you may show your superior good-humour by laughter, and unmeaning rattle of any sort; and if asked why you can be so silly on so serious an occasion, be sure to reply, because you would rather talk nonsense than hear it. Be discreet, however, in your folly, suddenly, and with a feeling tone, expressing your fear that the brave Poles will eventually be overpowered by the Russians, although the justice of their cause would seem to entitle them to the assistance of heaven; exclaiming, with a shrug of the shoulders-"Mais pour ca, je suis d'accord avec le Duc de la Ferte, que le bon Dieu est toujours du cote des gros battaillons." Flippant as it is, this remark will pass muster in French, and will enable you to introduce some cut and dry criticism upon the memoir-writers of that nation. Should any one express his surprise that you are so good a critic as well as wag, fail not to reply, "My dear sir, one cannot be always jesting; and I am quite of Lord Chesterfield's opinion, that a wise man should live quite as much within his wit as his income." You may now express a hope that the individual for whom the party are waiting may meet with his desert by coming after dinner, and verify the monkish rule-pro tarde venientibus ossa. Thus will you have sported criticism, French, and Latin-all very proper and telling before dinner, though they might not be so appropriate at, and still less after that meal. Lay it down as a general rule that the jokes the most highly relished during dinner are those which have reference to eating, as if they were suggested by the viands before you: and that you may diminish the supply of wit and observance of decorum as the consumption of wine increases. After the first few bottles, laughter becomes contagious and involuntary, your sorriest and most hacknied jests serving the purpose as well as your newest and happiest hits Such noisy cachinnations are but the ascending fumes of the champagne, and when you find that a drunken fool can excite them as successfully as a sober jester, you would do well to retire, and not waste your stock of facetiæ upon uudiscerning bacchanals. Dinner being served, you may launch such of your soup-jokes as you happen to recollect. Remind the company that when Birch, the pastry-cook, commanded one of the city regiments, he obtained the soubriquet of Field-marshal Tureen; say something smart about his forcedmeat balls, and pleasantly remark that the syllabubs of that artist are sure to be unrivalled, since every schoolboy must be aware that Birch makes the best whips. Upon the subject of fish, innumerable good things may be sported; and even the sauce will afford fair excuse for ladling out some of your own, as you will, of course, allude to the ambassador from Louis Quatorze, who, in his first despatches from London, complained heavily that he had been sent among a barbarous people, who had twenty-seven different religions, and only three fish-sauces. When a moment of favourable silence occurs, you may quote James Smith's happy epigram upon Harvey's Sauce, and his namesake the moralist

U

"Two Harveys had an equal wish

To shine in separate stations, The one invented sauce for fish, The other-Meditations:

“Each has his pungent power applied
To aid the dead and dying;
This relishes a sole when fried,

That saves a soul from frying."

If there be a hare at table, and it is under-done, as is generally the case, you may jocosely protest that you would not have dressed for dinner, had you been aware that the dinner was not to be dressed for you, and declare, with an offended look, that the cook ought, in common justice, to undergo the fate of Guatemozin. Some, perhaps, may be puzzled, but it is well to appear a little dark at times; they who understand the allusion will approve it; they who do not, will give you credit for erudition or extensive reading.-(Tom Shackleford a deep reader! Heaven bless the mark!) After this, you must assume your waggish look-for a smirk on a jester's face is sure to beget an anticipatory titter-and, continuing your allusion to the cook, exclaim, "Poor woman! I don't know why she should be roasted, though she cannot roast; for she was hired as a cook, pot as a hair-dresser!" Upon this, and upon all occasions, whether you fail or succeed, you must ride home upon your own horse-laugh; for a roar is catching, though wit be not.

Old anecdotes will acquire a sort of novelty if you confidently swear that they occurred to yourself. Boldly affirm, therefore, that when you were lately dining with a merchant in the city, and he tossed the carving knife over the bannisters, because it was blunt, you rose up and threw the leg of mutton after it; and that when asked the cause of this singular proceeding, you calmly replied "My dear Sir, I thought you were going to dine down stairs!" Apropos to leg of mutton, tell the story of Mallebranche, who had so excited his imagination that he fancied this joint to be perpetually hanging to his nose, and could not be cured of his delusion till a doctor, concealing a leg of mutton beneath his cloak, pinched the patient's nose till it bled, and then letting the joint fall at his feet, persuaded him that he had performed a marvellous operation. Apropos to noses; quote from Grammont's Memoirs—“Where could I get this nose?' said Madame D'Albert, observing a slight tendency to redness in that feature. 'At the sideboard, Madame,' answered Cotta.'” You may now

quote from de Grammont ad libitum, or pillage the Greek anthology for jokes upon noses; or returning to legs of mutton, make some pleasant allusion to the gigots of the ladies, and express your opinion that their sleeves are fashioned so preposterously large, in order that there may be sufficient room in them to laugh at them; not forgetting to insinuate, that female dresses are made like tinder in order to catch the sparks, and be all ready for a good match, &c. &c. In cutting a slice of tongue, you may allude to the strange fancy of Silenus, when he tells the Cyclop that if he eats the tongue of Ulysses he will ac

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quire all his eloquence; or express a malicious hope that your censorious friend, Sir Reginald, will not bite his own tongue, as he would infallibly be poisoned. If your host asks how you like the Madeira, exclaim-" My good friend, it is sweeter than the wine which Maron, the son of Bacchus, gave to Ulysses, or than that which occasioned Silenus to ejaculate so fervently Papaiapox! Babai!" Pronounce this with a mock solemnity, as if quizzing your own pedantry, and it will astonish the women and the groundlings, who will whisper to one another, "Tom Shackleford, with all his waggery, is a scholar and a man of reading." Follow up this classical hit by observing, that if we were to judge by present appearances in Europe, we might exclaim

"Prospicimus modo quod durabunt tempore longo
Fœdera, nec patriæ pax citó diffugiet:"

but that, in a few months, we may have to read every thing backwards, and that then the lines will run

''Diffugiet citó pax patriæ, nec fœdera longo

Tempore durabunt quod modo prospicimus." This, if cleverly managed, and copies furnished to the admiring guests, ought to make your fortune for a whole season, besides procuring you a prodigious reputation for Latin and learning with all those who are ignorant of both. During the second course you may tell the story of the silly French Marquis, who, being asked by his cook how he would have the wild ducks dressed, desired that they might be made into Bœuf a la mode; or you may observe of the green goose,

if it happen to be tough, that you suspect it wants to make a convert of you, as it seems to belong to the old Propaganda Society. Omit not to notice that Peter Pindar called spruce beerdeal-board broth; that Hook has denounced scolloped oysters as children's ears in sawdust, and brill as poor-house turbot; and that Bentley declared, with his usual dogmatism—“ Sir, if you drink ale, you'll think ale."

But it is useless, my dear Tom, to multiply examples when your own good taste (I speak literally of your palate) will suggest to you the properest means for maintaining your reputation, and procuring numerous invites from all parties. To secure this object you must not belong to any political faction, or rather you must be cosmopolitan in your views, and ingratiate yourself with all. Flat, and flippant, and stale as may appear some of these facetiæ upon paper, they will go off with good eclat when assisted by sympathy and champagne. After the second bottle you need take very little pains; anything will do; a bad pun is sure of a good shriek, and nothing better, therefore, should be disbursed, or rather dismouthed. Verbum sat: I shall be delighted my dear Tom, to find that you follow these instructions strictly and successfully, for by eating other people's dinners you will spare mine, and if you become a sufficient favourite with the public to repay me the hundred pounds I lent you last spring, you will become a greater favourite than ever with your affectionate and disinterested uncle, NIC. SHACKLEFORD.

ITALY has probably produced more of that distinctive quality called genius, than any other nation of Europe. What she was in the days of antiquity we scarcely know, farther than she was mistress of the world. Greece seems then to have borne away the prize of genius. But, before the question can be decided, we must remember that ancient Greece was exactly in the circumstances which are most favourable to the expansion of the intellect, while ancient Rome, from the time when she was relieved from the pressure of perpetual war, was exactly in the circumstances most unfavourable to that expansion;-that Greece was a group of republics, which even, when under the dominion of Rome, were less enslaved than tranquillized, while Italy was a solid despotism, shaken only by civil wars, which at once riveted the fetters of the despotism, impoverished the nobles, and corrupted the people.

But on the revival of Europe from the ruin and the sleep of the dark ages, Italy was placed under the original circumstances of Greece: the land was a group of republics; all was sudden

In

opulence, wild liberty, and fiery enthusiasm. She became first the merchant, then the warrior, of Europe; then the poet, then the painter, of the world. From that period she was the universal school of the arts, those higher arts which regulate and raise the character of mankind, government, political knowledge, law, theology, poetry, not less than those graceful arts which soothe or decorate human life; her music, sculpture, painting, the drama, the dance, were unrivaled. all periods, when a science had grown old, and the world began to look upon it as exhausted, Italy threw a new stream of life into it, and it began its career again for new triumphs. An Italian revived geography by the discovery of a new hemisphere, and revived astronomy by giving us the telescope, and throwing open the gates of the starry world. An Italian awoke us to a new knowledge of the mechanism of the airpump, the barometer, and the pendulum. An Italian made architecture a new attribute of man, by hanging the dome of St. Peter's in the air. An Italian made the wonders of ancient painting credible by surpassing them, and giving to man

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*kind an art which now can never die. While Italy continued a warring nation, all the great leaders of the European armies were either Italians or the pupils of Italy. The Sforza, Castruccia, l'arma, Montecuculi, were the very lights of martial science; and who was the subverter of Europe and its kings in our own day? who was the inventor of a new art of war, and the terrible realizer of his own fearful but brilliant theory? An Italian!

This universal supremacy in things of the intellect is genius. All was original; for genius is originality. All was powerful, practical, and made to impress its character upon the living generation, and the generations to come. For the highest genius is most practical: genius is no trifler; it may be fastidious; it may love to dream a world of its own; it may look with scorn on the feeble and tardy progress by which humbler powers attain the height which it reaches with a wave of its wing; but when it once comes to its task, and treads the ground, its pressure is felt by the vigour of its tread. It moves direct to its purpose-its purpose is worthy of its powers; simplicity, strength, and force, are its essence, and it leaves the evidence of its roble interposition, perhaps in the overthrow of kingdoms, perhaps in their renovation, but, in all its acts, leaves the proof of faculties given with the object of changing the direction, or renovating the strength, of the general human mind.

To come to the immediate purpose of the narrative. In the war of the Russians and Imperialists on the Ottoman Porte, which ended with the peace of Oczakow, Dec. 1791, it was remarked that the fortune which had so signally. accompanied the Imperialist armies in the earlier parts of the campaign, as signally deserted them towards its close; and that Turkey, which had been saved by little short of miracle from the first incursion of the Austrian army, concluded by not merely repelling those arms, but placing herself in a higher rank than she had held before. The Osmanlis of course attributed this singular change to the protection of their prophet; but those who were unable to lift their eyes to the paradise where he sits on sofas of eternal green velvet, drinking pearl and ruby sherbet, and surrounded by Adalisques surpassing all the Circassians extant, found a sufficient reason in the good fortune which had raised Hassan Caramata from the rank of a camel-driver in the camp, to the high and responsible situation of Aga of the Janizaries.

There was but little known of Hassan in his former career, as a matter of course, for Turkey has not yet had among the invaders of its quiet any amateurs in biography, collectors of " secret memoirs," or compilers of autographs. It was taken for granted that he was the son of somebody, and that was enough; but it was seen that he was a capital soldier, and that was more satisfactory to the general interest than if he had his veins incarnadined by the blood of all the Osmans. He had, besides, got a character, which effectually precluded all applications for his his

tory from his own lips. He was not merely one of the best handlers of the scimetar in the dominions of the faith, but one of the most unhesitating in its use. He was known to have cut from the skull to the chin, at a single sweep, one of his own captains, who had ventured to growl at an order in the field; and his habits were of a keen and vindictive vengeance, which above all other things turns the edge of curiosity.

It is perfectly well known that there was no man in the dominions of the Sultan, whom that Sultan so thoroughly feared; yet when Hassan was but a captain of the Delhis of the body-guard, he had established so decided a character for bringing things to a speedy issue with the scimitar or the carbine, that he received plumes, diamonds, and embroidered bridles and saddles without number, under the pretext of his adroitness in riding or javelin-throwing, but, as was well known, for his being able to strike off the neck of a bull at a blow, for his being the most unfailing shot in the service, and from, what was more to the purpose, the universal knowledge that an angry glance from the Sultan himself, would have been merely the preliminary to a trial of speed between them, whether the Sultan's Icoglans should first have Hassan's head in a sack, or Hassan should have sent an ounce ball through the heart of his angry master. The question was easily settled, for the Sultan must act by proxy, which, however sure, is slow, while Hassan would act in person, which is at once sure and swift. The consequence was, that this fiercest of men and most uncourtly of courtiers was suffered to take his way, treating Sultan and slave with nearly equal want of ceremony, and still, to the universal astonishment, advancing in military rank. It was notorious, too, that he openly scoffed at all the accredited modes of rising in the body-guard of any nation under the sun. He neither made a party among the clerks of the Divan, by promising them double allowances when he should be Vizier, nor bribed the Sultanas, nor told fables of his superior officers, nor made a lower salam to the Vizier, the Mufti, or the Capudan Pasha, than to his own Korseruldeer. On the contrary, but a short time before the fight of Tchesme, he had a furious altercation with the Capudan, in the presence of the Sultan himself. He tore the beard and struck off the turban of that fortunate slave and miserable admiral, pronounced that, as he had been a slippermaker in his youth, he was fit for nothing but to make slippers to the end of his days, struck him with the sheath of his scimitar in the face, and declared that as surely as he took the command of the Turkish fleet, so surely would he either leave it on a sandbank, or in flames, or in the enemy's hands;-three predictions which were all verified in one fact. For all the world now knows that the Capudan actually first stranded his fleet, saw it strike to the Russian flag, and then saw it burn to cinders on the shores of the memorable bay of Tchesme. The whole assemblage of Pashas round the head of the Moslemans were indignant at this breach of decorum, but

silence is the virtue of courts, even in Turkey. They waited for the Sultan's indignation to speak. But it said nothing. And Hassan Caramata quietly stalked through the midst of a hundred and fifty diamond-hilted daggers, and ten thousand carved and filagreed muskets, all thirsting for his blood. Yet neither dagger nor trigger moved. All eyes were fixed on the Sultan, and his were fixed on the towering height and undaunted stride of the Delhi as he moved from the hall. In half an hour after, every Pasha in Constantinople saw, to their utter astonishment, Hassan Caramata, the accursed, the ferociousgalloping along the valley of the Limes, in command of the Sultan's escort, shooting off the necks of bottles as usual with his infallible balls, and throwing the javelin with a force that made competition desperate, and drew loud applause even from the gravity of the Commander of the Faithful himself. This was decisive. The Capudan Pasha put to sea, content with the loss of his beard and turban, provided it were not followed by the loss of the head to which they belonged. The Pashas went back to their governments, to consult the soothsayers on the new kind of magic by which the mightiest of the mighty allowed the meanest of the mean to tear beards and turbans in their presence. But the Vizier instantly sent for the Delhi, complimented him orientally upon the grace of his manners, and the respect for the best of masters, which distinguished him among the children of the Prophet, invested him with a scimitar belt of honour, gave him his favourite charger, and gave into his hand the commission of chief of the body-guard.

Joseph and Catherine had combined to rob the sultan of whatever they could. Joseph longed for Belgrade, Catherine for Bender; and with a hundred and fifty thousand gallant savages between them, there was a fair prospect of their getting any thing that was to be paid for by blood. Hassan saw the Vizier and the army pass in review before the Sultan. "The Delhi smiles," said the sovereign," does he not think the Janizaries invincible?"-"Yes," was the answer. “They are invincible against every thing but cannon, bayonets, and men. The black beards (the Austrians) will trample them, the yellow beards (the Russians) will trample them. The Vizier will leave every thing behind but his brains, and the troops every thing but their hearts.' The Sultan, with a familiarity extended to no other of his officers, enquired how it was possible to convey either, after leaving the man behind. "Simply," said Hassan, "because no man can lose what he never possessed." The answer would have cost the Vizier himself fifty heads if he had them; but Hassan seemed guarded by a spell. The result of his last retort was an instant commission of Aga of the Janizaries.

The prophecy turned out true. The Vizier was beaten on all occasions; the Janizaries were beaten until the sound of an Austrian trumpet sent them flying to all points of the compass. The Russians were raising their batteries against

Bender; Cobourg and his chasseurs were carry- va ing off Pashas daily from the suburbs of Belgrade; the war was like a war of sportsmen against the wood-pigeons of Walachia. When suddenly the whole scene changed. Patroles cut off, convoys taken, detached corps of cavalry disappearing as if they had sunk into the earth, excited the utmost astonishment in the combined camp. The soldiers began to think the ghouls and vampires had made a sortie upon them, and that they were fighting with things of the air or the grave. Cobourg proposed to retreat from this perilous ground, but was attacked on that night, and, after a loss of some thousand infantry, driven on the road to Transylvania. The Russian general wrote for reinforcements from the frontier garrisons. They marched, but were never heard of. From the time of the famous battle of Forhani, in which the allies cut up the Turkish line, they never gained an advantage. All was famine, flight, loss, and wonder. The secret came out at last. The Vizier still commanded, but his age was venerable, and he had given up all duties but those of smoking his calaun, and perfuming his beard. His asthma disqualified him from the open air, and he consequently regulated the affairs of war and peace, asleep and awake, on his sofa, and with as much dexterity at one time as at another. But Caramata was in the field. The Delhi had brought some corps of his favourite troops with him, and, what was better, he had brought the Delhi spirit with his troops. Before a month was past, every Spahi was as eager for a trial of his scimitar on the Austrian helmets as if he had ate nothing but opium from the beginning of the campaign. The Janizaries brightened their kettles anew, and the sight of the horsetail was soon a terror to the platoons of the yellow beards. Hassan was still the same gloomy, solitary, and incomprehensible being; more sarcastic than ever, and more ferocious in quarters, in camp, and in the field. He had but one punishment for all offences-the edge of the scimitar. "We come to the field to slaughter men, not to save cowards," was his expression, when he ordered a troop of his Delhis to ride in upon a regiment of Janizaries that had suffered itself to be surprised. "You reproach us Turks with cruelty," said he one day to an Austrian general, who came to propose a cessation of arms," but the only difference between us is, that you are hypocrites, and we are not. You call yourselves soldiers, and you murder all that you can; we call ourselves murderers, and we act up to the profession."

Hassan at least acted up to his word; for on the very night which saw the Austrian return to his Prince with a fierce message of defiance, the whole of the imperial foragers were cut off, and the regiments of hussars which guarded them sent to the right about with such expedition, that they left three-fourths of their number under the hoofs of the Spahis' horses.

Winter began to blow, freeze, and sleet from the tops of the Carpathians; and the allies, fully satisfied with having been beaten for three months

without intermission, and already harassed almost to death, rejoiced in the sight of the first sheets of snow on the hills, as an omen of winter quarters. But the Aga of the Janizaries told his troops that now was the time to smite both black beard and yellow-that cowards required warm weather to put blood into their veins, but that brave men could fight in all weathers. He grew more adventurous than ever, dashed with his Spahis at every thing that appeared within a horizon of a hundred miles, broke into the detached camps of the allied forces, took cannon, ammunition, and wagons, and before a month was out, sent a pile of standards to Constantinople large enough to hang the ceiling of the Santa Sophia, and beards and mustaches enough to stuff all the footstools of the Seraglio. Joseph and Catherine were astonished. Alarm followed, and then wisdom. They sent a proposal for an armistice to the Vizier. The Vizier for once laid aside his pipe, and prepared to forward the envoy to the Sultan, Caramata came in during the conference, ordered the envoy to be seized, gave him into the hands of his Delhis, and turned him out of the camp, with a solemn declaration, that the next envoy should have his choice of the bastinado, or the mouth of the largest howitzer in the Turkish lines. The Vizier said, " Allah il Allah," resumed his pipe, and said no more. The envoy was escorted to the enemy's camp, and on that night Cobourg found his tents on fire about his ears, and was forced to make his way as well as he could towards the Barmat. Within three nights after, the redoubtable Suwarrow was forced to fight his way through ten thousand gallant horse, who stripped him of every gun and fragment of baggage. Bender and Belgrade were now both effectually cleared. The Sultan sent his Aga the Cheleuk* of honour; the Vizier was ordered to Constantinople, there to cure his asthma by the fresh air of the Bosphorus, and Hassan Caramata was appointed in his room, first counsellor to the king of kings, Commander of the armies of the faithful, and vanquisher of all the unbelievers and Kafirs under the sun.

The campaign began again: Leopold had succeeded Joseph, and he resolved to distinguish himself at three hundred miles' distance by the cheap heroism of a cabinet warrior. He sent an autograph letter to Cobourg, commanding him to signalize the new reign by a victory. Cobourg took the field with a hundred battalions and sixty squadrons. He moved to the field famous for its name, half Greek half Slavonic; but more famous still, for its demolishing the virgin laurels of the Emperor. At Tyrkagukuli he pitched his huge camp, gave a banquet in honour of the new hero of the House of Hapsburg, and, after it, rode out to fix upon the spot in which he was to annihilate the Infidels.

In half an hour he came flying back into his lines, with Hassan and fifteen thousand of the finest cavalry in the world thundering after him. Never had Prince of the Holy Roman Empire a

* Diamond plume.

narrower escape of being sent to his illustrious forefathers. The sixty squadrons were booted and mounted just in time to be charged, rode over, and broke into fragments. The aide-decamp who carried the news of the battle to Vienna, announced that the Prince had gained an unequalled victory, but " that he required reinforcements to follow up the blow." Hassan sent no aide-de-camp to Constantinople, but he sent a wagon containing as many Crosses and Eagles, St. Andrew's and St. Peter's, as would have paved the audience-hall of the Seraglio, or made buckles and bracelets for the whole haram, Nubians, Kislar Aga and all. The Austrians were thunderstruck, but they sung Te Deum. The Turks followed the flying Prince, and stripped him of his standards, guns, and foragers, as they had done the Russians before. The Allies proposed an armistice, in pity, as they declared, for the waste of Moslem blood. The Turks galloped on, and, without any similar compliments to the spirit of philosophy, cut up the hundred battalions as they had cut up the sixty squadrons. The days of Ruperti seemed to be come again, and Leopold the victorious began to think of clearing out the fosse, and rebuilding the ramparts of Vienna.

But the city of the Danube was no longer to be besieged by a Turk, nor saved by a Pole. Hassan Caramata disappeared. His scimitar, worth a province in jewels; his state turban, embroidered by the supreme fingers of the Sultana Valide herself; his horse furniture, the present of the Sultan, and too brilliant for the eye to look upon, except under its web of Shiraz silk twist -all remained in his tent, and were all that remained of the famous Hassan Caramata Vizier. A crowd of reports attempted to account for his sudden disappearance. By some he was thought to have fallen in a skirmish, into the midst of which he was seen plunging, with his usual desperate intrepidity, a few days before. But this, the Delhis, to a man, swore by their beards, was an utter impossibility; for what swordsman in the Austrian cavalry could stand for a moment before the fiery blade of Hassan? Others thought that he had been sent for privately by the Sultan, as usual, to converse on matters of state, and have his head cut off. But this was disputed too -for fond as Sultans may naturally be of cutting off heads, Hassan's was one that kept the Sultan's on the shoulders of the Father of the Faithful. The Roumeliotes, however, began to discover, according to the custom of their country, that there was witchcraft in the business, from beginning to end. They remembered Hassan's countenance-the' withered lip, never smiling except with some sarcasm that cut to the soulthe solemn, foreboding, melancholy brow-the look of magnificent beauty, but tarnished by bitter memory, or fearful sufferings. For all those, what manufacturer could be found but the old enemy of man? Zatanai himself had shaped the face of Hassan; and why not shape his fortunes too? This accounted for his coming, none knew whence-his gaining the Sultan's favour,