and more remote signification-being a symbol of all time, of the changes of the great year of the world, and in this sense it implies a higher meaning, as it represents the general dissolution as a consequence of the first death of the god (Gudadöd)—the death of goodness and justice in the world. Balder returns, followed by reward and punishment, by a new heaven and a new earth. Through this, and at the same time the inviolable sanctity which the northern mythology attaches to an oath, it rises above nature, and acquires a moral value for mankind.'

The concluding sections of the present work contain an exposition of the Ynglinga race, according to Snorre Sturleson, and of the line of kings continued down to Ragnar Lodbrok, whom Geijer places at the close of the eighth century. These sections being more exclusively listorical, we defer noticing them till the whole, or a larger portion of the author's work shall have appeared. We have the best authority-that of the learned historian himself for announcing, that the second volume of his work will be produced in the course of the present year.

ART. IX.-Un An à Rome, et dans ses Environs-Recueil de Dessins Lithographiés représentant les Costumes, les Usages, et les Cérémonies Civiles et Religieuses des Etats Romains, &c. Thomas. Paris.

THERE

HERE was a time-(and it is not very long ago, for it was in our younger days, and we are not yet very old)-when, to have been at ROME, and to have trodden on the ruins of the sevenhilled city;-to have beheld, as Hobbes expresses it with quaint sublimity, the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire sitting throned upon the grave thereof,' implied a sort of distinction to a man-and far more to a woman. To have had ocular demonstration of the Coliseum and the Palatine, and to have commanded our coachman to drive to the Capitol or to cross the Tiber!' (which Madame de Staël reckons not among the least of a traveller's pleasures,) was indeed something extraordinary. But how times are changed! People migrate to Italy, as once to Devonshire, for change of air; and think no more of crossing the Alps than of rattling down to Brighton. Rome, the mother of Christendom, the queen of the pagan world, has had her magnificent desolation invaded by troops of semi-barbarous idlers-has become as common ground as Bath or Cheltenham. Young lawyers go there to lounge away the vacation, and read Horaceand young ladies to spend the Christmas holidays, and take lessons in singing; Mr. Higgins, and Mrs. Wiggins, and the

nine Miss Simmons's, talk as familiarly of the Coliseum and the Pantheon as maids of thirteen do of puppy dogs; and the imperial City, divested of every charm borrowed from memory and imagination, history and poetry, has truly fallen in reputation; being regarded in a point of view totally different from that which existed fifty years ago.

·

The exhaustless antiquities of the ancient capital, the architectural splendours of the modern city-its sites, its palaces, have been illustrated ad infinitum, from Piranesi and other embellishers of genius-lying engravers', who scrupled not to exalt the low and level the high; to make the crooked straight, and fill up the lapses and hollows left by Time's effacing fingers', down to Batty, so hard and cold; and Hakewill, so artificially graceful; and Turner, of the fanciful pencil and luxuriant imagination, who mixes up gorgeous earth and sky, till the eye of the beholder is lost in deep bewilderment; and last, and above all, Rossini, (we mean the engraver, not the man of notes,) who, rivalling Piranesi in power, in richness of effect, and classical feeling, is superior to him in fidelity and correctness-all these give us the external or poetical aspect of Rome. But they present to the eye no just idea of the appearance of the modern city-nor of the moral condition of the people who inhabit it.

The elegant work before us has taken new and different ground: it does not rank high as a production either of literature or art-for the plates are merely lithographed from spirited tinted drawings, taken on the spot; and, for the literary part, the author, leaving antiquity and retrospection out of the question, has confined himself to plain matter-of-fact explanations of the plates. The work is literally illustrative of a year at Rome; to each of the twelve months are allotted six drawings with descriptions, representing the religious ceremonies, processions, amusements, and occupations of all classes of society, peculiar to the month. To some of our readers these light and popular sketches will be interesting, as correct delineations of national manners; to others as vivid recollections of daily, familiar, well-remembered scenes; and to the reflective they will have a deeper interest superadded to both, the association of the past with the present. It is impossible to look upon these scenes without a sense half melancholy, half ludicrous, of the patchwork mixture of Christianity and Paganism-meanness and magnificence-ferocity and servility. Old Rome survives, not only in the grand and mutilated monuments she has left behind; but in every house, and street, and individual, and through all the details of familiar life, we trace the spirit of the antique times. The character of the people, the dress, religion, manners, customs, have been, to a certain degree, modified

VOL. I. NO. II.

2 N

modified by the lapse of ages, but they remain essentially unchanged; names only are altered, things remain the same.

The very first plate is an amusing instance of what we have just asserted; it is the benediction of the Santissimo Bambino, in front of the church of the Ara Celi, on the highest point of the Capitoline. The fat capuchin, holding up the miraculous infant, which was brought down from Heaven one night by an angel, and being left at the door, pulled the bell for its own admission, is capital; and the devotees upon the noble flight of steps in front, whose attitudes express such total prostration of mind, as well as body, are all admirable. The traveller, attempting in vain to pierce the dense crowd, moralizes in his secret soul, and thinks of the iron masters of the world,' and sighs over their priestridden and degenerate posterity, forgetting that it was up this marble staircase where the Temple of Jupiter stood, where the Ara Celi now stands, that Julius Cæsar and part of his victorious army crawled on their hands and knees to avert the evil omens which attended his triumph. Another plate in the same number is a pretty Italian Interior. The mingling of the common utensils of vulgar life, basons and birch-brooms, with the symbols of a poetical and elegant life, the tambourine and the guitar; and the Madonna and the saints taking the place of the lares and penates of old, are all truly Italian and à l'antique; so is the simple earnest figure of the woman looking out at the window. The figures and costumes of the populace in the Benediction of the Horses' at the Church of St. Anthony, and the 'preaching in the Coliseum' are equal to Pinelli; in the first-look at the theatrical grace of the laquais, bowing to the saint from the foot-board behind the carriage! and the miserable, poking, bedizened horses, with their tails and manes tucked up with ribands and artificial flowers after the most approved style of hair-dressing in these modern times: and in the latter, what fine ruffian-like, dishevelled becloaked figures!-what a picturesque formality in the old priest, with his cocked hat on the top of his wig!-and how the sunshine glares upon the mountainous ruins piled up behind the group of listeners! Apropos to costume--we must remark, that the net for the hair, and the use of massy ornaments of coral, are remnants of the antique fashion; the ample cloak, too, is thrown round the figure with a grace that emulates the ancient toga; and the list sandals of the Trasteverini, the pin supporting the coiled tresses of the women, and the cumbrous ear-rings, of which Pliny complains, meet us at every turn.

The second series is devoted to the Carnival, which, at Rome, is always immediately preceded by an execution; and if, by special ill fortune, there is no poor wretch ready to be executed,

the

the city is treated with a scene scarcely less lugubrious-the punishment of the somaro, (the ass.) In Plate 7, we have a pair of grim gaunt fellows, of most villainous aspect, with the symbols of their delinquency-dark-lanterns, picklocks, false-keys, hung about them, paraded on asses through the streets, between lounging soldiers, till they come to the Cavaletto, a sort of flogging-machine, where, under the very nose of a benign Madonna, they suffer discipline according to their deserts. Their subsequent fate is generally to be sent to the gallera;' that is, to labour in chains at the public works. Of these condemned fellows, there is an admirable, yet shocking group,-squalid, ragged, ferocious, sturdy, depraved, and sullen.

6

The day after this exhibition, the delights of the Carnival begin. We have a crowd of masks in the Corso-combats of confetti, in which the group of the lady in the corner, and the gentleman gallantly shielding her with his umbrella from the arrowy sleet of sugar-plum showers,' hurled by the huge black bear, (worthy of his name,) who is seated in an elegant barouche; the standards of the combatants, allegramente, Signori Pazzi!''Viva il piacere!'and the placard against the wall, are true to the life. The horse-races on the Corso, though as good, and, when on the spot, a most animated and animating scene, are accompanied by cruelty and suffering, which make the spectator, not accustomed to such sights, absolutely shudder with horror. We pass, therefore, to the last day of the Carnival, and the moccoletti, or 'bougies.' The streets are then one vast and moving blaze; every window is illuminated, every person, whether walking, driving, riding, standing, or sitting, carries a wax-taper, and the sport consists in each person endeavouring to extinguish the light of his neighbour, while he defends his own. The scene is as well done as such a scene of tumultuous mirth can be represented to the eye. The cunning of those who have perched their tapers on the eminences of broomsticks and vine-poles, and the superior artifice of the fellow who has provided himself with a long-nosed pair of bellows, -the frightened dog snarling at a punchinello-and the horses rearing back, dazzled and astonished, are admirably illustrated. The extinguishing of the moccoletti is the precursor and the symbol of the gloom of Lent; people go about shouting, e morto il Carnavale,' and a masqued ball at the Teatro Aliberti concludes. these modern Saturnalia. The next day, (Ash-Wednesday,) these good Christians set to work to repent of all the sins committed during the days of license. Among the Lent scenes we must remark the friggitori, (sellers of fried fish, &c.) who, on the festival of St. Joseph, erect their booths in the square of the Pantheon. These booths, hung with festoons of evergreens and flowers, with

pictures of the saint, and sonnets in his honour intermixed, and the jovial looks of the friggitori, as they invite passengers to taste their frittura, are really appetising; and then the fine dark portico of the Pantheon, rearing itself in the background!—But we must pass to another scene, more interesting in its way-the two boys who, during Lent, assemble all the children of their neighbourhood, and lead them to be catechised and instructed in the arena of the Coliseum, where priests are stationed for that purpose. The group is beautiful; one carries a cross as tall as himself, the other sounds a bell, and cries out at intervals, in a piping tone, Padri e madri, mandate i vostri figli alla dottrina Cristiana! se non li manderete, ne renderete conto a Dio,'- Parents, send your children to be instructed in Christianity! for otherwise ye shall be accountable to God.'

6

In the Fourth Number we have the famous scene of the Pope blessing the congregated multitudes from the balcony of St. Peter's.* The stupendous architecture is well contrasted with the Lilliputian crowd in the Piazza; and to the right, the eye rests with pleasure on the long lines of the loggie of the Vatican, rich with Raffaelle's frescos, and fancies it sees them. In a detached group of the crowd, represented in another drawing, observe the old hag seated with her rosary, and the boy looking upwards in impatient expectation! The drawings which represent the procession of those whiterobed and mysterious looking personages, the Mortuari, bearing the uncoffined dead to the church, are very striking. We observe here one of those startling approximations of the solemn and the grotesque, which are so common at Rome. Beside each of these awful ministers of the dead, runs a ragged beggarly boy, who, with a bit of brown paper twisted into a cornette, is intent to catch the drops of wax which fall from the tapers as they flare along. The masses performed for the dead seem to have succeeded to the Parentalia, or funeral sacrifices of the Romans. The first are to shorten the pains of purgatory-the latter were to deliver the wandering soul from the wrong side of the Styx: the difference is not very great.

In the month of May, we can only notice the young girl offering flowers at the shrine of a rustic Madonna-full of quiet grace and sentiment: the scene, by the way, poetical as it looks, is one most common and familiar in the neighbourhood of Rome. In the procession of the famous Madonna of Frascati, it is worth while to remark the contrast between the fat, indifferent, lazy-looking, smirking priests and monks, and the fervent, earnest, eager faith of the multitude around them. It is by such touches of truth and

• Dio mio!' exclaimed a Pope, after this august ceremony, 'quanto è facile il coglionare le gente !'-how easy it is to gull folks!

nature