purposes of abusing the credulous or over-reaching the powerful; until these multiplied practices of deception and intolerance 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 retainFrom Cicero, we ing the same termination in all their cases. 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 Purissima Maria, et in sincero Te non adoro, et in divino ardore," &c. The Italian language, under the guidance of its great authors, has assumed those graces and embellishments which raise it above all modern tongues, and distinguish it alike in prose and in verse, in composition and in conversation. "Illam quicquid agit, quoquo vestigia flectit Componit furtim subsequiturque decor." If the former glories of Rome have been dimmed, Italy collectively has been perhaps more glorious in modern than in antient days. In agriculture, in charitable and in literary institutions, Mr. Eustace deems this land to have been, until the French Revolution, unrivalled by any European nation. The Italian character also, as we have before observed, claims his attention; and he examines into the truth of those dark stories that formed the subjects from which our fair countrywomen, and the old women of both sexes, have painted their Spalatros and their spectres. From a minute inquiry directed to this point, during a considerable residence in the haunted places, he finds that these nightly deeds are not more common in Italy than in other countries; that their occurrence has long been on the decrease; and that neither France nor England has any right to tax the Italians with a disregard to human life. He represents the roads in Italy as excellent and safe, and the peasantry as laborious and robust, pious and humane. He more than once urges the benefits that would result from erecting the whole peninsula into one kingdom, as a counterpoise to France. We join him in the pious wish. Italy has ever been the grave of the French; and the poet, who sang that the lily is not destined to flourish on the Italian soil, has prophesied the true event. "Merlin gli fè veder che quasi tutti Gli altri, che poi di Francia scettro avranno, Orland. Fur. Cant. 33. 10. ART. ART. V. An Essay on the Probability of Sensation in Vegetables, with additional Observations on Instinct, Sensation, Irritability, &c. By James Perchard Tupper, Member of the Royal College of Surgeons, and Fellow of the Linnean Society. 8vo. pp. 140. 5s. Boards. White and Co. W E learn that this Essay originated in some observations which the author had thrown together, when he attended as a student at the hospitals of Guy and St. Thomas, and when he enjoyed the benefit of the botanical instructions of Dr. Smith, the president of the Linnean Society, to whom it is dedicated. The inquiries to which these observations referred were resumed at subsequent intervals of leisure, and expanded into their present more connected form. Mr. Tupper lays it down as a primary position, which few considerate physiologists will be disposed to impugn, that vitality, as the result of a particular structure of organized parts, and as implying the faculty of reproducing a structure similar to itself, is an attribute of the vegetable as well as of the animal kingdom but he is at the same time perfectly aware of the futility of those lines of demarcation which have been too rashly alleged to discriminate these two grand departments of organized existence; and he admits that the transition from the animal to the plant is effected by shades so imperceptible, that it is difficult and perhaps impossible to determine what are those beings which actually form the last link in the scale of ani mated existence, and the first in that of vegetables.' He argues for the probability of sensation in vegetables not only from the general analogies which may be traced between animals and plants, but from other phænomena; some of which refer to certain powers of motion that particular species of plants are observed to possess even in a more eminent degree than the inferior orders of animals, several species of which are also destitute of all locomotive power.' The existence of these attributes, however, does not necessarily imply volition; which denotes a mental faculty associated with other qualities, and a power of deliberation and choice exerted on particular occa. sions. The aptitude and propensity of plants to incline to the light, the power exhibited by the climbing sorts in moving and turning their stems, branches, or tendrils, the direction assumed by the roots of trees, and many other vegetables, in quest of proper nourishment, &c. this ingenious essayist ascribes to spontaneous motion or exertion. Aquatic plants also furnish some curious examples of spontaneous motion strongly characteristic of instinct. Among these, the water-lily affords a very remarkable instance, and that too connected with the reproduction of its species. This plant bears its flowers upon |