rating principle is studiously guarded against as a supreme evil: all circulation of knowledge is interdicted, and free discussion put down per force. It was with great difficulty that upon crossing the Ticino, and entering the LombardVenetian kingdom, I could save my few travelling books from being seized and sent to Milan for censorship. Ignorance, which is the mother of Romish devotion, and slavish obedience, forms the chain upon which Austria depends to link the people with its "paternal" government. How great is the guilt of such an odious domination, which shuts out light and air from an infected prison, and stands guard over its captive!

I thought the inhabitants of the Milanese territory quite prepared for a change, as they are among the most enlightened of the Italians. Their vicinity to the Swiss republics gives them more political knowledge, while, in common with the whole of Italy, they feel their present degradation under the government of their German

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neighbours, to be worse than subjection to a French yoke. I often heard the comparison made between submission to a barbarian and a civilized master.

But whencesoever light is to arise—and had it not been for Austria, it might have shined ere now-the Venetians are like other men, and improvable by the same moral means. If the changes which are pointed out by the general knowledge of the age had been effected in the administration of their government, a new system introduced into their schools and prisons, and a gradual license to free inquiry granted as the desires of the people enlarged; though this city could never become again mistress of the commerce of the Indies and Archipelago, yet, what is much better, her children might be in a course of training, to become enlightened, and free, and moral. But so long as Austria governs as at present, Venice must shock the moralist by her impurity, and the mere politician by her

want of the patriotic principle, and energetic character.

How unlike to these reflections are those which are excited in approaching the metropolis for the commerce of the western world, where New York rises out of the waters, not enshrined in any ancient glories, in no sort decorated with fanciful images, not even adorned enough to satisfy an imagination, craving more than the elegance of ordinary life;-but which, as the residence of more than one hundred thousand people, active, laborious, enlightened, free, and in the main religious, exhibits the wonderful spectacle of what human energy and ingenuity can produce in less than two centuries. Fleets now ride where lately an Indian canoe but seldom floated; and an island recently covered with a forest, is now filled with the habitations of men.

We go in this contrast from the decrepitude of immoral old age, to the force and vitality and sprightliness of youth. Whatever drawback

our vices may require from allowable self-gratulation at this specimen of present attainment, and promise of farther improvement, we may safely infer that there is an atmosphere which suits man,—and that the religious and political freedom which abounds in the western republic, is the most important element of that atmosphere. May the example not be quite lost upon Italy herself; when the Germans shall find that they have business enough at home in reforming their own government, and leave Venice to pursue the regenerating principles which can alone make her citizens worthy of the delightful region in which they live.

THE TYROL.

IT was in the month of April that I journeyed from Italy, by the passage of the Tyrol. Soon after leaving Verona, we entered into the defile, and travelled along the left bank of the Adige, which now rolled rapidly, being swollen by the melting of the snows. The mountains approach very near to each other; and we presently beheld the glistening covering of their Alpine summits.

Rivoli, so famous as a battle-ground, and scene of the French victories, was the first remarkable object. The plain, though very narrow, affords support for a numerous and most hardy population, who signalized themselves all over the world by their animated resistance to their new northern invaders.