even say that Venice is one of the most brilliant abodes of Italian beauty. The nearer one comes to the Alps, the more this characteristic kind of beauty fades before us, and the appearance of the inhabitants approximates to that of the northern and western Europeans. Of all that mighty district which comprehends Germany, Sweden, Denmark, and England, the south of France is, I think, the place where the beauty of the women most recalls the idea of the antique, and resembles the beauty of Italy and Greece. Above all, it is in Languedoc and in the ancient Provence that the forms of the women are most frequently invested with this kind of perfection; and, as has been accurately observed by Camper, the inhabitants of these southern regions have oftener than those of any other part of the west, that firm and finished form of the jaw-bone, and that even line of the whole countenance which recall a Grecian origin,* and approach to that inexpressible charm which the arts of Greece has stamped on the faces of the Apollo and the Venus de Medicis. In many of the northern departments of France the women are extremely agreeable, but there is no trace of similitude to the perfection of the antique form, and nature almost never finishes the extremities which she elaborates with so much minute care under the fine skies of Italy. Beauties of complexion, &c., overcome the impression of those defects in regard to the pretty creatures of Picardy, Flanders, and Belgium. The Parisian lady again, whom we may regard as a species of female quite distinct from any other, has a graceful and piquant air, and great skill in dress, but not much pretension to classical beautythe mere beauties of feature and form. Their features are agreeable rather than regular, and very rarely remind one of the Grecian models. Covered perpetually from the sun, like the flower in the close bud, she wants air to bring out her colour, and partakes more in the interesting paleness of convalescence than the dazzling animation of youth and health. For these defects, it is vain to seek an atonement or a covering in the use of rouge. And yet colour is the principal charm which faces such as these should aim at. Without colour a northern belle is nothing, unless she be a miracle among those that surround her, and possess the outlines of a climate more favourable than her own usually is found to be to beauty. It is only the majesty of the Roman dame which can dispense with the charm of red and white-or even do better without it than with "Turpis Romano Belgicus ore color." In Germany the women are more beautiful than in the north of France. Their figures are tall and graceful; they have commonly an expression of sentiment which atones for any minor defects in outline. England, with the exception of the south of France, is perhaps, of all the countries comprised in this great dominion of Europe, that in which the women are most generally beautiful. Their features noble and harmoniously combined, and their expression such as to increase the effect of their features. The brilliant beauty of their complexions, the delicacy and softness and whiteness of their skins, are sufficient to add still more powerfully to the effect of the whole. In short, nature has, in regard to the fine women of England, been negligent of nothing but the hands and the feet-to which, it must be confessed, she has too frequently done imperfect justice. In the most elevated regions of Europe, and principally in Switzerland, the forms of men acquire, in general, a fine developement; but those of women have a certain exaggeration about them which renders them rather agreeable and voluptuous objects, "You may be than truly beautiful. lieve me," says St Preux, speaking to Julia of the Helvetian ladies of the Haut-Valais-" you may believe me they are beautiful, since they appeared so to me. Eyes accustomed to behold you, must be difficult to please as judges of beauty. Yet the largeness of some of their outlines I cannot away with," &c. &c. * * * Viz. the great Greek colony at Marseilles. ON A LATE ATTEMPT TO WHITE-WASH MR BROUGHAM. THE Whigs, while they chaunt their eternal hymn to the progressive influence of public opinion, modestly assume that the change must be altogether in their favour, and that nothing more is necessary than to enlighten mankind, in order to ensure the triumph of their party. What is the basis on which this forlorn sect found their predictions and their hopes? Is it, that they have shewn an unquestionable superiority of intellect, and have preceded, by a great and palpable interval, the rest of their fellow citizens in the march of improvement? Is it, that with unswerving fidelity they have guarded the ark of the constitution, or vindicated the honour of their usurped appellation, by some great exploit of political heroism, which might have endeared them to their country, as the preservers of its liberty, or the champions of its independence, in some dark hour of its destiny? Is it, that they have reached some proud intellectual eminence, presenting a more expanded survey, and a purer atmosphere, than that breathed by other and humbler men, that they congratulate themselves in the spirit of the most gracious self-adulation on the progress of knowledge, and propagate with so much zeal the convenient opinion, that it is only necessary that the public mind should be awakened from its torpor, to make it look up in solemn admiration of their celestial conclave? We know of no adequate grounds to justify this offensive self-complacency; and when we look back on the history of the party for the last thirty years; on their strange tergiversations, and portentous blunders; on their proved ignorance of the true interests of their country, and their cold contempt of its unperishable fame;-when we find them lavishing their atrocious plaudits on the fiercest of its enemies; damping the most heroic exertions by their gloomy forebodings, and standing through a long succession of perilous years in banded array against its triumphant genius;-we must say, that if public opinion, which is fast developing its energies, shall recognise them either as its champions or allies, it will exhibit itself in a shape entire ly at variance with our anticipations, and utterly alien to the spirit of enlightened patriotism. We feel assured, at all events, that public opinion, which the Whigs take so much credit to themselves for having formed and exalted, is already pretty much settled, as to the conduct of one of their most clamorous leaders on the subject, to which we mean shortly to direct the attention of our readers in the course of this paper. Here, at any rate, there is no room for doubt or hesitation; and the conduct of Mr Brougham will be equally condemned by every human creature who can master the ordinary distinctions between right and wrong. We do not know that so bold a project of wayward ambition has ever been formed under a regular government, as that which appears to have been engendered in the meek and humble bosom of this patriot hater of tyranny, and privileged declaimer against corruption. If we search the page of English history, we shall find nothing, even in the most daring measures of her proudest ministers, to equal the temerity, or in their most dextrous movements, to rival the art with which Mr Brougham's charitable inquisition was conceived and organized-no, not even in the memorable but fatal project of Mr Fox himself, to grasp an Indian empire, and to make the splendid patronage of the east an heir-loom of the party over which he presided. Great undertakings become a lofty and original mind, and it does credit to the genius of Mr Brougham, that when he meditated an invasion of the constitution, he took a flight of ambition above the ordinary pitch, and left all paltry and grovelling competition far behind. In his comprehensive sweep, he endeavoured to include nothing less than the universal charity and education of this great country: to bring within his grasp, and reduce to his sole subjection, all the splendid endowments which beneficence and piety have contributed to mitigate the evils of poverty, to cure the reproach of ignorance, or exalt the standard of national taste and refinement; to subject to his own arbitrary controul, or that of his dependents, the accumulated treasures, and the consequent influence of many centuries of pious liberality, in the most liberal and pious of the European states. Attend for a moment to the charac ter of Mr Brougham's proceedings. This patriotic citizen, observing with dismay the prevailing ignorance, and consequent depravity of the lower orders of the metropolis, claimed the interposition of the legislature for mitigating the enormous evil, and volunteered encountering the toil and anxiety of the laborious investigation. His be nevolence and patriotism were applauded by all parties; his charitable views abetted and encouraged; and the first unequivocal direction of his talents to objects of public utility, was hailed as an important acquisition to the public service. It was pleasing to reflect, that the ardent and indefatigable spirit of Mr Brougham would now be devoted to the culture of a field which promised full employment, and offered a rich and honourable reward to his enterprising patriotism; and which appeared, from the quiet and beneficent nature of the vocation, happily to exclude every seduction of a sordid or factious character, to which the reputation of men of a bustling genius has so often been sacrificed. The inquiry was of a nature purely charitable, and every thing selfish was of course forbidden; the work was one of public beneficence, and its very aspect appeared a guarantee against the intrusion of all that is sour and sullen in party distinctions; and the friends and opponents of Mr Brougham, alike rejoiced in the prospect now presented for the first time of contemplating the native energy of his character, unexcited by the stimulus of party dissentions-mild, placable, gracious, and forbearing; an exact personification, in short, of the genius of humane and enlightened legislation. The purpose was benign, and the enterprise was consecrated with universal applause; it embraced an unquestioned evil of enormous magnitude, of which the remedy appeared in prospect to be at once safe and practicable. The education of the poor was the trust committed to Mr Brougham and his colleagues a subject, fertile of profound and anxious speculation to philosophic legislators suggesting problems worthy of the whole reach of Mr Brougham's capacity, and adapted to the reputed character of his genius: a subject, to which it became a man proudly arrogating to himself a name above the vulgar herd of politicians, to have devoted himself with the characteristic VOL. V. ardour of a liberal and lofty mind; conscious that to mix up with it any thing of a selfish, or even of a questionable character, would certainly be to mar the whole splendid project, and to inflict an incurable wound on his own reputation. What was the conduct of Mr Brougham, after he had been placed with universal consent in this striking and elevated situation? He applied, in the first place, for an extension of his powers beyond the precincts of the metropolis; but to the poor alone, and their education, his inquiries were yet confined; the scope was enlarged, but the character and objects of the inquisition remained unaltered. The expansive faculty of Mr Brougham's committee had not yet been surmised; and although this gratuitous enlargement of its powers, while the original objects of the appointment were yet unfulfilled, might have appeared of questionable expediency, much was willingly conceded to the capacity and industry of the learned chairman. But he now meditated a higher and bolder flight; the humble and squalid establishments for mendicated instruction had become loathsome in his eyes; the petty details of their lowly and unpretending literature lost all interest with him; and with one bound, he rose from the humble platform of the Sunday schools, and perched on the proud turrets of the great academical institutions. With no other powers delegated to himself and his accomplished associates than those originally granted, and subsequently extended, to inquire into the education of the lower orders, did this distinguished individual contrive to include in his researches all academical establishments, and all public charities; and summoning before him, official persons from Eton, Winchester, and Cambridge, commence a minute and scoffing inquiry into the most private affairs of these great institutions; insulting, by arbitrary mandates for attendance, and reproachful questions upon examinations, some of the most learned and venerable men in the kingdom; and not contented with this profane trampling on the most august establishments for education of which Europe can boast, did this learned person meditate the permanent appointment of a commission, to be in all future time a convenient appendage of his 4 D own political existence; a commission which was to undertake the interminable labour of inquiring into the whole mass of English charity; of prying into the most minute affairs of establishments computed to be more than 30,000 in number; aye, and which was to prosecute this hopeless enterprise at a most enormous expense, and to exhibit such a constitution in point of arbitrary and irresponsible power, and palpable temptation to abuse, as was never realized under a free and enlightened government. But Mr Brougham's project, although boldly conceived, was resisted and exposed. He complained much of this in his letter to the late Sir Samuel Romilly, written in a tone of affected candour and visible indignation, and full at once of soft phrases and rankling emotions. He lamented the limited range of the commission actually appointed, because it was not empowered to descend wantonly into the charter-chest of every charitable foundation, for the purposes of mockery or of persecution; because it was restrained from interfering with establishments, which the will of the founder had committed to the perpetual care of special visitors; and finally, because the magnificent public establishments for the education of the higher orders were exempted from inquiry. To bring the great schools and universities within the scope of his inquisition, he misconstrued their statutes, and fastening on the phrase, 66 pauperes et indigentes scholares," reared upon it a blundering argument, to prove that the students of Oxford and Cambridge belong to the lower orders of society, and were fit objects of the care of his civic committee. The ridicule which he has brought upon himself by his unlucky interference with establishments endeared to every thing that is liberal and lofty in the English character, must have convinced him, that these venerable retreats of learning have not yet become the temples of pedantry and sloth, but can copiously supply a spirit of avenging wit, to blast their profane calum niators. But the political character of Mr Brougham's plan surpassed in deformity every other feature which it displayed. The facility with which an inquisition of unlimited range, and arbitrary direction, could be turned to the worst purposes of party was apparent from the beginning; and no one therefore could wonder at the ingenious selection of cases made by the committee, in which every scrap of the ex parte evidence adduced was calculated to inflict a wound on some distinguished individual, opposed in literature, influence, or politics, to that system which Mr Brougham had so warmly espoused. The blow was in the ostensible conception of the plan, indifferently suspended over the broad mass of delinquency; but it might have been anticipated, that its undivided strength would fall in that direction in which the imaginary violation of charitable trusts should be found united to the inexpiable offence of political hostility. Thus it was that Dr Ireland and Lord Lonsdale were immolated to the spirit of party, and sacrificed, so far as virtue and honour could be sacrificed, to insinuation and calumny. But the respectable name of Dr Ireland was not thus to be made the sport of faction; and the signal retribution which he has taken, is the triumph of integrity over sophistry and slander. With reference to the case of Lord Lonsdale, the conduct of Mr Brougham exhibited, by his own account of it, a violation of every form of procedure, and every maxim of parliamentary decorum, when, after the dissolution of parliament, and the consequent expiration of his own delegated power, he dared still to continue the exercise of it, and under cover of a certain incredible forbearance towards his rival, to usurp authority over the records of a committee, not only suspended but extinguished. By this strange assumption of power, for which he has taken so much credit to himself, he may have guarded the contest in Westmoreland against the inconsiderable bias, which the publication of the evidence, in all the precision of its palpable unfairness, might have produced; but every one must see, that by this course, he also lent to the struggle, the deep infection of whispered calumny, of indefinite suspicion, and boundless misrepresentation. But in what terms shall we speak of the commission suggested by Mr Brougham to accomplish the momentous inquiries so happily begun under his own auspices; a commission which was to undertake the vast survey of the whole charity, and the whole educa tion of the kingdom; which was to pry into every nook of every charitable foundation, however humble; and to penetrate, with reforming energy, the entire magnificence of the loftiest and most venerable-which was, in its vague and shadowy expansion, to embrace every element in the formation of the natural intellect-every seminary of literary or moral instruction-every institution by which manners are formed, or even exterior accomplishment imparted-a commission whose definite objects could not be accomplished in much less than half a century, and whose ulterior functions presented a dark vista of interminable scrutiny and impossible completion; yet was it gravely proposed, that this fantastic creation of enduring and universal terror should be constructed, not after the ordinary fashion of other constitutional fabrics; that it should neither owe its original existence, nor its periodical renovations, to the constitutional source of all vicarious authority, but to the great inventor himself, through the formality of a parliamentary nomination; and having thus unnaturally sprung into existence, should acknowledge responsibility neither to Crown nor Parliament, but continue undisturbed and uncontrolled, in the convenient receipt of its ample emoluments, and the eternal prosecution of its petty and vexatious labours. Nothing so vast in despotic conception, or so terrible in protracted execution, has appeared in England for ages; and when to the singular composition of this dread engine of power, we add the qualities required by its learned projector, as essential to the character of its members; the prying, suspicious, and sullen dispositions, which were to fit them for their ungracious office, and the unhappy exemplification of these and other questionable elements in the person of Mr Coe, the "ready made commissioner," whose exclusion Mr Brougham so pathetically laments-and above all, when we reflect on the startling project, in timated by the learned chairman, for confiscating to the use of the state the charitable funds diverted from their proper objects, instead of reviving and enforcing the primary and sacred destination; we are forcibly struck with certain analogies which too plainly assimilate the measure in question to the beginnings of confusion in a neighbouring country, and which stamp upon it a character altogether alien to the spirit of the constitution, and the genius of British legislation. over The Edinburgh Review, however, has attempted a defence even of these extraordinary proceedings; and indeed there is hardly any thing absurd or revolting which this journal has not, at one time or other, attempted to defend. The conductors are expert dialecticians, and accomplished sophists; and, aware of their own forte, it has ever been their aim to confound the understandings of their readers by elaborate sophistications. It has been their pride to "confute, change hands, and still confute." But as their appeals to the public have, generally speaking, been without power over its higher passions, and more liberal wisdom, they have ever had but a fleeting and perishable influence, disturbing for a moment the generous current of national sentiment, but soon whelmed in its deep and resistless movements. We speak of these clever persons as they were in their career of success-for it is long since even their characteristic subtlety and liveliness have been on the decline. Of this melancholy truth their late article on the subject of the education committee affords a strong confirmation-for, with the exception of a few paragraphs at the beginning and end of that paper, which sparkle with something of the remembered brilliancy of other days, and gird, like a luminous ring the thick and volumed opacity which intervenes, there is nothing in it which it must not have been extremely painful to write, and which it is not almost impossible to read. Far be it from us to drag our unoffending readers through the stupifying mists and palpable darkness of this middle region-or to disturb them with a dissection of the creeping sophistry which winds itself round the cases of Croydon, Yeovyl, Wellenborough, Huntingdon, and St Bees. But there are some matters of higher and In the bill brought into parliament during the last session, for the renewal of the commission, some unimportant modifications were adopted-such as the increase of the number of commissioners-but none which could in the least degree assimilate it to the project originally formed by Mr Brougham. That gentleman again made an attempt, but without success, to get the establishments having special visitors included. |