down to

leader of the Revolution of Naples, his name would go posterity along with those of Quiroga, Riego, and Sepulveda; as the patient and dignified sufferer, the inflexible patriot, the generous and philosophic soldier, he has earned a reputation and an immortality of his own.-Examiner, Jan. 1822.

ART. 22.--Memoirs of the last Ten Years of the Reign of George the Second. By HORACE WALPOLE, Earl of Orford. From the origi nal MSS. 2 Vols. 4to. London.

UNTIL within these few years, the French were supposed to bear away the palm in that slip-shod mixture of history, biography, and anecdote, which is usually given to the world under the denomination of Memoirs. Those who in habit, manners, and opinions, approach nearest to the French, most excel in this composition-that is to say, people of a certain rank, who by a conventional system of manners and deportment, resemble one another throughout Europe. The whole secret of these manners consists in a species of polite insincerity and external forbearance; but as nature will not be balked, in proportion as she is unreasonably repressed, will she break out into covert satire, sly observance, and refined duplicity. Chesterfield, H. Walpole, and Lady M. W. Montague, are all instances of this truth in England, and almost every body of the olden time in France. The spirit of freedom in the British theory of government, no doubt exceedingly qualifies the written consequences in the former. In the midst of the frivolous instruction of a Chesterfield, a manly and British spirit is occasionally predominant; and something of native and genuine principle will often qualify the puerile personality, fiddle-faddle, and fondness for little wit, of Horace Walpole. As to Lady Mary, she was more of a man than either of them; but all three abound in the prejudice of station, and in that sort of detraction, irony, and persiflage, which is at once so malicious and so attractive. Whilst so adapted, however, for the gratification of curiosity, and the indulgence of a relish for the piquant and sparkling, we doubt if this class of writers be favourable either to the elevation of principle, or to the establishment of general truths. An exhibition of the springs which move very artificial life may be amusing, without being instructive; and tend rather to confound than inform. In looking at the progress and fate of nations, the freaks and fancies of the mob of the powerful, the wealthy and the fashionable, seem but to resemble the gambols of the ephe

mera of the pool, and to have the slightest possible connection with the less visible but ever moving current of circumstance, by which that fate is regulated. In looking at the old body of French Memoirs, from those of Cardinal de Retz downwards, how little of general truth is to be collected-how little of a nature to produce an anticipation even of mighty event which may be very near at hand!

Those readers, to whom the liveliness and anecdote of this author form the chief attraction, will look blank at a great portion of parliamentary detail, and allusions to petty and unimportant party manœuvre ; but so larded is this meagre, and to say the truth, neither very candid nor very able statement, with anecdote, bon-mot, and secret history, the disappointment of the lighter student will be nothing compared to that of the more grave personage, who looks to it for a magazine of important historical document. The judgment of Lord Orford as a politician, appears to us to have been of no very high order, a case very common with Dillettanti and dabblers in virtu. His appreciation of public men and of their conduct in this publication, is capricious, contradictory, and inconsistent in the extreme; and he is evidently governed by nothing but his humour at the moment of writing.

Our general conclusion therefore is, that these Volumes are to be prized for precisely what the Letters of the Noble Author are so valued-the brilliancy and piquancy of their scandal, detraction, secret history, whimsicality, anecdote, and bon-mot. The only difference is, that these precious baubles are somewhat more obscured by heaviness in the setting, from which follows the necessary consequence, that they will be purchased at a higher price. This, however, cannot be too much for the gens comme il faut, for the pleasure of perusing a pleasant portion of wit and sarcasm at the expense of another's grandfathers and grandmothers, and, in many instances, of the fathers and mothers of the same.-Examiner, March, 1822.

ART. 23.-Beobactungen auf Reison in und ausser Deutschland von D. A. H. NIEMEYER.

HAMBURG is the native place of D. Augustus Herman Niemeyer, who offers to the European public a series of Observations made during his Travels in and out of Germany, and of Reflections on the Events and Persons of his own Times. He states, in a preliminary discourse, that he is now nearly seventy years

of

age, that he enjoys a lively memory, and recollects the original impressions made upon him by successive political occurrences from the battle of Rossbach to the death of Napoleon; and he proposes to comment on what still appears to him important among his various reminiscences. A beginning is made with those Travels in England which first elevated the author's point of view above national considerations to the European level.

The author learnt English of his school-fellow, Samuel Thornton, whom he met fifty years afterwards in London, a director of the Bank of England. Young Thornton gave him a Common Prayer Book; and he records the strong impression made on him by the funeral service, and especially by the sentence, "We commit this body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust."

Mr. Niemeyer was sent to the university in 1771, but hurries over his college years without specifying the object or place of study, which was probably Halle. Fragments, dated 1770, but indited afresh, describe Brunswick, Hanover, and Bremen, in which last town, he laments to say, has not yet been realized that coalition of the Lutheran and Calvinist churches, under a form of liturgy comprehending Unitarians, which throughout Protestant Germany has almost every where else taken place. The celebrated astronomer, Olbers, from whose brain sprang the planet Pallas, is characterized as an active and benevolent physician. Under the great church at Bremen is a catacomb called the Bleykeller. Anciently it was customary, if any foreigner died at Bremen, there to place the body until orders concerning the interment could be received from the kinsfolks. Bodies so deposited did not putrefy, but changed, as in the catacombs of Toulouse, into a sort of mummy. The corpse of a Countess Stanhope, not yet claimed by the family, has been preserved there above 200 years. The Rathskeller, famous for its huge casks of old hock, is also described, and the wine is compared, in the words of Klopstock, to the German characterGlowing, not boisterous, clear, strong, and void of empty foam."

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Fragments of a journey in Holland succeed, which are dated in 1806. As characteristic of the religious turn of the people, it is stated, that a Family Bible, edited with explanatory notes by the learned orientalist, Dr. Palm, at Leyden, had been subscribed for by 3000 persons. After visiting Amsterdam and

Rotterdam, Mr. Niemeyer embarked at Helvoetsluys for Harwich, which he reached in fifty-six hours. He lands, laughs at the Martello towers, dislikes the squat compactness of an English dwelling, ascends, with great admiration and delight, the London coach, of which a vignette engraving is given. The ever-thickening throng of houses, carriages, and men, which announce the approach to the metropolis, produces a shining impression. The foot-pavements and the shops dazzle in their turn. At length, the general features grow familiar, and the details of admiration succeed.

In the chapter on Manners, some curious remarks occur on the singular way in which the English spend their Sunday. No other Protestant nation, no other Christian nation, keeps the sabbath in so unjewish and unscriptural a manner. The literary ignorance of John Knox appears to have occasioned this unclassical blunder, which is now consecrated by habit and by law. The Jews at all periods have interpreted the decalogue, as commanding a merry holiday on the sabbath, a relaxation from toil, a suspension of cares, an exhilaration of the spirits, a cheer to the bodily frame. They danced at the feast of the Lord in Shiloh, (Judges xxi, 19.) These early dances of worship did not at all accord with later ideas of decency; for when David brought up the ark of God from Obed-edom, (2 Samuel, vi, 20,) the daughter of Saul reproached the king with having, like one of the vulgar, uncovered himself shamefully. After the building of the temple, a greater degree of refinement and decorum was introduced, and the sacred dances were confided to an appropriate trained band of dancers; but these ballets were continued as a part of weekly worship; and some of the psalms were set to minuet and jig tunes, for the purpose of being performed du ring the dance; for instance, the 149th, (see *Lorin's commentary,) and the 150th. These dances, accompanied with songs, were gradually improved into operas, which were regularly exhibited on sabbath-days in the temple itself; and some of these operas had so Aristophanic a character as to have represented the scourging of Heliodorus. After the conquest of Judea by Alexander and his successors, the Greek language became so prevalent at Jerusalem that these sacred dramas were given in Greek, and among the Apocrypha has been preserved a chorus

* In utroque psalmo nomine chori intelligi posse cum certo instrumento homines ad sonum ipsius tripudiantes: and again, de tripudio, seu de multitudine sultantium et concinnentium, minime dubito.

of one of them, entitled the Song of the Three Holy Children. Ezekiel, a Jewish poet, who flourished about forty years before Christ, composed a tragedy on the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, of which fragments remain. The Spanish mystery, Las Profetias de Daniel, has perhaps traditionally preserved another canvas as ancient as Christianity.

There is no reason to suppose that the early Christians in the least swerved from the notorious practice of the Jews, or that they objected to sacred dramas and mysteries on Sundays, when these were compatible with their own religion. All temples were then theatres; and it was against frequenting pagan temples that the declamations of the fathers were directed. Christianity was first taught throughout the north of Europe, by means of the stage. The mysteries and miracle-plays of the first missionaries had familiarized the prominent incidents of biblical history, long before the art of reading could have been called in to communicate the chronicles themselves. If modern missionaries had as much zeal and sense as those of the church of Rome, they would adopt in savage nations the same method of address, and would represent, chiefly in pantomime, and with illustrative scenery, the Creation, the Deluge, the Exodus, the adventures of David, and the miracles of Christ. Religion is less beloved, and the stage less moral, in consequence of the dissolution of their original alliance. Let it not be feared that religion would be degraded by thus mingling with our pleasures; this depends on the skill and excellence of the poet. Who that has seen Racine's Athalie performed at the operahouse in Paris, but must allow that one evening spent at such an exhibition impresses more indelibly the finest passages of scripture, (read the chorus Tout l'univers est plein de sa magnificence,) and enlivens more powerfully a feeling for the beauties of piety, than a month's attention to the lessons at church? Another valuable end is attained. By the learned and appropriate character of the decorations, a curious knowledge of Jewish habits and ceremonies is widely scattered among the people, and distinctly engraved on the memory. The pulpit often labours to communicate such information: but how slowly, how imperfectly it succeeds! A theatric chorus of Levites in procession, a scenic inside view of the temple, teaches more at a glance concerning Jewish costume and ritual than a week's poring over Godwin's Moses and Aaron. In Oxford and Cambridge, at least, and as a mean of instructing theologic students, who in England