critic that it is not readable. Mr. Panizzi has thought differently, and so do we; and he has, with immense labour, formed, by a collation of seven different editions, as pure a text of the poem as the strict laws of criticism permitted. We must let him speak for himself on this subject.

"I admit," says he, "the elegance of many parts of the rifacimento, but I contend that, if we may tolerate in an original poem a want of correctness, we have a right to be more rigorous when we are to judge of a work which has no claim to invention. The indiscriminate praises lavished upon Berni's work have rendered people afraid of examining it with an unbiassed and critical eye; whilst the outcry against Bojardo's incorrect and unpolished diction and versification, has created a kind of traditional belief that the lines of this great poet are not worth reading. I am proud of being the first to offer the original Orlando Innamorato in a legible form to the lovers of Italian literature, and I shall leave the question of its merits in comparison with Berni's rifacimento to all candid and competent judges, who will often be compelled to admit that the lines of the old bard are superior to those of the author upon whom the splendid reputation of having rendered the perusal of the poem tolerable has been conferred. Even readers who are prejudiced against or unacquainted with Bojardo will confess that it is unjust to bestow the encomiums due to this great poet on a writer whose name is now prefixed to a work of which he did not invent any portion. I have felt indignant at the title-pages of the Orlando Innamorato by Berni omitting the name of him by whom the poem was composed. Without Berni, the Orlando Innamorato will be read and enjoyed; without Bojardo, not even the name of the poem remains."

That the verse of the Tuscan Berni is more polished than that of the Lombard Bojardo we readily concede; but surely this is not a reason for depriving the latter of his fame. Southey somewhere complains of the tendency to the ludicrous of the Italian romantic poets: now one of the merits of Bojardo is that he is more free from this tendency than any other of them, and that almost every thing of the kind in the re-made poem is the property of Berni. We must confess that it was with surprise, as well as pleasure, we discovered this when we read the original poem for the first time in the present edition; and to us, the genuine verses of Bojardo, with all their negligence and all their ruggedness, but at the same time, with all their sweetness, (of which Berni was not capable), are far more pleasing than the Tuscan strains which have occupied their place. Dryden, a loftier poet than Berni, has modernized the Knight's Tale, of Chaucer; nothing can be finer, nothing more harmonious or more spirited than the lines of

* Mr. Panizzi, we believe, had to transcribe the whole poem, so extremely incorrect were all the editions.

this mighty master of rhyme: yet what person of true taste and poetic feeling would not rather read the ruder strains of the original poet! If the Faerie Queen were re-made, we are certain it would find a very limited number of readers; and now that the genuine Orlando Innamorato is placed before us, we expect that in future it will be read by the genuine lovers of poetry in preference to the rifacimento, with which ordinary readers may

continue to content themselves.

The present edition of the entire poem (for the Innamorato and the Furioso are but one poem), will, we trust, ere long take its place in every Italian library in this country. It has every thing to recommend it—a most correct text, many valuable notes and disquisitions, beautiful print and paper. To any library it will be an ornament,-no Italian library can be complete without it.

ART. III.—1. Résumé préliminaire de l'ouvrage ayant pour titre, Théorie des Volcans, par Le Compte A. De Bylandt Palstercamp. Seconde édition. Paris. 1834.

2. Description des Terrains Volcaniques de la France centrale. Par M. Amédée Burat. Avec dix planches. Paris. 1833. WHEN we see a work written professedly for our benefit, we feel a sort of delicacy in expressing our opinion of its merits or demerits. Should we find fault, we must appear to be extremely ungrateful to one who gives us so much of his time and thoughts solely for our good; and, should we altogether praise it, it seems as if we suffered our self-love to run away with our justice. The first work which now comes under our notice is the second edition of a pamphlet of seventy-eight pages; and perhaps, as a mere " avant-propos" or " aperçu" of a larger work, ought merely to be announced to the public. However, as this avant-propos (which we are very much inclined to translate feeler) lays before us the plan of three projected volumes, opens to us the motives and labours of the author, and sums up his new theory, we feel bound to remark on it at some length.

In the first place, the Count expresses his conviction of the obligation under which we all lie to benefit our fellow-creatures, and gives us reason to suppose, that, having run about the world for thirty years, first to amuse himself and enlarge his ideas, he has at length arrived at the maturity of wisdom and love, and now offers us the results of his experience from pure philanthropy. He sets all criticism at defiance by professing a perfect indifference towards it; he declares that he has not one spark of

vanity, and leaves literary glory to the learned. He candidly informs us, that, after having classed volcanic eruptions into eight distinct parts, and entered explicitly into every minute detail concerning them, we ought to be very much obliged to him; and he flatters himself that his birth and rank in the world will protect him from the suspicion that he has any other motive than that of being useful to his fellow-men.

Having faithfully followed the prescription given by Circe to Ulysses, when he left Ithaca, in order to be initiated into the sacred mysteries, (and a copy of which will not, we believe, be necessary to our readers) the Count believes that his writings are destined to make truth triumph over error; but he is by no means sanguine that this triumph will be accorded immediately, because every man who opens a new career in science is rejected at first, and perhaps, like Huygens, Kepler, Descartes, Newton (especially), and Galileo, years may elapse before justice will be done him; no matter, received or not received, the Count has done his duty" et cela lui suffit."

We are not however of the volcanic traveller's opinion; for although, in former ages, when just emerging, as it were, from the chaos of science and literature, a sublime truth had to work its establishment through long years of doubt and discredit-although men who made discoveries which have rendered them immortal were imprisoned as madmen (witness Salomon de Cans, in the time of Cardinal Richelieu, who discovered the power of steam)yet we think that now we are even too ready to adopt new theories and speculations, too apt to be sanguine in our expectations of their success, and that in no science whatever do we find new systems and new principles so eagerly adopted as in Geology. It would be well for us, and rid us of a multitude of incumbrances, did every one follow the advice we heard given by the greatest geologist in the world to an ardent young traveller just about to explore unknown regions: "Report facts exactly as you see them, and do not send us any theories or speculations of your own."

Now let us follow our amiable author in his travels. Having shaken off the dust of the schools, places which Nature hates, because she has been so ill-treated in them, the Count starts to interrogate this Nature, as a son does a cherished mother, or as the Neophytes interrogated Plato or Pythagoras. He finds her always good, amiable, and graceful, even in the midst of her troubles, and unceasingly occupied in repairing the damages she cannot avoid; or in other words, we suppose, like a good housewife, darning her stockings. He follows her from the summits of mountains into the entrails of the earth, and approaches her im

mense laboratory, in the hope that some spark from this formidable furnace would set light to his feeble torch, and dissipate the thick darkness into which he had been plunged by the study of scienti fic books. As a reward for his constancy, Nature accompanies him to Mexico, and thence to Asia Minor, without ever being tired of teaching his young ideas how to shoot, and he comprehends her as well as his ideas will let him. He then sums up the powers of nature and life, and in this instance condescends to follow the established opinions of some of our greatest philosophers, though we strongly suspect that he has never read the sublime article headed Nature, written by the Baron Cuvier for the "Dictionnaire des Sciences naturelles." But surely Count

de Bylandt advances too much, when he states, that till now (we presume he means his own labours) the volcanic part of Geology has been entirely narrowed within the limits of the substances which compose it; the works of Baron von Humboldt, M. Von Buch, Mr. Lyell, Mr. Murchison, &c., are ample refutations on this head; and indeed to the former the Count allows some merit, and takes him as a guide to the gulf of Mexico, and M. de Saussure to the Alps-always, be it understood, in the quality of ushers to Nature. It would, however, appear, that he soon starts without a guide at all, for he says, that he traced his own route, and determined, as in fact every one ought, to see, to compare, to analyse, and to bring everything to a common centre, before he reasoned upon what he saw. It is thus that he believed himself able to trace a geometrical plan of the interior of the volcanic part of the earth, which geometrical reduction of phenomena occupied him during the last twelve years of his researches. The Count then applied to preceding writers to see what they thought of the same phenomena, or if they knew any. thing of them; if they agreed with the facts as he apprehended them, he strengthened his judgment with their arguments, but if not, he rejected and combated their positions, i. e. he was determined to have his own way in spite of them.

At length, we flattered ourselves we were fairly started in the route of our traveller's operations: he walks on, with the rules of physics and chymistry before him, he challenges the impartial reader to judge if he has demonstrated the figure which nature presented to him, and, in order to go from little to great, and from known to unknown, he begins by the examination of cold mountains (montagnes froides.) He attributes the elevation of mountains to four causes, which are sometimes isolated and sometimes united. The first is, the eruption of central fire, ignited at the first period of the development of matter,-secondly, to the sinking down of the mineral crust, after it had been extended

to the utmost point of elasticity, by the central fire in all its power-thirdly to the falling down of a part of the layers in deep caverns, produced by a vertical pressure of water, and which explains the frequent obliquity of strata, sometimes even in a contradictory sense to the rest of the mountain and fourthly, to the heaving up of the outer crust by interior pressure, directed towards the extremity of those rays of the globe where the diminution of the force of the central fire had left it only the power of lifting up the points which oppose the least resistance. To the last the Count attributes the vertical direction of rocks and strata, which may be remarked in several mountains -here, he adds, "mon ouvrage developpera mes idées," and we hope it will.

Would not any one have supposed that we had now become involved in the maze of reasoning, so elaborately set before us by Count de Bylandt, and will not our readers be as surprised as ourselves on being obliged to return to the Count individually, and, in contradiction to his general plan, go with him from great to little, and from known to unknown? We offer the passage which caused our astonishment in the Count's own words

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"Comme l'étude était ma passion dominante, et que je n'en dépendais pas, je pouvais lui donner tout mon tems. Il n'est pas toujours facile aux savans de profession de faire de longs et pénibles voyages de plusieurs années consécutives: leurs occupations, unies à d'autres circonstances personnelles," (we suppose he means their purses) ne leur mettent de venir examiner le terrain qu'en courant, qu'à jours comptés, et quelque grande que soit leur pénétration, l'on sait que l'aigle qui plane au haut des airs ne peut apercevoir et distinguer qu'un seul point à la fois."

per

But it is time for us to be serious, and see what the Count asserts independent of himself; for, be it remarked, he finds it extremely difficult to quit this darling theme, and it has puzzled us not a little also to divest his theory of classical allusions and similes, which by no means add to the perspicuity of scientific observations.

As far as we can judge from the avant-propos, the Count's theory (for he insists upon it that we are not to call it a system,) is as follows:-that there are two great central volcanic fires or furnaces," where fire and water dispute the empire of the globe," the one situated under the island of Celebes, the other under the island of St. Christopher in the West Indies; from each of these issues a communicating and principal channel, through which the volcanic fluid is propelled from west to east according to the rotatory motion of the earth. From this great channel branch off a number of smaller channels, and on these are placed knots of