ment, and had become the residence of a petty tyrant called a Prefect. Stripped of all its former distinctions, it was reduced to one half of its population, and mourned in vain its slavery and impoverishment. From this city, Mr. Eustace pursued his route to Susa and to Novalese; and, on the northern brow of Mount Cennis, he bade an eternal farewell to the boundaries of Italy, and the regions of classic fame and beauty. In perusing and reflecting on the work of this learned, dispassionate, and energetic writer, we know not whether to bestow the greatest share of commendation on those talents for description which place the reader on the very spot, and surround him by every admonitus locorum, or on the many profound remarks and discussions respecting historical, political, literary, and religious subjects, which are scattered in different parts of his volumes. * If we cannot enter into the author's view of the church of Rome, we must acknowlege that he admits the necessity of a reformation to bring back that church to its primæval majesty and simplicity; and if certain ceremonies revolt us, the explanation which he has given of others undoubtedly presents to us the Papal court and discipline in a light different from that in which it is usually beheld through the medium of prejudice and misrepresentation. The Popes, he observes, were simply the bishops of Rome, subject at first to Pagan and afterward to Christian Emperors. The greater part of their powers, and especially those acts which have been most offensive, he allows to be of human institution. Under the former line of Emperors, the Popes were more popular in Rome than their masters, because they were native Romans, patricians, better informed, and more humane; in a word, because they were Christians. Under the Christian line, they became friends, confidents, and spiritual guides to the Emperors themselves; and they were enriched with grants of land, with plate and jewels, by their sovereigns and by foreign princes. The barbarians themselves appear to have been awed by their sacred character, and * Mr. Eustace apologizes for the table of Errata, which certainly is rather large; and, although he is evidently versed in classic lore, by a strange fatality the errors are of a description that should seem to indicate an inattention to prosody: such as rosca, corrected to rosea, when the metre demanded roscida : - Privatus illis census brevis erat, for census erat brevis : magna mater frugum, magna virum, &c. for magna parens; and very many more. These metrical inaccuracies are the more worthy of correction, as the tour is professedly classical. - D 4 left N left their accumulated riches untouched. This fact we learn from the epistles of Gregory the Great; who employed the vast income, of which he was the administrator, in supporting many illustrious families that had been reduced to misery, and in relieving the distresses of the people who were labouring under the accumulated pressure of war, famine, and pestilence. Meanwhile, the Emperors were usually also barbarians, and absent from the capital; in which they took no interest beyond that of conquest or of plunder. It is not surprizing, therefore, if the people were anxious to withdraw their allegiance from a foreign despot; and to grant it to a pontiff who employed his riches so much to their advantage, who was himself a Roman patrician, who saved them from the intrigues of the imperial court, and from the fury of the Longobardi. Gregory had been early employed in the management of affairs, and had acquired the address of a courtier with the experience of a statesman. In those disastrous times, the Romans were in need of some powerful mind that should draw, as it were, a magic circle around them, to secure them from assault and plunder. Neither bishop nor prince, however, it is asserted, would have been singly able to protect them: but the assumption of a character which combined the temporal and spiritual authorities, to their utmost, was at that fearful period their only bulwark and defence. Gregory was a Roman, and regarded all beyond the Alps as barbaric; and it is considered as probable that the claims to universal supremacy, which he first established, originated rather in the pride of a Roman than in that of a pontiff. From the period of his interference, the Greek Emperors were the nominal, but the Popes became the real and effective sovereigns of Rome. Attached to it generally by birth, and always by residence, duty, and interest, they promoted its welfare with unabating and often with successful efforts; and on the merit of these services, and the voluntary submission of a grateful and admiring flock, rests the original and best claim to temporal sovereignty which the Roman pontiffs possess. This sovereignty was long enjoyed by them before it was allowed on the part of the Emperor; and many ages elapsed before it was established on a solid and unshaken basis. Their conduct is represented as honourable to themselves and their country until the tenth century; from which period, for five succeeding centuries, they seem to have lost all the sacredness of their character in intrigue, and but too often in guilty encroachments on the rights of other princes and other nations. In the meanwhile, new pomps, new ceremonies, new dresses, new relics, and new absurdities of every kind, appear to have been devised for the purposes purposes of abusing the credulous or over-reaching the powerful; until these multiplied practices of deception and intole rance awakened the slumbering indignation of the north. This indignation, by withdrawing from the Popes much of the veneration of men, put them on their guard, and insensibly reduced them again to act more within the sphere of their pastoral duties, and to confine themselves to the reserve and severe magnificence of pontiffs. The income of the Roman court, when in full possession of its territory both in Italy and France, was not calculated at more than 600,000l.; and Mr. Eustace observes, contrary to the received opinion, that this revenue arose principally from internal taxation. The annats and dispensations from France, the richest of Catholic countries, did not amount, according to this statement, to more than 15,0col. per annum. In Spain and Germany, they were, as Mr. E. believes, bought off or suppressed. The pilgrims, who visited Rome in latter days, brought little more in their train than filth and beggary, and were more frequently a weight than a relief to the ecclesiastical establishment. Some of the Popes, we allow with this author, have been great and good men: but, although the wars of Julius II., and the cruelties and pollutions of Alexander VI., are by no means the scale by which we measure their general character, yet we cannot agree with him that a government whose head is a Pope, and whose senate is a consistory of cardinals, would ever replace with effect the consular and senatorial dignities of antient Rome. If the exercise of any profession would train its members to the arts of legislation and of government, the law should seem to be the more obvious school; and, if, after experience, the study of the law be found to contract the mind and unfit it for those general views which a politician should embrace, how can we expect that an individual, concentered in a subject the farthest removed from bustle and intrigue, and estranged from danger and alarm, should be fitted to meet new and pressing emergencies, and to make head against the factions and violence of the world? In viewing the calamities which have visited Europe for a series of twenty-two years, we coincide in general with the opinion of Mr. Eustace. The French first subdued the continent with their language, before they attempted its conquest by their arms; and the Italian, the daughter of the Latin, (which, although not matre pulchrá filia pulchrior, is unquestionably the sweetest and most sonorous of modern tongues,) has been compelled to yield its open and manly articulation to a Language in most respects its inferior. Even in this country, whose existence as an independent nation has long been owing to to the jealous vigilance of the well informed, aided by the wholesome prejudices of the multitude against French influence, that influence has extended very widely over our schools and societies. Not to mention the irremediable defects in the French language, its truncated syllables, the general complication of its grammar, the multiplicity of its rules, and the frequency of exceptions, its vowels and dipthongs of indistinct and its various syllables of nasal utterance, it is moreover a language which can by no process be said to lend itself to poesy in its more exquisite sense. To the beauties of inversion, which places a principal word precisely in that situation which sets it off to advantage, it is a stranger. The e mute is a mean subterfuge in metre; the rhymes masculine and feminine are but fetters, necessary indeed to that one language; and the gallop of its numerous syllables, though choaked with nearly as many consonants as the English, from the opening to the conclusion of a line, appears to say to the metrical writer, "Jest as much as you choose, but write nothing serious or tender." Yet, with all these defects, Racine has been tender, but perhaps Racine alone. In the epigram, however, the madrigal, and those happy nothings which depend on ingenuity, the French are not to be rivalled. Neither can we deny to their prose much eloquence and force; and, above all, that logical closeness and clearness which they claim, which to the authors of this country appears never to have been fully known, but which Mr. Eustace seems to consider as within the reach of other languages. Still, whatever may be its merits, we hail the present writer as coinciding with us in a long preconceived opinion, that Italian is its superior in sound and in sense; and that the re-introduction of Latin, or of Italian, into diplomacy, to the exclusion of the French, is almost necessary to the repose of Europe. The Italian language breathes no atheism; its authors are in general pure; in every species of literature, they have advanced far, and in many they have gone beyond their restless neighbours. Dante, Petrarca, Ariosto, Tasso, Boccaccio, Guarini, Alfieri, Metastasio, all Phabo digna locuti, Guicciardini, Davila, Denina, Muratori, in history; the same Muratori, Maffei, Carli, and Paciaudi, in antiquities; and in criticism the mere mention of Tiraboschi, who, in his Storia della Litteratura Italiana takes in the whole history of the antient and modern literature of his country, and conducts the reader from the first Punic war over the immense space of twenty intervening centuries down to the eighteenth; afford names not only illustrious for genius, but (with one exception) for the morality and piety of their compositions. The language which these writers have ennobled has precedency over all existing European tongues in antiquity, in sweetness, sweetness, and in majesty. It is of easy attainment, gives grace, harmony, and precision to every subject that it touches, and has the advantage of being spoken and written by a divided people, who are, from this circumstance, the least in a situation to alarm the fears and jealousies of Europe. To this language, the northern hordes, who successively inundated those who spoke it, have contributed none of the asperities of their native jargons; indeed, it appears that, in the rejection of the final consonant and the omission of the aspirate, it rather resembles the antient dialects of Italy; while, in point of date, it may in some respects have precedence of the more finished Latin itself. We collect from Cicero and Quintilian that it was formerly considered as an elegance to strike off the last letter in words; e.g. Qui est omnibu princeps" - for omnibus princeps, ་་ "Vitâ illâ dignu locoque" - for dignus, "Floribu nunquam" for floribus; and, from the most antient inscriptions produced by Lanzi, we find the m equally rejected, and the names of cities retaining the same termination in all their cases. From Cicero, we learn that the use of the aspirate was much less common among the antients than in his time, and that the early Romans pronounced Cetegos, triumpos, Cartaginem, &c., that is, as the modern Italians pronounce those words. The more frequent use of the aspirate was probably derived from the Greek pronunciation. Cato the Censor entirely omitted the m, according to Quintilian. The Italian sound of z like st is very antient, as appears from a medal of Trezæne, on which for Zeus we find ΣΔευς. Ct was generally changed by the antient as by the modern Italians into tt, as Coctius into Cottius, pactum into pattum, factum into fattum, &c.; as in Italian Cettio, patto, fatto, &c.-The above, with many similar observations, may be found in Lanzi. The new language retained so much of the parent idiom, that not the same words only but the same phrases became equally appropriate in both; and hymns have been written which may be called indiscriminately either Latin or Italian. Of this description are the two following: and, "In mare irato in subita procella Invoco te, nostra benigna stella!" &c. "Vivo in acerba pena, in mesto orrore Purissima |