Edipus himself to unravel or understand; but this is not to the purpose. There is a French lady therein introduced, Mademoiselle Somebody, who, according to the vulgar idea which Bulls have of French ladies, coquettes, faints, &c. I know that the untravelled amongst us, and the travelled indeed, think French misses complete Lydia Languishes, very heroines, full of romance, affectation, and sensibility-much given to hartshorn bottles, and cutting of stays. Alas! little do they know of that most masculine-minded, fair piece of creation-a French girl; whose very affectation-whose very ideal of heroinism, is independence, worldliness, and strength of nerves; who would endure compliments, courtship, or the boldest innuendo, with the same sang-froid; who would bargain for any thing in her marriage-contract; and who would set off to the mayoralty of her section to be married without the slightest particle of that emotion, which almost overwhelms an English bride at the altar. Frivolity, too, is another distinguishing characteristic of French damsels. Now, what may be the occupation of well-educated beings of that class, say Parisians, in the year 1824? We could ascertain. They have attempted " Les Eaux de St. Ronan” in vain-could not get through with it. "Qu'est ce qu'il fait donc, Valter Scott, avec ces niaiseries des Eaux ?" "And what, then, are you reading, Miss?" "Reading," says the young lady, taking up a new volume from her little marble work-table, "I have just finished the second livraison of Plato's works translated."-" Plato ?"-" Oui, Monsieur, la traduction est magnifique !"-" But is there not something rather ens for ladies?"—“ Ŏui, sans doute, grossier quelquefois, il nous fait crier hélas; mais, je vous assure, que c'est superbe, et les introductions tout à fait dans le style de Rousseau-êtes vous Lockiste, Monsieur?"-"I really can't say that I ever read the works of Locke, Miss !"-" Mais, comment, Monsieur," says the lady, with a long accent of surprise-" vous n'avez pas lu ni Platon, ni Locke, ni Kant, ni And here is the frivolity of French ladies. As to the male sex in France, I do believe we begin to be better instructed, to give up our old ideas of their coxcombry, gaiety, and petitmaitreism. The truth is, that the French nation, like every nation that has suffered a great moral convulsion, has become resolved into the primitive characters of simple manhood, at least of Europeanism. Whatever effect climate may have, must have remained; but as for the effect of habits, laws, government, &c. they are, with respect to such, quite uninfluenced, unprejudiced. They are men, nothing more-and except that love of the soil and of their past history, which even itself has been greatly shaken off, they are less national than any existing nation. You find no characteristics by which to designate the modern Frenchman-I mean the new race, who have mingled neither with the revolutionary, nor scarcely with the imperial deeds. A Frenchman is a man of the world -he has had enough of glory to make him respect himself, and enough of disaster to make him respect other nations. An Englishman, unfortunately, is either one thing or another-he is in general either nationally illiberal, or affectedly liberal; which latter state is the besetting sin of our travelled puppies. And I must own, that I think illiberal, honest John Bullism preferable to the baseless and sickening adulation with which young Englishmen are so willing to allow of foreign superiority on a great many points. But of these anon. Now, of all the nations in Europe, the French of the present day seem to hold the fittest medium between nationality and its contrary; their territorial position affords them union and sympathy with almost all Europe-their youth, not troubled with classic or profound studies, are not infected with that ever-during atmosphere of prejudice that encircles our schools and universities—their classic studies are in foreign tongues, and they are familiar with Locke, and Leibnitz, and Rousseau, with Adam Smith and Montesquieu; while our youth are deep in Greek, in logic, and ethics. Their mode of education may not be the best to produce profound scholars; but it makes amiable, well-informed men of the world, unisolated in prejudices, and undivided in sects. There is, moreover, one great difference between the English and French youth of the present day, and it is a difference likely to influence strongly the future fates of the two nations. It is this-that young Frenchmen, from their first consciousness, take a deep interest in the political affairs and progress of their country--whereas our young men can seldom arrive at a capacity of understanding the political march of English affairs until they have attained an age of mature, cold-blooded, and calculating experience; which makes of us, alike legislators and legislated, a people devoid of public enthusiasm, unless for talk or interest sake-a people to whom the useful, selfish, and social, is the only end; and to whom the steady principles of political honour, and the sanguine hopes of political perfection, pass as the creed and the visions of the enthusiast. But a truce with politics. We have remarked how resolved into first principles the French character has been by the Revolution: it is neither grave nor gay, serious nor frivolous, it is in no extreme; and so our travellers are at fault--they find no defect to fasten on, no virtue to extol, and no prominence of any kind to flourish about, and build hypotheses upon. And, consequently, if a novelist or imaginary writer wish to produce a French personage upon his canvass, he must recur to the ante-revolutionary period, for he can make nothing but decent, unremarkable common-place of the Cosmopolitan French of the present day. The male inhabitants of a foreign land, however, being more visible to a stranger than the female, though his ancient prejudices respecting the former must come to the ground on comparison, yet, no comparison being feasible with respect to the latter, the old hypotheses hold good. Thus we are compelled to acknowledge the French as no longer a nation of barbers and petit-maitres; but the ladies we still uphold to be the French women of the last century, whose coquetry and licentiousness we learn from our readings. I believe most Englishmen come to France with the idea that the favours of French women are to be had for asking; for certain, none of them ever return with the same idea. Their opinion of French women's frivolity is much the same-of this I have given an example from the life. And the tone of ease and command which even the lower order of French women assume in conversation, ay, though it turned on Fluctions, must not a little astonish our stammering beaux, accustomed to discuss the weather, and flirt at arm's length with their town and country cousins. Not that I prefer the calculating, strong-nerved, ready brunette of France, to the timid, genuine English blonde. Defend me from the impiety! although the most ridiculous and odious of God's creatures is, in my mind, a Frenchified or Italianized Englishwoman-I am merely discussing mistakes and misstatements. Let us pass to little peculiarities, or rather little prerogatives, which are allowed by every one, and see if they be more just. Taste in dress, for example. Can a French tailor, in the nineteenth century, make a coat? The thing has been tried an hundred thousand times— in vain ;-Miers must export his builds to Paris. How different the day when Lauzun's coat despatched from Paris was lost, to the horrific disappointment of the French beau, in the sands of Calais! Can the French make a hat? Why, a troop of English hatters have utterly ruined their fellow tradesmen in Paris. French ladies, however, are allowed to bear the bell. Not so fast. The supremacy is daily disputed, nor will our fair country women yield much longer their natural locks and shape to the frizzes and flat bosoms of th Parisians. Sed majora sequor. Personal beauty. The ugliest race in the world, without exception, are French countrywomen; compare them with those of England, Spain, or Italy. Women are finely shaped at Paris-but we argue not on bone and stuffing. But to escape from these petty details, let us stretch our view farther, and consider what, and how just are our ideas of Italian character. To this I may lead by quoting a friend :-"If John Bull wants to increase his natural antipathy to the French, he may take a trip to Paris; but if he wish to get rid of every dislike, he has but to cross the Alps. At home, where a person is independent of strange faces and new acquaintances, he has no opportunity of judging or experiencing the civility of his nation. The moment he goes abroad, and is really in want of a kind word or a countenancing look from those around, he begins to feel that politeness is not only a form, but a virtue and a benevolence. This politeness, this philanthropy on a minor scale, the French possess above all other nations; although the coldness of English demeanour, the proverbial pride and well-known prejudices of this nation, may prevent our countrymen from experiencing, at first, those kind feelings on the part of their rivals. As soon, however, as an Englishman has been some time in France, has grown at ease with himself, and has smoothed those porcupine prejudices which he always bristles up upon his first visit, he will find kindness and conciliation on all hands. But if this be not sufficient, let him, as we have said, cross the Alps; and he will learn from the first boor of a cameriere he comes in contact with, that he is no longer in France." Now, in contradiction to these just remarks, the two distinguishing qualities ascribed by general prejudice amongst us to Italians, are adulation and craft. Never was opinion more the reverse of truth. A poor sonneteer may, to be sure, string fourteen base lines in praise of my lord, and may confirm him in this idea; but generally the defect of Italians is altogether the contrary, and is remarkable in a want of politeness, of attention, of consideration. The tone, the look, the manner, is universally rude and boorish, and breathes all the independence that even an Englishman could wish. There are exceptions, to be sure; but where is the country, we should like to know, whose beggars are not servile? The other characteristic generally assigned to Italians, of superior craft and dissimulation, is as glaringly untrue. In support of which assertion, it is but necessary to mention the late revolutions in that country, which were overturned merely by the reliance of its people on the promises of their rulers, and the general philanthropy of mankind. In truth, there is no country in Western Europe, to use the phraseo logy of the Holy Alliance, in which the system of lord-dom and servility is so manifestly supported as in England. There is no English society, of which the members consider themselves equals; the grades of distinction are more strongly marked than if our law parcelled us into casts. At school we are fags or tyrants-youths, we are either mere umbras, shades, or the casters of the shade-in fellowship, we either lead or are led ;-inequality is stamped on every character, and, throughout the extensive net-work of English society, the links of bondage that the law and our own conceit declare for ever broken, are, in fact, more firmly riveted by habit and by prejudice. Now, in the countries we despise as enslaved, there is, in proportion with us, little or none of this: they have, to be sure, the Casino dei Nobili, and the Casino de' Mercanti; even this is only in Northern Italy. There there is but this one broad line of distinction, above and below all are equals ; and even beneath the despotic governments which grind them, they are at least free from that system of social bondage, that fetters every step and every word of a Briton. The lower order of Englishmen are rude and independent to the stranger; none are more slavishly submissive to the great folk of their town and vicinity, yet they have a reserve beyond which their humility will not consent to sink. The Italian is not without this reserve; law secures it to the Englishman-the less fortunate Italian secures it by the dread which his character and poniard inspire. Beggars and domestics in Italy care not what terms or titles of adulation they lavish, but see what the coin passes for, and you will estimate from such specimens the national character. There are many reasons why divided Italy possesses not moral courage; and I should really think, that, notwithstanding habits of dissipation, the physical courage of the lower orders is superior to that either of French or Englishmen. Thus standing up for the moral qualities of the Italians against the prejudices of my countrymen, I must add, still in opposition to those prejudices, that, in my conscience, I do not think Italy altogether a finer or more picturesque country than our three kingdoms. I know of no Italian scenes superior to Killarney, or Cumberland, or Devonshire ;-the Alps are not Italian; but the bleak Apennines, not lofty enough to be sublime, nor wooded sufficiently to be beautiful, and without any of the shrouding of the mist or fairy associations of the Scotch and Welsh hills, are to me far inferior in interest and beauty to these our native mountains. I think our own climate, moreover, a healthier and more comfortable one than any Southern "Ne il ciel di nebbia e di carbone, intoppo which, to translate the grim Alfieri, who here for once ventured on a smile, that shone something like plating on a coffin : "Nor can its skies of cloud and coal, What, if the smoke be over-much, But I must conclude this skirmish with our petty prejudices. Y. SECRETS OF THE MODERN SPANISH INQUISITION, THOUGH much has been said and written regarding the frightful tribunal of the Inquisition, little was correctly known respecting its mysterious proceedings until a very late period. All that related to it was enveloped in impenetrable mystery. Its regulations and proceedings were conducted so as to conceal the sufferings of its victims, and the cruelties of its executioners. The fanaticism of its agents, the oaths and menaces of its jailors, the eternal darkness of its dungeons, the thickness of its walls, and the fear of being again plunged into suffering, or perishing by the daggers of its familiars, for revealing what they had seen there, prevented the few who had the good fortune to escape from its horrors from opening them to the world. In every class of society its secret agents were constantly active, and perfect silence alone respecting the acts of the tribunal was the only guarantee for personal security. By the vulgar, the sufferings of the Inquisition were considered like those of Hell; none had witnessed them and told their tale; and this ignorance respecting them increased the terrible impression which they made, and contributed to prolong the existence of the tribunal itself. In 1808, the French invasion of the Peninsula, as in many other instances in the countries which their armies entered, contributed in some way to the benefit of the people. It put an end to the uncertainty existing respecting this tribunal and its mysterious proceedings. It unmasked its crimes and exposed them to the day, and broke the fearful charm which environed it so long. The monsters who presided in it, ferocious as beasts of prey, fled on the approach of an enlightened enemy, and forgot, from their fears, the victims and written proceedings of their hellish court; these effectually revealed its horrible mysteries. Napoleon at Chamartin, and the Cortes subsequently at Cadiz, pronounced its sentence of destruction; and from that period, the Holy Office may be considered as losing its former power over the public mind for ever, though the hand of despotism might, in fact, re-establish it. M. M whose name is identified with the revival of the Spanish drama, and with its reputation, was the first writer who corrected the opinions of his countrymen, in regard to the transactions of this tribunal. He published in 1809, accompanied with notes full of judgment and spirit, the account of an Auto da fé, which had been celebrated at Logrado two centuries before, and the particulars of which had been printed there at the time. This report, drawn up by the order and under the inspection of the Holy Office itself, forms the most complete accusation that could be exhibited against that body. It presents an abstract of all that human depravity and the accumulated ignorance of ages can engender. Unhappy women slowly consumed by fire, for having been convicted of sorcery-grave remarks on the Devil, and his adventures in gallantry with these poor tortured females-express details, as revolting to reason as to decency-things, in short, so horribly inconsistent as to render it incredible that they could have been written or uttered by any but madmen;--these, and such as these, are the contents of the work now alluded to. On this occasion, the king (Joseph Bonaparte) commissioned the Canon Llorente to examine into the archives of the Inquisition. M. Llorente, who had been during a long 1 |