hearts' content, and perches of ground.

Cover many The oaks make

a family tryst of it: there is the Quercus rotundifolia of Spanish origin, and famous food for cattle, the llex oak, and the Farnia, (Quercus cerus,) the Balotta oak, furnishing a sweet acorn equal to the chestnut in flavour, and our own Quercus robur, on whose leaves Gaetano Mazoni, a dyer of Leghorn, lately turned out a colony of cocci to pasture in the Maremma; there they multiplied, and acquired an exceedingly fine colour; the great show carpet of St Peter's was dyed in one pound of these very dried insects, and with the most brilliant success. The tobacco plant was not afraid to show his face here, despite antinicotian tariffs and Tuscan despotism, blooming in every variety in broad leaves, and lanceolate leaves, besides a little pigmy kind that is more flower than leaf. We saw the coffee tree, that carries its berry under its arm, and the Ficus elasticus was made to yield a small quantity of its milky caoutchouc; a Laurus camphora yielded us evidence of that substance concealed within its leaves. The Mimosa pudica did not escape our notice; we touched her trembling leaves, and they closed on their drooping stems-a little red flower (Portulacca Gilesi) set, on similar provocation, all its yellow anthers in motion, as if they had been its antennæ; nor were the sensibilities of the Cactus opuntia more obtuse-the Acarus calamus, whose soaked root gives its bitter principle to "vermuth," grew in a small tank, amidst other aquatic

plants. plants. The ebony tree (Diospyros), which we had seen in blossom at Padua (in May) was now ripe, and yielded its sweet but astringent fruit, in appearance vastly similar to the scoriæ apple. The new wood of this tree is white, like other wood; it is only the old wood or "anima" of the plant, that is black, and which constitutes the ebony. There was no end to the medicinal plants of this garden, henbane, and hemlock, and stramonium, and Elaterium (luffa) with pods as big as cucumbers, Atropa belladonna in her pink bonnet, and all the poisons! We saw the beautiful Musa paradisaica, the Banana tree, which is always cribbed down to a glass room of twenty feet, and breaking its neck against the windows-melancholy it looks! and always reminds us of our old acquaintance the elephant in Exeter 'Change; its bark shows the cellular arrangement of growth which is common to other plants, where, however, the microscope is generally required to make it visible; it yields a strong smell of cucumber when cut across. We saw much that we shall like to see again and again, and amongst these particularly, the Japan medlar (Mesplus Japonicus), which we had tasted ripe, and an excellent fruit it is, at Genoa, in the month of May; and which we found in most fragrant blossoming here in September! So that this extraordinary tree either brings with it a new code for regulating the growth of vegetables from Japan, or makes to itself an unsocial system here.

Our arm has been seized by the youngest (not very young) of two Florentine females (not very handsome) who have just entered the wax gallery, and, unable to read what is written over a foetus of twelve days' old, have requested us to interpret. We do so; she clasps her hands in ecstasy, and asks about the next. It is a wax accoucheé, deposited upon an ornamented couch, and provokes the exclamation, "Ah che bella Donna!" as if they were looking at Titian's Venus in the Tribune. At length we are obliged to turn off abruptly from the two fair ones, under pain of

not seeing any thing but what might move their curiosity. After passing through a suite of rooms, devoted severally to bones, muscles, joints, nerves and viscera, besides much comparative anatomy, where the huge elephant and well-riveted giraffe stand stiff on their wooden foot-boards, in a grove of antlers and horns, foreign and domestic, with whales' vertebræ, and huge fragments of potted mammoth and shark's jaws, over our head, and hyenas grinning at us under the table, we enter the insect compartment, which was what we came to see; where our friend Dr Passerini

is waiting to receive us, and where we are sure of beguiling away an agreeable and instructive hour. Dr Passerini is a very intelligent and amiable person, who began to love insects while a boy, and now follows up his passion with unwearied assiduity in spectacles. Placed at Florence in the midst of the fine arts, he sticks true to nature, and prefers the "lo" or "Vanissa" of God's own colouring, to all the Titians of the gallery! His own coat may be somewhat seedy, for it is not on his own dress that he spends his money; but his butterflies are select, and their pelisses are without speck! He is liberal, like all men of science, and integer vitæ scelerisque purus, which all collectors are not. He is not one of those who would cheat a brother entomologist in a transaction about a longicorn, or would glue legs, not his own, into a cetonia. Alas! we have known gentry of this sort, (Paris abounds in them,) whom we would not leave in a room alone with a good insect for something! who call themselves naturalists by profession, and hang out a glass frame full of beetles, by way of signboard to their premises, where they sit reducing dislocations, splicing antennæ, and labelling specimens for young beginners, to be sold very dear, and with apparent reluctance! The insects at the museum were not, perhaps, in good preserva

tion; but it was vastly interesting to look at an old collection, as left by Geoffrey, Fabricius, and Latreille, and with the old names-a collection formed before man looked too curiously for minute differences, or sought to distinguish an insect in order to distinguish themselves. Here we saw, with no ordinary interest, a specimen of that small and by no means rare or very brilliant insect, the Necrobium ruficolle, which saved the life of the celebrated Latreille. In prison during the Reign of Terror, and daily expecting to be led to execution, one of these little creatures appeared one morning at his window. It was then a new insect. He secured and sent the captive to one of the Directory, whom he knew to be fond of entomology. The present propitiated the man in power, who could not let a brother entomologist go to the scaffold, and interceded effectually for his preservation. Well might the periled man, in gratitude to the small creature for his deliverance, express his obligation in the universal language of science-" Insectum mihi carissimum! illis enim infelicissimis temporibus, quibus calamitatum omnium pondere obruta Gallia trepidante gemebat, amicissimis auxiliantibus Bory St Vincent, Dargelas, Burdigalensibus, (posteriori maxime,) hoc animalculum mihi libertatis salutisque occasio miranda evasit."

We enter this vast noiseless aviary, where a thousand birds are spellbound into silence! there they stood, the mother birds looking affectionately off their perches on the mossy cradles where the callow brood reposed, each name upon each nest! The family of the "Passeres" was there in great muster, with all their distant foreign relations; but no chirping being permitted, each cock stood stiffly by his dame, their beaks, like the faces of partners misallied in a quadrille, looking from off each other into the centre of the room. Amongst this division we note all the numerous small birds, which constitute the chief game in an Italian market, and all the finches, and they are few, of the Italian grove. But we had all the fine foreigners of the tropics to keep them company.

VOL. LI. NO. CCCXV.

There were the sylva, in their yellow pelisses; the trochilus, or hummingbird, in his brilliant shot red and green waistcoat; the cæreba, that looked as if she had been steeped in liquid lapis-lazuli, and many others, blazed away, or shone the despair even of Venetian colouring, on the sun-illumined panes of an old Gothic cathedral. Amongst the gallinaceous birds, we stop to salute a gallant cock, the Hector of the group, who shines in glossy green armour, and has a plume of burnished feathers topping his erect crest; whatever his country, Greek or Barbarian, well he deserves his Homeric name of "Lophophorus refulgens !" Next came the grallipides, those birds on "stilts," indebted perhaps to Plautus for the name, (cursu cervum,grallatorem gradu vincentes,)

D

curiously attitudinizing on one leg, or poising their high-titled personages, d'aplomb, on both sides at once; the ostrich's leathery thighs were there trolling over her eggs; and the "Ibis," dressed out like a "cardinal" in scarlet; and those saucy "becs retroussés "birds, the "recurvirostra," turning up their long bills as they looked at you! In passing out of this aviary into the darker room, where solitary eagles confront keen-eyed

kites, and the horned owl sits in her spectacles blinking at the hooded grey-eyed vulture, our attention is forcibly arrested by that uncommonly silly fellow, the goose, with his name distinctly written on his green gooseberry iris, and a printed notice round his neck, drawing himself up and looking half-pleased half-sulky, like a fool, who does not know why you stare at him, but hopes it may be a tribute of your respect to his superior parts.

Confined here rather by fascination than design, we look around and see colossal boas rolled upon themselves, in the absence of any object to implicate within their immense folds; their last cast skin is folded up carefully and beside them: vipers are here openmouthed, with their lancets ready for instant innoculation: and the snake, in whose tail nature places the rattle, to warn you, as some will have it, of the danger of his head! Small wiry ophidians, rising perpendicularly, like figurantes, on the very tip-toe of their tail, stiff as corkscrews, and looking implike through their small round eyes! The "coluber æstivus," that gave you no pleasant recollections of summer, showed his many spotted coils; while freckled and specked boccals of

poisonous reptiles, less known than these, filled all the glass cupboards around. The amphisbæna," that does not know his head from his tail, was there; and lizards, who, no doubt in consideration that they frequently lose that appendage, have been furnished by nature, in a provident freak, with one that was bifurcated. The cameleon, no longer not knowing what hue to assume next, is immutably bleached in spirits of wine; and the wide-mouthed batrachi, blown out and glazed, are fixed half erect on their bandy legs, or swim in large jars of white brandy.

These are but slight glimpses of the abounding interest of those collections, concerning which it were beside our purpose at present to say more.

Ir is told of Bishop Butler, the celebrated author of the "Analogy," that one day, being observed by his chaplain to be peculiarly immersed in thought, he enquired what was its subject. "I was considering," said the philosopher, "whether, as individuals go mad, whole nations may not also go mad." What so profound an enquirer might have made of his conjecture, is unluckily lost to the world; but the statements which we are now about to give, show sufficiently that vast multitudes may be as fantastic, as wild, and as headlong as any lunatic under the sky. It will be seen that men may act, en masse, as much in contradiction to common sense, to common interest, and to common experience, as if they were mistaking crowns of straw for crowns of jewels; and that millions of men may be as easily duped, chicaned, and plundered, as the simplest dreamer of waking dreams, who takes counters for guineas, and canvass for cloth of gold.

The physical theory of those observations remains for higher science than man has yet attained. But nothing can be more palpable than that there are faculties of sympathy in the human intellect not dissimilar to those which make our tears fall at the sight of tears, or our frames quiver at peculiar sounds, and that those faculties may be given, as all our other faculties are, for great purposes of wisdom and happiness; while, like all those faculties, they are capable of being perverted into instruments of great suffering and singular folly. It is obvious, also, that all the higher order of delusions have always fastened themselves upon some natural and even meritorious impression of the time, and, taking advantage of the impulse, have inflamed the good into vast and sweeping evil. Thus the Crusades originated in the newlyrisen spirit of reverence for the land trod by the first leaders of Christianity. Thus the various schemes of the alchemists took advantage of the justifiable desire in the multitude to acquire wealth, and in the philosopher

to penetrate into the secrets of nature. Thus astrology took advantage of the natural homage to the Hand which made the lights of heaven, and the growing love for investigating the sublime mysteries of the skies. Thus even the extravagances of witchcraft, magic, and its whole class of fearful and disturbing delusions, found their impulse in the natural and solemn anxiety to search into our own fate, the destiny of kingdoms, and the profound and awful career of the world to come. Mankind, in successive ages, seems wandering through a great gallery of successive fatuities-some bold and brilliant, some feeble and squalid, some merely eccentric, and some fierce and fearful, of which it mounts the successive pedestals, dresses itself in the robes, and adopts the characters.

But the rapidity with which the harmless absurdity has often darkened into the remorseless crime, should be a warning to legislators and nations against all deviations from the path of soberness. Against these deviations, we admit that there is a growing barrier in the general life of labour and general difficulty of subsistence inflicted on European nations. Poverty is a great restorer of the mind to the stern realities of existence. Yet what could be more rapid than the change of England, two centuries ago, from the mild monarchical feeling to the fury and tyranny of the Commonwealth or the change of France from festivity and loyalty into the maniacal horrors of the Revolution?

The work which has suggested these remarks, is one of research and ingenuity, but it goes only into a very limited portion of the subject. It is true, that space is required, but so much interest might be thrown upon the national history of the human mind, that we should be glad to see the topic adopted on a more diversified and comprehensive scale. The chapter of human extravagances is but half opened, and we propose heads for its further investigation. The investigation would derive additional

water, the world will not be left without its legacy of delusion for the laugh and for the rivalry of posterity.

We come to the moneyed delusion; the most showy piece of financial charlatanism on record.

There is nothing new under the sun. Every individual who has money, is marked as the natural object of swindlers. Every nation which has money, becomes equally the natural object of conspirators against its purse. The cause and the consequence go together, by a strict necessity. Such things never happen in poor countries. As Hudibras remarks

interest from its being ranged under centuries, and exhibiting the actual connexion between the "delusions" and the habits of the age. Thus a striking intellectual view of the sixteenth century might give the history of the Fountain of Youth, which so many adventurers went to seek in the South Seas, and the dreams of Eldorado, eminently the result of the romantic and adventurous age of Elizabeth. Ascending still higher, the fifteenth might give the history of the Philosopher's Stone, and the Elisir of Immortality. The fourteenth the age of astrology. The thirteenth the fortune-telling and juggling of the wandering minstrels of France and Italy. The twelfth the papal assumption of universal temporal power, as curious a delusion as any in the annals of human craft. The tenth, ninth, and eighth, might exhibit the connexion of relic worship, of legends, and spiritual terrors, with the power of Rome, and the profound ignorance of the people. Thus going back to the Gothic invasions, and those wild and often terrible superstitions connected with their worship in the forests and deserts of the north. The fourth and third centuries might give a valuable view of those stern superstitions of the Egyptian anchorites, which spread so rapidly through the Christian world, and formed the groundwork of the whole conventual system of later times.

own

Or, returning towards our period, there would be ample materials for curious and interesting narrative, in the miracles of the Abbe Paris in the eighteenth century, in the divining rod, and in the mesmerism of France, and the illuminatism of Germany. The miracles of Prince Hohenlohe are the only contribution which the nineteenth century is yet prepared to add to such an enquiry. But the horrors and absurdities of the French Revolution covered so large a space of the European mind within our memory, that human vice or folly has scarcely been able yet to find a spot to pitch its tent upon. But our age will not be without its share. Some new extravagance will run away with the common understanding of man, and whether it be popery or puseyism, revolution or the art of flying, teetotalism or projects for living on sawdust, and extracting champagne out of ditch

"No Jesuit e'er took in hand
To build a church in barren land,
Nor ever thought it worth his while
A Russ or Swede to reconcile."

France, though never equaling the wealth of England, at least during the last two centuries, has always been an opulent kingdom. Its fertility, its favourable climate, and the frugal habits of its people, have always made it recover with singular ease from the poverty produced by its rebellions and wars. But this easy recovery has been attended with pe culiar dangers. Its despotic monarchs, finding wealth pouring spontaneously into their hands, have often been tempted to waste it in desperate invasions of Europe, or on profligate corruptions of manners at home. From the time of Francis I. to that of Louis XIV., the alternation of parsimonious with profligate princes, had exhibited alternately the power of France to restore itself, and the power of the throne to exhaust the public prosperity. But the death of Louis XIV. was a crisis in public affairs. No king of France had so much embodied in his own character the spirit of the nation. He was generous, splendid, aspiring, and bold, but this was the bright side of the medal. He could be selfish, pitiful, insidious, and wasteful. This last quality was ultimately felt by his people to threaten France with ruin. The enormous expenses of his wars, and the scandalous prodigality of his court, had long threatened France with bankruptcy; and at his death in 1715, the cry arose that the kingdom was ruined. Still the expenditure was below the revenue, the former being but 142 millions of livres, while the latter was