The Longobardi established the duchy of Benevento and the principality of Salerno, which, in the middle of the ninth century becoming embroiled with each other, called in the assistance of the Saracens, who had already possessed themselves of Taranto and Bari. Its natural consequences followed the introduction of these new auxiliaries; their swords were turned against their employers; whatever had escaped, or (during three centuries) partially recovered from the effects of the previous barbarian inundations, was then completely destroyed. Pæstum went with her compeers, and was forgotten in the black darkness that mantles the history of the time. It may not be amiss, however, to relate the popular tradition of the country about its final destruction. The Saracens, it says, were encamped at Agropoli, and held Pæstum besieged; but the strength of its walls was for then an insurmountable obstacle; they made an assault, and were repulsed with great loss. But, on the 25th of April, the feast of St. Mark the Evangelist, the Pæstans went out of the city in grand procession (perhaps to bless the cultured fields), and the Saracens, entering by surprise, made themselves masters of it, and destroyed the whole by fire and sword. A few of the inhabitants escaped to the neighbouring mountains, and founded Capaccio Vecchio. There lay Pæstum, grand in her ruins, "mighty in decay," from the ninth century till near the middle of the eighteenth, when the Conte Felice Gazola, general of artillery to Charles the Third of Naples, happened to hear that such a place existed.* He immediately visited it, and determined to publish a work on the subject, with engravings representing the new-found treasures: however it was not done during his lifetime, though he did not die till nearly thirty years after the discovery, but at length the work made its appearance from the hands of the Padre Paoli. Bamonte says, that foreigners have asked him if the temples and the walls of the city had been buried in fact, and appears indignant at their ignorance,† though he fails to account for the erudite blindness of his dear countrymen for the space of nine hundred years, who had eyes, but saw not, and hearts that did not understand, Ay! and there is a Royal Hunting-seat within ten miles of Paestum! Capaccio too is an episcopal town, in which a cathedral was built in the very earliest part of the last century, so that Neapolitan architects, as well as bishops et hoc omne, must have seen Pæstum at least thirty or forty years before it was discovered!" Biferique rosaria Pæsti," have been sung by the Latin poets, and their songs have been echoed by others. Tasso, although a native of Sorrento, (on a promontory from which Pæstum can be seen,) speaking of the vermiglie rose," says, "come si narra," evidently borrowing his strain from his predecessors. 66 genus Fields and vineyards now occupy the space within the walls of the city; and besides the celebrated monuments of its former grandeur, there are in Pæstum, a farm-house and its appurtenances,-a mean little church called a Cathedral, and a meaner house called the Bishop's Palace, a peasant's cot, and the dirty little Taverna, or osteria, in which we were domiciliated, containing altogether perhaps about thirty or forty souls. There are certainly three or four primitive shepherds' huts besides; but as they appear not to be fixtures, I do not reckon their inhabitants among those of the city of Pæstum. The people in this part of the country are not cleaner, nor are the women handsomer, than they are farther north; however, I have seen fine Greek "In questo tempo arrivata a sua cognizione la notizia di talimonumenti dimenticati e sconosciuti, ed in solitudine deserta fra spinai sepolti, come era di animo intraprendente, e per l'avanzamento delle arti al sommo trasportato, si portò ad opervarle, e giudicò dovere esser di gran vantaggio alla republica letteraria, se delineate con esattezza, e con precisione incise, si pubblicassero. Cominciarono d' indi in poi i letterati a parlare frequentamente, e in ispecie gl' intendenti d'architettura, della città di Pesto."-Pæstanæ Dissertationes, "Tutto restò sepolto sotto le rovine, eccettò i dice Tempj, la Basilica, e le mura, che sempre scoverti sono stati e non sepolti, come falsamente credono taluni forestieri, da' quali ne sono stato io interrogato."-Le Antichità Pestane. profiles among the peasant women, though they are not otherwise handsome; the men look like any thing but Greeks, with their conical hats, and light blue jackets hanging over their shoulders. On our way to Eboli this afternoon, we met several groups of them returning from its fair, and many with one or two new hats piled on their old ones, looking like Lord Peter in the "Tale of a Tub." As our steeds were not very swift, and the carriage was open, we had plenty of time to admire the lovely scenery about the Selo. A great part of the country near the river on this side is covered with copse and underwood, as shelter for wild bears and the like, for royal hunting. Buffaloes swarm all over the marshes; they are odd-looking animals, invariably black, with horns like rams' horns, and they carry their heads so that their faces are nearly parallel to the horizon: cheese is made of buffaloes' milk, which is very white, and so completely in filaments, that it may be almost wound off like so much thread. The locauda at Eboli was formerly a convent, and, in the ruined church belonging to it, the bones of its former tenants lie exposed to the rude insults of its vagrant occupiers of the present time. 15th. While travelling in Italy, those who are determined to have clean sheets, must be content to have them damp; and those who wish to have their beds to themselves, should look to see that they are not previously occupied. Last night I should have had a large scorpion for a bedfellow, had it not been for that precaution: on turning down the sheets to see that they were clean, couched between them lay the largest reptile of the kind I had ever seen. At half-past five this morning we came off for Naples in a calash, which we were much mistaken in supposing that we should have to ourselves, for there were no less than four besides ourselves and the driver. One who had not seen a set-out of the kind, would be puzzled to know how seven persons could be accommodated in a vehicle not larger than our one-horse chaise, although it was drawn by two horses abreast, one in, or rather under, the shafts, and the other on the near side, harnessed like a trace-horse. In our road we saw several instances of eight grown persons on one of these vehicles drawn by but one horse, and that one swinging along at full trot. However, loaded as we were, we soon reached Salerno, where we breakfasted, and were quickly on the road again for Naples. The scenery up from Salerno does not show to half the advantage it does in going down, yet still we had enough to admire. We took a peep at the remains of Pompeii on passing them, and afterwards loitered an hour at Torre della Nunziata, while the horses rested. On arriving at the barrier of the Ponte della Madalena, we were detained some time about the disgusting passports, and were at length discharged, by our vetturino, a lad of about twenty, getting a sound box on the ears from one of the people there. NEW SERIES OF ARABIAN NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENTS.* NEW Arabian Nights!-What! New Arabian Nights' Entertainments of the old stock! genuine! more Scherezade and Dinarzade! more Zobeide and Camaralzaman, and Commanders of the Faithful, and ladies in veils, and enraptured linen-drapers, and genii, and magicians, and "light of my soul," and heads made no more of than turnip-tops! To hear of more Arabian Nights was, to us, like being told that we were to have a new piece of Childhood,-three volumes of Rejuvenescence,—a spring-time within the spring,-happy wonder,-a glut of * New Arabian Nights' Entertainments, selected from the original Oriental MS. by Jos. Von Hammer, and now first translated into English by the Rev. George Lamb.-3 vols. small 8vo. willing credulity. It is the next thing to having wings to one's shoulders. We have a respect for the common-places of life; nobody has more ;-but we do not find the goods and chattels of the world of imagination less tangible on that account; nay, perhaps the very height to which we carry our regard for the one, enables us to be properly at home with the other. As imagination fetches out the beauties of a common-place, so the pleasure which the latter gives us, adorned or not, is traceable to the very same mystery by which we receive impressions from a thing imaginary. People are not pleased with a horse, merely because he carries them from Richmond to London; they admire in him the mysterious qualities called beauty, and grace, and good-humour, things intelligential and spiritual; nor is the power by which he carries them less mysterious, when they come to investigate it; no, not a jot less so than that of the enchanted horse of the Calenders. It takes therefore no violent process with us to turn the every-day horse into the horse romantic. We dismount Sir Charles and unchristen Sir Billy; and lo! in the twinkling of a switch, the animal that we took for a good beast enough, with no other ideas in his head than himself, becomes the steed On which the Tartar king did ride. We Many a time have we met Cambuscan in a country road, and ridden with Odin down a gap in a forest. So with houses, and men, and women. Not having the insight of beaux and materialists into the supernatural world, it is impossible for us to say how many ethereal existences there may or may not be round about us, or whether they may not occasionally be in our studies and sitting-rooms. A palace full of enchantment is, therefore, no such outrageous matter in our eyes. take it as kindly as we did when boys; have a respect for the perilous chapel, and a handsome misgiving before the forbidden door. Men with us are not merely Joneses and Tomkinses. God forbid! Shall we consent to take a carpenter, or a fishmonger, or a man of fashion, merely for what he pretends to be? Not we! Nothing shall induce us. Hath not the commonest of his tribe, organs, and properties, and dimensions, and comforts, and cares? Has he not (though you would not think it, to look at him) been a little interesting infant, a mysterious creation, the object of a thousand caresses and anxieties to at least two other beings, as ordinary-looking and wonderful as himself? Has he not (though he is not old) gone through sensations infinite? and were we to know them all, should we not be tempted to laugh, and to weep, and to respect the stupid-looking cut of his face with those touching wrinkles in it, and to recognize in him, not simply a man and a brother, but a sensitive existence we know not what, a fellow-wonder, suffering and enjoying, come we know not whence, and going we know not whither? May the angel of Death find no truth in our hearts, if we have not given the benefit of these meditations (a great deal more than we ought to have done) to the veriest knave whom it hath been our lot to encounter! And woman! Is an interesting woman nothing but what a common-place fellow, or a formalist, or a debauchee, takes her for? Forbid it love, and poetry, and all that, in resorting to the colours of imagination, does but do justice to the emotions which she excites! Is the mystery of a cheek, or an eye, or a kind heart, a thing that contains no more in it than what the tongue of an every-day slave can utter? Let him first undertake to explain to us the subtlest charms of music, or to analyse and to vulgarize "the breath of God which arises in the breeze of night," and of which her existence partakes. Sunbeams may play on the dead log to no purpose; but they play on the living tree, and the blossoms come forth. Are the sunbeams not real, because the blossoms praise them? Amidst so many beauties and wonders, than which nothing can be more beautiful or wonderful, where is the mighty sense of revolting from another tale of enchantment, and of proving that we are inferior, in the number of our sources of pleasure, to children, to poets, and to wise men? We had a misgiving, in spite of our enthusiasm, that these new Arabian Nights would be as dull as some others that have occasionally transpired; that we should hear of nothing but fables thrice told, and those badly; that some new Seven Wise Masters would be as parabolical and prosing as the old ones; and some marvellous young Prince astonish the Court with his wisdom, and the readers with his stupidity. A few wise masters there are, including a young prince, in the story of King Jilia, all very sage and tiresome, and lugging in unhappy stories by the head and shoulders :- -"Wretches that ye are !" said Wird Khan to his women, 66 ye have plunged me into ruin, as the tortoises did the partridge.". "Will you not tell us that story?" said the women; "it might perhaps amuse us a little." The whole of the history of King Jilia is a fatiguing mixture of the moral and the extravagant; of lessons that seem made only to provoke people to avoid them, and tales of the marvellous, wild beyond all catching. These stories, however, are genuine; and, in the dullest and the wildest, there are passages to interest a student of things Eastern. In the story of Jamasp, Belukia finds himself in " a soundless subterraneous vault," where was 66 a conflux of all the seas and waters of the earth." This is like the grand fiction of Mr. Coleridge in Kubla Khan :~ In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-house ordain, In the same story is another fiction, as brilliant as this is solemn. In the fifth sea Belukia finds a small island, of which the mountains were of crystal, through which glittered veins of the finest gold; they were covered with lofty palm-trees, the fruit of which was also of pure gold. Towards evening, Belukia, to his great astonishment, remarked that the earth began to sparkle as the sky grew dark. "Ah!" said he, "this then is the Isle of Gold Flowers, which I have often heard described as a piece of the sun, which was broken off and fell into the sea, and yet produces gold and light." This appears to be eminently beautiful and poetical Milton and Spenser would not have disdained to add such an island to their dominions. The following is edifying, and should have done more good to the relater of it. Daniel, a Greek philosopher, casts all his books into the sea, preserving only five leaves, which contained "the quintessence of the wisdom of five hundred volumes." King Jilia's prime minister gives us his opinion of what constitutes a reasonable attachment to women. A man, he says, in order to enjoy the pleasures of female society, need not spend all his time in it. He eats to appease hunger, and drinks to allay thirst. Precisely so the rational man considers women. The day consists of twenty-four hours; it is quite sufficient to spend twelve of them in the harem; the rest of the day ought to be devoted to business, study, and repose."—" A trim reckoning." 66 An oriental Franklin, in his anxiety to see reason flourish, would have had this circulated on printed cards to hang up, and called it "Poor Rikh's Almanack, or the Rational Man's Every Day Book."—In the History of Maruf, the hero recounts among the tricks of his childhood, that he used to disguise himself with his companions as Christian children, creep into the churches of Cairo, steal the books, and " then sell them to the priests at a high price." The translator observes in the preface, that stories of this last kind betray an origin much later than that of the others. The oldest originalThousand and One Nights,' he conceives to have been a work of Persian, or perhaps Indian genius, all probability, translated about the time of the Caliph Mansúr-that is, about thirty years before the reign of Harún al Rashid, who was destined to play so distinguished a part in the later editions of it." The Arabians added, from time to time, stories both of Arabian and of Grecian origin; and finally, on the extinction of the Caliphat at Bagdad, the ascendancy of the Egyptian and other caliphs gave rise to a third increase and modification of the stories, in which the manners, whatever time or country they may pretend to, are painted after those of Cairo. By means of entitling the work' Nights,' instead of Tales, the authors were at liberty to include as many stories as they thought proper. Without stopping to compare these opinions with the theories of Warton and others, most of which may be easily reconciled, it is impossible to deny their great appearance of truth; and it is pleasant to observe that the translator does not attempt to palm all his tales upon us for good ones. He gives up the stale repetitions of some of them, and the dulness and outrageousness of others; justly thinking, at the same time, that a genuine Eastern story may be interesting to the lovers of that class of reading, from circumstances independent of its merit as a narrative. These concessions premised, and the least entertaining of the three volumes being despatched, we have no hesitation in saying, that next to the popular sequel to the Arabian Nights, called Arabian Tales, containing, among other, the admirable stories of Il Bondocani and Maugraby, the first two volumes of this work are by far the best addition to the stock that has appeared, and will amply repay the genuine reader. They are in particular remarkable, and indeed unique, as containing the very best specimens of Eastern poetry that we remember to have seen, with the exception of the romance of Antar; and even by the side of Antar, though they have not the same excessive air of unpremeditated passion, and what may be called naked vigour of the Desert, they may challenge a comparison of merit, as combining nature and passion with the very languor of refinement. Take the following selection. We do |