great blocks of basalt with which Vesuvius has here diced, we emptied a few bottles of tears (the celebrated wine called Lachrymæ Christi), and cast a consolatory glance over the sea and the happy landscape in the valley. Before us now lay the cone-shaped summit, formed of masses of pumice-stone and of lava, and of loose ashes: no path, no way leads upwards; every forward step buries the trace of its predecessor; and one often climbs without moving, as the advanced foot slides back again."

Up this pleasant bill they run a race, and our friend, the living letterwriter, first reaches the ridge of the crater.

all

"Fearfully it thundered beneath me; storm-winds roared as though the hurricane were passing; a double pillar of flame burst upwards, and with a fearful explosion the dread hell-jaws in the deep below vomited a red-hot stone-hail, which, like unparalleled fire-works, flung thousands of balls of light and of rockets far above our heads.... Over the inside of the crater is poured out a sulphur-slime, cracked in many places by the beat underneath, and which exhibits not only the usual sulphur-yellow, but ever-changing tints of green, blue, red and orange; and as metallic colours notoriously surpass others in brilliancy, we saw outspread before us, so long as the sun shone, a wonderously glittering carpet; which, however, despite the magnificence that charmed the eye, had something of the horror of a gaily variegated serpent-skin. The colours gain especial vivacity from the contrast of the black hill in the middle. The process of the eruption appears to have a very regular course. A subterraneous thunder is first heard, then follows a tempest of wind, flames burst out of the black hill through the double mouthed crater, and thereupon follows a threefold discharge of stones: the whole process lasted uniformly from eight to ten minutes. *** A more kindly and soothing spectacle drew us to the highest height of the ridge; this was the setting of the sun, that sank into the sea behind Ischia, and parted from the world with a glowing kiss. The green islands swam in the purple flood of ocean, and the waves broke in golden foam on the garlanded shore."

pas

This grows longer than we had intended, and we must needs leave Mount Vesuvius abruptly, omitting even Signor Salvator's manifold virtues and confidence in German travellers, because there is another sage which, with little reference to the living traveller himself, we are bent upon extracting. At Rome the letter-writer met with Thorvaldsen, and as we flatter ourselves that the Danish Life of the great artist, reviewed in our last number but one, may bave even increased the interest our readers would naturally feel in so extraordinary a man, we shall translate what is here said of him. The traveller is quitting the Roman Teatro Argentino, disgusted with the performance.

"In the lobby I met Thorvaldsen, who, with much friendliness, recollected our former meetings at Berlin and Dresden. Late at night he accompanied me to my villa, and invited me to seek him in his workshop the next morning. Since this visit I have seen the dear Thorvaldsen almost daily, either at his residence, adorned with the paintings of living artists, whom he patronizes more beneficially than many a prince, or in his workshop. We often visit the Vatican together, yet oftener some one of the taverns, where, mingling with his youthful countrymen, unaffectedly discarding high thoughts, and enjoying life, he smokes his cigar and empties his foglietta (an Italian measure of wine.) In his studio are casts of all the statues and bus-reliefs that he has completed during the three-and-thirty years he has lived in Rome. There too are a crowd of great works which, aided by numerous assistants, he still has in hand. To VOL. XI. XXI. Q

the little wooden out-house in which he wrought his first statue, a Jason, he has built on a second and a third larger room; and at length, the world of gods and heroes that he has collected requiring a complete Olympus, he has filled the lower story of the Barberini palace with them. With each of his productions some interesting moment of the artist's life is connected, and these he readily communicates to his friends in his simple, one might say childish, manner."

This ready communicativeness does not quite agree with Professor Thiele's account of the difficulty of obtaining information from Thorvaldsen touching himself, and, truth to tell, we place more confidence in the Dane, wholly engrossed with his illustrious countryman, and who avouches his statements with his name, than in our anonymous living traveller, whom, well as we like him, we suspect of some little colouring for effect. We trust him in essentials, but we doubt he embellishes common-place incidents, sometimes into romance, sometimes, when he stumbles upon English tourists, into farce; at least we can no otherwise understand his stories of English lords and ladies, unless, indeed, he may chance to have now and then taken a Cheapside haberdasher for a British peer. Upon the present occasion the story he tells, as from Thorvaldsen's own mouth, is that of the Jason, and varies from Thiele's version of it only in minor details, thus confirming our opinion of our letter-writer's kind of veracity. Having so recently narrated this anecdote, we shall not repeat it. Our letter-writer thus proceeds ;

"Since then (Mr. Hope's visit) Thorvaldsen is become a rich, celebrated, and, in every sense, a great man : he is worth, perhaps, half a million of dollars; he is President of the Academy; he has been decorated with ribbons and stars by all the princes of Europe; and, what is thought much more of here, Pope Leo XII. has visited him, the Protestant, in his workshop, where Thorvaldsen, in his working dress, chisel and hammer in hand, received the Holy Father standing, whilst all the company knelt around. And how little store does Thorvaldsen set by all these distinctions, how plain and simple is his nature, how entirely does he belong to Art and Artist-life! But this artistlife distinguishes Rome from every other place, for here only do artists really enjoy their existence, since here they hold faithfully together in cheerful association. Of this artist-life Thorvaldsen is the heart and soul. He does not shut himself up, grandee like; he thanks God when princes and princesses, bankers and ambassadors, let him alone, for infinitely does he prefer spending a joyous evening, in a smoke-blackened tavern, with his young kinsmen in Art. Every artist, whatever be his station or country, is certain of a cordial reception from Thorvaldsen; and never does it occur to him that he can let himself down, because, gladsomely mingling with young men as though they were his equals, he gives himself a jovial day amidst wine and song."

....

How far our readers may agree with the German traveller in admiring this preference of smoking and drinking with the mad youth of Germany, over associating with good company, we leave to themselves; and were about to conclude, when the words "wine and song" reminded us that we had said nothing of our living letter-writer's poetry. In fact poetry is now, we believe, nearly as common as reading and writing in Germany; and it would be more requisite to mention, of any given author so circumstanced, that he is not, than of all the rest that they are, poetical. With respect to the verses thickly scattered through these two

volumes, they are for the most part given as hasty effusions, when not as improvisations; and we must say, that those we read appeared to us șo thoroughly in that light-moreover, something less poetical than the prose descriptions-that the idea of translating any of them never crossed our brain.

ART. XIII.—A Grammar of the Anglo-Saxon Tongue, with a Praxis. By Erasmus Rask, Professor of Literary History in, and Librarian to, the University of Copenhagen, &c. &c. A New Edition, enlarged and improved by the Author. Translated from the Danish by B. Thorpe. Copenhagen. 1830. 8vo. pp. 224.

THE appearance of the present volume supplies what has long been a desideratum in English literature. It has been a cause of complaint to all who have investigated our early vernacular remains, that there have been no guides to direct them, and that each student had to form a Grammar and a Dictionary of Saxon for himself. It is no less surprising than distressing to notice the blunders into which Hickes has fallen, and in which Elstob, Lye, Manning, and, indeed, all who have written upon the subject, have followed him most religiously.

We are much indebted to the distinguished foreign scholar who has at length freed us, to a certain degree, from this lamentable state of things by the publication of his Saxon Grammar. In its arrangement he has taken the liberty of thinking for himself, and by doing so has shown us the errors which have originated from a superstitious adherence to the dogmas of his predecessors. An extensive acquaintance with the early languages of the north has enabled him to explore with greater safety the intricacies of our own, and by the aid of this species of comparative anatomy he has, in several instances, detected the springs which direct and influence certain peculiarities of formation, the principle of which would have probably been hidden from one who had directed his attention solely to the study of the Anglo-Saxon language.

The limits within which we are necessarily limited prevent us from offering to our readers more than a very general outline of the work. We would, however, direct the attention of the student to the important light which Rask has thrown upon the principles of the language, by what he has advanced regarding accentuation. The darkness in which this radical organization of the Saxon has hitherto lain is marvellous, the more especially when we notice its adoption in early manuscripts, and how essential a knowledge of it is towards a comprehension of the elements of the tongue. A pretty extensive examination of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, in which lie the proofs of the truth or the incorrectness of Mr. Rask's system, enables us to say that these manuscripts fully support the soundness of his views, and that the few instances of misapprehension and omission discoverable in his Grammar only leave the more room for us to wonder at their paucity. The division of nouns into simple and complex, of adjectives into definite and indefinite, are new to us in England; and the clearness of this arrangement forms an admirable contrast to the endless subdivisions, exceptions, and annotations,

which perplex the unhappy wight who has been labouring under the guidance of Hickes. But it is in the investigation of the verbs that Rask appears to the greatest advantage, and his classification of them is simple and obvious: of its accuracy there cannot be a better proof than the order and perfect regularity which it enables us to discover in nuHis observations merous formations previously considered as irregular. upon prefixes and postfixes are written with less care than the previous portion of the Grammar, probably from his not considering the subject as one meriting a deeper discussion. The same excuse cannot be urged for the slighting manner in which he has treated another branch-that of Syntax; in this part, although all the more prominent rules are exhibited, those more deeply hidden and nicer peculiarities, of which we cannot suppose him to be ignorant, are passed over without notice. This portion of the work therefore appears to great disadvantage when compared with the manner in which he has treated the verbs. The chapter upon the laws of Saxon poetry is excellent, and Rask displays a decided superiority over the dogmas of Hickes, Conybeare and W. Grimm. The volume concludes with a very good praxis, by the aid of which, and the other helps which this Grammar affords to the student, the labour of acquiring a tolerable knowledge of the language has been materially shortened and facilitated. It would be unjust to withhold our thanks from the gentleman who has conferred such a benefit upon English scholars as that of introducing to them, in an English dress, a publication upon which all subsequent investigations into the history and formation of the language of our forefathers must be mainly founded.

The preceding observations were committed to paper some months since in the interval which has elapsed between their coming before us in types, the melancholy tidings have arrived that the distinguished author is now beyond the reach of our praise or censure-Erasmus Rask is no more!

In the Literary Intelligence of the present number, under the head of Denmark, will be found such particulars of the life and literary labours of this remarkable scholar and linguist as we have been able to collect together.

ART. XIV.-La Ville de Refuge; Rêve philantropique. Paris. Ladvocat. 1832. 8vo.

THIS is a publication to which it is not necessary to devote more than a few words, nor, indeed, would it be worth noticing at all, if it were not of that class of books which form a sort of index to the state of opinion in France in regard to social morality, and the present wants of society in general. The motto of the book is " prier, travailler, s'instruire,' and it is appended to a vignette representing emblems of religion, implements of industry, and books and other sources of instruction. This motto expresses briefly the whole contents of the book, which amount to this-that governments ought to labour to make their subjects pious, industrious, and intelligent.

The visitor is introduced into a temple in which the inscription "Love one another appears prominent, as the basis of the faith of the worshippers. One of these, an old man, is made to say of the ceremonies of the temple :

"Each of us professes here freely his own worship; but each of us believes in the faith which he embraces, and conforms thereto, without deviation, his conduct and manners. As for me, whose age has whitened my hair and wrinkled my forehead, and whose experience, though perhaps too slow, has ripened my reason and rectified my mind, I say with a pious bishop long since dead (Gregory of Blois), and whose tomb must have been the seal of many sorrows, "What is religion to man, if it is a mere theory, without influence upon his conduct? Of what consequence is the theory of a free government, if it is, in practice, despotic? Of what use are the fine theories of a magistrate upon justice, if he turns the balance in favour of iniquity?”

It would be a libel upon the intelligent and well-educated portion of the French community, to say that they are still imbued with the sceptical philosophy of the last century, or that they are indifferent, or hostile, to the substance of religion. Those who know any thing of the state of mind of enlightened persons in Paris, must be aware that a better philosophy is rapidly taking the place of the materialism of the eighteenth century, and that France is passing through a philosophical transition, which affords promise of a result highly favourable to the most important interests of her people. It is our firm belief that the day is coming when the main truths of Christianity will, in no country, be more firmly established than in France, and, what is more, that those truths will be put into practice. The public veneration for empty ceremonies and fantastic shows may have died away-the taste for polemical discussion may have grown languid-the superstitious reverence for ecclesiastical dogmas may have abated-but if all this is found to lead, not to the destruction of religion itself, but to its propagation and strengthening, and to the imbuing the hearts of the French people with the fear of God, and the love of man, the charge of irreligion against them is one which must wholly fall to the ground. Time will show how far our anticipations may be realized; but thus much is certain, that Paris in 1832 is no more the Paris of Rousseau and Voltaire, than it is the Paris of St. Louis, and that it is an unmerited imputation upon the most enlightened of the citizens of Paris, to say either that they do not respect the essential doctrines of religion, or that they do not practise the precepts of Christianity as much to the full as they are practised in our own metropolis.

ART. XV.-Paris Malade, Esquisses du Jour, par Eugène Roch. 8vo. Paris. 1832.

A WHIMSICAL and clever book, by a young author of considerable reputation designed to exhibit Paris under the influence of the cholera-we hardly know whether to say tempered or inflamed, perhaps the right word is-modified by the revolution of July, 1830, by the subsequent tumults