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row houses are to be seen there, no crowds of close compacted streets, such as we find on the continent. No where in London do houses contain more than three stories; no where else are so many grass-plots before the houses and in the middle of the squares: five large parks occur in this city of the world, on the grass of which, in the midst of a world's traffic, the cattle graze undisturbed, as though in a wild oasis of the desert. From all this the conclusion our traveller draws is perfectly naïve: "Certainly the English are, at bottom, a prosaic people:" nor do our trees and grass in the squares, "our splendid buildings of phantastic forms, our magnificent shop-windows of plate-glass, displaying all the treasures of the world," do away with the effect of our endless lines of cold, dark houses, lanes, and streets, which, though broad and long, are witnesses of the thick and impure at mosphere of London, or efface the above conviction from his mind. There is, he observes, with that love of system which indicates a German origin no less distinctly than language itself,

LUCINIAN

101

SOCIE

in the first week his, residence
when he beheld English Windolib, their
superb equipages and showy costume, suc
as his boyhood "ha mired in English
copper-plate cuts." And Arpark-
ling eyes and long dark lashes, the rosy
lips, teeth of beaming brightnes, small
noses of beautiful form (no way resembling
the tower of Lebanon, we conceive), and
roseate cheeks, shadowed with luxuriant
flowing ringlets, which he carefully com-
memorates, we suspect much of the prompt
change in our traveller's opinions may be
fairly attributed. Next to the ladies he ad-
mired the horses. There was evidently
no cooling down suddenly from such an
excitement to plain reason: it would have
been "touching a cold key with a flat third
to it ;" and accordingly the philosopher
flies off from England to Rome in the days
of its glory, and the victories of its circus.
He finds the analogy between the two na-
tions so obvious in everything,-in their
love of curiosities and display, their dislike
of soldiery out of warfare, their combina-
tion of the sensual and spiritual in enjoy-
ment; in the taste for science, the prefer-
ence for shows, spectacles, and races, over
the drama, &c. &c., that he cannot avoid
the corollary that England is the legitimate
successor of Rome! This is surely philo-
sophy in a fog, whether English or foreign.

But upon the subject of his next chapter the author comes at once to plain thinking. It is on the English Sunday. There are persons. he observes, who imbibe conjugal tenderness from the cudgel, and others whose religious creed springs from intolerance and persecution. In England, enlightened, practical England, religion is a

"There is a reciprocal connection between climate and architecture, which we find in every country. Beneath the clear heaven of Greece, on the fair banks of Ilissus, lordly structures and stately temples rise on white marble columns into upper air. On Rome's vulcanian soil, and amidst hills between which the yellow Tiber winds along, triumphal arches rise, and prisoned nations have erected a Colosseum,-a St. Peter's: in London, wealth and trade build, under a darker sky and a pallid heaven, endless lanes like single palaces; the architectural style of every nation is brought together like the merchant's wares, and in the modern Babylon the foreigner is lost weapon of war rather than a bond of peace: in amazement. The poor foreigner! hehe insists, we hope unjustly, that the must in England feel himself a stranger; whole nation is tinctured with this indivihe must forego many of the opinions im- dual fault; that persecution and exclusivebibed and cherished from infancy as un- ness are common to all parties and sects; questionable verities; he must begin again and that the English sectarians of all kinds to handle and to learn what hitherto he hate each other as fiercely as in former has not handled or learned. He is in a times. Certainly the evidence should be land where all is new to him,-existence wears a different hue; the water of the strong that takes so sweeping a conclusion; sea that surrounds the British shores has and the writer's argument is not better supsomething of Lethe in its nature, for it ob- ported by the Witch of Endor, to whom he literates the opinions and ideas that we expressly refers, than by the single illusbring over from the continent. He comes tration he gives us in addition, namely, the to England, to a people whose political case of Catholic Ireland; for none surely, writings have given lessons to all others, except "a thoroughly bewildered stranger," and to a land of reform,-and finds conservative manners; customs sanctified by can be ignorant that politics on this quescenturies of time; a system of moveless- tion give their color to religious differness, which, banished from politics, has ences. On one point only of this questio taken refuge in the kingdom of usages." vexata can we pause to remark, and this but to rectify the error of those who, like our traveller, err on a matter of fact. Lord Lyndhurst, in certain animadversions, ex

No little addition to our traveller's admiration of all this was made at Ascot races,

pressly quoted the language of his oppo-|cessary and innocent recreation and enjoynents to describe them. This is easy of ment, we have strong doubts whether any proof from every newspaper in the United country in Europe has reason to pride itKingdom: and if it was not remembered self over our own as to rational observance by his antagonists at the time of that ob- of the Sabbath Day. noxious speech,-for to forget is a Chris tian duty, often more convenient than to forgive, still strangers, like the writer before us, ought not, in their own ignorance, to misrepresent the character of the British parliament, and scatter insinuations so injurious to a whole people, through their representations, from misunderstanding the tendency of a single speech.

Our author gives a description, lively by contrast, of the different forms of worship that he witnessed here, and all apparently equally novel to him. Though a Protestant, he felt deeply moved at the solemn celebration of the Catholic rites, and was also much struck with the Quakers.

"Still and silent on the one side sat the men, with their heads covered; on the other the females, with their sober-colored bonnets of silk."

She

acted the effect of her eloquence. The whole assembly seemed indifferent to what was passing; each appearing lost in his own thoughts."

On the gloom of an English Sunday we cannot entirely agree with our author, who re-echoes the commonplaces of its being "a day of mourning and sadness, when We hope the worm that produces it is music itself is a sin, and an awful stillness spreads its raven wing over the whole land." not that from whose subtle doings our foreOur national mode of observing the Sab-fathers prayed to be delivered; though the fact seems suspicious. bath has undoubtedly "a visible effect on the lower classes;' not merely, as the wri"The walls were cold and bare, and deter charitably affirms, by driving them to- titute of the slightest ornament. For one wards political and religious fanaticism, or full quarter of an hour not the slightest to the gin-shops, but in promoting those sound broke the death-like stillness that family reunions, and infusing a taste for reigned around, when suddenly an elderly those tranquil pleasures which constitute dame stood up at the further end of the the charm and the blessing of English do- hall, and spoke in a feeble voice. She had mestic society to a degree of which the scarcely concluded, when a melancholy more superficial portion of foreigners can with tears and internal agitation. female form commenced a long speech, not be competent judges. There is, we spoke of love, of repentance, and of love think, far more apparent than real severity again: to this point she constantly returnin our ordinances on this head; and they ed." "I was sorry," says our author, may even err, though slightly, on the side "that this apostle of love was not pretof excess but, while we have doubts whe-tier ;(!) for her want of beauty counterther society ought to be altogether unhinged for the advantages of eating mutton cold on a Sunday, and are somewhat sceptical whether those who are compelled to walk all the week should in consequence be debarred from riding on the Sabbath, we consider that the attendance at worship, and the calm demeanour that marks the sacred day in England, are not less accordant with the spirit of the divine injunction than the continental tradesman laboring up to two o'clock at his usual avocations. There is perhaps nothing in the national institutions of any age or nation that so strongly forces reflection upon the mind as the absence of what are called amusements on the British Sabbath: the blank may irksome, but thought will thus intervene, to fill up the vacant space, and leave its beneficial traces on the mind. And when we compare the numbers resorting then to public-houses with the vast mass of popu lation that abstain from these; and still more, when we compare the few sots and drunkards within the precincts of those walls to the many that enter them for ne

be

From hence, and his devotion seems essentially locomotive, the author entered a Methodist chapel, where, as among the Quakers, he saw more women than men; but their dresses were elegant, and carri ages and livery servants stood before the door. The service, a mixture of hymn, as dramatic-scarcely less so, he thought, prayer, reading, and preaching, struck him was a meeting in the open air in Smithfield; where the preacher, a well-dressed man, with loud voice and violent gestures, Old Testament. gave a puritanical gloss to a text from the

Our traveller remarks that all sects in

England take by preference their texts from the same source, instead of from the New Testament; and hence he infers that they deem the Deity a God of vengeance and wrath rather than of love. He adds that Sir Andrew Agnew's bill has recently gained strength in parliament, and he looks

66

on all this, like a true theorist, as referrible this he justly attributes to the power and to the wealth of the nation. Machinery pathos of the Irish Melodies, so popular in and money-getting abase the spirit; the the boudoirs and drawing-rooms of the love of gain predominates in life and in fashionable world. In fact, to make the politics; a reaction ensues through puri songs of a nation is to rule their hearts, as tanical severity and sheer spiritualism, hos- the wily Frenchman long ago asserted, tile to all enjoyment. This," he conti- and Moore and Beranger have proved to nues, "is the darkest side of the English our hands. But to return to our author, character, the snake amidst roses; for, his subject, and his reflections,should England receive some violent shock, the iconoclast disciples of Knox would pour forth in crowds to overturn every social institution, and to build a charnel house on the ruin."

"And O'Connel himself, but a few years since what was he? The cause he advocated was not so brilliant that its rays could form a halo round his head. Only the lowest and most demoralized class of the Irish were with him; the White-boys gave him their support; but the champion of religious liberty disavowed the Catholic bishops; the nobility scorned, the tradesmen dreaded his schemes; a thousand parties divided the country, and in their private feuds forgot the public cause: but during the struggle O'Connel's case grew ever brighter; a whole land ranged itself under his banners; the thunder of his voice rolled over the Irish Channel, and found in a million English hearts its corresponding echo. At length it became strong enough to support or overturn a ministry.”

Such is the opinion hastily formed per haps, of a foreigner, who from his station in society had the means of conversing with well-informed persons, and forming his judgment by theirs; but we must pass over these grave topics, and therefore decline dwelling with the writer on Bedlam and the Penitentiary, in spite of the attractious of that parti-coloured costume so ad mired in the heroic age of England's third Edward, but which fashion, somewhat more reluctantly followed in the present day, appears to have lost much of its interest in the eyes of the modern fair, at least beyond the precincts of Millbank. Neither St. Paul's nor Westminster Abbey however, We must copy a few remarks on paintthe Tunnel, the Tower, nor the Docks, noring in England and France. After speakeven Barclay's Brewery, attract our specu- ing of the Spanish artists, whom our travellative Hungarian. Monstrous churches, ler considers, somewhat whimsically, as he observes, that produce little effect, and are filled with tasteless monuments, are sufficiently common on the continent; docks, and breweries that drown whole streets in beer, have long had rivals in Europe and America; but the Collosseum, Astley's, the Adelaide Street Gallery, and the Zoolo-"The Frenchman brings all his vanity and superficiality, his theatricaal ffectation and gical Garden, are to be found in London display, to bear upon his work: the na

alone.

We may pass these, however, for our traveller's remarks on the meeting at the Crown and Anchor Tavern in favor of O'Connel, and presided by Joseph Hume, and "from which the Irish members through delicacy were absent." He gives a brief abstract of the chairman's speech, and slight personal sketches of the chief orators, Hume, Warburton, Furgusson of Raith, "who is known to the whole world," and Attwood; and expresses surprise that from 6000 to 8000 men of all classes should peaceably have attended there, and no constable to be seen-the object, too, being a subscription of the Protestant English for an Irishman and a Catholic. Much of

* We have not heard of any catastrophe rivalling Meux's double-barrelled destruction some years since.

affording a remarkable parallelism with the Greek, Indian, Chinese, and Persian styles!-(he had previously deduced Gothic architecture from the Banyan tree-) he proceeds,

tionality of his countrymen never leaves
him without a task. In England, on the
contrary, there is almost nothing for art.
Protestantism forbids pictures for church-
es; men of education are occupied with
politics; and consequently English art is
weak, effeminate, and unnoticed.
holds only the same rank as the idyll in
scape painting alone flourishes; but it
poetry-a milk diet for grown men."

Land

We cannot spare much time for the writer's western progress. Salisbury, from its repose and German prosaic character, contrasts, we are oddly informed, as strongly with commercial and manufacturing towns as romantic life with large watering-places. Stonehenge naturally awakens some fanci ful speculations in a mind so prone to indulgences of this kind; but we must quote a passage respecting the music of Bath, from its novelty in a German mind:-

death of the genial Keats." The story is just as true of the Edinburgh as of the Quarterly, to which last the homicide is generally ascribed.

"It was Sunday, and we entered a church. How were we astonished as the tone of the powerful organ, one of the most celebrated in England, mingled a strain of sublime sacred music with a full To the Advocates, who form the princiclear and united voice of melody, which, from the accounts of travellers, we should pal society of Edinburgh, and their practisleast of all have expected to find in Enged casuistical skill," which binds the crea land! I wished those writers present who tions of phantasy by the rules of art," our had formed their opinion of the musical author attributes that subtile vein of crititaste of the English from the applause cism, and habitual attention to rule and prewhich the fashionable world lavishes daily cedent that, according to him, mark out at concerts upon the garnish of Italian this city as the seat of puritanism and pre

song: this one circumstance would have convinced them that the metropolis no more includes all England, than the fashionable society of London represents the people of Great Britain."

From the above extracts it will be obvious that our Hungarian visiter forms his own opinions, and is not ashamed to avow them when they differ most from those of his countrymen. His seems, in truth, one of those wild and dreamy minds that evidence, equally with history itself, the oriental origin of their proper nation, and that, fraught with the love of the beautiful, springs ever from the sterner labours of judgment and comparison to delight itself in abstract conceptions, and only turns earthward when exhausted, and to prepare for another flight. He feels rather than reasons: and, with the fault of intuitive genius, whenever he errs it is from a bias towards the ideal of his own thoughts. His remarks on Warwick Castle and Birmingham are instances of this; and it is impossible to grapple with fancies like the following summing up

cisness.

The poetical spirit of our author does justice to the unrivalled situation of the city, its majestic rock, and picturesque castie, with the bridge and the national monument on the Calton Hill. Alas! the prototype of the Parthenon did not fail from want of funds under Pericles. He bestows some pages on the lavish beauties of situation and prospect that render Edinburgh unique; yet, while admitting the beauty of the New town and its public edifices, he holds them deficient in originality, and but a cold imitation of the Greek. But this surely is as it should be, according to his own maxim, that architecture every where harmonizes with the climate.

We must find room for a few remarks on our literature, in which there is much truth, though the political impress is, to our thinking, exaggerated.—

"The vocation of a critic here is different from the rest of Europe, where the public looks on at a reviewer and author as the Romans on their gladiatorial shows. In England, on the contrary, all takes the "It is childishness, but I really felt hap-litical engine, and the heavy ordnance of stamp of politics. Here criticism is a popy that the nearest road from Warwick reviews is used to breach the walls of arisCastle to Birmingham did not pass by tocracy or democracy when the musKenilworth. I regarded this as a favora. quetry of the journals is of no further ble omen that the transition from the pres- avail. The pages of the reviews are the ent to the future would be peaceful and first practice of the future statesman, and unbroken as the road from the castle to in these he prepares himself for the conthe manufacturing town." test he is to carry on hereafter in parliament. 'Who would write,' says Lord Byron in his journal, if he had any thing else to do? This is the device of English authorship which regards writing but in its effects, and the Word as mother to the Deed. This feeling acts upon poetry and destroys it, for poetry expires the moment she becomes the tool of party."

Of Ireland more than enough has already been said to render any notice of our traveller's visit to that country necessary here; especially as beyond the natural beauties of the scenery he gives us little of his own remarks, unless in a conversation with a native and politics are not our forte; Irish politics confessedly our foible. We can but touch on his visit to Edinburgh, which, as he had compared London to Rome, he regards as its Alexandria, the seat of a school of Reviewers. "Lord Byron's satire," he observes, "has not hurt them; and it is known that a severe critique of the Edinburgh Review caused the

Again,

"In England public life affects poetry; round the fairest flowers of Thomas Moore's genius, and the novels of Bulwer, Mrs. Trollope, and Lady Morgan, winds the snake of politics; so that the reader feels uncomfortable, and is often in doubt

whether the Hesperian apples of poesy are ready remarked. The country of the aunot gathered from the Tree of the Knowl-thor in itself renders the book an object of edge of Good and Evil. Hence it arises curiosity: and that it does not in a single that in general only young people, ladies, line of its light and airy pages indulge the end effeminate characters interfere with vulgar vanity of parading acquaintanceship lighter literature, all skill and talent fining and betraying domesticity is a proof that room for Action in England. The present literary poverty of the country is a proof of the internal feeling of the nation; and is the less to be regretted, since the aim of its existence is to trade, not to

write."

"Such is perhaps the real position of the English critics, to whom the confused tone of French literature appears so singular that they cannot comprehend it, and will not trouble themselves with this utter chaos of ideas after being accustomed to the decided language and clear perspicuity of England. French literature is also in a singular crisis, and who can augur of its next phase, when even a mind like Victor Hugo's doubts whether the obscurity that

the writer's mind does honour to his rank in society. Many hints for the improvement of his native land have already been adopted from England, and we trust the facilitation of foreign intercourse by canals will tempt more than one kindred spirit among his countrymen to enlarge his sphere of observation and our own by a visit of the Magyar to our shores.

hovers over France is the forerunner of ART. XII.-Die Alt-Persischen Keil- Iu

night, or shall produce day from its womb! This uncertainty has given to French talent the leaden impress of insignificance, and deprived it at once of the freshness of opening life and of the perfection of its decline."

We can extract but a few lines more, to show the impression which England left upon the candid traveller. After enumerating the courtesies he had received, and the treasures of art and nature every where freely offered to his inspection, as well as some personal attentions, shown by an ut ter stranger, he proceeds,

"These kindnesses occur so often amongst the educated classes that we are tempted to believe that the writers who complain of the rudeness and incivility of the English coald never have mixed with the gentry. It is only the populace of England that is brutal and uncivilized; and this is but a proof of the healthiness and the independence of the lower classes."

As he quitted our shores he tells us,

"So long as the English coast remained in sight we kept looking back upon it, and as it faded in the distance we exclaimed with full hearts,

Old England for ever!"

We have bestowed some little time on this volume, not only from the talents and station of its writer, but also as the first of his countrymen, to our knowledge, who has given his candid opinion of England from actual inspection of its state. That it is on the whole decidedly favorable to us is flattering to our national feeling, and on the cause of any of its errors we have al

VOL. XX.

14

schrifteu vou Persepolis. Entzifferung des Alphabets und Erkärung des Inhalts, nebst geographischen Untersuchungun, &c. (Ancient Persian Cuneiform Inscriptions at Persepolis. A Deciphering of their Alphabet and Interpretation of their Contents, with Geographical In. quiries, &c.) Von Dr. Christian Lassen. Bonn. 1836.

We have slightly alluded in a former number to the labours of Dr. Grotefend in deciphering the cuneiform inscriptions of antiquity, and to the opinion of the Baron de Sacy, that certainty had not been hitherto obtained on the subject. To the diligence and perseverance of the former, however, it must be confessed, a larger share of gratitude is due, since his researches form a basis for subsequent inquiries, and amongst others for those of Dr. Lassen.

This last writer is well known to the learned world as devoting himself to the study of those recondite points of Asiatic philology, which, whatever their value to history, seemed till now to offer little inducement or hope either in the shape of discovery or encouragement. In conjunction with M. Eugene Burnouf, confessedly the first scholar of Europe in these paths, Dr. Lassen has already published some valuable elucidations of Oriental antiquity: and he now comes forward in prosecution of those labors, to correct and extend the discoveries of his predecessors in the abovementioned field; without, however, attempting to claim for himself any portion of the praise that he deems justly conceded to them. A slight sketch of the discoveries thus achieved may not be uninteresting to our readers.

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