At Strasburg, the church of St. Thomas is visited, in which is the magnificent monument to Marischal Saxe.

"But when we saw it," says the writer, "a living figure stood at its base, which more than divided our attention. It was that of a maniac; but of one who, in losing reason, had still retained so much of grace and dignity, as to shew that it is not by his highest attribute alone that man is superior to every other mortal thing. This unfortunate gentleman was an officer of rank in the French service, and had received a wound in the head. Being a person of large fortune, and perfectly harmless, he is kept under no restraint; except that a servant always attends him, who, it is his pleasure should be dressed as a soldier. I never saw a more graceful or commanding figure than that of this poor madman; and the wildness of his countenance, and gesticulation, often suggested the idea of enthusiasm, rather than insanity. He was dressed in mourning; and the only pecu. liarity of his attire was wearing a black silk handkerchief round his body like a military sash. He was conversing in a very animated manner with a gentleman whom he had casually met in the church, and who appeared to listen to him with the deepest interest: but from time to time he stopped short in his discourse, and uttered a few magnificently powerful and musical notes, as if to try the effect of the reverberation from the vaulted roof; and then he put up his finger in the attitude of one who would enjoin silence, while his uplifted countenance had the expression that one would imagine in a person listening to sounds from heaven. He paused before a monument, whose inscription announced that it was in memory of one who died young. He shuddered, - -"Si jeune," said he, in an accent of deep melancholy; "est il possible!"-then turning away and shaking his head," Mais enfin !" It was not difficult to follow the course of his sad thoughts."

Our traveller's route from Strasburg is back to Manheim,—thence, by steam, to Mayence. Wiesbaden is visited, but, although attractive, is thought inferior to Baden. Ems, and the country between it and the Rhine, are sketched with much vivacity. During the stay at this town, the author mentions having been presented to the Countess d' H

"The father of this lady was one of the many conspirators, against the life of Napoleon; he was arrested, and condemned to death. Before the day was fixed for his execution, his wife, a highborn German lady, obtained admittance to the Emperor, and besought her husband's pardon, in that tone of deep and true feeling, which generally finds an answering chord to vibrate within the hearts of others. Napoleon was vexed-distressed -doubting-and deeply touched. The trembling wife stood before him, waiting a double doom. "Madame," he said, at length, "while such proof as I have here," (drawing a paper from a bundle, that lay on his table,) while such proof as I have here exists, I cannot pardon your husband.” As he spoke, he placed in her hand a paper, in which the crime was too surely acknowledged, under the

signature of the accused. She clasped the scroll firmly, and fixing her eyes on those of Napoleon, read something even as he turned them from her, which gave her courage to rush towards the hearth, —and, in an instant, the record had blazed and perished. The happy but trembling woman, once more sought the eyes of the Emperor, but in vain, one hand hid them from her view, and the other waived her from him. The sentence against her husband was revised, and proof of his guilt being imperfect, the doom of death was changed to that of banishment."

From Ems the travellers proceeded to Coblentz, to make a week's stay at the village of St. Goar, in the very heart of the loveliest scenery of the Rhine.

Much attention has lately been drawn to the system of education in Prussia, by Mrs. Austin's Translation of the Official Report of the state of it in that country. Mrs. Trollope bears her testimony in its favour:

"This system," she says, "already so prolific of the happiest results, has attracted the attention of all Europe; and England, among the rest, is said to be taking a lesson on this most important branch of government, from the benignant absolutism of Prussia. Assuredly she cannot do better; but let her not put in action one part of this immensely powerful engine, while another part, on which the whole of its movement depends, is left neglected. Woe betide the politician who shall labour to enforce, by law, the art of reading; while he slothfully, viciously, or from party spirit, continues to advocate the unrestricted freedom of a press, which fills every village shop with blasphemy, indecency, and treason! Let him not dare to imitate the pure and holy efforts of Prussia, to spread the blessing of knowledge through the land, till he has manfully set to work to purify the source from whence it is to flow. He, who shall best succeed in making the power of reading general throughout England, while this monstrous mass of impurity is permitted to spread its festering influence through the country, will have a worse sin to answer for, than if he forced all to drink of a stream he knew to be poisoned."

Repassing through Mayence and Frankfort, our tourist proceeds to Cassel, which is described as 'surprisingly beautiful,' and to Göttingen,-here she remarks,

"In Hanover, they have one University (Gottingen) with fifty professors, and forty private teachers; -sixteen public schools of the first rank, in which one hundred and thirty-five teachers are employed; -fourteen public schools of the second rank, with sixty four teachers, and about 350 elementary schools. Out of 900 students residing at Gottingen, about 600 are Hanoverians. At the public schools of the first order there are 2,200 pupils ;-at those of the second class, 2,100,- and at the elementary schools, 215,000. As the population of the kingdom of Hanover is only about 1,600,000, it is evident that the business of education is carried on there on a much more extended scale than in England, Ireland, or even in Scotland."

The route through the Hartz Mountains,

so interesting to geologists,-is less known than that which we have hitherto described, but we have no space for the author's description of this curious district, of which Goslar is the capital. We still more regret our want of room to select the spirited and powerful description of the ascent to the Brocken.-Our party slept in the Brocken-house,' an inn built of the most substantial materials, by the Prussian government; but we cannot refrain from giving the animated account of the night of tremendous storm which they passed there.

"Many must have cause to remember the fearful night that preceded the 1st of September, 1833. The gale that blew that night, caused more wrecks than any that has been recorded for years, and we felt it and heard it in a manner never to be forgotten. There was something new to me, and very awful, in the sound of the wind, as I listened to it through the hours of that tedious night. There were no trees,

be laid in the country whose manners and scenery are so graphically sketched in the interesting work—of which we now take our friendly leave.

REVIEW. Disquisitions on the Antipapal Spirit which produced the Reformation; its Secret Influence on the Literature of Europe in general, and of Italy in particular. By Gabrielle Rossetti, Professor of Italian Literature in King's College. Translated from the Italian by Miss Caroline Ward. In 2 Vols. Smith, Elder, and Co. London. 1834.

MAN never absolutely bowed himself down in an abject subjection wholly silent, beneath the tyranny of error and evil.

be either tamed or lost; and I thought that there were notes in its unmitigated voice more solemn and appalling than any to be heard elsewhere. At intervals a blast struck so rudely against our low, strong. set shelter, that I fancied it could never before have witnessed such a storm; and that we and it should speedily be scattered and shattered among the rocks of the mountain. But, when for a while the fury of the attack remitted, and that hollow sound succeeded, which in every storm seems to indicate an intermission of its strength, or its rage, there was something so solemn and so wild, in the mystic wailings which followed, that all the legends I had ever read rose to my memory; and more than once I caught myself listening, as if I expected to detect articulate sounds. It certainly requires very little invention in addition to a tolerably lively fancy, to tell that voices have been heard, and words spoken, amid such sounds as swept along the Brocken that night. Occasionally, fatigue conquered all the excitement of this singular position, and I slept for a few minutes; but by far the greater portion of the night was passed by me in listening to these unearthly noises,-and yet, strange to say, I was conscions of a species of pleasure in this occupation,-my spirits were in a sort of balancing see-saw,-between fear and enjoyment; and I felt as if I had for a while quitted the earth and all its ordinary emotions, and had attained, by accident. some other state of being."

From Hanover our tourists proceeded to Cologne, and thence to Rotterdam.

By the ample selections we have made from these volumes, our readers will conclude that we believe them to be well worthy their attention. Although the route is familiar to all, still our authoress has observed with a quick eye, and described with a fluent and animated pen. When a touching incident, a scene from life, or the finer features of landscape, attract her attention, we are reminded of those powers which form the principal qualifications of the successful novelist, and we think we shall prove a true prophet, when we conjecture that, at no distant period, we shall have a work announced by the writer of these volumes, the scene of which will

rance and baseness, obey in terror, there are always some who look with earnest indignation at the power that oppresses them and their fellow-beings, who trace the evils under which they suffer to their causes, and who seek with anxiety the means of communicating their thoughts and sentiments to one another. Such communication is always difficult, for the evil power is ever vigilant, and never hesitates to use the most destructive means against those who propagate the truths that are injurious to the authority it exercises, or to the full indulgence of its avarice and ambition. When we peruse the history of the church of Rome, from the time of Charlemagne to the bursting forth of the Reformation, we are at first struck by what has been termed "the quiescent horror" in which her soul-subduing edicts were heard and obeyed. The kings who knelt down to assist the priest of Rome to mount his mule, and submissively held his stirrup and gave the reins into his hands, were men of high courage and of deep policy in the affairs of their realms, but the opinion of their age, limited by the paucity of knowledge then acquired and diffused, was in favour of that spiritual usurpation against which they had previously experienced it was not safe for them to struggle. But though history, except in a few instances, present to our first casual inspection a dark blank of mental and superstitious slavery during those gloomy centuries, yet, if we examine with more scrutiny the remaining vestiges of the thought and intellect of that era, we shall discover a strong though latent stream of indignation and abhorrence which was continually rising with a powerful and increasing tide against the pride and oppression of Rome. The

As the termination of the tenth century approached, great alarm was felt by numbers of the clergy, and was spread wide among the laity, relative to the fulfilment of those striking passages in the Revelation: "And when a thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of prison, and shall go out to deceive the nations." c. xx. v. 7 & 8. And again "Babylon is fallen, and become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit." c. xviii. v. 2. These were applied to Rome, and many bold ecclesiastics did not hesitate to denominate the Pope, Satan and Antichrist, and to style

Rome, Hell and Babylon.

"Even before the year 1000, Claudius, archbishop of Turin, who was celebrated for the purity of his life and doctrine, though censured by some members of the church for his writings against the Pope, wrote: "No wonder that the members of Satan speak of

me thus."

"Of the Pope Hildebrand (Gregory VII.) who lived at the end of the prophesied thousand years, we read: "The raging Satan has been unchained, that the mighty arm of the

Lord may destroy him, that is, the Pope

Hildebrand."

"Lambert, the Monk of Aschaffenburg, writing of the same Pope, says:" Satan has broken forth from prison, and lays waste the Church."

"A little later, the English Carmelite, William Dysse, who was celebrated for his preaching in France or Spain, &c., indignant at the vices of the heads of the church, exclaimed :

"O, how worse than useless are the modern priests! Rather may they be called priests of Hell!"

In the ninth and tenth centuries "intrigue, and passion, and violence," as the author of Europe in the Middle Ages' observes, "were the only visible movers of the spiritual machine. It may readily be inferred, that in such elections (to the papal chair,) neither intellect nor moral worth was much regarded: youths almost beardless, and open debauchees, were sometimes chosen. Two famous patrician ladies, mother and daughter, of morals the most infamous, raised, during half a century, their lovers, or immediate connections, to that dignity. The former, Theodora, procured the tiara for her lover, John X. whom she had placed in the metropolitan see of Ravenna: the latter, Marozia, at the head of the opposite faction, caused him to be imprisoned, and successively couferred the papacy on two of her creatures. Though married, first to Alberic, marquis of Camerino, next to Guido, duke of Tuscany, she had never forsaken her criminal connections. She had been the mistress of Sergius III., and the son, whom she next raised to the popedom, John XI. was reasonably supposed to be the offspring of that connection."

"Arnulph. Bishop of Orleans, thus addressed the Council of Rheims, pointing to the Roman Pontiff: "Who is that seated upon a high throne, and radiant with purple and gold? I say, whom do you take him to be? Verily, if he thus follows uncharitableness, and is puffed up with his own learning, it must be Antichrist, sitting in the temple of God."

"And in the Council of Ratisbon, which was held much later, Everard, Bishop of Saltzburg, exclaimed: "He who is the servant of servants desires to be lord of lords: he profanes, he pillages, he defrauds, he robs, he murders, and he is the lost man who is called Antichrist." The last words prove habitually applied to

that the name was the Pope."-p. 5, 6.

In the reformations begun by the Walprophetic texts of the Apocalypse was open denses or Albigenses, the application of the and frequent; and while thousands of those unhappy people fell victims to the aroused vengeance of the papal see, the troubadours of Provence filled their poetic strains with In the next invectives__ against Rome. century, Petrarch and Dante, who drank as deeply from the same fountains of imagination and scriptural truth as their predecessors, the Provencal bards, with whose compositions they were well acquainted, were indignant at the enormous iniquities of the papal court. Among the prose writings of Petrarch, there is a volume entitled, Epistolarum sine titulo liber, a book of

work the author of the letters without a name.-From this curious Disquisitions" has made numerous extracts, of which the following is a short specimen.

"He writes from Avignon, then the papal see, to a confidential friend, thus :

"The sun never shone on a more shameless city than this western Babylon, where I am now dwelling: its river, the proud Rhone, is like the burning Cocytus or Acheron; and here reigns a proud race of fishermen, who are no longer poor. In the name of Jesus, but with the works of Belial, they imprison numbers of unhappy Christians, and then, after pillaging them of every thing, they condemn them to the flames." (Epis. 4.) "Woe to thy people, Christ Jesus, woe to thy people, Lord! Fountain of all mercies, suffer us to pour out our sorrows unto thee; for as our woes are great, so do our hearts cling to thee more fondly. Give not our souls, we implore thee, as a prey to the devouring beasts. Thou hast sorely tried thy people, like as silver is tried; we have passed through the flame, &c. ; we trusted in thee, who rulest over the waters, to still the fury of the waves, which destroyed the first fisherman ; and that we hoped thou wouldst have calmed them when his bark

decended to another: we trusted that these proud ones would have been humbled, and that thine arm would have overthrown thine enemies, for they are no longer lambs, but wolves; no longer fishermen, but pirates; no longer shepherds, but butchers; but their pride increases now more and more." (Epis. 10.)

"This ecclesiastical Dionysius oppresses and spoils our Syracuse-his delight is in others' woes; fishing in troubled waters, thieving in darkness." (Epis. 11) "O, Christ! thou who art all-powerful, hear our miseries, and put an end to this struggle, for our yoke is intolerably heavy. We are fervent and zealous, O Saviour, in thy service." (Epis. 15.)

In another letter, he dissuades a friend from going to that infernal city, and conjures him rather to visit any other part of the world. "Go where thou wilt, even

among the Indians, but come not to Babylon,

descend not, while living, into Hell.-No light is here, but all is confusion, darkness, and perplexity; (and to use the words of Lucan,) a night of intense wickedness; yes, a night of clouds and darkness, unspeakable misery, infinite anguish, and distress that has no end." (Epis. 12)

Horrified with the wickedness he saw, he escaped from Avignon, fearing probably that he might share in the works of Satan, and afterwards writing to a friend who was still there, he urged him to fly directly from the tabernacle of the devil, if he would not be damned for ever. "The Rhone surpasses Cocytus and Acheron, the rivers of hell. All that has been ever heard or read of perfidy, deceit, pride, and unbridled licentiousness; all that earth ever contained, in its different regions of impiety and immorality, is gathered and concentrated there. And if thou still lovest Christ, piety will give thee strength to fly from the sight of the enormities of his enemies. For thou art living in the midst of a people who have rebelled against him, who were ranged under his banners, and are fighting the battles of Satan ; in a word, a people impious, proud, greedy, and vain; with a heart of iron, a breast of steel, a will of lead, but soft of speech; a people who follow the example of Judas Iscariot, who betrayed his master with a kiss, saying, Hail, Master!' and of those Jews who clothed their Lord in purple, and crowned him with thorns, and then smote him, and spat upon him, and bowed the knee before him in bitter mockery, crying, 'Hail, King of the Jews!' And what else do those enemies of Christ continually?" (Epis. 15.)

It would indeed have been strange had there not been a current of sentiments like

From this, and many other passages, we clearly collect that Petrarch considered that the Apostolical succession had passed to the persecuted, and not to their persecutors, whom he calls Satan, demons, &c. &c.

20. SERIES, No. 46.--VOL. IV.

these flowing though the minds of good men, and seeking that communication which might enable them by their union to burst like united torrents upon the foul iniquities of papal Rome and wash it from the face of the earth; but the power of which they expressed their abhorrence was strongly established in the ignorance and superstition of mankind. Wickliffe, in England had preached that "the popes and cardinals were not ordained by God, but introduced by the devil;" and alluding to the thousand years of the Revelations, he said "from the begining of the tenth century down to this day, the consecrated host has been converted into a heresy, for it was then in the hands of the devil." The followers of Wickliffe were numerous, and more than 40,000 armed sectarians in Hungary avenged upon the Latin church the martyr. doms of Huss and Jerome of Prague. In the sixteenth century, Luther found the minds of men prepared to received doctrines which were no longer new to them. In his work on the captivity of Babylon, he pointed to Rome as Babylon, and called the pope Antichrist, but merely found him. self enabled, by circumstances, to publish with impunity, what had before been spoken of cautiously, or had been openly declared, with the devotion of self-sacrifice to the cause of divine truth.

But the imprudence of this open conduct was seen to be pernicious not only to the fearless victims but to the cause itself which suffered in its means of promulgation by these tenable immolations. They increased the hatred of mankind to the papal power, but they compelled men to seek security in secret means of communicating this hatred to one another. In 1243 Patarini, a sect of Lombardian dissenters from the Roman church, adopted signs by which they might know one another, and their discourses abounded in allegories.

The allegorical language was founded on the opinions then predominant, which were of two classes, profane, and sacred; and from these were derived the different styles of mystic figures, the mythological, and the scriptural; by means of which, the world was described under two aspects,-as what it was and what it ought to become. The ages of iron and gold; the deep vale of sin, and the lofty mountain of virtue; Avernus and Elysium, and other similar poetical imageries, are all ingenious mythological fancies. The scriptual afford a not less abundant store: first, we have Adam innocent, and sinful; in his first state placed in the Garden of Eden, on the top of a sunny mountain, full of flowers, fruits, and domestic animals; and in the last, banished to a world of tears and darkness, full of tribulation and 3 Q 190.-VOL. XVI.

Sorrow; there peace, abundance life, joy, and happiness; here, war, poverty, death, sadness, and misery. Then again, the woful slavery in Babylon, and the joyful return to Jerusalem; the iron age of the one, and the golden age of the other; an allegory taken from the old and the new Testament, as in the Revelation, the wicked Babylon, and the holy Jerusalem, are described in contrast. Again, the condition of mankind under the dominion of Satan, after the original sin, is contrasted with Christ's holy kingdom, after the divine redemption. And figures of allegory we may also call Hell and Paradise, with all the different descriptions and ideas associated with each. These were the weapons with which talent made war on power, turning the erudition of paganism and the sacred doctrines into dark meanings, in order to wound its enemies secretly, and leave them no field whereon to meet it. But to succeed in this warfare, with what skill must the writer have armed himself! with what dissimulation cloaked his meaning! what a variety of resources must he have had in store! One false step would have led him to a fatal precipice.

We have not space to exemplify, by quotations, the skill with which the allego. rical style was used in the eclogues of Petrarch and of Boccaccio. We must content ourselves with one extract,

"The 10th eclogue, which is called "The Dark Valley," opposed to the Sunny Mountain, describes the Infernal regions, where reigns a cruel shepherd named Plutarch, who torments those who dwell in these dismal shades, with a flock of wolves; Boccaccio here hints to a friend; "The tenth eclogue is called the Dark Valley, because in it I have treated of infernal deeds." (Manni.)

"In the centre of Tænarus there is a cave where the sun never penetrates, and where those are imprisoned who are shut out from heaven. Awatch-dog* stands at the mouth of the cave to guard the entrance, and when he sees any one approach, he wags his tail at them, if they seek to enter the cavern; but flies at them if they attempt to leave it without the permission of the prince. Within are dark woods and rivers: and its appearance is altogether dreadful. The valleys are surcharged with a dense marshy fog, and the hills are blackened with smoke. The ice never melts there; the gloom never clears away, and there is a constant slow fire burning without the need of fuel to feed it. The place is infested with serpents, which are the pests of the land; their tails lash us, their teeth bite and their black folds crush us. us, Plutarch and his dusky queen are seated upon a throne of rock; their faces are covered with

lank and matted hair, and around them hover squalid filth and disease, with every ill that brings death. The cruel shepherd, surrounded by this train, and guarded by snakes with bloody scales, amuses himself in torturing his wretched flock: they are never refreshed with the shears, nor cheered by the sound of the pipe; but spirits and sheep are alike terrified with the blasts of a horn, which he ever and anon sounds from his rocky seat to awaken the Furies. Then do the cruel sisters appear on the steeps, aud torment us with hydras; the ferocious ministers range the multitude, assign the respective punishments, and then hurl the condemned from the top to the bottom of the cliff. Plutarch himself casts the wolves into the flames, and, too often, alas! have I been flung into them in their company!" "O Lycidas, say no more, I implore thee! Thou hast been with those wolves, thou hast been hurled into the flames beneath."

It appears that this Lycidas, who relates all these things, is a figure of some wretch who was employed by the Inquisition as an informer against the sect. A wolf, and tormented by the great Wolf, nevertheless. Boccaccio tells his friend in confidence, that he called him Lycidas, "from Lyco, which signifies a wolf." (See Manni. p. 60.)

The leading object of Sig. Rossetti is to prove that the great poem of Dante, the Divina Commedia, is a continued allegory of this description; or in other words, an awfully mystic satire against papacy. To this end, and to the further purpose of decyphering and explaining that sublime and astonishing composition by the key which he conceives he has discovered to its inward meaning, the great body of his disquisitions is devoted; and, in this task, he has discovered great learning and ingenuity. The interpretation of the immortal poem of Dante has always been regarded as an object of importance, not merely in a literary point of view, but on account of the light that might be thrown by it upon the history and theology of the age in which it was written; yet there are critics who find sublimity in the dark obscure though which the bright truths that live and glow in the genius of Dante seem to be labouring to break, and who think that to the purely practical reader enough is perceptible to raise his admiration and to fix his attention. To prove to us that the whole is an enigma, or a combination of enigmas blended artfully together would in no degree add to our respect for the author; and we doubt much whether, with a sense of the ingenuity of the contrivances to give every combination of circumstances, and persons two separate and opposite meanings, deeply impressed upon our minds, we should ourselves again read the Inferno