling in Italy. "A journey," observes our author, "from one end of Italy to the other,-sometimes with tempting equipage,sometimes as a solitary, unarmed and defenceless rambler, has convinced me, that, with common prudence and good humor, a traveler is as safe in this land of banditti, as in any part of the British dominions. An Italian will outwit you,-or, if you please, cheat you, in every possible way, but he will not murder you, pillage you, or steal from you, if you leave your baggage open in the court of the inn where you stop." Dr. Johnson was probably more fortunate than many others in escaping the arts of the lightfingered gentry, and perhaps his views of Italian dread of theft, are consequently a little overrated. But as to personal safety, with the exercise of common prudence, in avoiding certain locations at night, in some of the large cities, he is doubtless correct in regard to that part of Italy generally traversed by foreigners. Still, the frequent gens d' armes to be met on the public roads in the southern part of the peninsula, will almost unavoidably make the traveler feel, that he is not, after all, quite as safe as he would be on the public roads of England. And as for Calabria, we much question whether a man of prudence would willingly, and for any small consideration, undertake a solitary journey across the country from Reggio to Salerno.

The Val d'Arno strikes the traveler as the very personification of natural loveliness, and to the English traveler, particularly, the sight of Florence awakens strong emotions of pleasure. This city, for some reason or other, is quite a favorite with the British traveling public; and not a few expatriate theselves for months or years, to enjoy the fancied balminess of its climate. Our author ventures to differ from most of his countrymen in regard to the attractiveness of Florence, as a place of residence. The healthiness of its climate he questions, and urges good reasons for his doubts. Its boasted cleanliness he directly contradicts. "There is not a street in this celebrated capital of Tuscany, which does not shock the eye and the olfactories of an Englishman at every step, by presentations of filth,-and that in the worst of all possible VOL. VIII.

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shapes!" "Each mansion constitutes the receptacle or depot of an annual, biennial or triennial accumulation of filth, where an expurgation of the cess-pool generates an atmosphere around each house, that would nauseate, if not poison, any human being except an Italian!""The city of Florence, then, like too many of its neighbors, is a city of filth, where not a single wave of air is unimpregnated with the most disgusting if not pestiferous effluvia, that imagination can conceive!" This is a picture of Florence, so much above its sister-cities in respect to neatness and cleanliness, drawn too, by a master, a man of observation and science,—who directed his attention particularly to this subject, and made minute observations in reference to it in every city and town he visited. What, then, must we think of the other cities of Italy? We intended to collect and sum up the author's testimony on this point; esteeming it a desirable thing to make known the opinions and observations of a writer so worthy of confidence. But the disgusting nature of the subject and our rapidly diminishing space, induces us to forbear. We shall barely allude to it again, in considering its effects on health, and leave our readers to form their inferences from the hints given above; desiring them only to bear in mind, that Florence is a very picture of cleanliness, in comparison with some other cities of fame in Italy.

We cannot stop to accompany our traveler in his rambles over the city; or his visits to the galleries of wax-works,-the pride of Florence, the Palazzo Pitti, with its superb collection of paintings, or even the interesting gallery of the Gran Duca. One glance at the Tribune, which "concentrates, within the space of a small ante-chamber, twelve feet in diameter, a host of the most wonderful efforts, or rather prodigies of human genius," must suffice. It is directed, not to the wonders of art and skill, as reflected from the chisel of Praxiteles and the pencil of Raphael, and the other ancient and modern masters, but to the effect of that promiscuous assemblage of subjects,-divine and human, christian and pagan, sacred and licentious,-upon the mind of the beholder. "The eye glances from a naked Venus to a sainted Madonna; from a capering fawn, to a decapitated apostle; from a Diana ogling Endymion, to Herodias receiving the head of St. John; from a wrestling match, to the crucifixion of our Savior; from a knife-grinder, to the massacre of the innocents;' from a naked nymph, auditing the soft nonsense of Cupid, to a naked slave, listening to a band of conspirators!" What must be the abiding impression made upon the mind by such a combination of conflicting and opposing objects, all presented in the most attractive charms, that the most exalted and most highly perfected human genius and art can give them? If painting and sculpture can and do influence the taste, the judgment and the passions, and if the proper influence of such

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an exhibition be suffered to come in upon the mind and heart, how can it be otherwise than, that reverence for the sacred and holy should be lowered and weakened, and horror of the licentious. and gross, be lessened and dissipated?

But we must leave this interesting city, and hasten with our traveler to the great focus of attraction in Italy,-imperial Rome. We pass over for the present his observations on the pestiferous exhalations of the Campagna, and enter the gates of the eternal city. We mount at once to the top of the tower on the Capitoline Hill, and direct our view over southern Rome. It is Rome in ruins, which on this side comes into view. The eye, from this elevated position, takes in most of what remains of the splendor and magnificence of the ancient mistress of the world. It is easier to moralize and philosophize than to examine, measure, and describe. The place and the scenes around bring on a musing mood. Hence it is, perhaps, that our author chooses to indulge in a train of philosophic reflection on the politics, religion, and morals, of ancient Rome; the tyranny, oppression, and cruelty of its inhabitants; the frequent mobs, seditions and insurrections; their voluptuousness and sensuality; their debasing religion and their gross superstition; on the emptiness of worldly grandeur and power; the mendacity of triumphal honors, of arches, and columns; and the deep degradation of which human nature is capable; rather than to bring before our minds, by careful, minute description, a picture of the scene before him. We peruse with a melancholy, depressed spirit, these workings of a mind musing on the wrecks of magnificence and grandeur, that lie, majestic in their ruin, around the base of the Monte Capitolino. We feel them to be just and natural; though to a phlegmatic spirit, perhaps, apparently tinged with a little morbid sentimentalism. As a specimen, we give an extract from his reflections on the Coliseum, the proudest relic of ancient splendor, corruption and debasement:

To feast their eyes on the mangled and quivering members-on the reeking entrails of man and animals-to view, with exquisite delight, the murderous conflicts of the ensanguined arena, hither flowed daily the impetuous tide of human existence, the lords of the creation, the venerated, the god-like Romans! Here took their allotted seats, the sceptered prince and laureled consul-the warlike knight and solemn senator-the haughty patrician and factious tribune-the vestal virgin and stately matron-the tuneful bard and grave philosopher. These and countless multitudes of Roman citizens and Roman rabble, rushed daily to yon gorgeous structure-all for the sake of that EXCITEMENT which simple or innocent pleasures could no longer elicit !

Yes! and when the wounded gladiator fell before the superior force or fortune of his fierce antagonist, and sued for life-when the victor

poised in the air his gory falchion, and looked for the signal of mercy or murder-these polished Romans-the fair sex themselves, vestals, maidens, and matrons, held up their hands for BLOOD; nor would they forego the poignant pleasure of seeing the reeking steel plunged into the vitals of a fellow-creature! Such was yon collossal slaughterhouse, where every ferocious animal that roamed the wilds or baunted the rivers of Asia, Africa, and Europe, was conducted to view, as well as to encounter, with horror and astonisement, the still more ferocious animal-MAN.

Erected by a Pagan-purged of its inhuman rites by a priest-and propped in old age by a pope-the Coliseum shadows out some faint emblematical picture of Rome itself. It was once the stormy theater of bloody deeds-it is now the peaceful asylum of holy crosses. Part of it still stands erect, or renovated; part of it totters over its base; but the greater part has vanished. Eloquent in its silence, populous in its solitude, majestic in its adversity, admired in its decay, the ruins of the Coliseum, like the remains of Rome, excite the curiosity of the antiquary-the ruminations of the moralist-the zeal of the Catholic— the admiration of the architect-the sigh of the philanthropist-the sneer of the cynic-the humiliation of the philospher-and the astonishment of all.' pp. 163, 164.

From the same happy position, our author next introduces his readers to northern Rome, or Rome as it is. But we cannot dwell on this view, interesting as it is; nor on our author's speculations on the influence and tendencies of the Romish faith, with its gorgeous temples, ostentatious rites, and its crime-fostering dogmas. We quit the everlasting city, press rapidly over the deadly Pontine marshes, through the dark, gloomy towns of Fondi and Itri, with their "gaunt, grim, and hunger-stricken inhabitants," and with our traveler, on the third day, arrive at gay, fascinating Naples. The views from the bay, from Vesuvius, and from the castle of St. Elmo, in Dr. Johnson's opinion, are the most splendid on the surface of the globe. The climate is exceedingly changeable. Naples is generally associated in the mind with a never-varying sky, always canopied by the deepest and purest azure; with an atmosphere that might woo a fairy by its softness and balminess; with an unruffled expanse of waters stretched out before it, and backed by a country that would vie with paradise in its loveliness and beauty. But such a picture is only the imagination of the poet. Naples, like every other part of this lower world, has its vicissitudes of weather, and they differ from the changes to which other places are subject, only in being perhaps a little less frequent, but more violent, more sudden, and more trying to the constitution. Weeks together the Tramontane hides the sun from view, deluges the city with rain, and by the fury of its blasts renders some of its streets actually impassable. This cold, bleak, and shivering atmosphere, a few hours