fruit of holiness, and the harvest of life without end, through the mercies of the Father, the merits of the Son, and the strong protection of the Comforter.'-pp. 580-583. From the extracts we have given, our readers will have been enabled to form their own opinions of Mr. Heber's manner. His conception, in our judgment, is strong, his imagination fertile, his expression nervous, and his general style well sustained. At times, however, he is deficient in ease and simplicity, and, if we may so express ourselves, hurried by the imagination of the poet, beyond those bounds of sobriety within which the preacher should remain. Occasionally, too, he makes allusions to the classics, which we hardly think consistent with good taste, or propriety, in discourses from the pulpit, even when delivered before a learned body. Upon the whole, however, we consider these discourses as highly creditable to the talents and learning of Mr. Heber, and as forming a very useful accession to the series written for the Bampton lectureship. ART. III. 1. Geschichte Andreas Hofer. 8vo. pp. 460. Leipic. 1817. 2. Beiträge zur neucren Kriegsgeschichte von Friedrich Forster. Svo. pp. 222. Berlin. 1816. THE HE name of Hofer was at one time familiar in our mouths, and we yet remember the lively interest felt in this country for the cause in which he fell. It had not, it is true, all the pomp and circumstance of glorious war' to dignify it; but our admiration was, nevertheless, excited by the gallantry displayed by the Tyrolese, and our sympathy called forth by the hard fate to which they were compelled to submit. In the struggle, we could only partici pate in a remote degree; our armies were not, as in Spain, identified in the contest; and neither in its duration, nor in the importance of its results, will the Tyrolese war bear a comparison with that of the Peninsula: still, however, it must be considered as occupying a very interesting portion of the history of that time, and it cannot therefore be a useless task to collect whatever is known of those men, by whose ability and enterprize an undisciplined body of peasantry were for some time enabled to keep in check the united force of Bavaria and France. Few works on the subject have yet reached England, and of those few none, we believe, have been translated; so that our countrymen's knowledge of the chief actors concerned in the struggle is necessarily vague and indistinct. Of those which have fallen into our hands, Bartholdy's work is by far the most interesting, and though he has been accused of garbling the official communications which which he received from authentic sources, and of occasionally dealing in romantic exaggeration, (especially in his relation of Speckbacher's adventures,) we are inclined upon the whole to credit his statements. It is too evidently his object throughout to throw discredit upon the conduct of Austria in regard to the Tyrol, and to represent in an unfavourable light the measures adopted by her agents in that country; and to this feeling must be attributed many of the inaccuracies into which he has fallen; but by comparing his accounts with those contained in the works before us, we shall be in possession of pretty nearly all that is known on the subject, and probably arrive at the real truth. The History of Hofer' would more properly be called the history of the war in which Hofer was engaged. It is an assemblage of official documents, political reflexions, and military details, put together in no very orderly or workmanlike manner; yet it is, as Sancho would say, nevertheless a history, and valuable for the information it contains, derived, apparently, from authentic sources. We suspect, indeed, from the air of authority which pervades it, that we owe this production either to Hormayer himself, or to some one who has been furnished by him with the necessary materials. The other publication, by Forster, is the first number of a collection of papers, which each separately relates to some military event of importance in the late wars of Germany. This work, we understand, has made a great impression in that country, as well as in Russia, owing to the character of veracity which is conceived to belong to it. In the first article will be found a compendious and well written account of the events which took place during the particular period under our notice; and it contains, in addition, a detail of the military operations of the Archduke John against the French under Beauharnois and Macdonald, in the territory of Friul, as well as an interesting account of the defence of the Malborghetto passes, called by the author the Thermopyla of the Carinthian Alps. Those inhabitants of the Rhætian and Vindelician Alps, who are described as witnesses of the exploits of Drusus, were the ancestors of the Tyrolese of the present day. Through the exertions of that chief, or those of Tiberius, this country was first brought under the dominion of Rome; and colonies were founded there by Augustus, who no doubt saw the importance of maintaining such an opening to the heart of Germany. With this view he occupied himself in the opening of roads through the difficult parts of the mountains; and was thus enabled (as Buonaparte has been, in later times, by the military road over the Simplon) to transport troops without impediment through passes which had hitherto been considered impracticable for large bodies of men. In 476, the Tyrol fell, with the Roman power, into the hands of the Goths; it afterwards be came came subject in succession to the Lombards, the Franks, and the Bavarians. From the uncertainty of its boundaries and the inequalities of its surface, this most singularly romantic portion of Europe was designated by the name of the Mountainous Region, ('Landes im gebirge,') and parcelled out amongst a variety of petty lords spiritual and temporal. The German emperors were interested in maintaining this order of things, for while the Tyrol continued in this divided state, a free passage was open at all times for the troops of the empire. At the peace of Verdun, in 843, when Bavaria was first raised to the rank of a kingdom, that part of the ancient Rhætia which lay between the sources of the Inn and the Drave, and which was then divided into several lordships, formed a portion of the possessions of the newly made king. But when the commotions, which were soon after occasioned by the tyranny of Charles the Fat, furnished his nobles with an opportunity of declaring their independence, the lords of the Tyrol followed their example, and emancipated themselves from the Bavarian yoke, engaging only to furnish a certain number of troops when the state should be in danger. Otho the second, duke of Bavaria, dying in 1248 without issue, his territories were divided, and the greater part of those in the valley of Venosta and Sole fell to the lot of Albert, count of the Tyrol, and possessor of the ancient castle called Teriolis, from which the country received its name. At the death of Albert, his estates passed by marriage into the hands of Mainhard, count of Goertz, whose son (also of this name) was the first who obtained a decided ascendancy in those parts. He appears to have been a person of considerable talent, and was one of the chief instruments in the elevation of Rodolph of Hapsburg to the imperial throne. After him, the most conspicuous personage whom we find in the records of these times is a certain Margaret, commonly called the Maultasch, a lady of a very decided character; cruel in her disposition, and as loose in her principles and habits of life as the Fredegondes and Brunehilds of the old French history. She had connected herself by two successive marriages with both the Houses of Austria and Bavaria, but the indignity to which we have alluded in the note, is said to have determined her to convey her possessions to the former power. It was in vain that the Duke of Bavaria opposed the execution of her will. The Emperor Charles IV. obliged him to cede to Austria, for a certain sum of money, all his rights to * * For the origin of this name two derivations are given, which speak little for the beauty of the lady, or the courtesy of the age in which she lived. She owed this appel. lation, according to some, to her deformity; according to others, to a box in the ear which she received at the court of Munich, at the hands of her brother-in-law ;-the more probable origin is to be found in its being the name of one of her favourite towns. AA ? the the Tyrol;—and since this epoch that province has remained an appendage in the Austrian family, of which the princes bear the title of Counts of the Tyrol. It is a singular and Providential arrangement in the economy of the human mind, that although a love of change is strongly prevalent in our nature, yet by habit we acquire a taste for that to which we are accustomed even where it has little intrinsically to recommend it to our regard: this disposition, which leads us rather to bear the ills we have Than fly to others which we know not of,' may partly explain that affection which has been shewn, in some instances, by a whole people, for a defective government; but it can never account for that devoted attachment which the Tyrol has, at various times, manifested for the House of Austria. This must arise from a higher and more creditable feeling; and although stare in antiquas vias' is certainly not the favourite motto of the present day, we do not the less appreciate the merits of those who respect it. It was not that, in the system of government pursued by the Austrians, there was any pretension to Utopian perfection, any peculiar nicety in the exercise of its functions; but it was mild and considerate to the wishes of its subjects; it studied to avoid shocking the national prejudices, and to keep alive the free and independent spirit which prevailed amongst these hardy mountaineers. As a barrier to the south of his dominions, the Tyrol was invaluable to the emperor; it has been called the shield of Austria, and it was in this light alone that she estimated its importance: as a proud appendage it was every thing to her; as a source of revenue nothing. She was satisfied with the hearts and devotion of the people. To the Tyrolese themselves the connexion with the Imperial House was most precious, not only from the benefits which they enjoyed by it, but from motives of a higher and more disin terested description. With it were associated all the recollections of the most brilliant periods of their country's history; all the exploits of the Maximilians were identified with their own, and no peasant could visit the magnificent tomb in Innspruck of his favourite hero, the first emperor of that name, without experiencing sensations of exultation and self-importance. Secure in their fastnesses, little visited by strangers, and free from all the contamination of inflammatory publications, perhaps there is no people of modern Europe who have partaken so little as the Tyrolese of the restless spirit which has pervaded other quarters, or have remained so unmoved amidst the commotions which shook the allegiance of the countries around them. Neither the disturbances which accompanied the Reformation, nor those which marked the rising of the peasantry (bauerkrieg), ever extended to to these provinces; whilst the neighbouring district of Salzburg was in a state of frequent uproar. Why then, it has been said, did Austria ever desert such men, and leave them, as she did, to shift for themselves? The answer is a very simple one.-She had fought nobly, but she was beatenand when kings are compelled to give up their daughters to the conqueror, they can have but little power to secure better terms for the rest of their subjects. It was thus the Tyrol was transferred to Bavaria; a bad exchange, as that power thought, for the duchy of Wurzburg. The situation indeed of this newly established kingdom was widely different from that of Austria before her disasters. With an accession of greatness came an increase of expenditure; and, in order to maintain the large military establishment which Buonaparte required, and which was far above her means, she was obliged to exact contributions from the Tyrolese to an extent to which they were before completely unused. To the mild and indulgent sway of the House of Austria, succeeded a system of vexation and oppression which drove to desperation a people who are of all others the least capable of being ruled by violence; and we cannot wonder that the result should be a deep and irreconcileable hatred. 'Bavaria,' says Muller, seemed intent on impoverishing and op pressing her new subjects; the constitution was overthrown which had lasted for so many ages; the representative states were suppressed, and the provincial funds seized. All ecclesiastical property abolished, prelacies and convents confiscated; and amongst the public buildings exposed to sale, the ancient castle of the Counts of the Tyrol was not even spared. New imposts were daily exacted; specie became scarce; the Austrian notes were reduced to half their value; and to crown all, Bavaria had it in contemplation to change the very names of her new acquisitions, and to incorporate them with her hereditary dominions.* These, it must be confessed, are no ordinary acts of severity; but the stern manner in which the Bavarian government enforced them proved far more irritating to the feelings of the natives than the acts themselves: those, however, by which they felt themselves more particularly aggrieved, were-the application of the funds drawn from the land to purposes foreign to it,the recruiting system, and, above all, the total contempt of the privileges and rights of the Tyrol as a state. There, as in Sweden, the four orders met in general convocation, (for to the nobility, clergy, and burghers, is added a separate order for the peasants,) except in the Vorarlberg-where the two first mentioned classes do not exist ;these meetings took place at Innspruck, the president was selected *Beauharnois, by an order dated Mosco, 24th September, 1812, only permitted to some of the southern districts the use of their mother tongue for six years longer. A A 3 by |