deserted stage was left to the fatal mercy of the blindest ignorance; and without decency or restraint, without enthusiasm or judgment, the wildest and most disgusting abortions were engendered, so that sooner or later it would have sickened the very public which had corrupted it, had not the war of the Succession intervened, and with it the termination of the Austrian dynasty in Spain, to the relief of the people and the restoration of the stage.

During the long tract of this memorable struggle, whilst so many grave interests were discussed, the theatres were closed or deserted. The Muses are too timid to encounter the perils of battle, and too feeble to be heard amidst the din of civil dissension. The peace, which fixed the crown of Spain on the brow of Philip V., was not very serviceable to the national arts. This foreign prince, whom the bayonet alone was able to naturalize, had exactly developed himself during the latter years of his grandfather's reign, when a crafty female thought it necessary to cover with the veil of systematic hypocrisy, the scandal of a fresh concubinage. Neither by education nor inclination did Philip belong to the famous age of Louis XIV.: indolent, sensual, ignorant, and superstitious; the blind instrument of his rivals, the puppet of his ministers, and the slave of his confessors he was, of all monarchs, the one least fitted to supply the necessities or regenerate the literature of Spain. He was a gift from France, which brought with it a terrible lesson, that might have benefited Spain in more recent times.

Ferdinand VI., though not possessing any greater talent or less prejudice than his father, contributed, no doubt, in some degree, to revive his drooping country, thanks to the long peace which marked his reign. The beneficent impulse which was given to the arts and belles lettres, did not, however, extend to the national drama. The exclusive affection of the king for ultramontane music, spread amongst the people of Madrid, and absorbed all their attention. Immense sums were lavished in the re-edification of the theatre of Buon Retiro, for the representation of the most celebrated operas of the day, by the most expensive foreign singers, and with an unparalleled magnificence. The public theatres were left to their unhappy fate, and the dramatic productions of this reign were confined to a few historical farces, with the same unpleasant smack which belonged to their predecessors, and to a few translations from the most wretched Italian pieces. Of these, the only ones which are at all tolerable, were the production of an author called Termin del Rey, a native of Saragoza.

It was reserved for the reign of Charles III., to witness the revival of the Spanish theatre, but with an increased splendour, and a distinct nature and form from those of the other branches of our national literature. To consider carefully the obstacles which were overcome, and to appreciate the value of the exertions necessary to complete success, both on the part of authors and rulers, will be the subject of another article.

WRITTEN IN EGYPT.

PARENT of nations! Arts' proud sire!
Upon thy pyramid I stand,

While the sun flings his beams of fire
Over thy desolated land.

Now, far as the strain'd eye can scan,
A sandy ocean sleeps around,
Nothing speaks out of living man

Save me and mine-there is no sound
Of aught amid this solitude

To break the silence of the waste,
And fancy paints in mournful mood,
Wild visions of th' ideal past.

For now the mind is left to guess,
How fair was once this wilderness;
As death upon some lovely frame
Tells life once breathed in beauty there,
That th' extinguish'd taper's fame

Once flash'd its radiance on the air;
Thus shadowing forth from their decay
The glories of a perish'd day.

The crown that gemm'd thy awful brow, Thine arts, thy power-where are they now? No wandering Arab can be seen

Within the horizon's sweep,

And I am living 'mid the scene

Where the tiar'd Pharaohs sleep

And I am trampling o'er the dead,

Full fifty ages vanished :

Those vanish'd dead-but who were they?

They pass'd and left no name:

Haply ambition in their day

Had never shewn the toiling way

To cheat posterity with fame.
What ruin'd cities may be hid
Around this lofty pyramid,

Whelm'd in the desert sand;
In whose long streets the gazer's eye
Once saw amid antiquity

This wonder of his land,

Yet knew not who had rear'd it high,

But guess'd as erringly as I.

Yet the same heaven look'd out in light

Upon the toiling busy sight,

Uprearing then its glorious brow,

At morning's dawn as it does now.

O Land of that famed sound which hung
Round Memnon's mystic shrine!

I gaze upon thy ruins flung

Like wrecks upon the brine.

I think of Memphian chivalry
Amid thy Red-Sea lost,

Of Necho and his swarthy host,

Th' avengers of their destiny

In a long after-age.

Of giant Thebes that now defies

The waste of years and human rage

Beneath these burning skies:

Her very wrecks are mighty still;

They scorn our strength and mock our skill.
Here, in the light of beauty's eye
That charm'd him with its witchery,

The Roman lost a world.
Here Cæsar's mighty rival died,
And, one poor foot of earth denied,
With scorn was headless hurl'd;
And he who captived king and throne,
Had not a grave to call his own.
Mark, ye who sail ambition's tide,
The bitter sum of human pride!
But wherefore call up ancient years?
Enough within my view appears
To minister to thought:
The desolation reigning here
Speaks to the mind in accents clear
Things schoolmen never taught.
Behold, the horizon's self is clad
In a strange hue and livery sad,
Like th' impressive calm that reigns
Mournful o'er earthquake-riven plains,
That the "mind's eye" can see full well,
But language hath no skill to tell ;
Seeming to grieve the mighty day
Of its pass'd glories rent away;
Even their very record flown,
Unwrit, unregister'd, unknown,
The camel waits his lord below;

The turban'd guides my musings break;
I must away-yet ere I go

One parting glance around me take,

Then bury 'mid a Moslem crew

This pyramid's majestic view

Fane, tomb, whate'er thou art-adieu !

L.

OUR TRAVELLING MANNERS, PAST AND PRESENT.

Geneva, 1823.

MR. EDITOR, -I have a word or two to say on what M. Simond has recorded of nous autres Anglais at Geneva. The picture which he has thought proper to give of us, is, throughout, a forced caricature-false, in many places, in fact, and, in nearly all, in argument. If I recollect right, the Edinburgh Review notices this passage, but only to make one part of it the text of a spirited and tranchant diatribe against that sullen and sulky reserve which has of late been so distinguished in English manners. But the Editor of the Edinburgh Review has made the notice of Mr. S.'s work far more agreeable than the book reviewed, by throwing his own proverbial brilliancy over M. Simond's style and matter. The Edinburgh editor, I say, has gone off at a tangent to the attack of this crying sin of our society, and has taken no further notice of the very undeserved charge which served as a hint to give it rise. For my own part, in the remarks I am about to make, I feel myself free from national prejudice. My leaning has always been the other way; my great horror of exclusiveness and John Bullism has driven me perhaps too

much into the opposite feeling. But I always give "the devil his due," and will not deny it to my countrymen.

M. Simond says that the Genevese were always favourably inclined to the English, from the connexion which existed between them before the Revolution, occasioned by so many Englishmen receiving a considerable part of their education at Geneva, and thus forming friendships which continued through life, and were renewed, as occasion offered, from time to time. The separation necessitated by the subsequent political events was, he says, strongly felt. The Genevese always retained their former predilections, and were disliked by Napoleon on that very account. He is recorded to have said "Ils parlent trop bien Anglais pour moi."

M. Simond then continues thus: [I quote from the English copy, as it is not a translation, but a counterpart of the French by the author himself. There are considerable variances in the following passage between the two, the English expression being throughout much softened, and in one or two places differing materially from the French.]

"Who would not have supposed that when, after a separation of twenty or twenty-five years, the English again appeared among the Genevans, they would have been the best friends in the world? Yet it is not so. English travellers swarm here as every where else; but they do not mix with the society of the country more than they do elsewhere, and seem to like it even less. The people of Geneva, on the other hand, say, their former friends the English are so changed they scarcely know them again. They used to be a plain downright race, in whom a certain degree of sauvagerie only served to set off the advantages of a highly-cultivated understanding, of a liberal mind, and generous temper, which characterized them in general: their young men were often rather wild, but soon reformed, and became like their fathers. Instead of this we see, they say, a mixed assemblage, of whom lamentably few possess any of those qualities we were wont to admire in their predecessors; their former shyness and reserve is changed to disdain and rudeness. If you seek these modern English, they keep aloof, do not mix in conversation, and seem to laugh at you; their conduct, still more strange and unaccountable in regard to each other, is indicative of contempt and suspicion : studiously avoiding to exchange a word, one would suppose they expect to find an adventurer in every individual of their own country not particularly introduced, or at best a person beneath them. You cannot vex or displease them more than by inviting others to meet them whom they may be compelled to acknowledge afterwards. If they do not find a crowd, they are tired; if you speak of the old English you formerly knew, that was before the Flood; if you talk of books, it is pedantry, and they yawn; of politics, they run wild about Bonaparte! Dancing is the only thing which is sure to please them; at the sound of the fiddle, the thinking nation starts up at once ; their young people are adepts in the art, and take pains to become so, spending half their time with their dancing-master. You may know the houses where they live by the scraping of the fiddle, and shaking of the floor, which disturb their neighbours. Few bring letters; they complain they are neglected by the good company, and cheated by the innkeepers. The latter, accustomed to the Milords Anglais of former times, or at least having heard of them, think they may charge accordingly, but only find des Anglais pour rire, who bargain at the door, before they venture to come in, for the leg of mutton and bottle of wine on which they mean to dine. Placed as I am between the two parties, I hear young Englishmen repeat what they have heard in France, that the Genevans are cold, selfish, and interested, and their women des precieuses ridicules,—the very milliners and mantua-makers giving themselves airs of modesty and deep reading!-that there is no opera nor Theatre

des Variétés ;* in short, that Geneva is the dullest place in the world. Some say it is but a bad copy of England, a sham republic, and a scientific, no less than a political counterfeit. In short, the friends of Geneva, among our modern English travellers, are not numerous, but they are select. These last distinguished themselves during the late hard winter by their bounty to the poor-not the poor of Geneva, who were sufficiently assisted by their richer countrymen, but those of Savoy, who were literally starving. If English travellers no longer appear in the same light as formerly, it is because they are not the same class of people who go abroad, but all classes, and not the best of all classes either. They know it, and say it themselves; they feel the ridicule of their multitude, and of their conduct; they are ashamed and provoked; describe it with the most pointed irony, and tell many a humorous story against themselves. Formerly the travelling class was composed of young men of good family and fortune, just of age, who after leaving the University went the tour of the Continent, under the guidance of a learned tutor, often a very distinguished man-or of men of the same class, at a more advanced age, with their families, who, after many years spent in professional duties at home,t come to visit again the countries they had seen in their youth, and the friends they had known there. When an Englishman left his country either to seek his fortune, to save money, or to hide himself; when travellers of that nation were all very rich or very learned, of high birth yet liberal principles (éclairés et libéraux), unbounded in their generosity, and with means equal to the inclination; their high standing in the world might well be accounted for, and it is a great pity that they should have lost it. Were I an Englishman, I would not set out on my travels until the fashion were over."-Simond's Switzerland, vol. 1, pp. 356-9.

This is the subtance of what M. Simond says concerning English travellers abroad. If it had been written by a returned French emigré, saturated with the miserable prejudices of the ancien regime, I could perfectly have understood and accounted for it. But from a man professing liberal and philosophical opinions-a man laying claim to enlightened experience and knowledge-above all, a man who made America the country of his adoption, and who formed his dearest connexion in that country-from such a man I confess I am strongly surprised to meet with these sentiments. I am as much alive as it is possible for any foreigner to be to the worse than ridicule of that sullen self-concentration which of late has marked fashionable manners in England; but I do aver, without fear of contradiction, that this stupid, silly, and vain characteristic originated wholly with, if it be not engrossed by, those very classes to which M. Simond regrets that the monopoly of travelling is not still confined. The truth is, that the English are, beyond all calculation, a more intellectual nation than they were five-and-twenty years ago. The circumstances of the times have thrown them forward

In the French, it is added as part of the complaint of the young Englishmen ni des filles. Why M. Simond suppresses it in the English copy I know not, unless it be that he supposes our countrymen who have been at Geneva will read his work, and know the utter fallacy of the statement. Nothing can be more amusing and absurd than the airs which Geneva gives itself on this point. The strictness of its women is the refrain of all descriptions of its society,—a most groundless assumption indeed. In proportion to the size, there is no sort of difference in this respect from Paris or London. Even in the Italian towns, which bear so loose a name, there is not half so much apparent vice as in proper and prudish Geneva.

†M. Simmond seems not to have understood his own meaning-" les devoirs de leur position," is very different from "professional duties."

There is no mention of the " very learned" in the French cdition.