goal of superiority, overturn or thrust out of their ordinary path the rest of mankind, till either they provoke against them a general conspiracy of their fellow-creatures, or, till reaching the point of their pursuit, they become elevated objects of homage and admiration. Such men are generally composed of great materials for mischief : -having strong natural talents and violent ungovernable spirits; according to the direction these get, they are harmless or mischievous-but, like morbid matter in the animal system, if not let loose by some channel or other, they never fail to disturb the whole economy of the body they belong to, and produce fatal consequences to it and to themselves: Colonial possessions have therefore, in some views, been of use (as America formerly to England) to draw off those dangerous spirits, who, though they are in times of peace better at a distance, in times of war are found to be the toughest sinews of a nation.

Home,

The country of Tyrol, such as I have described it, formed by nature for the residence of the Sylvan deities, rich in the products of the earth, the people contented and happy, and the whole the region of peace; manufactures, the first root of low vices, and commerce, the great instigator of war, have scarcely been able to set their feet there; hence it happens, that there is no channel through which those exhuberant spirits I have alluded to can take their course, or expand their force. therefore, is no place for those of the Tyrolese, who are cursed or blessed (call it which you please) with those very combustible qualities; and they are obliged to roam abroad in search of opportunities of distinguishing themselves, giving vent to their spirits, and manifesting their talents. They are found therefore, scattered all over the continent and as it rarely happens that opportunities occur in life of signalizing such talents in a dignified line, rather than be idle they do what they can, and apply to chicanery as a wide and appropriate field for their genius and vigor to work on the emigrant Tyrolese are, therefore, by most nations of the continent, reckoned among the most expert and accomplished sharpers in the world the people, however, who remain at home, are of a different character-they are, generally speaking, tall, ro

bust, and vigorous; the women strong, and very fair; and both sexes exhibit a very pleasing mixture of German phlegm and Italian sprightliness; or, to speak more properly, they are a mean between those two extremes.

Ianspruck, though a small city, is handsome and agreeable, standing in a very beautiful valley, surrounded with mountains, which, while their lower parts are well cultivated, are capped on the tops with perennial snow. The castle formerly the residence of the Austrian princes is stately and magnificent, adorned within with fine paintings, and decorated without by natural and artificial fountains, statues, pleasant gardens, groves, walks and covered galleries, leading to five different churches.

A-propos. Let me not forget the churches! In a chapel of the Franciscan church, there is an image of the Virgin Mary as big as the life, of solid silver, with many other images of saints of the same metal. If some of. those silver deities were transferred to Paris, I fear their divinity would not save them from the hands of the sacrilegious Convention. One thing, however, is well worth the attention of travellers, particularly those who wish to wipe away the sins of a deceased friend, and get them a direct passport to happiness-This Franciscan church is held to be one of the most sacred and venerable in the world, on account of the indulgences granted to it by several popes; so that one single mass said in it, is de- . clared to be sufficient to deliver a soul from the pains of purgatory. When we consider the great and important extent of their power in that respect, we cannot wonder if they had all the saints in the calendar, and the Virgin Mary to boot, in solid silver, even of the size of the Co

lossus at Rhodes.

Hall, the second city in Tyrol, lies one league from Innspruck it is famous for its salt-works, and for a mint and silver mines, in which seven thousand men, women, and children are constantly employed.

At a royal palace and castle called Ombras, lying at equal distance from Innsprunk and Hall,' there is an arsenal, famous for a prodigious collection of curiosities, such as medals, precious stones, suits of armor, and statues of several princes on horseback, in their old rich

fighting accoutrements; besides a great variety of mili tary spoils and trophies taken by the House of Austria; in particular a statue of Francis the First and his horse, just as they were taken at the battle of Pavia, and two others of Turkish bashaws, with the costly habits and appointments with which they were taken, embellished with gold, silver, and precious stones. But, above all their curiosities, the most extraordinary is an oak inclosing the body of a deer: this last, however unaccountable, is fact; and equals, I think, any of the wonders in the metamorphoses of Ovid.

Leaving Innspruck, I proceeded on my journey, and. soon entered into the mountains, which are there of a terrible height-I was the best part of a day in ascending them as I got near the top, I was shewn by my driver, the spot where Ferdinand, King of Hungary, and the Emperor Charles the Fifth, met, when he returned from Africa, in the year 1520. It is marked with an inscription to that effect, and has grown into a little village, which, from that circumstance, bears the name of the Salutation.

Although this mountain, called Bremenberg (or Burning-hill), is covered with snow for nine months in the year, it is inhabited to the very top, and produces corn and hay in abundance; at the highest part there is a posthouse, a tavern, and a chapel, where the traveller is accommodated with fresh horses, provisions, and, if he chooses, a mouthful of prayers-I availed myself of the two first; but the latter being not altogether in my way, I declined it, for which I could perceive that I was, by every mouth and eye in the place, consigned to perdition as an heretic.

Just at this spot there is a spring of water which falls upon a rock, and divides into two currents, which, at a very small distance, assume the appearance, and in fact, the magnitude too, of very large rivers. The mountain is sometimes difficult to pass, sometimes absolutely impracticable-I was fortunate, however, in this respect; for I got over it without any very extraordinary delay, and on my way was regaled with the most delicious yenison that I have

ever tasted in my life; it was said to be the flesh of a kind of goat.

Although it is but thirty-five miles from Innspruck to Brisen, it was late when I reached the latter; and as it contained nothing worth either the trouble or delay attending the search of it, I set out the next morning, and, travelling with high mountains on one side, and a river all along upon the other, arrived at a town called Bolsano, in the bishopric of Trent. The country all along was thickly inhabited, and the mountains perfectly cultivated and manured even to their highest tops. On entering the valley of Bolsano, I found the air becoming obviously sweet, delightful, and temperate; the vineyards, and all the trees and shrubs, olives, mulberries, willows, and roses, &c. of all the most lively green, and every thing marking the most luxuriant vegetation.

Bolsane is a small, but extremely neat and pleasant town-but nothing I saw about it pleased me so much as their vineyards, which are planted in long terraces along the sides of the hills, and are formed into the most beautiful arbors, one row above another.

From Bolsano to Trent, is fifty-one miles, a good day's journey almost the whole of it lies through the valley of Bolsano, a most fruitful and pleasant—indeed delightful road, which made the day's journey appear to me much shorter than it really was.

Perhaps no part of the habitable globe is within the same comparatively small compass of earth, so wonderfully diversified by the hand of nature in all her extremes, as that through which I have just carried you. There, under almost the same glance of the eye, were to be seen the stupendous, the rugged, the savage and the inaccessible-the mild, the fruitful, and the cultivated. Here, the mountain capped with perpetual snow, gradually falling in blended gradations of shade, far beyond the reach of the artist's pencil, into the green luxuriant valley; and there, the vineyard, the olivary, and the rich cornfield, bursting at once from rugged rocks and inaccessible fastnesses the churlish aspect of the tyrant winter for ever prowling on the mountains head above-perpetual spring smiling with all her fascinating charms in the plains

below. Such scenes as these would baffle all efforts of the poet's pen or painter's pencil to be conceived, they must be seen. I shall therefore close my account of them with a strong recommendation to you, that whenever you travel for improvement, you go through the Country of Tyrol, and there learn the great and marvellous working of nature.

LETTER XXIII.

PERHAPS

ERHAPS the learned unwise men of the world, who spend their lives poring after impossibilities, have never met with a more copious subject of puzzle-pated enjoyment than the derivation of the names of places. In all disputed cases on this subject, the utmost within human reach is conjecture; but the joke of it is, that fortunately for mankind, the certainty of it would not be of a single button advantage to them, even if it could be acquired by their search. Doctor Goldsmith, in his Citizen of the World, has thrown this matter into high ridicule and I recommend it to your perusal, lest this shadow of literature should one day wheedle you from more respectable pursuits. Trent has afforded vast exercise to bookworm conjectures in this way; for, while some pronounce it to be derived from Tridentum, and for this purpose will have it that Neptune was worshipped there, though so far from the sea-others claim the discovery of its derivation from Tribus Torrentibus, or three streams which run there. Now, as to the first, exclusive of forcing Neptune all the way from the Gulph of Venice to their temples I cannot find any such similarity in the sound of Trent and Trident to warrant the inference; and as to the Tribus Torrentibus, they might as well say that a primmer or hornbook was found there, and that thence it was derived from the alphabet, since the same analogy subsisted between them, namely that the letters t,r,e,n,t are to be found in both. But, in the name of God, what signifies what it was called after? Its name is Trent;