accompanied by appropriate notes, and followed by a grave pause, desponding air, and a recital of the calamity suffered. In case of death, sorrow is shown by loosening the hair from its plaits, and testifying by action, behaviour, and a gloomy colour of dress, the deepest affliction. It was a law of the Ovahs that no member of the king's family should approach a dead body, or the spot on which it might be laid; yet, on the occasion of Mr. Hastie's death, which happened at Thanaan-arive, Radáma, to the astonishment of his people, attended the funeral, and followed the corpse to the grave. The exclamation in "Never was any man so consequenee was, beloved and respected by our king!" On this point, however, I shall allow Radáma to speak for himself. In his letter to Sir Lowry Cole, then governor of Mauritius, dated Thanaan-arive, 25th of October, 1826, he says, "I have the painful and lamentable duty of informing your Excellency that James Hastie, Esq., the enlightened and faithful agent of your government, is no more. By his wise counsels, and his promptitude always to assist the needy and distressed, he has not only attached himself to me more and more every year, but also to my people, who lament his loss as a friend and as a father. In order to show my regard for him and my sorrow at his loss, I directed that everything in my power should be done to his honour as soon as he died, and I gave him as honourable a funeral as could be done in my country."

One of the principal impediments to intercourse with the Ovah country arises from no use being yet made of cattle for either draft or burden; but the different provinces of the island are very susceptible of improvement; and rice and corn might be cultivated to a very considerable extent. Many of the inhabitants might also be employed in opening the bosom of the earth, and working its abundant treasures of iron-ore, potter's clay, plumbago, and tin; and more attention might be paid to the breeding of cattle. The Ovahs carry on a trade, both by barter and with money; that by barter chiefly consisting of slaves, rice, and cattle, which are exchanged for arms, clothes, and ammunition; that by money, of all sorts of other things, as scents, baubles, and the like.

(To be continued.)

GUERNSEY.

THE character of the islanders is marked by a great deal of shrewdness; as to physical courage, they have given repeated instances of their bravery; and wherever they have been employed, at home or abroad, in public capacities, they have run the fair race of competition with their English, Irish, or Scotch brethren. There is a mixture of the French and English peculiarities in many of

both the Jersey and Guernsey people, which is productive of good; the fiery, irascible blood of Gaul is tempered with a due proportion of the phlegm of Albion, and the result is a determined, staid, but active individual, capable of the highest efforts to which his duties may call him. In honesty and truth, the islanders are not surpassed. The language of the people is Norman French, but English is now becoming very general, and in St. Peter's Port it is the prevailing dialect.-Martin's British Colonies.

THE DRESS OF THE IONIAN GREEKS

CONSISTS chiefly of a wide capot of thick felt, (the principal ingredient in which is goat's hair,) or coarse, shaggy, woollen cloth in summer, and of an additional article of the same material in cold or wet weather. The capot is very rarely taken off; the under dress is a woollen vest, large breeches of coarse cotton, called thoraké, with cloth leggings, and a coarse sandal of undressed hide, secured by thongs, or a shoe of half-dressed leather scarcely less rude. This is the national dress of the aboriginal peasantry; but the settlers, whether Albanians, Moriots, or others, retain some traces of their native costume, as the red skull-cap, the turban, &c. &c. A girdle or zone, of silk or cotton, is almost invariably worn round the waist by both sexes. The better classes wear a double-breasted vest, usually made of blue or marone-coloured velvet, with a double row of hanging gold or silver buttons, descending from the shoulder to the waist, generally bordered with broad gold lace, and fastened with a sash of coloured silk; cossack trousers cut short at the knee, or the white Albanian kelt or petticoat, white stockings and buckled shoes, complete the dress. The hair is worn floating on the shoulders by the men, and by the women plaited and hanging down to the heels, and a handkerchief on the head. The women are loaded with as much clothes of coarse cotton, silk, or brocade, as they can procure, and are passionately fond of every species of ornament, especially necklaces, ear-rings, and girdle-buckles. The vests are made like the men's, of rich velvet, ornamented with gold lace, and flowing open; beneath is worn a beautiful cestus or girdle, fastened in front by a clasp of gold or silver, and highly wrought. The petticoats are of pink or blue, richly bordered and spangled; no stays are worn, the costume fitting closely to the waist all round; high-heeled shoes, with very large silver buckles, complete the attire. Many of them tinge the nails and tips of the fingers of a pink colour, and the practice of inserting powdered antimony along the edges of the eyelids is very common, especially among such as come from the islands of the Archipelago. This appli

SHRINES AND PILGRIMAGES.

(Continued from Vol. XXVI. p. 361.) LEAVING the saintly celebrity of Canterbury, with its thousands and tens of thousands of pilgrims, we shall proceed to enumerate a few other famed shrines. Foremost among these is that of Venerable Bede, which stood in the Galilee, a chapel built at the western end of the Cathedral at Durham. This chapel is divided into five aisles, by rows of clustered columns. At the eastern end of the three centre aisles were formerly three altars; that to the South being St. Bede's, before which is the tomb, on which, until the Reformation, stood the shrine of the Saint,

The following account of this shrine is from a book published in 1672, under the title of "The Ancient Rites and Monuments of the Monastical and Cathedral Church of Durham, collected out of Ancient Manuscripts, about the time of the Suppression:" "There was on the south side, between two pillars, a beautiful monument of blue marble, a yard high, supported by five pillars, one at every corner, and the fifth under the middle; and above the said marble-stone and pillars stood a shrine, second to St. Cuthbert's, wherein the bones of that holy man, St. Bede, were enshrined. It used to be taken down every festival day, when there was any solemn procession, and carried by four monks in time of procession and divine service; which being ended, they conveyed it again into the Galilee, and set it upon the said tomb, which had a cover of wainscot curiously gilt, and made to draw up and down over the shrine, when they pleased to show the sumptuousness thereof." Elsewhere, the same account says, that "there were two stones that belonged to St. Bede's shrine in the Galilee. The uppermost stone had three holes in each corner, for irons to be fastened in to guide the covering when it was drawn up or let down. The other was a plain marble stone, which was lowest, and laid above a little, marble tomb, whereon the bottoms of the five small pillars stood, to support the uppermost stone." At the suppression of the monasteries, the shrine was probably destroyed, and the bones of Bede interred, "under the same place where before his body was exalted;" the larger marbles were

removed into the body of the church, and only the little, marble tomb, which served as the basis of the shrine, was left remaining in the Galilee.

This account of Bede's shrine has been quoted in the Penny Magazine, No. 211. It may be interesting to add that the tomb of Bede was opened on May 27, 1831. Two thin, copper coins of the Hanseatic towns, (or, as they are generally denominated, abbeypieces,) were found in the soil near the surface; and below, at the depth of about three feet, disposed in a grave nearly six feet in length, were found several human bones exactly in the relative position they would have occupied if the body had been entire. Some portions of decayed wood, and moist, soft dust, appeared along the whole length of the grave, remains, apparently of the coffin. A large thumb-ring of iron, covered with a thick coating of gold, was discovered in the place which the right hand would have occupied, had it been there. It appeared, however, to have been placed upon a bone, for which, as it was too large, the intervening space had been filled up with coarse, woollen cloth, portions of which remained. The device is a cinque-foil. The ring is deposited in the library. After a cast had been made of the skull, which was of a very strange formation, the bones were carefully deposited in a strong box of oak covered with lead, together with a record upon parchment of the above particulars, and were carefully reinterred; and the massive, superincumbent altar-tomb of blue marble was replaced on the following day. On the tomb was subsequently cut in bold letters, the old, monkish

verse:

HAC SUNT IN FOSSA BEDE VENERABILIS OSSA.❤

Another celebrated shrine was that of St.

Ethelbert, which formerly stood upon the high altar of Hereford Cathedral. This interesting relic has been engraved and minutely described in the Mirror, vol. xxi.; where also is noticed "the Shrine of the Monks," which is preserved to this day in Peterborough Cathedral, and regarded as a fine specimen of Anglo-Saxon art..

It is, however, time to return to the general subject. All pilgrimages to canonized shrines were professedly devotional; but the devotee often visited them to satisfy some personal want or secular interest. This arose from that

subdivision of the Romish, as of the classical, calendar, which assigned a tutelary deity to almost every situation or contingency of life; and, in consequence, filled the country with tion here alluded to is quaintly detailed in a shrines of a specific virtue. The superstipassage in Sir Thomas More's Dyalogue on the Adoracion of Images :—

Sykes's Local Records, vol. ii. p. 301. New edit. Newcastle, 1833.

The conditions upon which pilgrimages were sometimes undertaken, with a few details of presents to shrines, relics, &c., will form the subjects of another paper, and thus enable us to conclude our gleanings in this attractive branch of popular antiquities.

The Public Journals.

HISTORICAL NOVELS.

SIR WALTER SCOTT was the founder of a new school of literature; before his day the historical novel was not to be distinguished from the ordinary trash of the circulating library; he was the first to embody the spirit of past times, to bring before us the costume, the habits of life, and, in some degree, the motives of action, in ages to which, in these essential particulars, we were utter strangers. Before the publication of Ivanhoe, it was scarcely suspected by any but professed antiquarians, that in the reign of the Plantagenets, England contained a race of Helots, strangers in the land of their nativity, enslaved to foreign lords, who scourged them by their cruelty, plundered them by their rapacity, and slandered them by their malice. Ivanhoe threw a new light on the national history; it showed the causes of Jack Straw's and Wat Tyler's insurrections, and at once dissipated a host of prejudices that had distorted and perverted a most important era of

our anuals. Far would it be from us to take one leaf from the imperishable wreath that crowns the monument of" the great northern enchanter," but we must not disguise our opinion that Sir Walter stopped short in the great revolution that he had the glory of commencing; nearly perfect in his descriptions of institutions and manners, he was timid in tracing their effects, and scarcely ever investigated their causes. Deeply imbued with a respect for chivalry, that historic dream which the Dukes of Burgundy attempted to realize, he viewed the feudal ages through this glittering but delusive medium, and pardoned the horrors of vassalage for the fancied graces of knighthood. It is an old complaint that most of his historic characters are gross misrepresentations. Richard "of the lion heart," and tiger disposition, a rebel to his father, a tyrant to his subjects, perfidious in peace, merciless in war, becomes an amiable monarch, whose worst error is his preference of perilous adventure to the honours of royalty. That pedantic despot, James I., is represented as a good-natured sovereign, with a few harmless eccentricities; and apologies are found even for that moral monster, Louis XI. Some critics have gravely ascribed these erroneous descriptions to political partialities; we are persuaded that Scott, in writing them, never thought of politics; in his mind the subordination of feudalism was blended with the beauties of chivalry;

A

Three living writers, James, Grattan, and Bulwer, have entered the field left vacant by the death of Sir Walter Scott, but each following the bent of his inclinations has struck out a path for himself. The most recent works of these writers are before us, and in connexion with our subject require a few words of notice. Mr. James is scrupu lously faithful in depicting costume and manners; his historic verity is scarcely ever impeachable, but his researches never go be. yond secondary causes; he tries not to investigate the secret springs of action; the moral anatomy of motive has altogether escaped his attention. Hence, we think, arises the want of vitality in all his portraitures; the likenesses, the colouring, the drapery, are all excellent, but they are still only pictures; "soul is wanting there,” and this very meritorious author must add to the study of forms the study of the mind that originated these forms, before he will arrive at the summit of his fame, and earn a place in distant memory, by advancing the progress of that branch of literature to which he has devoted much industry and much mental power.

Grattan excels in the developement of individual rather than national mind; one of his plots would furnish enough of intrigue for three ordinary novels, and he sometimes treads closely on the confines of improbability. But he excels in showing the nature of the inner mind by a few significant traits, that at once lay bare the latent workings both of reason and passion; there is more of the genuine character of Elizabeth in a few pages of Agnes de Mansfelt than in the whole of Kenilworth.

It

Bulwer's Rienzi, we fondly believe, must be regarded, like Scott's Waverley, as the first of a new class of publications; it is the first historical novel in which the intellectual problem of history is fairly worked out. is a genuine developement of the great philosophic truth, "Mind generates forms and institutions, and these again produce events;" the formula has only to be generalized, and the means are supplied for correctly tracing the progress of mankind. A prodigious advance has been made by one brave bound; an untrodden field of analysis is opened to the philosophic historian. A man in the midst of a corrupt state, by the mere force of his mind raises himself to rank and station, and attempts a reform, in which he makes the natural but fatal error of mistaking me

mory for hope: he has to work upon a tyrannical nobility and a degraded populace; the political intellect of the period is blind selfishness, the religious creed servile superstition. Such are the conditions of the problem; let us see how they are worked out. Wrapped in blind security, the ruling party leave the reformer to mature his plans unheeded; they are for the time eliminated; the populace gains the mastery and at once proves its unfitness for freedom by clamouring for an individual instead of an institution. The death-knell of Roman liberty was rung when every man cried "Long live Rienzi!" and no man-" "Long live the Republic!" The individual mind, however upright and pure, must work upon a corrupt people by corrupt means; it is necessarily sullied by the contact, and is sure to adopt the great popular error of depending on self, rather than on the gradual working of institutions. The best revolution that this world ever saw never effected the tithe of the benefits that its authors expected; disappointment prepares the way for suspicion; a new change is demanded to supply what the last had failed to effect; some new demagogue outbids the popular favourite; he is hurled to the dust by the hands that raised him, and his fate serves "to point a moral or adorn a tale." This is the history of some hundred revolutions, because the result is necessarily involved in the very conditions of the question; actions are the result of motives; the direction of motive is determined by the extent of intelligence, and when this has been ascertained, there can be no more doubt of the consequences that will ensue from any given movement, than of daylight's following the rising of the sun.- Foreign Quarterly Review.

GENIUS. BY VICTOR HUGO.

EVERY passion is eloquent: every man who is convinced, convinces: to draw tears, we must weep; it has been well said, "enthusiasm is contagious."

Take an infant away from its mother; collect together all the orators in the world; then say "Let the child die, and let us go to dinner:" listen to the mother: whence comes it, that she has excited moans, has caused you all to weep, so that you have repealed the sentence?"

The eloquence of Cicero and the clemency of Cæsar are spoken of as very wonderful. If Cicero had been the father of Ligarius, what would he have said? Nothing more simple.

And, in truth, there is a language which never deceives, which all men understand, and with which all men are gifted: it is the language of great passions as well as of great events: it is spoken in moments when all hearts respond to it, when Israel rises as

one man.