"The government regulation of not permitting one set of posthorses to pass others on the road, has this inconvenience: he who wishes to travel expeditiously has no power to do so, if the person immediately before him should choose to travel slowly, or should refuse to fee the post-boy beyond the government tariff, which is fifteen sous, when he expects forty at least, and does not think himself liberally paid unless you give him fifty. In this case, he may refuse to drive at the rate of more than one post an hour, which is slower than a hackney-coachman may be compelled to drive in the streets of London. To be extricated from this difficulty, there is but one slight chance, and that at a considerable expense, which is by despatching an avant-courier to bespeak horses; but this contrivance will avail nothing, if there should be sufficient horses at the post-house for both carriages; then, the slow carriage, necessarily arriving first, will be first despatched, and he who is behind, must continue to be so to the end of his journey, be that journey ever so long.

"As there is only one person in a town authorized to let out post-horses, if all his horses should be on the road, or employed in agriculture at a distance from the post-house, you must wait in the street, or the stable-yard, one, two, or three hours, until the horses can be obtained. In an advanced state of society all monopolies are injurious to the public, however they may add to the patronage of government. Competition awakens ingenuity, and stimulates industry.

"There is one point in which travelling in France is supposed to have a greater advantage than travelling in England; and that is, from there being no turnpikes in France: the government, however, has contrived a very ample set-off to this advantage. First, by the paucity of post-roads; and secondly, by giving post-boys so much power, that if the traveller wishes to make any progress on the road, he must pay him nearly, and oftentimes, quite as much as we pay for turnpikes and post-boys together," P. 69.

Switzerland is particularly out of favour with Mr. Duppa. In the mer de glace, he saw nothing but "a large dirty mere of snow, cracked and irregular in its surface, with a broad road in the middle, as dirty as a street." Its wonders, we are told, are very much the offspring of English imagination; the scenery looking from Montainvert is" without repose.'

"

"A tour round Mont Blanc may gratify the mind, as to rocks and mountains, though it often happens, to arrive at the top of one crag, after some hours toil, another still higher has made the effort fruitless, and in elevated situations, clouds, or sleet, or snow, often shew how easily this little ambition may be defeated; and, at best, nature is seen to no advantage; all that surrounds you is dreary and cheerless; nothing assimilates with thought, but the desire to descend with safety. Amongst these inhospitable mountains, when a fire is kindled, civilization has made its greatest effort; a shattered roof serves the office of a chimney, and a square hole in the wall, at once lets in the light, and the drifting rain and sleet. Under it, the table on which the scanty meal is prepared, and off which it is eaten,

has a deep trench cut round it, that the middle may be dry. If you have light, you must have the storm, and the choice is rather the effect of instinct than of reason. Here, life is spent to contend and struggle with the means of existence." P. 92.

L

There is some confusion in the commencement of this extract which we cannot unravel; it is not explained in the errata, and we do not like to hazard conjectural emendations upon a living author. We give it as we find it, and thus much, at least, we can collect, for a certainty, that Mr. Duppa is no amateur of mountain scenery.

In passing from Liddes to the Hospice, Mr. Duppa was accompanied by a robust young woman, from whom he had hired a mule to carry hay. She was dressed in a gown of russet brown woollen cloth, and the account.which she gave of herself, was truly patriarchal. Her property consisted of ten cows, eleven sheep, one goat, and one mule: in the short spring and summer she prepared the ground, planted, sowed and gathered in the crop, and in the long, cold, dreary winter, she made her clothes. 66 This gown I have on," she said, "I made from the sheep's back; I sheared the sheep, I carded and spun the wool, wove the cloth, cut it out, and made it."

One more Swiss picture will succeed to this.

" An account of a morning's excursion from Lauterbrunnen to Grindelwald, over the Wengern Alps.

"I have been wet through twice, could see very little when I arrived at the top, from the bad weather. It was, nevertheless, very well worth the trouble, though I was several times within a hair's breadth of falling down the most frightful precipices.'

"After dinner was over at the table d'hôte, where we dined together, * * * said ، Good God! what can we do with ourselves, we have at least, four hours to assassinate before one can possibly go to bed!' This is drawn from the life, and I consider the sketch to be a good illustration of a mountain scramble, and of the feelings of those who are in constant activity to be somewhere else.

"Nothing is more difficult than to make a just estimate between the toil of any undertaking, and the pleasure of accomplishing it; this must depend on the taste of the individual; but he who travels the mountains of Switzerland to see the peculiarities of the country may place it to his account, that he will be exhausted with fatigue, and, when the day is spent, be content to lodge in some offensive and miserable place, where all he stands in need of he must continue to want; yet, here is no lack of population; wherever there are the means to support life, there is a wooden house, and where a goat can browse, there is cultivation; but the state of society is rude and inadorned." P. 10g.

It has been said of some former eminent linguist, that if he had been alive during the building of Babel, the dispersion

need not have followed the confusion of tongues, since he might have acted as interpreter general. There have not been many to whom this statement would be more justly applicable, than to the astonishing man who is mentioned below.

"By far the subject of the greatest interest in Bologna is D. Giuseppe Mezzofanti, who is the principal librarian and professor of oriental languages.

"He is a plain, unaffected, modest man, with such an extensive knowledge of various languages, as it is not easy to credit on any ordinary testimony. Having heard and read of his great fame, I introduced myself to him in the public library; after talking to him some time in English, he said that he found all the European languages very easy. Of the oriental, the Arabic was the most difficult, from its richness in terms. To acquire the English language gave him very little trouble; this opinion surprised me, and I entered into a discussion with him on some grammatical peculiarities; I also remarked upon the great irregularity of our pronunciation, which he more perfectly understood on principle, than any person I ever talked with on that subject: he was also so obliging as to read a page of an English book, which I took from a shelf in the library; and, in reading and speaking, he never made a single mistake. The only sign of peculiarity was, that in speaking, he employed a word occasionally, not of colloquial use, but which, nevertheless, was perfectly correct as to the sense.

"So far I can speak from my own knowledge, and a Polish countess whom I knew perfectly well, and who speaks German, Russ, and French, as native languages, in common with her own, told me, that she conversed with him in all of them, and, to the best of her judgment, he understood and spoke them as well as she did.

"A German officer, with whom Mr. Rose dined at Bologna, said, that he should not have known him by his language from being a native of Germany; and Mr. Rose's servant, who was a native of Smyrna, said, that he might pass for a Greek or a Turk as far as he was able to judge, In the course of conversation I asked him how many languages he knew; he said, about forty, and that he could speak about thirty, but that he had so little practice in speaking the oriental languages, that he spoke them with less fluency than the European. To add to the wonder of these attainments, he has never been out of Italy, and, I believe, Florence is the greatest distance he has ever been from Bologna. I wish I could have spent more time with this extraordinary man." P. 132.

There are a few blemishes in Mr. Duppa's style, which we shall wish to see corrected, since he promises that this volume is to form a part of a larger work, if it be favourably received, and of this there can be little doubt. He will doubtless, therefore acquit us of any perverse or hypercritical feeling in

noticing them. The following passages, among others, are not English.

، Besides this restored part of the old castle (Chantilly), there is another considerable range of buildings detached from the chateau, erected by the present duke for his ill-fated son, the Duc d'Enghien; and during his life was called after him." Page 3.

"The subject (of Desaix's monument) represents the General supported in death by a brother officer, with his horse led by. a soldier; and on two pilasters, which support an entablature, are two small whole length emblematical figures of the Nile and the Pô, to indicate the beginning and the end of Desaix's military career; having first distinguished himself in Egypt, and fell at the battle of Marengo." Page 89.

Mr. Duppa will forgive the freedom with which we have used his volume. We have reason to think that he is far from splenetic in the common intercourse of life, and we are anxious therefore that he should not convey any unjust impression of himself in print. We shall be glad to follow him in the remainder of his tour, for we shall be certain to meet with sound criticism on works of Art, and sensible if not novel remarks on foreign habits.

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