and able like you, there is no fear of coming here. I have a cow, calf, two pigs, and eight chicken: we had a very fine harvest. Your sister Sophia lives at Squire Longley's, where she did when she first came, waiting-maid, 10l. a year. Jane is house-maid at Squire Jones's, 121. a year; I am happy to say she is very steady. Hepzebą has not been home to live since we landed; she has 3, 10s. Henry has his living and clothes, lives at Mr. Hicks's, where we took the land when we first came. Daniel and little William live at home with me; he grows a very fine boy, he can talk anything now; sometimes I say, "Baby, I want the cow," he will take a stick and drive her to the door for me to milk. You are desirous to know what I do: the farmer's wife is glad with me; I go to market one day, sometimes two days in the week, and go to Prescott to sell and buy for them; and when they sheared their sheep, I helped them to sort the wool; they asked me if I could spin in the hand-turn, I said yes, so I have earned twenty shillings, and I am going to buy me a gown: they don't pay in money: last week I went and picked up apples, for which I had my keep and a bag of apples. They are very good to me; if I want anything in their garden, I send and have it. Your dear sisters and brothers, when I read the letter to them, their eyes were filled with tears of joy to hear you were coming; Sophia says, “Then I Give our shall be happy." We all long for that happy day to come. kind love to my sister French: I hope I shall see her in America. Give our kind love to Mrs. Heel and Sarah, &c. I am sorry you did not say anything of Thomas Barter; he was at our house about a month ago; he has a very good place; he lives handy our Sophia; sometimes they come here together, they live at one place but not at the same house; he takes my house as home. I am happy to say that in the same place as your three sisters live there is a Church of England and Meetings the same as in England.

'From your affectionate Father and Mother,

· WILLIAM and JANE RAWLINGS.'

One more specimen and we have done :

Upper Canada.

'MY DEAR WIFE, I received your letter on the 4th of this month, and am happy to hear that you are all well: I thank God for it. I am happy to inform you that I never had one hour's illness since I left you, that is a blessed thing to say. I don't know that I ever was so stout or so strong in my life as at present; I thank God for it. I have got my house built and the roof put on, and one room finished; it is twenty-four feet long and sixteen feet wide, with four good rooms in it, when finished, which I hope will be in March or April. Do not bide and get rid of all your money, and then say I wish I had went to Canada when I had some. We have no landlord to come at Michaelmas, to say I want my rent: no poor-rates to pay; we are in a free country. It is a pretty thing to stand at one's own door and see a hundred acres of land of his own, I wish you would

go

go to my brothers and your own, or send and persuade them all to come, if they can; not to mind if they have but one shilling in their pockets when they land, they soon get more. You must think if I

was bad off here, I should not wish a dear wife and family to come. and be the same. Edgar, be sure to take care of your poor dear mother, and the little children; may God bless you, and send you a safe journey: so no more at present from your loving husband and father,

'ROBERT SLADE.

P.S.-If I never see you no more on earth, I hope I shall in heaven. May the Lord bless you all, my little dears. May the Lord bless every subscriber; I hope they will never live to want it.'

We conclude with the same wish; may the Lord bless every one who will contribute to the good work of aiding the honest and industrious poor, whom no fault of their own, but the natural progress of population expanding within a narrow insular area, has reduced to misery in Ireland, to parochial slavery and degradation in Britain, to remove to a situation where they will enjoy the comfort, independence, and happy prospects that are so strikingly depicted in these artless letters-where they will become a blessing to society at large, to themselves, their friends, and their native country, instead of an incumbrance and a spectacle of illrequited patience under almost intolerable and wholly undeserved sufferings.

ART. VII.-Storia degli antichi Popoli Italiani, di Giuseppe Micali. Tomi 3. 8vo. Firenze, 1832.

THE

HE vast erudition, and, no doubt, the spirit of bold and ingenious speculation, which the German scholars of recent days have carried into every branch of antiquarian inquiry have thrown into the shade the more modest-though, in some instances, not less meritorious-researches of writers in other countries. Some of the Italian literati, in particular, have ill-brooked the invasion on what they considered their own peculiar territory-the history of ancient Italy; their journals have been constantly open to rude, and occasionally not unsuccessful, attacks upon the new views of Roman history. To this jealous and resentful spirit, however, Signor Micali is altogether superior: he does full justice, even where he differs from them, to the more eminent scholars of Germany.

'As to some,' he observes, who discuss the antiquities of Italy, it is easy enough to come forward as writers, on the credit of opinions already published by others-imagining that they have composed a book when they have compiled one. But from this imputation are exempted those distinguished men who, by their acute researches

since the beginning of the present century, have given to Italian history greater fullness, lustre, and utility. Of these, to pass over others, suffice the illustrious names of a Niebuhr and an Otfried Müller.'

He adds, however-in a tone assuredly of pardonable national feeling that his countryman Vico had already opened the way to all the brilliant discoveries of later times.

"Italy is willing, on every subject, to avail herself of the erudition of others; but, as well for her philosophy, as for her national spirit and genius, she has no need to look beyond herself. We appreciate and from our hearts give all due honour to foreigners; yet we cannot, without a compassionate smile, see those same opinions, which are, by inalienable inheritance, the patrimony of our country, returning home to us in a foreign language.

We shall not attempt the arduous, and not very profitable, task of vindicating their due proportion of literary glory to the scholars of either country. The dark oracles of Vico certainly contained the primary principles of almost all the new discoveries of the present day, but undeveloped, and enwrapped in that enigmatic obscurity which belonged to his style on the other hand, it must be admitted, that the Germans themselves were the first to do justice to Vico, and to obtain for the philosophic Neapolitan that European reputation which was due to the boldness and originality of his views; but which his peculiar and repulsive manner of writing, as well as the singularity of his opinions, had prevented him from attaining, even in his own country.

The present work of Signor Micali may be considered a rifacciamento of his former publication, L'Italia avanti il Dominio dei Romani. It is so superior in every respect-in extent and depth of inquiry, as well as in more mature judgment-that we fear the author, will himself endanger any claims to originality, which he might have founded on the date of his former work, by the neglect to which he will have consigned it by this History of the ancient Peoples of Italy.' We have been led, indeed, to his present treatise by an incidental circumstance. In a former article on Egyptian antiquities, we had been struck by the extraordinary similarity between the vast Egyptian catacombs and some of those ante. Roman cemeteries in Italy, which appear from recent discoveries to have been very common in the old Etrurian cities. We ventured to recommend this inquiry, as possessing peculiar interest to Italian scholars, and as likely to be pursued by them with the greatest local advantages. We were not at that time aware that Signor Micali had carried on this investigation with so much ardour, and had avowedly espoused the theory of the Egyptian origin of the Etrurian civilization. He has, in justice to himself,

transmitted

transmitted the volumes now before us; and we shall begin with quoting his own general statement of the conclusions at which he has arrived:

That t the principles of these oriental notions in Etruria were chiefly derived from Egypt is not a mere ingenious speculation, for we have most positive demonstration in the monuments themselves, which establish with the greatest weight of authority, that at a very early period there existed in Etruria a centre of civilization contemporaneous with that of the East and of Egypt. And here we mean to speak of the most ancient monuments, or those which at least are the representatives of the tenets received in the most ancient times; in these alone the true and legitimate national character can be studied; those which betray in any manner the influence of Grecian art, or mythology, belong to a period manifestly secondary, and can only give false notions of the history of the primitive Etruscans. Now the principal symbols which passed at first into Etruria, as the veil of the secret doctrines, are found in great numbers, particularly among the monuments in the sepulchres; which men in the older times, profoundly impressed with religious notions, considered their true and eternal dwelling. There are seen Canopic vases, figures of biform nature, winged sphinxes, and every other kind of monstrous animal;all the significant emblems of the East, or of mysterious Egypt;the very doctrine of Amenti recurs in a great many representations the evil placed in opposition to the protecting genii;scarabei in great numbers;-and in what more particularly regards the arts of design, the workmanship and the imitation of the Egyptians, which we might almost call the Asiatic style of Etruria, are the great distinction of works properly called Tuscan. Figures having four wings, and other unusual symbolic forms, and signs, which rather distinguish the Phoenician, or Syrian, or Babylonian divinities, show still further that the highly-religious Etruscans adopted, wherever they made their voyages, or traded, celestial protectors-more particularly in the East, the abundant source of superstitions. Indeed, without going so far, in the neighbouring Sardinia, which was inhabited by Phoenicians, Carthaginians, and Etruscans, the latter might easily appropriate many things foreign to, yet in strict conformity "with, their own system; and these same Asiatic, Phoenician, and Egyptian notions the groundwork of the national Etruscan mytho logy were so deeply rooted from their antiquity in Etruria, that even when the people began to fall away from its ancient creed, and the power of the priesthood to decline-when the arts of design wholly Grecized, imitating only the Hellenic models-we still find not a few of the symbols and the fables of the antiquated religion brought upon the scene, though under more graceful forms. We now touch only rapidly an important subject, which will be more fully developed in the next volume.'

*

Signor Micali appeals to the highly interesting volume of

engravings

engravings which accompanies his treatise, for the evidence on which he grounds this curious theory; and, undoubtedly, it is impossible to mistake the Egyptian forms and symbols which occupy many of his plates: several of them, if inserted in Rosellini's work, might pass without suspicion for genuine monuments from the tombs of Thebes. The severe historical criticism of modern times will scarcely, however, accede to the conclusions of Signor Micali, without a more profound and rigid investigation; but his case, as it stands, is so full of interest to the antiquarian, and, at least at first sight, has so much probability in its favour, as fairly to claim such an investigation. Many questions immediately suggest themselves. Since it is well known that at later periods the Egyptian religion was propagated in Italy with so much success as to defy the laws of the Republic and of the Empire, have we clear and undeniable proof that these Egyptian monuments do really belong to the old Etruscan period? Can we place full reliance on the classification of the Etrurian monuments themselves, as well as of those which bear marks of Egyptian origin, according to their age? Is not the fact that they are mingled up with other symbolic representations from Phoenicia and the East, rather against the theory of the Egyptian descent of Etrurian art and civilization? To these difficulties we do not venture to suppose that we can offer a satisfactory or decisive solution; but the opportunity is tempting to enter into the field of Etrurian antiquities, which has been cultivated of late with so much activity, if not success; and to give some view, however necessarily rapid and imperfect, of the curious questions which are connected with this subject. We shall not scruple to avail ourselves of the assistance of Niebuhr, of Otfried Müller's elaborate work Die Etrusker'-and of the valuable researches of Sir William Gell in the neighbourhood of Rome, as well as those of Signor Micali.

Etruria is one of the great and, as yet, unsolved problems of ancient history. It is clear that, before the Romans, there existed in Italy a great nation, in a state of advanced civilization, with public buildings of vast magnitude, and works constructed on scientific principles and of immense solidity, in order to bring the marshy plains of central and northern Italy into regular cultivation. They were a naval and commercial people, to whom tradition assigned the superiority, at one period, over the navigation of the Mediterranean. Their government seems to have been nearly allied to the oriental theocracies; religion was the dominant principle; the ruling aristocracy a sacerdotal order. Some writers have pretended to trace out a regular division into castes, but Micali rejects that notion, and this with somewhat too much of indignant ardour. In their federal government, (each Etruscan