miracle, to raise the populace against what was called the revolutionary party: the most ferocious of the ignorant population mounted a leaden Madonna in their hats, seized arms, and, drunk with wine and fanatism, proceeded with most sanguinary designs to Florence. Their leader was Mr Windham, the British minister: he rode at the head of this infuriate mob, his frail but beautiful mistress on his right, (dress ed and mounted as an Amazon;) on his left a Monk, with the crucifix in one hand and a pistol in the other. Countrymen of Milton, of Newton, and of Locke, it is thus your glorious name and honourable wealth have been prostituted at various epochs to aid the cause of oppression and of bigotry!" p. 85, Vol. II.

"I regret," says Lady M. p. 147 of the same volume, that a "name so respectable should be found in these pages coupled with transactions of so dark a character." We have no such feeling. The greatest libel which Lady M. can write against a public character is to praise him. It will be recollected, however, that this woman pledged herself at the outset to "detail only facts backed beyond the possibility of dispute by the authority of contemporary testimonies." We are now enabled to ascertain what these "contemporary testimonies" mean, as we are assured that the "facts" were "subjects of common conversation in Florence!" So a serious and criminal accusation is preferred against an able and upright diplomatist, merely because such was the tittletattle and gossip of the Bonapartists at Florence!! A little farther on too, she tells a libellous story, which we scorn to repeat, on "the authority of the contemporary testimonies" of a Princess P***

which being interpreted, means nobody at all, for the thing is a physical impossibility.-Lady Morgan would persuade us that the Countess of Albany was the wife, and not the harlot, of Victor Alfieri, merely because this poetical mad-cap thought fit, in one of his wild humours, to honour her with the epithets of la donna mia. The reason of this assertion of a falsehood, which every one knew to be such, was, that this adulteress, on one occasion, deigned to converse with Miladi from her box at the opera, and "to talk of Alfieri," an honour, which she could not do less than endeavour to repay by a paltry and mendacious

attempt to whitewash a strumpet who had dishonoured the lust branch of the royal House of Stuart. It is universally known in Italy, as Dr Moore has long ago informed us, that Alfieri's connection with the Countess of Albany, was just of that simple and convenient sort which generally obtains in the land of CicisWe beos, and Cavalieri Serventi. may, therefore, dismiss this Formarina, as Lady Morgan, but for the words of condescension at the opera, would have called her, with the slender ceremony, which our country accords to ladies of her caste. Lady Morgan farther tells us, for she is determined to make a case, that the husband was "brutal." Certainly a husband that refuses to pander to the libidinous propensities of his faithful wife, deserves to be pilloried as "brutal.'

When a husband bas once been injured, he is sure to be abused by all women of loose morals!

We must now take our leave of this NOTLAZOMAHUITZTESPIXCATZIN of female authors. We had a great deal more to say, but we have already far transgressed our limits. We meant to conclude with a word of friendly admonition, but we were satisfied that her ladyship is so deeply inoculated with the dreadful virus of infidelity and Jacobinism, that nothing which we could say or urge could be expected to make the least impression. We do, however, deplore the monstrous perversion of her talents and industry for which she has to answer; and we cannot but feel ashamed of her impudent dogmatism, when she faces out the most marked aberrations from fact. With all the self-satisfied assurance of the most complete vanity, she tells us that Hannibal, according to Livy, crossed the Alps by Mount Cenis, whereas every body knows that the Prince of Roman historians has made the Carthagenian Hero to pass by Mount Genèvre, or the Alpis Cottia. This is one of a thousand similar examples, in which the simple and notorious truth is sacrificed with a wantonness of dogmatism, that admits of no parallel. In her historical prefixes, too, she is continually trespassing in the same way, and labouring, with a perverted industry, to accommodate facts to her own particular opinions. We hope

we have been able to convince her that the public are not to be easily imposed on, and that there still are to be found some individuals in this age, whatever the laudatores temporis acti may say to the contrary, who love good taste, and cherish a regard for truth and virtue, and who, while they "fear God," are not ashamed to "honour the King."

We think it fair to give an independent specimen of Lady Morgan's work. We shall select the first that presents itself.

"The high road of Portici runs through the old-fashioned paved court of its royal palace a heavy cumbrous fabric, commanding the bay. Though one of the most considerable and finely situated of the royal villas, it must have been a most gloomy and incommodious one, before the elegant improvements made in it by its late active, but transitory queen. The old custode, who showed us the apart. ments, had some difficulty in naming his late mistress by the title of Madama Murat, instead of her majesty,' and had evidently got up a new vocabulary for the new (or old) regime. On entering, he observed to us, that the whole of the very elegant vestibule, in which we stood, the broad and double staircase, the spacious corridor, and the beautiful little theatre, into which it opens, were all fatti da Madama Murat. Again, a gallery ornamented with superb candelabras, and accommodated with elegant ottomans, extorted the laconic fatto da Mudama Murat.' In a word, we found that endless suites of apartments, baths, cabinets, book. rooms, green-houses, orangeries, &c. &c. were all either painted, decorated, and furnished, or planned and erected da Madame Murat. Some of the rooms exhibited a very extraordinary degree of taste in consulting the genius of the place.' The walls were covered with paintings, copied from the Pompeii, and the furniture was imitated from objects discovered there, and still preserved in the Museo at Naples. The draperies of the richest silk were all of the Neapolitan loom; for Madama Murat' made a complete clearing out of all the old and tawdry furniture of this palace: so that, on the return of the royal family, they knew it as little as many other objects of her reformation and improvement; and expressed their surprise and admiration, with a naïveté that still contributes the current coin of anecdote to the circulating medium of ridicules in Naples. "The apartments of the Ex-Queen are models of elegance and feminine taste. The bed-room, dressing-room, boudoir, and library, are eminently so; and have

VOL. IX.

been left precisely as she last occupied

them. Her dressing-boxes are on led

toilette; a miniature of her nephew, the little Napoleon, (hung by a ribbon,) decorates the chimney-piece; her dejeuné, on an English tray, stands in the centre (worked and embroidered for her by her of the room; and some pretty étrennes ladies a few days before her reverses) are scattered on a sofa. Niente cangiato," said the Cicerone, except this!' (and he approached her magnificent bed, and pointed to two large black crucifixes, and a pendent vase of holy water hung at its head,) -Non è quella una modo Francese.' On the King and his wife sleeping one night at Portici, these sacred images were hung up for the occasion. In the dressingroom, all the necessaries of the toilette, in crystal and silver, still remain; even some silver brushes lying where the femme-dechambre of the late fair inhabitant had left them. It is said, that Madame Murat carried even to affectation her determination of not removing any thing that belonged to her royal state, and took only what she considered personal and private property. Portici was her favourite residence, and the numerous English and Irish nobility, whom she received there, can vouch for the courtesy and hospitality with which she did the honours of her palace.

"Murat's apartments join his wife's: they were equally luxurious, splendid, and commodious; the hangings all silk and satin; the carpets all English and Turkey. The toilette splendid and recherchée, as that of the vainest petite maitresse, or royal beauty. Close to his superb sleeping-room is a simple little cabinet, with a small white dimity camp-bed, where his secretary slept. Here, in this little bed of the ex-secretary, sleeps the Royal Bourbon--the legitimate King of Naples, when he makes his visits to Portici. It is said that he walks about the palace in endless amusement, admiring all the elegant finery of which he has become the master; but still adhering to the little dimity bed, and the secretary's closet, which resembles his own homely bed-room in his palace at Naples. He has added nothing but a large crucifix.

"In an old lumber-room of this palace all the portraits of the Murat and Bonaparte family are huddled with broken chairs and mouldering tables; but there is a cicerone to shew them, who expects to be as handsomely remunerated for the exhi bition of the lumber room, as for the museum of Portici, which is attached to the palace. This museum, so often described, and so well worth describing, by those who can do justice to its merits, though now despoiled of its ancient bronzes, which are to be seen in the Musée Bourbon at Na

ples, still contains several hundred paintings, in Fresco, taken from the ruins of

Herculaneum, Pompeii, and Stabia. Though buried for eighteen hundred years, the colours of these antique paintings are wonderfully fresh. There was one that struck me particularly it was a Sappho her stylus pressed to her lip, and her tablets lying open before her. It probably decorated the cabinet of some learned lady of Pompeii; for many of the paintings still remaining on their sites, were evident ly appropriate to the rooms they decorated." pp. 339-342, Vol. II.

VARIETIES.

UNDER this head we purpose occasionally to group together such shreds of knowledge as, though they possess an independent interest, do not readily fall under a more general form of classification.

We make the following extracts from a book just published, entitled "Recollections of a Classical Tour through various parts of Greece, Turkey, and Italy, by Peter Edmund Laurent."

[En passant, this title is somewhat of a misnomer: at least, if we are permitted to collect its meaning from the admirable work of Eustace. We fear much, that Mr Laurent's acquaintance with classical subjects is as circumscribed, as the style of the book before us is clumsy, and even ungrammatical. In addition to the account of the death of the venerable Winckelman, we shall give a speciinen of his manner of treating a classical question of some difficulty and interest, and of the self-complacent flippancy with which he has presumed to make mention of an enthusiastic scholar and intelligent traveller.]

Assassination of Winckelman.

"It was at Trieste that Winckelman was assassinated by a villain -named Arcangeli. This man had been a cook in the house of the Count of Cataldo at Vienna, and had been condemned to death for several crimes, but had received his pardon: he met his victim on the road from Vienna to Rome, and gained his confidence by affecting to have a great love for the Fine Arts. Winckelman was occupied in a room of his inn writing some notes for a new edition of his History of Art, when Arcangeli interrupted him by asking him to see

some medals; hardly had the Antiquary opened the trunk which contained them, when his murderer endeavoured to strangle him; not threw on his neck a running knot and being able to succeed in his purpose, the villain pierced him in several places with a knife: he was immediately seized and executed for his crime; but his punishment did not repair the loss which literature experienced by the death of Winckelman. The venerable antiquary lived sufficiently long to receive the spiritual consolations of his church, and to dietate his will, by which he named Cardinal Albani his sole legatee.

"Winckelman was the son of an obscure tradesman of Steudal in Brandenburgh; by indefatigable exertions he raised himself to a most conspicuous rank in the study of antiquity: he was member of nearly all the learned societies in Europe, and his name will be ever dear to artists." p. 5. [The author from whom we have -made the above extract describes himself as travellers." How justly he has apa mere butterfly among preciated his own character the following extract, which we shall oppose to another from Dodwell's splendid and learned work on Greece, will sufficiently show.]

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butted with warmth by his friends. Two parties immediately divided the classic world; one contended for the truth of the minute, and often fanci ful details of Le Chevalier; while others denied the truth of many of the most important facts brought forward by that geographist. Both parties were violent, and, as generally hap pens in such cases, equivocation took the place of truth, passion that of ar gument.

To conciliate the two parties is a task which I have neither the wish nor the talent to perform. I have too often experienced, that when once discord has reared her head in religion, in politics, or literature, argument is the last instrument to which resort must be had to check its influence; blastering ignorance (this is quite unique and perfect of its kind!) generally crushes one of the factions, and the tyranny of the other necessarily ensures a temporary quiet! When I visited the plain of Ilium, I had heard but little of the dispute in question. I knew, indeed, that some persons had endeavoured to prove the Trojan war a fable; but I rejected the idea, as a Christian does that of infidelity, from which, in future life, he guesses much harm may perhaps accrue, while, with certainty, he knows that no bad effects can ensue from his adhering to the tenets of his ancestors." pp. 45, 46.

The following is Mr Dodwell's opinion of the " GEOGRAPHIST."] "Mons. Le Chevalier is author of the learned works, entitled, Voyage

dans la Troade,' 3 vols. in 8vo, with an atlas, and Voyage de la Propontide, et du Pont Euxine,' 2 vols. in 8vo, with maps. It is to this celebrated traveller that the world is indebted for settling, in a clear and unequivocal manner, the long controversy about the position of Troy, and its memorable plain. The author of the present tour visited the Troade, with the Iliad of Homer, and the Travels of Le Chevalier, as his only guides; and he can, with other travellers who have been upon the spot, (was Mr Laurent ever actually the spot?") bear testimony to the scrupulous accuracy of the work; and it is certain, that those who have since written upon the same subject,

on

have either copied the ideas of Le Chevalier, or, if they have differed from him, they have committed errors, or fabricated systems which cannot be upheld." Dodwell's Classical and Topographical Tour through Greece. Preface, p. 9. Note.

King Richard 11.

WHEN newes was brought unto King Richard the Second, that his unkles of Yorke and Gloucestor, the Earles of Arundell, Warwicke, Darby, and Nottingham, with others of that faction, who sought to reforme the misorders of the King, or rather of his wicked counsellors, were assembled in a woode neere unto the court; after hee had asked other mens' opinions, what was to be done in so weightie and doubtful a case; at length he merrily demaunded of one Sir Hugh a Linne, who had beene a good militarie man in his dayes, but was then somewhat distraught of his wittes, what he would advise him to doe. "Issue out, (quoth Sir Hugh,) and let us set uppon them, and slay them every mother's sonne; and, by God's eyes, when thou hast so done, thou has killed all the faithfull friendes that thou hast in England."