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of steam; and bellows, formed with this view, gave it free passage into the organ. The first which was constructed on this new principle, or, at least, the first which appeared in the west, was that placed by Louisle-Debonnaire in the great Rotunda at Aix-la-Chapelle. A short time afterwards skilful constructors of organs made their appearance in Germany. There were many at Rome towards the end of the ninth century. Pope John the Eighth had drawn them thither. From Rome the art quickly spread through all Italy. In the tenth century bellows-organs appeared in England; one, amongst others, was placed in Westminster Abbey in London.

The mechanism of this instrument was still very clumsy; as it had no less than four hundred pipes, and twenty-six pair of bellows, and required the most power ful exertions of twenty strong men to play it. The keys were five or six inches in breadth; and altogether so rudely constructed, that the musician was obliged to use his feet instead of his hands. In the thirteenth century, however, they began to reduce the size of the keys; so much so, that the performers played with their fingers, as in the present day. The method of placing separate rows of keys, one over the other, was invented at the same time; and by degrees the fabrication of the new lip was perfected, which afforded the means of imitating on the organ the sound of many musical instruments playing in concert.

In the organ constructed by Glabren, master of the manufactory of Ratisbon, and which had been ordered for the Abbey of Weingaren in Suabia, were counted no less than sixty-six different lips; consequently sixty-six regulators, which governed the sound of sixty-six thousand six hundred and sixty-six pipes. Arriving at this point of gigantic complication, the organ was rather a kind of monument than a real instrument of music.

NIAGARA WHIRLPOOL.

THE whirlpool near Niagara Falls has of late become a receptacle of dead bodies, which remain in the grasp of its agitated waters; there are the bodies of two horses and a hog. These may be seen, from the bank above, passing round a "funereal circuit" of a mile or more in

circumference, cach succeeding circuit drawing them nearer the vortex of the whirlpool, until each in its turn becomes submerged beneath the boiling element-again thrown violently from its angry embrace, to repeat its former evolutions. The sight of human bodies in the whirlpool is solemn and terrific-the blue waters seem to hold their prey in defiance of human efforts to dispossess them-until, satisfied in revelling with the dead, it emits them through its narrow outlet into the rapids below, to be entombed in Lake Ontario.-Toronto Globe.

PARENTS must give good example and reverent deportment in the face of their children. And all those instances of charity which usually endear each othersweetness of conversation, affability, frequent admonition-all significations of love and tenderness, care and watchfulness, must be expressed towards children; that they may look upon their parents as their friends and patrons, their defence and sanctuary, their treasure and their guide.-Bp. Taylor, Holy Living.

INGRATITUDE is the abridgment of all baseness, a fault never found unattended with other viciousness,-Fuller. THOSE who quit their proper character to assume what does not belong to them, are for the greater part ignorant of both the character they leave and of the character they assume.-Burke.

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A DAY IN MILAN.

"Let us go see the wonders of this town."-Twelfth Night. We entered Milan, after a wearisome ride from Como, between ten and eleven at night. The evening was gloomy, the streets we drove along were narrow and badly lighted, the shops had closed, so that our first impressions of this renowned city were not of the most cheerful nature. On clambering from the top of the lumbering vehicle into the court-yard of the post, we were in an unpleasing state of doubt with respect to the particular hotel to be selected during our short stay, having received in the course of the day four or five recommendations of different hotels, each recommendation being accompanied by a special warning against the hotel to which we had been last directed. However, after another glance at Murray, some inquiries made and answered chiefly by signs, and a short walk, we found ourselves harboured in La Gran Bretagna; nor had we reason to repent the choice. Whilst the narrator may be imagined sleeping away the fatigues of a long day's travel, we shall take the opportunity of laying before the reader a short statement of facts respecting the city through which we hope to have the pleasure of

inclining from north to south, within sight of the snowy Alps, and between the rivers Adda and Ticino. It is upwards of six miles in circumference, and encloses within its walls a population of 140,000 souls, thus making it the third city in Italy, Naples and Rome alone having a larger number of inhabitants. Eleven gates afford ingress to the city, all of them elegant, and one magnificent. The precise second of its latitude and longitude we can spare the reader; but we may mention that the Austrian viceroy resides here, as well as the governor-general of the Lombard provinces, and that it is the see of an archbishop. The manufactures are said to be of some importance, consisting principally of silks and jewellery. The streets in the old part of the city are narrow and irregular, but those leading from the gates are broad and handsome.

Our anxiety to make the most of the scanty number of hours to which our stay in Milan was limited, called us up early in the morning, and, dressing hastily, we made towards the Piazza d'Armi, a piece of ground as large, perhaps, as St. James's Park, lying between the great barracks and the city walls. Even at this early hour we saw several gentlemen on horseback, and remarkably fine animals they had. The object of our his company. visit to the park was, however, to inspect the celebrated Milan stands in the middle of a plain, gently Arch of Peace, which stands over against the Caserma,

at the termination of the great road that begins at Geneva, and is called the Simplon, from a mountain of that name which it crosses. The arch is an admirable piece of architecture. It is constructed entirely of white marble, and rises to a height of seventy-four feet. It is pierced by three roadways, having on each face four pillars thirty-eight feet long, each cut out of a single block of Crevola marble, as well as a great quantity of sculpture. On the top, where the image of Napoleon was intended to be placed, there is a good deal of bronze statuary, the principal being an emblematic representation of Peace in a chariot of six horses, all of a colossal size. A staircase in the mass of the arch affords the curious the means of inspecting the bronze work closely, and of obtaining a bird's-eye view of the city. The arch is "a choice trope in fortune's rhetoric." It was commenced by Buonaparte, and completed by the Emperor of Austria. The sculpture upon it was designed by the projector to commemorate his victories in Germany and Lombardy; but, when the conquered became conquerors, all that was changed, and the carvings were rapidly metamorphosed into representations of the successful doings of the allies, but the triumphs and exploits of the Austrians are principally recorded. Thus Napoleon's entry into Milan has been adroitly changed into the triumphal return of the Emperor Francis to Vienna; the entry of the allied army into Lyons takes the place of the French emperor's entry into Berlin; and the capitulation of Dresden is represented by a basrelief that was originally meant to picture the capitulation of Ulm.

all the good pictures in this gallery; but it is impossible to forbear noticing an exceedingly fine Guido. The subject is Christ on the Cross; the colouring a happy medium between his golden and silvery styles. There is a number of paintings by Bernardino Luini, Da Vinci's most eminent scholar, by whom there is good reason to believe the picture called Christ disputing with the Doctors, in our National Gallery, is painted, though the design is his master's. Amongst several works of Titian there is one that rivets attention-no one could paint a portrait like he-and this is of himself.

Next we hastened to that wonder of Europe, the cathedral, the dim outlines of which we had scen against the sky the previous evening. This stupendous edifice, built of white marble, was commenced in 1386; and it is only just finished. It is in the Gothic style, but Gothic Australised, and so elaborate that it has been said to bear the same relation to its prototypes of the north, as the double rose bears to the single flower. The sculpture and statuary about its exterior are almost beyond belief, there being between four and five thou sand marble images of various sizes; the front alone has nearly two hundred and fifty. On entering there is a space of 485 feet between the eye and the opposite extremity. Fifty-two columns rest on the polished floor, and towering upwards assist in supporting the fretted roof, which hangs at the astonishing height of a hundred and forty-three feet. The interior is not too much ornamented with ecclesiastical furniture; a praise which cannot be given to many Italian churches. There is a good deal of stained glass; and three windows behind the high altar are wonderfully rich in their colours. In one of the subterranean chapels the body of Saint Charles Borromeo is exhibited. He was archbishop of Milan at the time of the great plague in 1576, and of such sanctity that he was thought worthy of the honour of canonization. He is clothed in his pontifical dress adorned with diamonds, and a gold cushion rock-crystal sarcophagus, in which the body is enclosed, is sufficient to allow the features to be distinguished with ease. The quantity of gold and silver about the tomb seems to be at variance with the motto of the Borromean family engraved upon it--“Humilitas." A colossal statue of brass, erected to the saint's memory, stands near Arona on Lago Maggiore. The tomb of Cardinal Frederic Borromeo, a cousin of the archbishop, is much simpler. This dignitary is a conspicuous personage in Manzoni's interesting tale of the Promessi Sposi, a good translation of which has been recently published. To obtain an adequate notion of the cathedral, it is necessary that the stranger should ascend to the roof. Thence he may see that prospect of which Wordsworth has spoken in terms of warm admiration; a prospect bounded on one side by the Alps, and on the other by the Appennines, with the vast plain of Lombardy between. The view of the body of the Duomo from the central tower is an extraordinary sight. A crowd of balustrades, buttresses, and pinnacles of the purest white, shoot upwards far above the roof, each elaborately carved, and having a statue the size of life on the summit. We are sure that no apology need be given for quoting at this place an extract from Wordsworth's fine ode, in which his fancy flies to

In Roman Catholic countries the churches are open all day long, from an early hour. We looked into several, rich with paintings and marble, none of which were entirely empty, and then returned to our hotel to breakfast. That despatched, we set forth once more to inspect the notable things of the city. And first we bent our steps to the Ambrosian Library, a collection of 60,000 printed volumes, and about 10,000 manuscripts. But what attracted us thither were the relics of Leo-supports his mitred head. The transparency of the nardo da Vinci and Petrarch, and the pictures preserved there. Da Vinci ! He was the miracle of that age of miracles. Ardent and versatile as youth; patient and persevering as age; a most profound and original thinker; the greatest mathematician and most ingenious mechanic of his time; architect, chemist, engineer, musician, poet, painter! We are not only astounded by the variety of his natural gifts and acquired knowledge, but by the practical direction of his amazing powers." In this library there are twelve volumes of his works, and one huge book of MSS. containing drawings of figures, machines, &c., accompanied with notes. The anatomical sketches Dr. Hunter declared to be wonderful for their truth and beauty. This volume is kept in a glass case, and is pointed out by the librarian with great pride. The Queen possesses three volumes of Leonardo's manuscripts, of great value, amongst which there is a sketch of his own Last Supper, regarded by Canova as more precious than anything else he had seen in England. Preserved with equal care is a copy of Virgil, which belonged to Petrarch, containing many autograph notes; one on Laura naturally excites a good deal of interest. A little history is connected with this book. In 1499, when Louis XII. took Milan and carried away the library, a worshipper of the poet succeeded in obtaining possession of the volume, which he concealed until it was no longer necessary to do so. Three centuries afterwards, however, when the French invaded Italy, it was conveyed to Paris, but at the close of the war it was restored to its old shelf. The finest thing in the Gallery is Raphael's cartoon of his famous painting in the Vatican the school of Athens. Chateaubriand declares the cartoon to be as admirable as the more finished composition. There is a portrait, done by himself, of the "myriad-minded" Da Vinci-a patriarchal head with a full flowing beard, the countenance calm and meditative. It would be tedious to mention

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Milan's loftiest spire,

And there alights mid that aerial host
Of figures human and divine,
White as the snows of Appennine
Indurated by frost.

Awe-stricken she beholds the array
That guards the temple night and day;

Angels she sees that might from heaven have flown,
And Virgin saints, who not in vain
Have striven by purity to gain

The beatific crown;

(1) The Betrothed Lovers of Manzoni translated, 2 vols. Burns.

Sees long-drawn files, concentric rings,
Each narrowing above each; the wings,

The uplifted palms, the silent marble lips,
The starry zone of sovereign height."

Having descended 520 steps, we re-entered the body of the cathedral, and then quitting it, crossed the square to the Palazzo della Corte, the viceregal residence,-a large pile, with nothing very striking in its exterior. One wing, however, projects so as to interfere with one of the best views of the majestic cathedral. The stranger is allowed to walk through a number of rooms containing the usual decorations of palatial abodes, which, however, have ceased to interest an English traveller long before reaching Milan, if he have duly investigated the interiors of all between Italy and England. The Milanese look with great approbation upon the ceilings, painted in showy colours, by Appiani, a native artist. In one room is the Apotheosis of Napoleon, which they consider worthy of every attention. The great hall is a fine apartment, embellished with carya tides, supporting a gallery which runs round it: one of these, a female with a veil over her face, was stated to be cut by Canova's chisel. Whether that is so or not, we are unable to say; but it is worthy of Praxiteles. The most cunning artist could not have more magically represented, in stone, features but half concealed by a transparent covering. You could scarcely bring your self to believe that you could not remove the veil, which you seemed to see through.

We then betook ourselves to the Brera Palace,-a handsome edifice, of substantial construction, formerly a college belonging to the Jesuits, but now appropriated to the use of the Academy of Arts and Sciences. The gallery of pictures is full of interest to an admirer of art. It contains the famous Sposalizio of Raphael, a subject common in Italian art, representing the Marriage of the Virgin. Raphael was only twenty-one when he executed this divine picture. A painting by Guercino, Hagar dismissed by Abraham, shows the grandeur and deep pathos of which he was capable. This composition electrified Byron, and he was not easily moved by works of the pencil. He has said somewhere," Of all the arts painting is the most artificial and unnatural, and that by which the nonsense of mankind is most imposed upon." There are many other excellent pic tures; amongst which some scripture-pieces by Guido, and a grand old head by Titian, catch the attention. A performance of Raphael's father is interesting, on account of his renowned son, and the rarity of his works. He was a poet as well, but his verses were never "imprynted." A manuscript poem of his, in twenty-three books of terza rima, trumpeting the praises of the Duke Federigo d'Urbino, his patron, and dedicated to his son, is preserved in the Vatican. His skill in painting was not great, a fact he seemed himself to be aware of; for when his son showed signs, at an early age, of his mighty genius, he placed him in the school of another

master.

We passed in front of the La Scala Theatre, which derives its name from being built upon the site of a church dedicated to Santa Maria della Scala. It has an imposing façade, and its size is very large, there being, in fact, but two larger in Europe,- -one at Parma, and the other at Naples. It was a disappointment to us that it was closed just then, as the interior is represented to be strikingly fine. After taking some rest and refreshment for sight-seeing is attended with no little fatigue we next sought out a painting that has filled the world with its fame the Last Supper of Leonardo da Vinci. We found it on the wall of the refectory, or dining-room, of a convent attached to the church of the Madonna della Grazia. No picture is so well known, by means of copies and engravings, as this, and none is so near extinction. It is in a much worse condition than I had dreamt of,-faded, cracked, blis tered, and repainted in a deplorable way. A platform, elevated several feet from the floor, allows you to inspect

it closely; but its meaning is best gathered from the middle of the hall. There, we may form a rude guess at the painter's conception of our Saviour, when, sitting at that solemn meal, he lamented over his betrayer.

"Though searching damps and many an envious flaw
Have marred this work,

The annunciation of the dreadful truth

Made to the Twelve, survives; lip, forehe ad, cheek,
And hand reposing on the board in ruth

Of what it utters."

Man has little right to complain of the irreverence with which Time is accustomed to treat his most glorious works, when he himself often displays so much regardwhich this picture was placed has certainly hastened lessness in his treatment. The perishable material on the work of destruction; but if proper care had been used, it would still have been a fitting monument of its French, in 1797, actually used the refectory as a stable author's genius. The monks neglected it, and the and granary. The best and carliest copy belongs to the English Royal Academy,

Then, in the dusk of the evening, I entered once dim and deserted, with a thronging of indescribable more the Cathedral, and paced round its vast aisles, all stone was invisible, and the moon shed her beams, sensations at every pulse. The lofty ceiling of fretted through storied windows, upon the marble floor.

"How like a dream,-and dreamy thought
Flew off to other times and places."

Solemn and serene was that mighty temple; solemn, but perplexed, was the mind of the stranger. A whispering of the days gone by seemed to fill the vast space with a confused indistinctness. The Past was present, and the feeling of the Future was blotted out.

The French recognise in Milan a strong likeness to their own capital. Old Montaigne found that it "pretty much resembled Paris, and was like the towns of France;" and during the two years Tasso passed at Paris, in the suit of Cardinal d'Este, he noticed the same resemblance. The similarity is said to exist chiefly in the hôtels of the noblesse, and the cafés. The latter certainly strike the eye of a stranger at once. They are elegantly fitted up, and brilliantly lighted of an evening. The first room is generally open to the street, and at many of them the customers, well-dressed men and women, had conveyed themselves bodily into the street. There they sat, round a table planted in front of the house, chatting, and sipping coffee, as comfortably as if they had been defended from public gaze by four stone walls. I am not able to say much in praise of Milanese beauty; in truth, I did not see one handsome face in the course of a long day's ramble. Nevertheless, the women have the most brilliant dark eyes, and the smoothest raven hair I ever saw. Their head-dress is simple, and has a pleasing effect. It is just a black gauze veil gathered into the hair at the top of the head, and allowed to hang over the face. Bonnets are not in fashion. The women of the lower class at Como, through which we passed the day before, have a very fantastical mode of ornamenting their hair. They thrust some things, for all the world like tea spoons, through the pile of hair at the top of the head, so as to form a fan, and then they shove in two tablespoons, to make a kind of shaft. The excessive narrowness of the streets at Milan renders the want of trottoirs more keenly felt; and, in the middle of the day, they are intolerably hot, owing, in a great measure, to the want of air. There is hardly a single article of diet which the Italians use without oil and vinegar, and the shops where these commodities are sold are proportionably numerous. We were informed that the English have not colonized Milan in the way they have most of the other continental cities. This seems rather strange, for the place offers many advantages to families who wish to combine cheapness with the luxuries of life. There is gaiety enough; in the winter months there is a rapid succession of balls; eight theatres offer their

attractions, and La Scala has usually singers of the first class. House-rent is low, and a villa, which becomes indispensable during the summer months, can be hired on any of the neighbouring lakes for 16. or 18. per annum. There are mineral baths, for those who fancy they require them, not far distant. The beauties of art, already noticed, are of the highest order; so that it is a little surprising these united advantages fail to attract a larger concourse of resident English.

THE PLOUGHING MATCH.

"ART going to the ploughing match, Will?" were the words I heard whilst crossing a style at the end of a pretty lane in the parish of S, Bucks. "Yes, man," was the reply; "everybody is going surely; and, may be, I'll get a prize, too, for my apples at the show.' The speakers were well known to me; both were old men; the one, crippled by the shocks of nearly seventy years, stood leaning on a gate; the other, still vigorous, shouldered a digging fork, and showed, by his cheerful look and air, that it might be long ere the village churchyard claimed him.

The elder was an inmate of an alms-house, established, some centuries back, by one of the ancient lords of the manor of S. I knew "Old Robert," (such was his name,) at a glance,-the white hair falling beneath his old straw hat, the crabbed blackthorn stick, which could boast the service of many years, and his honest-looking face, were all familiar to me. Old Robert was famed as a mole-catcher, and to this day may be seen with his trap under his arm, in the still meadows of this secluded spot. Sometimes the roaming school-boy finds the old man, with his trap at his feet, stretched on the warm sunny grass, by one of the many rippling brooklets which descend from our common. Robert will leave a name behind him when he dies, likely to endure in rustic memories when greater than he are forgotten. He was not without one little characteristic, or failing, as some may deem it; namely, a wish to know a little of everybody's business. His curiosity equalled that of any old maid I ever met with. Not a stranger arrived, not a native departed, but Robert was advertised thereof; he was, in fact, the newsman of the alms-house, and speculator-general of the parish.

On the present occasion, his curiosity was clearly at work upon the "ploughing match" appointed for the ensuing day, and it was doubtless with the object of quietly extracting some information that he interrupted his old neighbour," Will Nottey," with the question, "Art going to the ploughing match, Will?" My approach probably prevented those lengthy colloquies on things in general, in which Old Robert gloried. I saw, from his position and manner, that he had prepared himself for the feast of rustic chat. A painter, whose forte lay in depicting the natural, would have rejoiced in the view then before me. The setting sun threw its rich mellow light full on the old man's face, as if prying into every wrinkle, and fell with glorious beauty on the ancient walls of the alms-houses, covered with masses of dark ivy and wreaths of clematis. An irregular group of ancient elms and beeches displayed those numberless tints, which autumn and rich sunlight ever produce. Old Robert was in the happy mood suggested by the brightness of the hour, and, taking off his hat as I approached, wished me "good night" with the manners of a peasant gentleman. I perceived how gladly he would receive some compensation for the chat I had interrupted by my approach; and after a few inquiries respecting his welfare, the state of the alms-house, and the crops in the long slip of garden, soon found myself in the midst of a discussion on the blight in the potato,-a subject upon which Robert expatiated with particular vehemence, as his own allotted portion of the crop had been diminished by one-half.

"Well, sir," was his abrupt conclusion, "it's the work of Providence, and can't be helped; that's one comfort, at any rate. I don't know what I shall do without the roasted potatoes, which I baked in the ashes on cold winter's nights, when the storm seemed blowing the old house down. You don't know, sir, what comfort there was in those potatoes."

The picture thus presented to me, of the old man finding solace in the dreary winter over his roasted potatoes, was too much like truth to provoke a smile; So, after giving him some hints respecting the treatment of his imperilled crop, I turned the conversation to the subject which his first remark to Will Nottey had suggested, viz. the ploughing match," expressing a hope that he would be able to see so cheerful a spectacle.

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"Well, sir," said he, “may be neither these old legs nor this stick will carry me so far; though I've seen the day, sir, when twenty miles afore breakfast wouldn't ha' stopped me. But that's gone, and for ever, too; old Robert is like those black leaves that are just falling. There were no ploughing matches hereabouts, sir, when I was young; but they've done good, sir; I see that with my own eyes. I've been born and bred in this parish; and for almost seventy years, as boy or man, have I been acquainted, I may say, with every field and cottage in the place. But, sir, the parish is like some other things-it arn't got the same face it had once; I hardly know it myself."

"Well, Robert," cried I, "do you mean to say the parish has changed for the worse?"

"Why, no, sir, not exactly that, though some things are not what an old man would like to see; that they are not," said he, with one of those emphatic and half testy gesticulations which aided his limited vocabulary. "I am not a-grumbling at Providence, sir," rejoined the rustic moralist; "our poor old vicar, God bless him, though he's dead and buried-I always say God bless him, sir, when he's mentioned as I was a-saying, our poor old vicar taught me better. I meant, sir, when I spoke of the difference in the parish, how some things had improved, how much better behaved the people are than when I was a boy, and the men who used to be at the S- Arms are now digging their gardens and pruning their trees, ever since the gentlemen began to give prizes for the best fruit and garden stuff. There was hardly a poor man's garden in the parish once, sir, except my own father's, and he was one of a thousand; none of his sons ever came up to him, sir, though we did our duty always pretty well. There was but our own cottage with a garden which could be called a garden. All was riot and tatters, though not for want of money; but the landlord of the S Arms got that. I well remember how strangers used to make a stop as they turned the corner of yon lane with the tall elms, when they came all at once upon our cottage, to look at the only tidy garden in the place. There, sir, in yonder corner was our old house," exclaimed Robert, pointing to a little nook, as if the memories of a life had suddenly been revived. "There we, six of us, sir, were all born and brought up, and there all but old Robert died. The house is pulled down now." The old man at this moment recovered from the feeling which had suddenly crossed his spirit, and resumed: Father used to be so pleased when he saw the ladies tell their coachmen to stop, that they might look at his garden from their carriages; and sometimes they would really walk in and look at the flowers and fruits, which always made father happy the whole week after; but now every cottage, sir, has a garden. First one thought he would try for a prize, and then another, till at last they try by dozens, as you will see, sir, if you go. I always go if I can, out of respect to father; for he, sir, got the first prize at the first ploughing match ever held in this parish."

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"I am glad to hear," said I, " that you are witness to such good effects of these yearly exhibitions. I shall certainly go myself to-morrow; and hope that you,

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