Champagne, August 12, 1829. Between Brienne and Arcis the valley was full of villages, and they were large and comfortable looking, almost every cottage having a good garden. These valleys in Champagne are, on a small scale, what Egypt is on a large scale; highly cultivated, and with a crowded population along the streams, because all the country on either side of the valley is an uninhabitable desert. Arcis is a very poor town, and from thence to Chalons it was a country not to be paralleled, I suppose, in civilized Europe, except it be in Castile in Spain. A waste it was not, for it was all cultivated, but the dreariness of a boundless view all brown and dry, corn-fields either cleared or ready for the harvest, without a tree or a green field, or a house, was exceedingly striking, and Champagne is worth seeing for the very surpassing degree of its ugliness. They are, however, in several places, beginning to plant firs, and if this system be followed, the aspect as well as the value of the country will be greatly improved. Chalons, at a distance, looks well; and the green valley and fine stream of the Marne are quite delicious to eyes accustomed to one brown extent of plain or table-land during thirty miles.

VI. TOUR IN NORTH OF ITALY.

Chamberri, July 17, 1830.

1. The state of feeling displayed by and the rest of the party, filled me with thoughts that might make a volume. It was, I fear, certainly unchristian and ultra-liberal;-looking to war with very little dismay, but anxious to spread everywhere what they considered liberal views, "les Idées du Siècle," and so intolerant of anything old, that made it a matter of reproach to our Government that Guernsey and Jersey still retained their old Norman laws. They were strongly Anti-Anglican, regarding England as the great enemy to all improvement all over the world. Now as to mending and that is not our concern; but for ourselves, it did fill me with earnest thoughts of the fearful conflict that must soon take place between the friends and enemies of the old system of things, and the provoking intermixture of evil in the latter, which makes it impossible to sympathize wholly in their success. struck, too, with the total isolation of England from the European world. We are considered like the inhabitants of another planet,

I was

tari pertes mi respected in many points, but not loved, and inı

And bow much is car s

꿀

How Enle do we seem to

zaten mirstood a gueård work The same vil regard in the Orctiset hvor vi der flp-b▼ little do we appreciate i Is it never to be, the

Ten soll be a me Tints and really liberal and wise: ani Sa Te Dement of our soci cotition always be left to unbeloved hands a efer it' I acclude with the lament of the

TILLS COUSSYTE anderes apateen; or rather.

I she did say in midi de igieren, we not believe that there * Ce a vice mine visin was accompanied with infinite power, and voose vil izsis that we should follow after what is god ourselves, bar should not wonder or be disappointed if “ another take the ry and in be alled after his name. There is a want of mal vska iming the Continental Liberals, as among their reproents back strai ad a home, which makes one tremble to ith such rules. I give my Thay les to: would that be eld read and prods by its for. sad to say, Thucydides seems to me no bare been not only a fairer and an abler man, but one of a far som ber moral sense, and deeper principle, than the modern Liberals. Fetween what a Scylla and Charybdis does the state of society seem to be waraming, the brute ignorance and coarse commonplace! selfishness of the Tiries, and the presumption and intellectual fever of the Liberis. To the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness: bat to them who believe, both Jews and Greeks, CHSIST, the power of God, and the wisdom of God." Apvai igen Kagas 'Inc.

Varese, July 24, 1830.

2. We arrived here, at the Star inn, the post, about a quarter after Eve, got a hasty dinner, and ———— and I were in our carriage, or rather in a light cabriolet, hired for the purpose, a little after six. to drive about two miles out, to the foot of the mountain of S. Maria. At the foot of the mountain we began to walk, the road being a sort of paved way round the mountain in great zigzags, and passing by in the ascent about twenty chapels or arches, introductory to the one at the summit. Over the first of these was written. Her foundations are upon the holy hills;" and other pas sages of Scripture were written over the succeeding ones. In one of these chapels, looking in through the window, we saw that it was full of waxen figures as large as life, representing the Apostles on

9

the day of Pentecost; and in another there was a sepulchre hewn out of the rock, and the Apostles coming, as on the morning of the Resurrection, "to see the place where Jesus lay." I confess, these waxen figures seemed to me anything but absurd; from the solemnity of the place altogether, and from the goodness of the execution, I looked on them with no disposition to laugh or to criticise. But what I did not expect was the exceeding depth and richness of the chestnut shade, through which the road partially ran, only coming out at every turning to the extreme edge of the mountain, and so commanding the view on every side. But when we got to the summit we saw a path leading up to the green edge of a cliff on the mountain above, and we thought if we could get there we should probably see Lugano. Accordingly, on we walked; till just at sunset we got out to the crown of the ridge, the brow of an almost precipitous cliff, looking down on the whole mountain of S. Maria del Monte, which on this side presented nothing but a large mass of rock and cliff, a perfect contrast to the rich wood of its other side. But neither S. Marie del Monte, nor the magnificent view of the plain of Lombardy-one mass of rich verdure, enlivened with its thousand white houses and church towers-were the objects which we most gazed upon. We looked westward full upon the whole range of mountains, behind which, in a cloudless sky, the sun had just descended. It is utterly idle to attempt a description of such a scene. I counted twelve successive mountain outlines between us and the farthest horizon; and the most remote of all, the high peaks of the Alps, were brought out strong and dark in the glowing sky behind them, so that their edge seemed actually to cut it. Immediately below our eyes, plunged into a depth of chestnut forest, varied as usual with meadows and villages, and beyond, embosomed amidst the nearer mountains, lay the Lake of Lugano. As if everything combined to make the scene perfect, the mountain on which we stood was covered, to my utter astonishment, with the Daphne Cneorum, and I found two small pieces in flower to ascertain the fact, although generally it was out of bloom. We stood gazing on the view, and hunting about to find the Daphne in flower, till the shades of darkness were fast rising; then we descended from our height, went down the mountain of S. Maria, refreshing ourselves on the way at one of the delicious fountains which are made beside the road, regained our carriage at the foot of the mountain, and, though we had left our coats and neckcloths at Varese before we started, and were hot through and through with the skirmish, yet

Christ, and to have our spirit in sympathy with the Spirit of God. Alas! how easy to see this and say it-how hard to do it and to feel it! Who is sufficient for these things? No one, but he who feels and really laments his own insufficiency. God bless you, my dearest wife, and our beloved children, now and evermore, through Christ Jesus.

July 29, 1830.

4. The Laquais de Place, at Padua, was a good one of his kind, and, finding that his knowledge of French was much less than mine of Italian, if that be possible, we talked wholly in Italian. He said that the taxes were now four times as heavy as under the old Venetian government, or under the French. He himself, when a young man, had volunteered into the republican army, after the overthrow of the Venetian aristocracy in 1797, and had fought at Marengo, where he was wounded. He said they had in Padua a Casa di Ricovero, or asylum for the infirm and infant poor; and here also, he said, relief was given to men in full age and vigour, when they were thrown out of employment. I asked how it was supported. He said, chiefly by bequests; for whenever a man of property died, the priest who attended him never failed to suggest to him that he should leave something to the Casa di Ricovero; and he seemed to think it almost a matter of course that such a recommendation should be attended to. It seems then, that in the improved state of society, the influence of the Catholic clergy is used for purposes of general charity, and not for their own advantage; and who would not wish that our clergy dared to exercise something of the same influence over our higher classes, and could prevent that most unchristian spirit of family selfishness and pride, by which too many wills of our rich men are wholly dictated? But our Church bears, and has ever borne, the marks of her birth. The child of regal and aristocratical selfishness and unprincipled tyranny, she has never dared to speak boldly to the great, but has contented herself with lecturing to the poor. "I will speak of thy testimonies even before kings, and will not be ashamed," is a text which the Anglican Church, as a national institution, seems never to have caught the spirit of. Folly, and worse than folly is it, to think that preaching what are called orthodox doctrines before the great is really preaching to them the Gospel. Unless the particular conclusions which they should derive from those doctrines be impressed upon them; unless they are warned against the particular sins to which they are tempted by their station in society, and urged to the particular