down, or forsake us. Of others-even those which flat- | countries love to frighten the credulous. It is an exerter us most-we can too often spell the duration; but we are sure of nature, for she must outlive ourselves."

cise of power,-an indulgence prohibited in general by their position in society, and they particularly love to exert it over their minds to whose will they are by con

Such, too, are these brief comments upon na-dition subservient." tural scenery ::

The three principal personages in the Nouvelle "that philoso

Light is the physiognomy of scenery; a landscape is like a regular set of features-both may be good, but nei-Heloise, are well characterised as ther speak, unless the light of nature or of the mind brighten on them."

An incident witnessed in an Italian church introduces remarks which, if not original, are at least just and well expressed :

phical, rhapsodical, unnatural, and most eloquent trio, who discussed virtue as a problem, and found that its solution was a vice ;" and Rousseau's elo"Montesquieu was right: the monotony of contrasts quent exaggerations are thus amusingly noticed:becomes at the long run as fatiguing as that of symme "When that illustrious visionary, Jean Jacques, got try. The power of contrast consists in the shock, or hold of an idea, how he hugged and fondled it, and dresscharm, of opposition, and the excitement of surprise; ed it up in colours snatched from that palette which now but when its effects are too regularly, repeated, they lies buried, with all its dewy freshness, in his tomb. No weary like the voice of an echo, which at first astonishes one since has found it; other writers use live tints, and and delights, but soon loses its charm when we become bright ones too, but his touch was magical. The aware of its unfailing return. It seems ungrateful to poor Valaisannes on whom he lavished his delicious find fault with nature in this divine country, but the op-colouring, are wretched realities, and may take rank positions of colouring (for instance) fatigue like same- amongst the least dangerous of the fair sex. One comes ness, and in the end become so." amongst them, seeking under every little hat for the charming face; and peering at every tinselled jacket for the light shape, which St. Preux, even while the fair form of the impassioned Julia floated before his mind's eye, found so perplexingly lovely, and a squalid half-awake "I love the Italian churches, with their broad aisles, race, disfigured by goîtres which they show off as our vast and unfrittered,-no pews, no divisions, no aristo- women do white teeth or ivory fingers, presents itself. I cratical screenings; all kneeling together, the high and should think the most fire-and-tow garde-du-corps in the mighty and the lowly, on the same pavement; all send service of his majesty Charles Dix, might dine in perfect ing up their thanksgiving, or their prayer, to the same tranquillity of heart, though waited upon by a legion of great Being in whose eyes all are equal. No dread of such damsels as the leaden-eyed she, who is at this mo vulgar contact, no elbowing of the tattered penitent. 1ment laying a log of wood upon the fire." shall never forget the impression made upon me, on my National characteristics appear to have been first visit to St. Peter's at Rome, by a young lady who acutely observed; and we find the following livecame into the church, folded up in a cachemere, and fol-ly and sensible remarks upon the difficulty of lowed by a servant in gorgeous livery: her appearance estimating them correctly :was that of a petite maitresse, as far as dress was concerned, but her air was devout and collected; she passed on slowly to the illuminated shrine of the saint, and inserted herself amidst a group of masons in their working dresses, kneeling with them on the pavement, and praying earnestly. This was beautiful, and similar acts of humility are performed every hour in the day in every church in Italy.

Principles are better things than impulses, even when both are good. Religion in this country seems less a principle than a feeling; it does not appear to influence the moral conduct, but for the period during which its forms are exercised, the abstraction seems deep and real. Whether the visible image of the samt or virgin then implored be not the paramount object of adoration, may be questioned, and probably the zeal awakened through the medium of the imagination can only be sustained by the same means. The interceding saint, protecting madonna, or familiar image, long known, and long revered,-implored in sorrow, and relied upon in repentance, receives the fervent homage of the tender and devout. The enlightened may see in these palpable forms only a memorial, and while kneeling before a terrible crucifix, may lift up their souls to the Divine Nature, triumphing over sin and death, or send out their thoughts from the foot of the decorated altar to Him whose " way is on the sea, and his path on the great waters." But the vulgar,"the great vulgar and the small," do they look beyond the identical picture or statue (always invested with miraculous powers) ?—I should doubt it."

She has been alarmed by a false report, and

:

"Joined the table d'hôte party to-day upon principle, wishing to see a little of the manners of Heidelberg, though it must be confessed that its usually mixed society can afford but an imperfect criterion. However, if it does not give us the Corinthian capitals, it at least offers flying sketches of men and manners, and those are all that a stranger can ever hope to seize. In fact, we birds of passage can form no positive judgment on any point susceptible of fluctuation. We look at society through a kaleidoscope; a jog to the right or to the left scatters our materials just as we are preparing to sketch from them, and no twisting or turning can bring back the same pattern again; while stationary people fix their microscopes firmly, fasten their subject before them, and dissect it at their leisure. After all, our grand error is, that, instead of looking through our own eyes and judg. ing by our own impressions, we run to our books of reference, pinning our faith on other men's sleeves, without considering how time and season, sunshine and rain, bile and blue devils, alter matters. It is like judging of a nation by an individual, a thing so often done dictatorially and senselessly too. 'He's knight o' the shire, and represents them all,' is a common presumption, and always goes down."

Here follows a sketch of German students, and a comparison of them with the same class in France..

"An eye of defiance, an exulting step, an intrepid carriage, are the marks and tokens of a German student. This audacious bearing is strengthened and set off by the open collar, short frock, (generally of Lincoln green, and of Robin Hood's own cut), small casquette, the point pressing flatly on the forehead, and hair cropped like Giotto's or Cimabue's apostles, floating or bristling at

each side of the face. These chartered libertines,' for such they are during their collegiate life, run a course of unbridled riot, mastering the quieter classes of society by their force and number: to be formidable seems their point of honour, and they sustain it fiercely. Many of these swaggerers are certainly of an age to have long since finished their studies, and others curl their angry mustaches as if they had already smelt powder, and were 'fit for treason, stratagem, or strife.' Indeed, their general appearance is more that of lawless desperadoes, robbers of the cave and forest, than of dwellers in the quiet groves of Academus; and yet these same students, when absent from their universities, appear to be persons of peaceful and respectable habits, earnest in the pursuit of knowledge, and often battling courageously for its attainment in the very teeth of poverty and its concomitant disadvantages.

*

an infuriated bacchante, and even the little girl of the bodkins throwing in a note. It is extraordinary that a people whose song is all passionate tenderness,-all soul, all sweetness,-should have frequently the speaking voices of porters and oyster women. Yet they are a kind, good-tempered people,—not rough, I think, in any thing but their voices. I have seen instances of flexible mildness in Italy, that were really edifying.”

What is said on the unpoetical temperament of the Swiss, is not new; but it is well expressed :

"The Swiss are an excellent people,-calm, religious, lovers of order, good citizens, worthy of liberty, and strong to maintain it. But they are neither poets nor painters. A country that might "Create a soul,

Under the ribs of death,"

"The fearless, lawless air of a German student be- seems to act like a wet blanket on the fancy. A man speaks a man who dreams of equality of station and un-naturally imaginative, but who has always lived in the limited license, and who will bluster about his rights and world, may perhaps be more sensible of the soul stirring expectances boldly and fiercely, at least while the hey-marvels of nature when they suddenly open on him, day of youth lasts. His mind is like his dress, manly than one who has grown up in the midst of her familiar and fanciful, but the black cravated student of the pays and unheeded riches, though he may not prize or love latin shows in his thoughtful eye, and abstracted yet them with such home feelings. But I am surprised that ardent look, the spirit that never dies, the absorbing hope the constant intimacy with scenes and objects of infinite which clings to the heart through life, and never loses beauty and splendour, does not give an habitual colouring sight of the indemnifying moment. Perhaps the cause of of poetry to the mind. I can comprehend why a man an observation frequently made, that a German youth, on of acute understanding, liberal education, and studious quitting college, soon forgets the day-dream of liberty, the habits, but unaccustomed to society or the intercourse of projected efforts of patriotism which have amused his boy-the world, may fail in the developement of the passions. hood, and quietly settles into the peaceful subject of sume Man's nature is intricate, and must be studied intensely. petty prince, while a Frenchman who has once taken a He who would lay open the magnificent structure of the political bias, rarely sobers down into the pliant and con-human mind, must watch it through the changeful phases tented citizen of a government inimical to his early of active life, and meditate what he has there marked in opinions and feelings, may be traced to the different posi- the stillness of solitude, with the door barred upon the tions of their respective countries. The one, a member world and its distractions. But nature is more commuof a vast empire divided into many states, more or less nicative than man; she spreads open her page, and he powerful, can never hope to see the different portions of who will may read its ample characters, and catch light his variously ruled country united under one enlightened and inspiration from them. But light comes not here, and paternal system of government, while from the still nor inspiration either. Why it does not is a problem, and unpartitioned state of France, every Frenchman the solution of which I leave to others." looks to one central point, from which a constitution, inspired by the love of liberty, and matured by wisdom, -a constitution, affording equal protection and equal advantages to all, may emanate."

Of the Italians, she says,—

"The Italian character has great breadth and raciness, and a fine natural colouring, never sullied by affectation; not but they are tricking too in their way, but their cunning goes straight forward to its aim, and is never wasted on points of display or vanity,-things which rarely enter into an Italian head. Fashion, whose laws are in England a kind of interior police, by which our most domestic concerns are regulated, has little influence here; the Italians, as Madame de Staël has observed with her usual skill in character, ne font rien, parce qu'on les regarde, et ne s'abstiennent de rien, parce qu'on les regarde.'

แ Unquestionably the Italians are the noisiest people in Europe,-singing like angels, and talking (as far as voice is concerned) like traffickers in fish or charcoal, the ear knows not whether it seizes the notes of a prima donna, or of a macaroni vender. Last night, a party from Milan, (capital gentry, our hostess said,) who were either convivial or quarrelsome till an unreasonably late hour, put sleep quite out of the question,—such shouting, -such screaming,-a dozen voices raised together, and sustained with incredible power of lungs,-each striving to maintain the upper key, but a sharp female treble always lady of the ascendant. And then the hostess, with soft, sweet eyes, and a delicate outline, raving like

There is not much allusion to works of art; but there is enough to show an appreciation of their merits, unmixed with the cant of connoisseurship. Michael Angelo and Caravaggio are well distinguished ;

"In the chapel is a Pieta (basso relievo) by Michael Angelo, full of beauty and expression. This powerful master was not often tender, but he could be so; the proof is here. I once knew a clever man who greatly admired Caravaggio, and used to place him on a line with Michael Angelo. Caravaggio, too, was a genius, one full of strong, broad-shouldered ideas; a perturbed and gloomy spirit, throwing his dark soul out upon his canvass with startling effect; but he did not think or feel like Michael Angelo; his genius was not sublime; he painted like a coarse bad man, of monstrous capacity, but not like one who had unsealed the book of judgment, or lifted up the Pantheon and hung it in the air."

celebrated portrait-painters are equally just ;— The following remarks on the works of two

"Genoa is rich in living portraits,-portraits that one dares not trust with a secret. I should as soon think of conspiring against the state, before the “reverend sig. niors" of the assembled senate, as in the presence of those lofty Dorias or Durazzi, or even of their gentle wives, who look and listen till you feel almost confused at having discussed their charms as it were in their hearing. Vandyke was a powerful master; few have possessed in a higher degree the art of giving vitality to

their portraits. Unlike the glossy monotony of Sir Peter | that stare at one every where, and put out the Lely, (whose courtly shepherdesses are all as like each eyes with their effrontery of brick-dust, would be other as the fifty daughters of Danaus, in the melodrame,) a benediction.' There are benedictions for the his personages have the air of life so freshly on them, ears, too. At an opera at Lucerne, she says, that when we see the same portraits a second time, it is never was noise as loud, yet so merciless ;-a like meeting old acquaintances, family people with whom dozen kettle-drums would have been a benediction.' one has lived in friendly intercourse. We contract an The same serviceable word may be found masintimacy with them, as we do with the dramatis personæ of Sir Walter Scott's novels. Who that has ever con- querading in other places, and with the same distemplated Vandyke's portrait of Charles I., but fancies regard of its every day meaning. We notice this, he has seen and known that melancholy visage? or read because an inclination to disregard the usual Rob Roy, without the conviction of having been person-import of words is too observable in other inally acquainted with Bailie Jarvie ?" stances. Here end our censures-and we conclude with a cordial recommendation of this work as one that will animate the untraveled by its promises, and gratify the traveled by the recollections it awakens.

From the London Examiner.

France; Social, Literary, and Political. By Henry Lytton Bulwer, Esq., M. P. Bentley, 1834.*

the huge masses that float upon its crowded waters; the tall fabrics, gaunt and drear, that line its melancholy shores; the thick gloom through which you dimly catch the shadowy outline of these gigantic forms; the marvellous quiet with which you glide by the dark phantoms of her Mr. Henry Bulwer has lived much in France, power into the mart of nations; the sadness, the silence, and enjoyed ample opportunities of studying the the vastness, the obscurity, of all things around, prepare people. The present book, we are assured, is the you for a grave and solemn magnificence. Full upon result of many years' observation of them; and a your soul is shadowed the sombre character of the very clever, sparkling, amusing, and instructive golden city;' deep into your thoughts is breathed the book it is, abounding in curious anecdote, keen genius of the great and gloomy people, whose gloom and remark, and valuable information throughout. But whose greatness are, perchance, alike owing to the restit is somewhat rambling and confessedly incom- less workings of a stern imagination. Behold St. Kathaplete. The rambling character, indeed, is the rine's docks, and Walker's soap manufactory, and Harnecessary result of the plan adopted by the au-dy's Shades! Lo! there is the strength, the industry, thor of treating his subjects in the order in which and the pleasure-the pleasure of the enterprising, the they were suggested to himself-a plan which,oney-making, the dark-spirited, people of England! 'Hardy's Shades- singular appellation for the spot considering the wayward nature of mental asso-dedicated to festivity. Such is the entrance into London ciations, is one, to say the least, of very doubtful by the Thames. propriety; though it has enabled him to infuse a Let us change the scene, reader! You are at Paris! spirit and a power into portions of his work, which "To enter Paris with advantage, you should enter it would otherwise most probably have been found by the Champs Elysées. Visiting, for the first time, the wanting in such qualities. The book is incom- capital of a military nation, you should pass under the plete, because it was found impossible to comprise arch built to commemorate its reign of victories. Comthe matter within the limits originally proposed; ing to dwell among the most gay and light-hearted but other volumes are to follow, devoted to sub-people in the universe, you ought at once to rush upon jects (as the church, the army, the law, the cham-them in the midst of their festivities. Enter Paris, then, bers, &c. &c.) unavoidably omitted in those before us; in which the main object of the author has been "to bring a people upon the stage, to show what they have been and what they are." A glance at the contents will show in what manner he has attempted to do this.

by the Champs Elysées! Here are the monuments that speak to you of the great soldiers; and here the guinguettes that display to you the great dancers of Europe. You pass by the old gardens of Beaujon; you find the caserne (and this tells you a good deal of the nation you are come to visit) intermingled with cafés and salons littéraires; and you see the chairs under the trees, and He begins by a dashing sketch of the exterior the open spaces left for the ball; and if you stop to read of the capital: the 'Champs Elysées, the Boule- an advertisement, it will talk of the Chevaux mécaniques, vards, the Palais Royal, the Quais, the Tuileries, and of the Bal paré, and of the Concert des Champs Ely &c., are made to pass before us, and the historical sées; and the sun shines upon the golden cupola of the recollections connected with them are called up. stately Invalides, and on the glittering accoutrements of We have then the characteristics of the people with their trees and terraces, which yonder misplaced the sauntering soldier; and before you are the Tuileries, their politeness, gallantry, wit, gaiety, and crime: for, after exhibiting the Parisians in their plea- the Seine and the chamber of deputies; and to your left monument cannot quite conceal; and to your right are sures, Mr. Bulwer, by a happy and impressive the Corinthian architecture of those palaces that form transition, proceeds to deduce precisely similar the Rue de Rivoli. The tri-coloured flag floats from the conclusions from their crimes. These two divi- gates of the royal gardens; the military uniform, mixed sions constitute the first book. The second, en- up with the colouring of every passing group, enriches it titled "Historical Changes," contains an able with its deep blue and its bright scarlet. The movement resumé of French history, from 1789 till now. about you is universal-equipages of all kinds are passing The third book, entitled "Predominant Influ- in all directions; the movement is universal, but differences," treats of female influence, military influ-ing from that you are accustomed to in England; the ence, and literary influence, and concludes with movement is the movement of idleness and of pleasure; detailed critical accounts of some of the most cele- an indescribable mirth reigns in all you see, and the brated modern historical and dramatic authors of busy gaiety of Paris bursts npon you with the same France. There are also an introductory analysis have all the habits of a people of the sun-they are not effect as the glad brightness of Italy. The people, too, and an appendix, containing much valuable sta- the people of one stock; collected in every crowd are the tistical information relating to population, reve- features and the feelings of divers races and different renue, measurement, exports, imports, births, deaths, gions. In Paris you are not in the climate of Paris. &c. The style is rapid, abrupt, declamatory, irre- France is brought into a focus, and, concentrated in the gular-occasionally deficient in clearness from too capital; you find all the varieties that vivify the many eagerly aiming at point, but seldom unattractive, provinces of the kingdom. It is this which gives a city and never wearisome or dull;-the style, in short, of the north the gracious and agreeable aspect of the of a clever man of excitable temperament, more south, and transports the manners that are legitimate to used to debate and conversation than to the pen. the olives and the myrtles of Provence, to the elms of the We are not aware that we can give a more cha- Champs Elysées and the Boulevards. London is the racteristic extract than the following, which forms city of the English, as Constantinople is the city of the Turks. Paris is the city of Europe: it unites, more than the opening chapter of the work:any city in the world, the wants of a variety of classes, the habits of a variety of people. With the snow, you have the sledge of St. Petersburg; with the summer, the music, the nightly promenade, the ice, the lemonade, and all-but the sea and sky of Naples.

"It is by the Thames that the stranger should enter London. The broad breast of the great river, black with

*

Republished by Harper and brothers, New York.

"I am now at the corner of the Rue de la Paix. It is a beautiful autumnal evening. What a dazzling confusion of colours and images! white houses, green trees, and glittering lights! The rattling equipage rushes by me; the whispering saunterer lounges before; and the group is seated round the café; and the music is far enough away to lose all harshness; and in the background-behold! the piles of buildings, and the lines of lamps, rising one above the other, and broken at intervals by some dark mass of verdure. It is almost impossible to describe the scene, and as impossible to gaze upon it without inhaling some portion of the spirit it breathes, without feeling a character more soft and southern-a ray of light that had not penetrated there before, stealing | into the severe and sombre recesses of one's northern imagination. Here it is most especially that the Boulevards justify the old French proverb, which says, 'When le bon Dieu is out of humour, he opens one of the win. dows of heaven, and recovers his spirits by a glimpse of this long line of trees.' There is certainly nothing that I know of like the Boulevards in any other city in the world."

He subsequently hurries us through most of the city in the same manner; nor could he have adopted a better mode of bringing us acquainted with the inhabitants, for

"If you want to know the people of Paris, you must seek them abroad. They love the sun, and the air, and the sauntering stroll; they love, if it be only for a moment, to glide across the broad street, amidst the turnings and windings of which society changes its colours at every instant, like the shifting forms of a kaleidoscope: the idle loiter there for amusement, the busy steal there for distraction. Besides, it is not only the present I have been showing you. I do not know where you may better study the past. What has not even our own generation looked on from yonder windows? Robes pierre, Barras, Bonaparte, the Republic, the Directory, the Empire, have all passed in triumph and defeat before

them."

"The manner is gone; the French, so far from a polite people at the present day, want that easiness of behaviour which is the first essential to politeness. Every man you meet is occupied in maintaining his dignity, and talks to you of his position. There is an evident effort and struggle, I will not say, to appear better than you are, but to appear all that you are, and to allow no person to think that you consider him better than you. Persons, no longer ranked by classes, take each, by themselves, an individual place in society. They are so many atoms, not forming a congruous or harmonious whole. They are too apt to strut forward, singly, and to say, with a great deal of action and a great deal of emphasis, 'I am nobody.'"

There are some pleasant anecdotes in the Chapter on Gallantry; and, in that on Vanity, Mr. Bulwer has unsparingly exposed and admirably illustrated the wondrous workings of this master motive, this weakness, madness, yet sometimes virtue, of the French.

"You find this vanity the predominating genius of the camp, the court, the counter-it reigns no less at the Bourse, the Morgue, or the prison. The Frenchman wishes to live with ostentation;* if he cannot do this, he does not care whether he lives or not. Like most passions, this vanity is good and bad, little and great, now sublime, now ridiculous; but upon the whole, perhaps, it appears in France as more good than bad, more great than little, even more sublime than ridiculous. Absurd in the drawing-room, fatal in darker scenes, it has made the French army the most renowned in the world, and the French nation the most united. But it has also made of the French a people eminently volatile: eager for changes that promise much, disgusted with utility that cannot boast show, and impatient of plans that run in a slow and quiet course to their perfection."

We regret that we have no space to dwell upon the Chapters on Influences, peculiarly rich in matter for reflection as they appear to us; but we We are in the habit of regarding the French must take the liberty of expressing a doubt as to as, par eminence, polite. In Mr. H. Bulwer's the justice of the parallel, drawn by Mr. H. Bulopinion they are no longer so, and he thus endea-wer, (here adopting the view taken in England vours to account for the change:and the English,) between the relative positions "The manners of the French in the time of Louis 16th in society of the literary man of England and of had one feature of similarity with ours at present. A France. According to him, literature in France monied aristocracy was then rising into power in France, is the surest and quickest road to the highest disas a monied aristocracy is now rising into power in Eng-tinctions; the successful writer is fêted by wealth, land. This is the aristocracy which demands obsequious servility-which is jealous and fearful of being treated with disrespect. This is the aristocracy which measures, with an uncertain eye, the height of an acquaintance. This is the aristocracy which cuts and sneers. This aristocracy, though the aristocracy of the revolution of July, is now too powerless in France to be more than vulgar in its pretensions. French manners, then, if they are not gracious, are, at all events, not insolent; while ours, unhappily, testify on one hand, the insolence, while they do not, on the other, represent the talent and the grace of that society which presided over the later suppers of the old regime. We have no Monsieur de Fitz-James, who might be rolled in a gutter all his life, as was said by a beautiful woman of his time, without ever contracting a spot of dirt! We have no Monsieur de Narbonne, who stops in the fiercest of a duel to pick up the ruffled rose that had slipped, in a careless moment, from his lips during the graceful conflict! You see no longer in France that noble air, that 'great manner,' as it was called, by which the old nobility strove to keep up the distinction between themselves and their worse-born associates, to the last, and which, of course, those associates most assiduously imitated.

caressed by beauty, trusted by the people, and decorated by the king-whilst in England he is scorned, calumniated, or, at best, neglected, by all four; in proof of which somewhat startling propo sition, we are told of the election of M. Thiers, M. de la Martine, and M. Arago, to the Chamber of Deputies, as contrasted with Mr. Babbage's rejection by the electors of Finsbury, and of the certainty of our meeting "all the literary men who belong to all the different political opinions, at Madame D's, at Madame de M—'s, at Madame de R's" (these ladies must have large houses); whilst such, we are assured, is the degraded state of the same class in England,

that

told one of Mr. B.'s French acquaintances that a good-natured young English nobleman

* In 1810, a notaire's clerk killed himself, leaving a piece of paper behind him, on which he declared that, having duly calculated and considered, he did not think it possible for him to be so great a man as Napoleon— therefore he put an end to his existence.