lady in her horrible imaginings" conceive such a thing-of course Sir Charles Morgan must be the accoucheur on the occasion. Ye artists, ye royal academicians, invent a new term for the honour of all that is beautiful, for Sir Charles Morgan tells us such things as these are (page 330, vol. i.) "a sort of beau idéal!!!" The doctor is equally learned in what he terms his "Tuscan statistics," in which he informs us there is carried on a great commerce in pigs (page 121, vol. ii.) and "that much pork is consumed in the home market," and "no inconsiderable quantity salted for exportation." He likewise informs us that "the vine grows in Florence," that " oil is manufactured," and "gardenstuff cultivated in the neighbourhood of great cities," and that "the quantity of annual harvest materially affects the price of corn." He then favours us with a long account of literary disputes in Italy, entertaining as any other disputes, in the course of which he assures us the stage has learnt to deride "The parson much bemus'd with beer," though unfortunately for the poetry, no beer is drank in Italy; he then condescends to be playful and riddles, shewing how that is a difficulty in the text, which in a note he tells us is no difficulty at all. "How this dialect became the language of good company, and the written medium of communication is not difficult to explain"-see the note below, "there exists, however, a difficulty." He tells us likewise many other ingenious novelties with equal clearness and precision. Having now treated of Sir Charles by way of an episode to our heroic strictures, we return with all due respect to my lady, whom we find fretting and fuming, very angry that her dear French should be slandered in the affair of firing at the principal and divine figure in Leonardo da Vinci's celebrated picture of the Last Supper; yet notwithstanding all the pains she took to see the marks of the bullets and could not, we can only say that we did; and perhaps our eyes were less blinded by the dazzling glare of French magic. On the subject of pictures she is remarkably ignorant, and takes great pains to describe a picture by Guercino, we verily suspect for the sole purpose of placing Abraham in no very amiable light: for she says little or nothing about the real fine pictures of Raphael and Correggio. Her admiration of Raphael Morghen, the engraver, though consonant with the taste of the many, we venture to blame; the Last Supper is probably his best, and the soft woolly print of the Transfiguration his worst performance; there is nothing of the vigour of Raphael in it, it is like the petit engraving for a lady's work-box. There is no crime in not having a knowledge of pictures, but to affect it is a common one. She ranks Claude among the Flemish painters; she speaks of Titian as having a patent for his mould, his Venus; whereas his excellence lies notoriously quite another way. In page 267, vol. i. she tells us "the death of Correggio too well known to repeat was still more melancholy" (it being an opportunity to abuse princes) and in page 276, in a note, she says, the story is "universally disbelieved," and nothing is known about it. But it is a part of her system to adopt any story, true or false, or taken upon mere hearsay, that may suit her purpose, especially when it is to blast the character of kings, princes, or ministers, who have been so unfortunate as not to have invited her to dinner. This practice of taking hearsay evidence, is so like her friend the Morning Chronicle, and the rest of the ear-whigs of the day, that it may not be amiss to give a specimen; premising her own inimitable apology for falsehood, that " anecdotes, if not authentic, at least shew the temper of the people." The following appears as a note on the chair of St. Peter. "The sacrilegious curiosity of the French broke through all obstacles to their seeing the chair of St. Peter. They actually removed its superb casket, and discovered the relic. Upon its mouldering and dusty surface were traced carvings, which bore the appearance of letters. The chair was quickly brought into a better light, the dust and cobwebs removed, and the inscription (for an inscription it was) faithfully copied. The writing is in Arabic characters, and is the well known confession of Mahometan faith. There is but one God, and Mahomet is his prophet." Now this is totally false; she had perhaps heard the real story and forgotten it, and either manufactured this to supply its place, or some one did for her. The real story is this. In the year 1662 this chair was cleaning in order to be set up in some more conspicuous place in the Vatican, when the twelve labours of Hercules unluckily appeared engraved upon it; an author of no mean character, unwilling to give up the chair, has attempted to explain the labours of Hercules in a mystical sense, as emblems representing the future exploits of the popes. The title of the book is, "Luchesini Catedra restituitá a S. Pietro." Vide Bower's lives of the Popes. Upon the evidence of Celleni, who was certainly mad, she prates with much pleasure about the Diavoleria di questo Cardinale. Cardinal D'Este of Ferrara. How like the Morning Chronicle is the following: "Whom their grandfather Pope Paul III. made cardinals in their 16th year; heaping benefices on them, as English prelates now concentrate livings on the clerical youth of their own families." We will now make a few extracts from her politics, and we think we shall not be accused of wrongfully charging her with malicious ignorance. Page 136, vol. i. she speaks in high terms of " a system of radical reform, which the French revolution afterwards adopted, but could not complete." Page 139," It. teaches us also that most important fact in politics, that kings who lavish privileges cannot give rights; it is the people that must take them." 196, "The French are accused of having stripped off the lead in many parts of the cloisters, &c. but how in the heat of conquest, they abstained as they did, is wonderful!!!" 247. "In such a country as Great Britain, the army cannot take the lead in popular sentiment; but it can never be compelled, or seduced, to remain very far behind it." a Page 150, vol. ii. is a picture of French liberty very agreeable, and very liberal. The French military Prefect obliged the old murky time-worn nobles to throw off their dusty great coats." 175. "Every political assassination, like every private murder, is in its naked abstraction à horror; the redeeming the time, and the ascertainable mocircumstances lie in the history of tives of the assassin: posterity will never very vehemently accuse man who has removed a tyrant by subtlety when not otherwise attackable." P. 180, "Poor Damien is an object of pity, for the wretched creature did not accomplish the of the king." When are we to erect crime he meditated, the assassination wood!! Page 379 she tells us the statues to Bellingham and ThistleEnglish are execrated abroad. P. 436, we are happy to extract the following slip of her pen as a notice for those whom it may concern. The government of this tiny state (San Marino) once realized the proposition of universal suffrage, and every house sent a representative to the great council of Aringo; it has however undergone some modification; the multitude of statesmen was found too numerous for order and deliberation." Her attacks upon religion, particularly upon the Church, as connected with the State, occupy no very small space in this infamous publication-the reader may judge of their virulence from the following examples, in which he will find the most profligate audacity and ignorance. Does she pretend not to know that the worshippers of Apollo and Minerva put Socrates to death upon the charge of introducing new gods? Is she ignorant of the Prætorian edicts mentioned by Livy (an historian of the country over which she travels) to guard against religious innovation? Is she ignorant of the advice of Mæcenas to Augustus to force, hate, and punish all who should attempt to introduce new religions? and can she possibly be ignorant of the horrible persecutions under Nero-that even the mild Pliny, who pleaded with the Emperor Trajan for the Christians, and affirmed their innocence, put Christian women to the torture? Has she never read in the Acts of the Apostles, the martyrdom of St. Stephen? But let her speak for herself. "The worshippers of Apollo and Minerva were not persecutors. The internal evidence in the nature of man is all against such fables; for where power and policy, the interests of Church and State, do not interfere to inflame zeal, or to kindle persecution, such horrors have never been committed. Contemporary historians are all silent upon these histories, which are rendered still more improbable by their palpable contra dictions to the known usages of antiquity. The first well authenticated martyrdoms occurred only after the establishment of a paid hierarchy, fired by interests which are not those of society at large." Vol. i p. 297. "The policy of the Church was then (and ever will be) wherever it is made an engine of state, to enforce a conviction of its own power by all means within its grasp; and for this purpose to substitute forms and rites for those substantive virtues, which require no priestly interference." The canon of an English cathedral is among those whom she calls "i bui della Chiesa," whose stupidity has become, she says, proverbial-she attacks therefore the Archbishop of Canterbury literally, as she would fell an ox. Angi taglio in un colpo il scudo, e lui E mandollo all' Inferno a regni bui. "Between the dignified Clergy of the two Churches of Rome and Canterbury there is scarcely a shadow of distinction." She had not of course exercised much forbearance in her abuse of the Church of Rome, and then tells us, "but the more one considers the Churches of Rome and England, the more their resemblance is apparent." She tells us of " Bishop Cranmer and other enthusiasts.' She informs us "en passant" that "Sunday was only made holy by an abstinence from civil affairs, anno 321. The Scriptures have commanded no such abstinence; and the manner of the Jews in observing their Sabbath (Saturday) was thought to be so righteous over much, by Him who looked more to the spirit than the form, that he publicly rebuked it!!!" P. 204, she again recommends the "Church principalities" of Canterbury, York, and Durham, to the care of some future radical government by this prophetic threat. "The Church received a blow from which it never was to recover. What monument will rise to commemorate the reformation of another Church? Canterbury, York, and Durham princely, if not infallible pontiffs! can ye tell us this?" Ignorant of the command to "teach all nations, and baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost," she positively asserts that our Saviour" never practised or imposed the ceremony of baptism, though, in his meekness, he submitted to it." She informs us likewise, that " he ordered no public thanksgivings," " and dictated but one prayer, the only prayer man need proffer." With a singular contradiction of her previous panegyric upon the worshippers of Apollo and Minerva, she adds, his system" was fatal to all existing State Churches, alike dangerous to the hierarchies of Moses and Jupiter. The followers One of both rose against him." more compliment to the Church, and we have done. Q "St. Paul's in London differed but in de gree from St. Peter's at Rome; and Canter bury in his palace, and Durham on his throne, were but modifications of the Pon tiff of the Vatican, or the Patriarch of St. Petersburgh. The Church was still the same, whether Greek or Roman or English, gorgeous in its forms, exclusive in its prin ciples, and arogant in its pretensions." P. 276. These malicious and blasphemous extracts almost demand an apology for our introduction of them; but as this is a work to be had at some circulating libraries, we are anxious that all parents who wish their children to be" godly and quietly brought up," should have ample means of judging whether this is, or is not, a proper book to lie on their tables. The greater part of this work has been evidently manufactured at home; it is therefore barren of incident and objects of amusement. The very anecdotes are all political or irreligious, or paraded to our notice as indicative of the high estimation in which Sir C. and Lady M. were held in the "first societies," for she assures us, p. 148, vol. ii. she had no less (at the least calculation) than 600 on her visiting book-" Irish, English, Russian, Poles, Swedes, Germans, French, Italians, Greeks, Americans." Of all these the mistress of Alfieri seems to delight her most, because she knows how to laugh, and at whom." Who these are we may judge from the politeness of an Italian visitor, who won the way to her good graces by mimicking her countrymen, for which they are of course obliged to her and to him. An invitation to dinner however is the surest passport to her favour; and in her public declaration of this, she is somewhat wise, as her travel probably is not yet ended. Indeed it is not a matter of wonder, if those who are writing a book are pretty sure to be well received. The society of Naples delighted her; and what return, reader, would you tality-no expensive dejeunè, or suppose she made for all this hospielegant suppers, but by presenting her admired circle of friends with, what! that daily talisman of liberty, the Morning Chronicle!!! No doubt as elegant reading as the curses of Ernulphus, of which, though she displays her knowledge, to a sense of decency, she does not we sincerely hope out of a respect know in detail, and on that score it would be as well if she had not assured us that Boccacio's tales were facts; some she might as well not have read, or as a woman, have said nothing about them. We have read her letter to the Reviewers of Italy, tagged on to the New Monthly Magazine. Her mirth, or "her fun," to use her own phrase, is much like Sir Fretful Plagiary's dwindling laugh hah, hab, hali-hah, hah-hah-and like him she makes her exit in a perfect herself persecuted by government rage; in her mad fits she imagines faries-then recovering, she has recourse to her pretty oath" by yea and by nay;" arms herself in complete steel, and sallies out to run a tilt with any adversary; but after singling out one, she suddenly alters her mind, and has him, as she expaste-board hobby," to knock him presses it," trotted out on his down more like an auctioneer than an Amazon. However, she again talks of drawing the arrow to her head, and turns Parthian, or a sort of female knight errant, a very Rodomont in petticoats, (for there is rodomontade enough); and thus let her stand, as we take our leave of her, harnessed for the field, and ready for some new campaign. And now we seriously recommend it to all ladies who may view her in the attitude above described, to consider if it be a becoming one, and caution them by an opinion that women cannot become Polemics either in politics or religion without the greatest risk of losing their senses; nature gave them a soft voice, and a sweet form, by which she seems to forbid them the imitation of croaking, puffing, swelling frogs, mere reptiles, who are all noise and mouth, with no teeth to bite. And ere we take leave of Sir Charles Morgan-we protest against ever reading any more of his medi. cal or statistical works, though he should rival Silius Italicus himself, as a silly ass may be tempted to do; nor do we ever intend to put ourselves under his anatomizing hands, lest his fertile wit should invent a formidable instrument to extend the jaws of his unfortunate patients to enable them to swallow pumpkins instead of pills. IF the modest author of this work had stated it as containing some of the obligations of Society to the Ecclesiastical Orders, he would have given a more correct title to his design; and we are confident (as himself says towards the close of his volume) "that he could have multiplied these portions of biography to the extent of a ponderous volume, having materials sufficient to impart interest and gratification to many thousand pages." The work is divided into nineteen chapters, of which the first is occupied by a brief, and very brief Essay on the antiquity of the Ecclesiastical Order, in which the right of the Clergy to tythe is derived as from divine authority. The second, equally a short chapter, proceeds to combat a few of the prejudices of society against the possession of tythe; and as if in anticipation of some future attempt to compound or abolish them, the author makes the following judicious remark. Experience hourly instructs us, that reforms too frequently terminate in destruction-all ancient edifices have some secret imperfections, some defects, which the march of time, and the progress of human opinions, will necessarily engender; objecpenetration, but if attempted to be eraditionable perhaps to modern judgment and cated, even by the most skilful hand, the venerable pile becomes so crippled, its primitive beauties so interpolated and defaced, its symmetry, proportions, and harmony so disarranged, that if it avoids destruction during the transition, it only survives a useless disfigured ruin." Speaking of the spoliation of the Church by Henry the Eighth, with a view to its reformation, our author thinks" that the character of the priesthood became from that moment changed; that it was no longer that distinct and sacred class which ages had contemplated with awe and reverence," and apprehends" that step by step we have approached a period, when the Clergy are regarded as little better than authorized despoilers." Rather than have entered upon such important topics as "the right to tythe," and "the prejudices entertained against the Clergy as a body," in so desultory, and unsatisfactory a brevity, we could have wished that they had altogether been omitted." By far the strongest, best, and most readily understood line of argument, in defence of Church property, and Church income, is deducible from: the rights of the crown, the nobility, and landed interest to theirs. The whole frame of society would be disjointed,, and every principle upon which the possession of " one's own" is held so sacredly, and is protected in its enjoyment by law, would be compromised by any interference with the property of the Church. Antiquity may confer upon this property a greater sacredness; but it is the law of the land, which is also the law of society, which gives to it, its character of security. The same argu |