diversity or colouring from the original and individual character. The species or peculiarity of the plant was lost in the taste of the soil in which they grew, and they were so much affected by the culture, by their juxtaposition, and connexion with each other, that at last they seemed as grafted on the same tree, and belonging originally and radically to one and the same parent trunk. The gardens which lie in the same quarter, and cover the extremity of the Pincian, we saw, like the church, very rapidly, in passing. They owe their origin to the French, who, wherever they came, established promenades, for their own advantage and that of strangers. In Upper Italy, indeed, the national character has more of that light-heartedness, and expansion, and gaiety, which, in a remarkable manner, is the distinctive and the ancient inheritance of the Sienese, from their clergy to their painters; but, in general, the Italians are not an ambulatory race; and the Romans may be described by their antipathy to every amusement at all connected with exertion. A vehicle of some kind or other, equipped in a manner the most incondite and discordant, as it suits the fantasy of their coachmaker and coachman, is the first condition, the great indispensable, of all appearance in public, from the cardinal to the last ranks of the "secondo ceto;" and sacrifices are made to obtain this gratification, as ludicrous as they are disproportionate and unnecessary. The pavé of some of the Italian towns, (for in general they are very far superior to the insufferable lanes of France,) together with the heavy "maremma" air generally prevailing in Rome, and the intensity of the heat during the greater part of the summer months, have probably generated this entire reliance on the legs of animals, and singular dislike to the employment of their own ; whilst reciprocally, this same indolence and indulgence has left the pavements, with some favourable exceptions, in nearly the same state in which they were before the irruption of the modern Gauls. Their love for noble inutilities, as Madame de Stael calls them, affects an aristocratic disdain for all the plebeian comforts, or (as in England we should call them) all the absolute necessities of life. Modern Rome, however, was never a Republic, que par parenthèse and sufferance, and nothing can be more unlike the spirit of the equality which it preached, than many of the enactments and sanctions of the code under Massena. Even the revolutions of her early history are anomalies: the occasional re-appearance of the tribune's rod under Crescentius or Crescenzi, and the celebrated Colà, names still living at Rome, are exceptions, rather than proofs. The class of the Popolani, who would have been most likely to originate or support these innovations, hardly existed there. When the aristocracy were sufficiently strong to expel the ecclesiastical monarchy which weighed upon their heads, the populace, rather than the people, took advantage of the moment, and slipped into the post which, in their temporary exertion, the Patricians had relinquished and left vacant. This will usually be the case when there are three, or rather four diverging powers in the community. It is not so much a victory for themselves, as a victory over others, that is aimed at, and gained.

The Piazza itself presents a very theatrical appearance; it is quite on the construction of the ancient scene. You have the three streets, stretching off, each in their true classical obliquity, from one common centre; the "twin churches," as they are called, represent the temples, and the obelisk fixes of itself the locality at Rome. The two sides, indeed, and particularly that towards the right, want completion, at present: the mob of low-roofed houses which disgrace it, are worthy of the Palatine residence of Evander. The building of churches has very nearly ceased, at least on the part of government;-that occupation is now left to Naples and England. There is no longer a board of works supplied by the coffers of Europe; and though the galley-slaves are a fund of themselves,

The name of Crescenzi is still esteemed and prevalent, amongst the Jews. I knew one of that name from the Piazza della Tartarugha, who was an important personage in the Synagogue. Rienzi still exists in the person of an old woman, in the Reola.

(for, farmed as they are, their utmost maintenance does not go much beyond three-pence per day) yet, as there is no value for time, years are expended here upon a work, with as little compunction as in England we expend thousands. Individuals are not all Torlonias; and consequently it is inch by inch that the extension of the city, in this direction, goes on. Besides that, they do not calculate upon their buildings falling after twenty years, and are therefore obliged to build them up in limine, as if it was intended they should last. The original design (French), though partially departed from, is still too magnificent for private contributions; and as there is not the advantage of a joint-stock society in this country, ex nihilo nihil fit-nothing can be got above ground, unless a certain quantity of bona fide specie be buried below. The Street Babuino, so called from a statue * which now, indeed, has some title to the name, is scarcely less broad, but much inferior to both the Corso and the Ripetta; it has neither the palaces of the former, nor the views across the Tyber of the latter; but it is, perhaps, cleaner, and more fashionable than either (there is fashion even at Rome), and is the grande entrée to what the Gods and the Italians call the "Delizie de' forestieri," the "Ghetto degli Inglesi," but which, in the language of men, goes under the name of the Piazza di Spagna." This square, or place, is "the Mola" of this quarter of the town, and might justify a small pocket volume of itself. But the night was advanced; we had not slept, since our departure from Florence, except in the way in which no one will sleep if he can help it; and we were by no means sorry to see our caritelle suddenly stop before the Hotel de l'Europe, the best in the square, and consequently the best in the whole city. Our postilion dashed off his cloak over his horses' necks, and we were conducted to our apartments in an instant, with all the proverbial urbanity of a very Roman. Lord Blayney will be happy to hear that every thing was almost as good as if he had recommended and ordered them himself; and Christophe Arundel, had he been present, would have forgotten for once his ennui, and consented to be amused with an excellent supper. We retired to bed in a few moments, and in golden dreams anticipated the pleasures of to-morrow.

SCENES OF THE PAST.-NO. II.

Pharsalia.

PEACE is upon the land,

The stars shine sweetly down,

The man of might and his helmed band

Lie heedless of renown;

The camp sleeps fast, and the dewy night

Flings o'er its hush her cold moonlight.

Earth seems one quiet tomb

So looks, the tempest past,

The ocean's face, in whose plumbless womb

The unknown dead sleep fast;

Like a smooth wave that foretells no wrong,

Yet big with Fate, Time lurks along.

Soon will the hour updraw

The morning's bloody veil;

Far other scene than the moon e'er saw

Shall make the sun wax pale;

The wide world's realm shall be given away,

'Ere twilight come in her stole of grey.

This statue was once intended to represent a River God, and was appropriately situated over a large balneum or reservoir, about the centre of the street; but it has been so disfigured by the Vandalism of the young Romans, that at present it is! not very distinguishable from a colossal baboon.

Over Pharsalia's plain

The dawn streams through the sky,
The Parcæ are choosing out the slain
From those that slumbering lie,

Or that, risen, are girding their armour on,
Unconscious their last day has shone.

With myrtle garlands twined

Their silken tents are seen,

With odour of flowers, and the red-eyed wine,
That camp hath joyous been;
Amid pleasure and singing, and revelry,
Rome's chieftain pass'd his hours away.*

White are his locks with eld,

With watch and battle-toil,

And Victory from him hath never withheld
Her triumph and her spoil.†

She had been his till to-day, and never

Has he once dream'd that she can sever.

The flower of Rome is there,

Her chiefs and chivalry,

Well worthy the cause they come to dare
Of her great destiny—

Brother to brother, as foe to foe,

Sire to sire, must soon lie low.

Two rival warriors now

Shall combat for the world,—
He of the bald but laurelled brow,

And he who vengeance hurl'd

God's wrath on Judæa's root and stem,
On the stately-built Jerusalem.

The gleam of arms is bright,
Eagles with eagles meet,

The squadrons rush to the ranks of fight,

On wings of battle fleet,

And man is again the demon of prey,

The Cain of a fratricidal day.

The Lord of Gaul is he,

To whom the world hath bow'd,

And the warrior who met him in rivalry

Is gone like a summer cloud,

His glory is quench'd, and his victories o'er,
Headless he lies on a foreign shore.‡

Now, Cæsar, wear the crown!

The universe is thine;

But the guilt and blood that made it thy own,
Do they sully not its shine?

Doth Ambition's laurel no keen thorns hide

For the brow of his Country's Parricide?

"Their tents and pavilions" (of Pompey's army), says Plutarch, "were richly adorned with garlands of myrtle, painted carpets and hangings, their couches strewed with flowers, and their tables set full of bowls and glasses, and even these crowned with wine."

Until the day of Pharsalia, Pompey had reckoned thirty-four years of victory. Of Egypt, on the shore of which he was assassinated by Septimus and others.

POPULAR FALLACIES.

That handsome is that handsome does.-Those who use this proverb can never have seen Mrs. Conrady.

The soul, if we may believe Plotinus, is a ray from the celestial beauty. As she partakes more or less of this heavenly light, she informs, with corresponding characters, the fleshly tenement which she chooses, and frames to herself a suitable mansion:

All which only proves that the soul of Mrs. Conrady, in her preexistent state, was no great judge of architecture.

To the same effect, in a Hymn in honour of Beauty, divine Spenser, platonizing, sings:

Every spirit as it is more pure,

Aud hath in it the more of heavenly light,
So it the fairer body doth procure

To habit in, and it more fairly dight
With cheerful grace and amiable sight.
For of the soul the body form doth take:

For soul is form, and doth the body make."

But Spenser, it is clear, never saw Mrs. Conrady.

These poets, we find, are no safe guides in philosophy; for here, in his very next stanza but one, is a saving clause, which throws us all out again, and leaves us as much to seek as ever :

"Yet oft it falls, that many a gentle mind
Dwells in deformed tabernacle drown'd,
Either by chance, against the course of kind,
Or through unaptness in the substance found,
Which it assumed of some stubborn ground,
That will not yield unto her form's direction,
But is perform'd with some foul imperfection."

From which it would follow, that Spenser had seen somebody like
Mrs. Conrady.

The spirit of this good lady-her previous anima-must have stumbled upon one of these untoward tabernacles which he speaks of. A more rebellious commodity of clay for a ground, as the poet calls it, no gentle mind-and sure her's is one of the gentlest-ever had to deal with.

Pondering upon her inexplicable visage-inexplicable, we mean, but by this modification of the theory-we have come to a conclusion that, if one must be plain, it is better to be plain all over, than, amidst a tolerable residue of features, to hang out one that shall be exceptionable. No one can say of Mrs. Conrady's countenance, that it would be better if she had but a nose. It is impossible to pull her to pieces

in this manner.

We have seen the most malicious beauties of her own

sex baffled in the attempt at a selection. The tout ensemble defies particularizing. It is too complete-too consistent, as we may say-to admit of these invidious reservations. It is not as if some Apelles had picked out here a lip-and there a chin-out of the collected ugliness of Greece, to frame a model by. It is a symmetrical whole. We challenge the minutest connoisseur to cavil at any part or parcel of the countenance in question; to say that this, or that, is improperly placed.

Concluded from page 229.

We are convinced that true ugliness, no less than is affirmed of true beauty, is the result of harmony. Like that too, it reigns without a competitor. No one ever saw Mrs. Conrady, without pronouncing her to be the plainest woman that he ever met with in the course of his life. The first time that you are indulged with a sight of her face, is an era in your existence ever after. You are glad to have seen it-like Stonehenge. No one can pretend to forget it. No one ever apologized to her for meeting her in the street on such a day and not knowing her-the pretext would be too bare. Nobody can mistake her for another. Nobody can say of her; "I think I have seen that face somewhere, but I cannot call to mind where." You must remember that in such or such a parlour it first struck you—like a bust. You wondered where the owner of the house had picked it up. You wondered more when it began to move its lips-so mildly too!-No one ever thought of asking her to sit for her picture. Lockets are for remembrance; and it would be clearly superfluous to hang an image at your heart, which, once seen, can never be out of it. It is not a mean face neither:-its entire originality precludes that. Neither is it of that order of plain faces which improve upon acquaintance. Some very good but ordinary people, by an unwearied perseverance in kind offices, put a cheat upon our eyes; juggle our senses out of their natural impressions; and set us upon discovering good indications in a countenance, which, at first sight, promised nothing less. We detect gentleness, which had escaped us, lurking about an under-lip. But when Mrs. Conrady has done you a service, her face remains the same: when she has done you a thousand, and you know that she is ready to double the number, still it is that individual face. Neither can you say of it, that it would be a good face if it was not marked by the smallpox-a compliment which is always more admissive than excusatory— for Mrs. Conrady either never had the small-pox; or, as we say, took it kindly. No-it stands upon its own merits fairly. There it is. It' is her mark, her token; that which she is known by.

That my Lord Shaftesbury and Sir William Temple are models of the genteel style in writing. We should prefer saying-of the lordly and of the gentlemanly. Nothing can be more unlike than the inflated finical rhapsodies of Shaftesbury, and the plain natural chit-chat of Temple. The man of rank is discernible in both writers; but in the one it is only insinuated gracefully, in the other it stands out offensively. The peer seems to have written with his coronet on, and his earl's mantle before him; the commoner in his elbow chair and undress. What can be more pleasant than the way in which the retired statesman peeps out in the essays, penned by the latter in his delightful retreat at Shene? They scent of Nimeguen, and the Hague. Scarce an authority is quoted under an ambassador. Don Francisco de Melo, a Portugal Envoy in England," tells him it was frequent in his country for men, spent with age or other decays, so as they could not hope for above a year or two of life, to ship themselves away in a Brazil fleet, and after their arrival there to go on a great length, sometimes of twenty or thirty years, or more, by the force of that vigour they recovered with that remove. "Whether such an effect (Temple beautifully adds) might grow from the air, or the fruits of that climate, or by approaching nearer the sun, which is the fountain of light and