KIDNAPPING THE POPE.

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French gendarmerie and of police at Rome." But, says the writer:

"Their greatest merit was their having brought with them the galley-slave, Francesco Bossola, who had formerly served in the palace in the quality of porter, and who, having committed a robbery in the apartments of his Holiness's private chaplain, had obtained the pardon of his life from the clemency of the Pope himself; being reserved for the present occasion, to perform the part of guide to the satellites who were destined to the attack of the palace, and the seizure of the person of the venerable Pontiff, Pope Pius VII. For this service he was to receive 100 piastres; and he accordingly pointed out to them all the doors, stairs, and passages, by which they would have to proceed."

The number of French troops in the city was trifling; and even when joined by some hundreds of conscripts from Naples, and a number of "degenerate sons of the capital," and ill-affected people from the provinces, the force was still so inconsiderable as to render the commanders extremely anxious to execute the design with a secrecy and rapidity which should prevent any alarm and insurrection of the population of the "beloved city," which the narrator says, would easily have frustrated the enterprise. It is to the credit of the Pope that he does not seem to have been disposed to avail himself of this expedient, which would probably have been, at all events, the cause of great bloodshed. The achievement was performed late in the night.

There is much liveliness of description in the account of the circumstances of the Pontiff's self-possessed and moderate deportment, of the manners of his captors, and of the successive stages of his journey into France, and back again into Italy. We cannot fairly afford more space for the story; we must be content to state in general that, in spite of all the precautions of the French agents, the journey soon came to resemble a procession of some most favourite and popular Pagan idol. The intelligence constantly preceded him with inconceivable rapidity, and everywhere the roads, the inns, and towns, were beset with innumerable crowds of people, of all classes, and from all distances, who came to pay homage and receive benedictions. His conductors hoped that as soon as he should be once

fairly on French ground, this offensive enthusiasm would abate; but the inundation became the more formidable the farther he advanced; and in the route through Grenoble and Valence, to Avignon, he involuntarily exercised the supreme sovereignty of the country,-a sovereignty which took hold of the inmost souls of the people. In vain the appointed directors of the journey bustled, and threatened, and raged; in vain the local magistracies attempted to interfere; in vain was it attempted, in some instances, to keep the idol secluded from the people's sight, to which expedient that idol itself made not the slightest objection. The vast populace collected, and pressed, and demanded, with tumult irresistible. The sound of the most dreaded name in all France (Napoleon), was completely lost on their fears, and some of them were heard to pronounce that name with very irreverent associations:

"It was in vain that the vice-prefect, the military commandant of Grenoble, and Boazar himself, employed every possible precaution, by keeping the Holy Father under the strictest watch, to prevent or disperse the assemblage of the populace: for, from the very first day of his arrival in this city, so vast a multitude flocked from all the adjacent country, to behold the Supreme Pontiff, and kiss his feet, that it became necessary to devise means for giving safe vent to this pious ardour. So that, at last, having fixed upon a convenient spot in an adjacent garden, where the general desire might be accomplished without danger, several hours were devoted to the reception of the crowds that poured in from all quarters. The same method was observed during ten succeeding days."

At Avignon the frenzy grew to a still more victorious defiance of all restraint or measure. But it should seem that before this time the august head of the Gallican Church had become alarmed in his palace of the Tuileries; for he immediately issued an order to take the Pontiff back again, by a different route, to Italy.

ABYSSINIA.*

For the last twenty-four years Abyssinia has been regarded, by the greater number of the people among us, who take some little account of the different regions of the world they inhabit, much in the light of a newly discovered country. Previously to that time it was seldom recollected to be in existence; the relations of foreign missionaries and historians of a long anterior period, were very little known among us, excepting that of Lobo, translated by Dr. Johnson; and how much of that might be accurate no one presumed to have any confident judgment. The name always conveyed an idea of utter estrangement; and the very locality, secluded on all sides by such a breadth of impervious frontier, had to the imagination a certain dark air of vast remoteness, which was no longer retained by the regions of the great Southern Ocean.

This character of profound retirement was at length broken in upon, and dissipated by, a most daring and accomplished adventurer from this country. When Bruce published his travels, Abyssinia became, all at once, far more familiar to our imaginations than a great part of our own island. Its leading personages, the general condition of its population, its institutions, the face of the country, its grand river, its most remarkable animal and vegetable productions, were suddenly displayed before us in one comprehensive picture of most vigorous delineation and glowing colours. So vivid was his representation, and in so natural and interesting a manner was he himself brought forward in it, that he has associated his name, his character, his history, inseparably with the country. Abyssinia may exhibit its long list of emperors, and its ample memorials of wars, revolutions, and missionary enterprises; but in popular recollection, in this country at least, it will, for a long time to come, have no distinction so marked, so instantly and inevitably suggested to thought, as that it is the country that Bruce visited. He had, morally, some

A Voyage to Abyssinia, and Travels into the interior of that Country, executed under the Orders of the British Government, in the Years 1809 and 1810. By Henry Salt, Esq. Royal 4to. 1814.

thing very like that quality, or happy accident of being, which some of our voyagers to the South Sea islands found possessed by the king of a portion of one of them, that whatever ground he walked upon became thenceforward his own.

Bruce's representation has, partly by means of its priority, but not less by the power of mind which inspirits it, taken such effectual occupancy of the general imagination (like Milton's representations of Eden and the infernal world), that it is not without some little reluctance that many of his readers are yielding to the evidence which is accumulating to correct his involuntary errors or intentional impositions.

THE INTERIOR OF ABYSSINIA INACCESSIBLE.

Bruce stands, as yet, above all danger of rivalry in practical achievement in that part of the world. He went where no other of his countrymen has penetrated since, or is likely to penetrate for an indefinite time to come; and the brilliant enterprise was accomplished by his own single energy, aided by none of that influence which now accompanies, in so many regions of the East, a man belonging to a nation known to have acquired the ascendancy at sea, and the dominion of a considerable portion of Asia. His fame admits no other individual for a moment in heirship or competition but Mr. Salt; and he, with all the influence and the facilities that accompanied him, has not been able to approach that central region of Abyssinia which Bruce found the means of invading, and traversing with protracted, privileged, and intimate inspection.

Having read, with much interest, Mr. Salt's former journal of travels in Abyssinia, forming a part of Lord Valentia's splendid work, we heard, with great pleasure, of his being appointed by our government to make a more formal attempt on that country, in a mission which, with overtures for opening a commercial intercourse as its most palpable object, would necessarily, in such hands, include whatever could be accomplished in the way of general inquiry, vigilant and accurate inspection, and graphical representation. We ventured to hope that at his return we should be enabled to travel once more in imagination

to Gondar, for the first time with a guide on whom we could in all respects implicitly rely. It was, therefore, with a strong feeling of disappointment that we learned at length that he had, with still more mortifying disappointment to himself, found insuperable obstacles to his design of penetrating into the interior province of Amhara; that he had not, indeed, been able to approach very materially nearer to Gondar than Antálo, the capital of the grand eastern province denominated Tigré, the same town which formed the limit to his former advance into the country.

Still, though all his readers will very sensibly share his own disappointment, and though they are to be informed, besides, that he failed in the specific object of his mission, they will all testify that he has given us a very pleasing book.

ABYSSINIAN SLAVE MARKET.

Slavery and the slave trade were brought, in various forms, fully before the traveller's view. He saw some Portuguese vessels leave the harbour (of Mesuríl) with about five hundred of these unhappy beings on board, 'bought at this place at the price of ten, fifteen, and twenty dollars a-head, that is women and children at about the rate of three and four pounds a piece, and able-bodied men at the price of five pounds!' Five ships loaded with slaves had gone that year to the Brazils, each vessel carrying from three to four hundred; and it is considered a lucky voyage if not more than sixty die in each ship. He went to the market where some native traders had just arrived, from a remote part of the interior, 'with a cafila of slaves, chiefly female, together with gold and elephants' teeth for sale.' To amuse the English gentlemen in the evening, the slaves were assembled, and, according to the usual practice for keeping them in health, permitted to dance." He adds, "I subsequently saw several dances of the same kind in the slave-yards on the island of Mosambique; but on these occasions it appeared to me that the slaves were compelled to dance."

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"I shall never forget the expression of one woman's countenance, who had lately, I understood, been brought from the interior. She was young, and appeared to have been a mother,

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