476 ETNA - SICILIAN RUSTIC INNS. your breath. It yet wanted half an hour to the break of day, and I wrapped my cloak close round me to guard me from the keen air, which came up over the white cape of snow that lay spread at the foot of the smoking cone where I was seated. "The earliest dawn gave to my view the awful crater, with its two deep mouths, from one whereof there issued large volumes of thick white smoke, pressing up in closely crowding clouds; and all around, you saw the earth loose, and with crisped, yellow-mouthed small cracks, up which came little, light, thin wreaths of smoke that soon dissipated in the upper air, &c. And when you turn to gaze downwards, and see the golden sun come up in light and majesty to bless the waking millions of your fellows, and the dun vapours of the night roll off below, and capes, and hills, and towns, and the wide ocean are seen as through a thin unearthly veil; your eyes fill, and your heart swells; all the blessings you enjoy, all the innocent pleasures you find in your wanderings, that preservation, which in storm, and in battle, and mid the pestilence, was mercifully given to your half-breathed prayer, all rush in a moment on your soul."- Ibid. pp. 253-257. The following brief sketch of the rustic auberges of Sicily is worth preserving, as well as the sentiment with which it closes: "The chambers of these rude inns would please, at first, any one. Three or four beds (mere planks upon iron trestles), with broad, yellow-striped, coarse matresses, turned up on them; a table and chairs of wood, blackened by age, and of forms belonging to the past century; a daub or two of a picture, and two or three coloured prints of Madonnas and saints: a coarse table cloth, and coarser napkin; a thin blue-tinted drinking glass; dishes and plates of a striped, dirtycoloured, pimply ware; and a brass lamp with three mouths, a shape common to Delhi, Cairo, and Madrid, and as ancient as the time of the Etruscans themselves. "To me it had another charm; it brought Spain before me, the peasant and his cot, and my chance billets among that loved and injured people. Ah! I will not dwell on it; but this only I will venture to say, they err greatly, grossly, who fancy that the Spaniard, the most patiently brave and resolutely persevering man, as a man, on the continent of Europe, will wear long any yoke he feels galling and detestable."— Ibid. pp. 268, 269. The picture of Naples is striking; and reminds us in many places of Mad. de Staël's splendid sketches from the same subjects in Corrinne. But we must draw to a close now with our extracts; and shall add but one or two more, peculiarly characteristic of the gentle mind and English virtues of the author. "I next went into the libary, a noble room, and a vast collection. I should much like to have seen those things which are shown here, ENGLISH TRAVELLERS THE BEST OF THEM. 477 especially the handwriting of Tasso. I was led as far, and into the apartment where they are shown. I found priests reading, and men looking as if they were learned. I was confused at the creaking of my boots; I gave the hesitating look of a wish, but I ended by a blush, bowed, and retired. I passed again into the larger apartment, and I felt composed as I looked around. Why life, thought I, would be too short for any human being to read these folios; but yet, if safe from the pedant's frown, one could have a vast library to range in, there is little doubt that, with a love of truth, and a thirsting for knowledge, the man of middle age, who regretted his early closed lexicon, might open it again with delight and profit. While thus musing, in stamped two travellers, my countrymen, my bold, brave countrymen not intellectual, I could have sworn, or Lavater is a cheat "Pride in their port, defiance in their eye:" They strode across to confront the doctors, and demanded to see those sights to which the book directed, and the grinning domestique de place led them. I envied them, and yet was angry with them; however, I soon bethought me, such are the men who are often sterling characters, true hearts. They will find no seduction in a southern sun! but back to the English girl they love best, to be liked by her softer nature the better for having seen Italy, and taught by her gentleness to speak about it pleasingly, and prize what they have seen! are the men whom our poor men like, who are generous masters and honest voters, faithful husbands and kind fathers; who, if they make us smiled at abroad in peace, make us feared in war, and any one of whom is worth to his country far more than a dozen mere sentimental wanderers." Ibid. pp. 296-298. Such "Always on quitting the museum it is a relief to drive somewhere, that you may relieve the mind and refresh the sight with a view of earth and ocean. The view from the Belvedere, in the garden of St. Martino, close to the fortress of St. Elmo, is said to be unequalled in the world. I was walking along the cloister to it, when I heard voices behind me, and saw an English family - father, mother, with daughter and son, of drawing-room and university ages. I turned aside that I might not intrude on them, and went to take my gaze when they came away from the little balcony. I saw no features; but the dress, the gentle talking, and the quietude of their whole manner, gave me great pleasure. A happy domestic English family! parents travelling to delight, improve, and protect their children; younger ones at home perhaps, who will sit next summer on the shady lawn, and listen as Italy is talked over, and look at prints, and turn over a sister's sketch-book, and beg a brother's journal. Magically varied is the grandeur of the scene—the pleasant city; its broad bay; a little sea that knows no storms; its garden neighbourhood; its famed Vesuvius, not looking either vast, or dark, or dreadful - all bright and smiling, garmented with vineyards below, and its brow barren, yet not without a hue of that ashen or slaty blueness which improves a mountain's aspect; and far behind, stretched in their full 478 GENERAL MERITS OF THE BOOK. bold forms, the shadowy Apennines. Gaze and go back, English! Naples, with all its beauties and its pleasures, its treasury of ruins, and recollections, and fair works of art; its soft music and balmy airs cannot make you happy; may gratify the gaze of taste, but never suit the habits of your mind. There are many homeless solitary Englishmen who might sojourn longer in such scenes, and be soothed by them; but to become dwellers, settled residents, would be, even for them, impossible.” — Ibid. pp. 301–303. We must break off here-though there is much temptation to go on. But we have now shown enough of these volumes to enable our readers to judge safely of their character-and it would be unfair, perhaps, to steal more from their pages. We think we have extracted impartially; and are sensible, at all events, that we have given specimens of the faults as well as the beauties of the author's style. His taste in writing certainly is not unexceptionable. He is seldom quite simple or natural, and sometimes very fade and affected. He has little bits of inversions in his sentences, and small exclamations and ends of ordinary verse dangling about them, which we often wish away-and he talks rather too much of himself, and his ignorance, and humility, while he is turning those fine sentences, and laying traps for our applause. But, in spite of all these things, the books are very interesting and instructive; and their merits greatly outweigh their defects. If the author has occasional failures, he has frequent felicities;—and, independent of the many beautiful and brilliant passages which he has furnished for our delight, has contrived to breathe over all his work a spirit of kindliness and contentment, which, if it does not minister (as it ought) to our improvement, must at least disarm our censure of all bitterness. WARBURTON'S LETTERS. 479 (JANUARY, 1809.) Letters from a late eminent Prelate to one of his Friends. pp. 380. Kidderminster: 1808. 4to. WARBURTON, we think, was the last of our Great Divines -the last, perhaps, of any profession, among us, who united profound learning with great powers of understanding, and, along with vast and varied stores of acquired knowledge, possessed energy of mind enough to wield them with ease and activity. The days of the Cudworths and Barrows-the Hookers and Taylors, are long gone by. Among the other divisions of intellectual labour to which the progress of society has given birth, the business of reasoning, and the business of collection knowledge, have been, in a great measure, put into separate hands. Our scholars are now little else than pedants, and antiquaries, and grammarians,—who have never exercised any faculty but memory; and our reasoners are, for the most part, but slenderly provided with learning; or, at any rate, make but a slender use of it in their reasonings. Of the two, the reasoners are by far the best off; and, upon many subjects, have really profited by the separation. Argument from authority is, in general, the weakest and the most tedious of all arguments; and learning, we are inclined to believe, has more frequently played the part of a bully than of a fair auxiliary; and been oftener used to frighten people than to convince them,-to dazzle and overawe, rather than to guide and enlighten. A modern writer would not, if he could, reason as Barrow and Cudworth often reason; and every reader, even of Warburton, must have felt that his learning often encumbers rather than assists his progress, and, like shining armour, adds more to his terrors than to his strength. The true theory of this 480 WARBURTON A GIANT. capable of reasoning, have ceased to make a parade of their scholarship; while those who have nothing else must continue to set it forward-just as gentlemen now-a-days keep their gold in their pockets, instead of wearing it on their clothes-while the fashion of laced suits still prevails among their domestics. There are individuals, however, who still think that a man of rank looks most dignified in cut velvet and embroidery, and that one who is not a gentleman can now counterfeit that appearance a little too easily. We do not presume to settle so weighty a dispute;— we only take the liberty of observing, that Warburton lived to see the fashion go out; and was almost the last native gentleman who appeared in a full trimmed coat. He was not only the last of our reasoning scholars, but the last also, we think, of our powerful polemics. This breed too, we take it, is extinct;-and we are not sorry for it. Those men cannot be much regretted, who, instead of applying their great and active faculties in making their fellows better or wiser, or in promoting mutual kindness and cordiality among all the virtuous and enlightened, wasted their days in wrangling upon idle theories; and in applying, to the speculative errors of their equals in talents and in virtue, those terms of angry reprobation which should be reserved for vice and malignity. In neither of these characters, therefore, can we seriously lament that Warburton is not likely to have any successor. The truth is, that this extraordinary person was a Giant in literature-with many of the vices of the Gigantic character. Strong as he was, his excessive pride and overweening vanity were perpetually engaging him in enterprises which he could not accomplish; while such was his intolerable arrogance towards his opponents, and his insolence towards those whom he reckoned as his inferiors, that he made himself very generally and deservedly odious, and ended by doing considerable injury to all the causes which he undertook to support. The novelty and the boldness of his manner-the resentment of his antagonists—and the consternation of |