tion of the monastic tonsure farther precluded his return, after this deposition, to the temporal business of the world.

P. 58. Sir Andrew declares of Charlemagne that he acquired a considerable degree of knowledge in every branch of polite literature.' The form of expression is in itself absurd as applied to an age of gross ignorance and darkness: but, such as its 'polite literature' was, Charlemagne had but an indifferent portion of it, since even Eginhard, his secretary, and the eulogist of his learning, expressly declares (p. 119, c. xxv.) that the endeavour to acquire the elements of writing was the painful labour of the emperor's old age.

P. 164. What does Sir Andrew Halliday mean by the assertion that the wars which the famous countess Matilda of Tuscany 'supported and carried on, were the beginning of those contests which so long ravaged Italy, under the name of the Guelph and Ghibelline factions'? He cannot, we presume, be ignorant that these terms originated in Germany, as distinctions of faction, only in the middle of the twelfth century, and were certainly not heard in Italy until the beginning of the thirteenth:-that is, full a hundred years after Matilda and her wars were at rest.

But we have done: for it would be a fatiguing labour to take minute notes of all our author's historical inaccuracies. All that we have mentioned are contained in the first half of the first volume. Ex pede Herculem.

ART. VI.

1826.

Continental Adventures, a Novel. In 3 vols. post 8vo. 1. 118. 6d. London. Hurst, Robinson, and Co. THE writer of Continental Adventures,' with a modesty very rare in a successful author, has withheld from the public, in the present novel, any indication of its having been written by the learned, ingenious and delightful lady, to whom we owe "Rome in the Nineteenth Century." That work-written upon certainly the most usé of all possible subjects-presented us with a view of Rome by far the most able, original, and amusing, with which we are acquainted. Libraries, churches, palaces, pictures, statues, ruins, and all other kinds of antiquities; modern matters, including balls in the Coliseum, blue stockings, artists, tourists, and sketchers, fashionable and unfashionable, the Mr. Browns and the Mrs. Smiths who go to Rome;-in short, every thing had been de scribed so often that we were alarmed at the first sight of three thick volumes on Rome, by a young lady; but, on reading the work, we not only did not wish it to be shorter, but, from the brief specimen she afforded us of her talent for description in the sketch of her journey to Rome from Sienna, and a day spent at Florence, we wished for three volumes more, equally thick, detailing the whole of her travels. We confess we should have been better pleased

with the authoress's own continental adventuers, than with those of the fictitious personages who figure in her novel: but as the book, in some measure, supplies the want which we regretted in her "Rome," we have no right to be discontented.

'Continental Adventures' consist of the wanderings, loves, meetings, and separations, of a great many personages, all of whom are, of course, finally united at the end of the book. Indeed, we do not know any work-except Tom Thumb-of which the close is so theatrical, and the fates of the dramatis personæ so uniform. In the play, all the characters are killed-in the novel, they are all married. The novel, however, notwithstanding a certain exaggeration of sentiment-which in a lady may be easily pardoned-is, like the authoress's "Rome," full of originality, poetry, and eloquence. There is not, of course, so much learning in the novel as in "Rome:" but there is the same acuteness, the same fine sense of the ridiculous, the same rich and fervid imagination, and the same display of versatility of talent. We must say, however, that we do not like all her styles equally well. We prefer her pathos to her humour, and her descriptions of scenery to both. Sketches in prose are generally very tiresome-but her sketches are not of this kind: they are striking and picturesque.

These volumes consist principally of extracts from the supposed letters of a Miss Caroline St. Clair to her sister, Mrs. Balcarris, relating the sights she saw, and the adventures and people she encountered, on a journey into Italy. Of course the carriage is overturned, and Miss St. Clair's first adventure is breaking her collar bone, and her salvation by a certain Lord Lumbercourt, a peer about fifty, who, according to the usual mode of things, falls in love with her, proposes marriage, and is rejected. In return for the lady's want of affection for the peer Miss St. Clair is doomed to fall in love with his supposed nephew, Horace Lindsay, who was, moreover, the supposed son of Lord Montford, and who, at the end of the novel, turns out to be the son and heir of a certain Lord Setoun, whose estates had been confiscated in consequence of his family's attachment to the cause of the Stuarts. Horace Lindsay, in return, falls in love with Miss St. Clair, but he cannot tell his love, because he is betrothed to a Miss Hamilton, whom he cares nothing about, and who is beloved, unknown to him, by his most intimate friend, Heathcote. This convenient friend is made to act very like a scoundrel, for he marries Miss Hamilton while Lindsay is botanizing among the Alps: Lindsay is delighted, and intends to propose immediately; but he is shocked to find that Miss St. Clair has been waiting for weeks, in disguise, by the bedside of a young man of fortune, a Mr. Bredalbane, who had rescued her from destruction at the hazard of his own life, and who had, like all the other unmarried gentlemen in the novel, fallen desperately in love with her, and offered her marriage, believing her to be a Swiss fille de chambre. A great many other incidents and situa

tions occur, in which the heroine, in the eyes of her lover, stands in a very questionable light; but, at length, every thing is cleared up, and the marriage is about to take place, when the young lady's mother, Lady St. Clair, arrives in great horror and a post chaise to forbid the union. It seems that this virtuous matron had been in love with Lord Montford, and, in the absence of her husband, Miss St. Clair was born. She fancies, of course, that Lindsay and Miss St. Clair are brother and sister, but this mistake is rectified by the appearance of Lord Setoun, who, after wandering about the Alps some years, like a madman, spouting bad poetry in prose, and lamenting the loss of his son and estate, succeeds in regaining both. The marriage of Miss St. Clair and Lindsay now takes place: Lord Montford marries a Lady Hunlocke; Breadalbane, a sister of Miss St. Clair; and a dozen other people, whose names we have not had time to mention, marry a dozen other people.

We shall quote one or two pictures at random.

'As Mrs. Cleveland and Lord Lumbercourt had not been able to make any of these mountainous excursions, and had spent the preceding day in driving a char á banc to the upper end of the valley-and in visiting such of the glaciers and views as were accessible to them-the rest of the party accompanied them, this morning, to the Arveiron, perhaps one of the most sublime spectacles of nature. Ascending gradually through a wood of pine and larch trees, which, like a verdant screen, conceals the scene you are approaching, it suddenly bursts upon you, and you behold the stupendous towers and pinnacles, and icy pyramids of the great Glacier des Bois, which forms the lower part of the Mer de Glace, flanked by tremendous peaked and naked rocks, and reaching far up into the wild and impenetrable recesses of the Alps. From its utmost summit, which is many thousand feet above the vale of Chamouni, shoots up into heaven the tremendous Aiguille de Dru, one solid spiral pyramid of naked granite -four thousand feet in height. Inaccessible wholly, even to the stormdriven eagle, its smooth and naked sides, untouched from creation, never have afforded footing to any living thing. No summit in the whole range of the mighty Alps is so striking and so isolated as this wonderful monument of nature. Extending far to the right and left behind it, rises the Aiguille Vert, not much inferior to the giant summit of Mont Blane itself in height.

'Immediately before your eyes, a sight still more sublime chains the soul in wonder and admiration. At the base of this immense glacier yawns a tremendous cavern of ice, hollowed out by the furious source of the Arveiron, and supported by columns and buttresses of ice, through which its struggling waters work out their impetuous way, bursting down into the valley at once a mighty foaming torrent. The vast vault or dome of ice which the raging waters form above them, before their fury has worn away the props and pillars that support it-and which their own force has made-often reaches to one hundred and fifty feet in height, and its concussion, at last, when it falls, is heard and felt through the valley like the crash of overthrown mountains. Instances have been known of men-led by curiosity too near this awful spectacle-being

swallowed up in a moment by the masses of ice which are furiously swept onward. Continually, as they stood viewing it, huge rocks of ice were disengaged from its lofty cavity, and fell with awful reverberation.'— Vol i. pp. 248-250.

There is considerable spirit in the following description of an excursion to the Lake of Thun:

'After dinner we embarked in a pleasure boat, to row twelve miles to the head of the beautiful lake of Thun, in ancient times called the lake of the Vandals. If, as is said, it derived its appellation from the Vandals having settled on its borders, I must say they were persons of much taste, and little deserved that their names should become a proverbial epithet of reproach for the want of it. Nothing can exceed the beauty of the sail. Behind the rocky shores, richly wooded with pine and birch, tower on one side, the sublime forms of the Stockhorn, the Gros Eiger, the Blümlis Alp, and the Jungfrau, covered with eternal snows, and rearing their mighty summits far above the clouds Lower down rises from the lake, the lofty and picturesque pyramidal mountain of the Niesen. At its base, your eye penetrates far up the beautiful vale, down which the Kander pours its wild torrent into the lake. The ruins of Gothic castles, to which tradition attaches many a romantic legend-the abandoned walls of the Golden Court'-where the proud Counts of Strätlingen once held their magnificent reign-the mysterious dungeons and subterranean passages said still to remain half unexplored around its shattered tower, and the mouldering vestiges of the castle of Spietz,awake remembrances of those feudal times of wild warfare and romance, which throw a charm so powerful and undefinable over every scene to which they are attached; more especially over scenes of secluded beauty and grandeur such as this. On the opposite side of the lake, our boatmen pointed out a mountain cave, the inmost recesses of which cannot be penetrated,-where, according to tradition, in the sixth century, St. Beat, a British hermit, and the first Christian in Helvetia, lived and died. A fine stream of pure, and of course holy, water, from some hidden subterranean source, flows from the cave. Near this spot, at Merlingen, vines and spreading Spanish chesnuts gives [give] a richer air to the banks of the lake-while the rural dwellings, the cultivated fields, the picturesque villages, the beautiful vales or thals opening into the bosom of the mountains-the rocks and wild woods on the banks of the lakeand the towering mountains and glaciers far above, beaming with silver lines in the summer sun, presented so enchanting a scene, as our little gaily painted bark glided over the bright blue sparkling bosom of the lake, that it was with regret we approached the head-where the snowy Alps disappeared below the lower but nearer elevation, and the prospect lost much of its grandeur and its charm. Landing at the little hamlet of Neuhaus, we got into a common char, or long cart, furnished with slung seats, the sole vehicle of this part of the country, in which we trotted away through Unterseen, and all the bustle of its fair, which was crowded with sheep and cattle, and stalls, and busy peasants in their gayest holiday costume. Crossing the wooden bridge, one of the most beautiful scenes imaginable struck our delighted sight. We beheld the wide clear blue stream of the Aar, sweeping round a majestic precipice of rock-and

VOL. II.

D D

its depth, its expanse, its beautiful cerulean hue, the rushing rapidity of its course, broken into foaming falls by crossing wears, its sides, edged with mills and picturesque wooden cottages-the beautiful valley of Interlachen, through which it wanders, covered with the bright emerald verdure of spring, shaded with gigantic trees, now tinged with the first tints of autumn, and bounded with high rocks, covered to their very summits with woods of noble pine trees,-the snowy heights of the sublime Wetterhorn and Jungfrau, caught through the deep narrow vales opening to the right, amidst the Alps-altogether presented a scene of such varied beauty, as we rode up this enchanting valley, that the most vivid imagination can picture nothing approaching to the reality. It is a spot which must remain for ever engraven on the remembrance.'-Vol. i. pp. 315-319.

The fair writer is too merciful to visit us with any new infliction of catalogues of pictures, statues, &c. when her heroine arrives in Italy: but the expression of her first feelings on beholding that beautiful country, and her impressions on touching its glorious soil, are too eloquent and real to be withheld from our readers.

The scenery, the whole way on the Italian descent, is incomparably finer than on the Swiss side of the mountain. I could not have conceived the possibility of such a union of the sublime and beautiful as it displays. Much did we regret the rapidity with which we descended through it. But who can describe the effect of our arrival at Duomo D'Ossola-of the luxuriant richness and beauty of the country, teeming with wine, and oil, and corn, and fruits, and flowers;-resounding with the joy of the vintage; overflowing with population; covered with villas, and villages, and poderes, and especially with churches; every living thing beaming beneath the bright blue sky, sporting in the soft summer air, and melting beneath the fervid sun-beams? Who can describe the effect of the changed appearance of every object-of the whole face of nature and the human face divine? Who can describe the effect of the first view of Italy? It is like a new existence-another world! Yes! Italy-Italy is before us! We are standing on its rich and glorious plains! Three hours have sufficed to transport us from the regions of eternal ice and snow, and the wild deserts of a polar region, to the climes of the sun, the garden of the world, the land of beauty, and luxuriance, and seduction; of classic remembrance, of taste, of imagination, and of song ;—of all that can captivate the senses, or charm the soul!

'There is a luxuriance of life in Italy, which breathes and floats around you, and inspires a feeling wholly unimaginable, if you have not experienced it. You seem placed in the very garden of nature, amidst inex haustible redundance and unsatiating pleasures. Earth and air, and heaven itself, seem dressed in smiles. Every thing breathes of joy, and laughs in beauty. You cannot speak the transport that swells in your own bosom, and dances through your veins. It is worth while to come to Italy to feel the delicious sensations with which the mere consciousness of existence and the sight of nature, fill the heart.

'We journeyed along by the beautiful shores of the Lago Maggiore, admiring the variety of new productions that met our astonished sight; -the fields of ripened maize, the vines twining their luxuriant branches,