inlet, bay and river's mouth, except only where the winds or currents might violently sweep them past these objects. Then we are to allow for a long stay on the shore of Western Africa, for the sake of reaping, or having reaped by natives, a wheat harvest a fact which strengthens the probability of the voyage, but diminishes the disposable time which Herodotus would use as the exponent of the space. We must remember the want of sails aloft in ancient vessels, the awkwardness of their build for fast sailing, and, above all, their cautious policy of never tempting the deep, unless when the wind would not be denied. And, in the mean time, all the compensatory forces of air and water, as utterly unsuspected by Herodotus, we must subtract from his final sum. mation of the effective motion, leaving for the actual measure of the sailing, as inferred by Herodotus-consequentJy for the measure of the virtual time, consequently of the African space, as only to be collected from the time so corrected-a very small proportion indeed, compared with the results of a similar voyage, even by the Portuguese, about A. D. 1500. To Hero dotus we are satisfied that Libya (disarming it of its power over the world's mind, in the pompous name of Africa) was not bigger than the true Arabia as known to ourselves. And hence, also, by a natural result, the obliteration of this Periplus from the minds of men. It accomplished no great service, as men judged. It put a zone about a large region, undoubtedly; but what sort of a region? A mere worthless wilderness, now Ongwons dedicated by the gods to wild beasts, now αμμώδης, trackless from sands, and every where fountainless, arid, scorched (as they believed) in the interior. Subtract Egypt, as not being part, and to the world of civilisation at that time, Africa must have seemed a worthless desert, except for Cyrene and Carthage, its two choice gardens, already occupied by Phoenicians and Greeks. This, by the way, suggests a new consideration, viz., that even the Mediterranean extent of Africa must have been unknown to Herodotus-since all beyond Carthage, as Mauritania, &c., would wind up into a small inconsiderable track, as being dispuncted by no great states or colonies. Therefore it was that this most interesting of all circumnavigations at the present day did virtually and could not but perish as a vivid record. It measured a region which touched no man's prosperity. It recorded a discovery, for which there was no permanent appreciator. A case exists at this moment in London precisely parallel. There is a chart of New Holland still preserved among the κειμηλια of the British Museum, which exhibits a Periplus of that vast region, from some navigator, almost by three centuries prior to Captain Cooke. A rude outline of Cooke's labours in that section had been anticipated at a time when it was not wanted. Nobody cared about it: value it had none, or interest; and it was utterly forgotten. That it did not also perish in the literal sense, as well as in spirit, was owing to an accident. IV. The Geographical AKTE of We had intended to transfer, for the use of our readers, the diagram imagined by Niebuhr in illustration of this idea. But our growing exorbitance from our limits warns us to desist. Two points only we shall notice:-1. That Niebuhr-not the traveller, as might have been expected, but his son, the philosophic historian-first threw light on this idea, which had puzzled multitudes of honest men. Here we 2. see the same similarity as in the case of Rennell; in that instance, a man without a particle of Greek, "whipped" (to speak Kentuchicé) whole crowds of sleeping drones who had more than they could turn to any good account. And in the other instance, we see a sedentary scholar, travelling chiefly between his study and his bedroom, doing the work that properly belonged to active travellers. Though we have already given one illustration of an Akté in Asia Minor, it may be well to mention, as another, the vast region of Arabia. In fact, to Herodotus the tract of Arabia and Syria on the one hand, made up one akte (the southern) for the Persian empire; Asia Minor, with part of Armenia, made up another akte (the western) for the same empire; the two being at right angles; and both abutting on imaginary lines drawn from different points of the Euphrates. V.-Chronology of Herodotus. The commentator on Herodotus, who enjoys the reputation of having best unfolded his chronology, is the French President Buhier. We cannot say that this opinion coincides with our own. There is a lamentable imbecility in all the chronological commentators, of two opposite tendencies. Either they fall into that folly of drivelling infidelity, which shivers at every fresh revelation of geology, and every fresh romance of fabulous chronology, as fatal to religious truths; or, with wiser feelings but equal silliness, they seek to protect Christianity by feeble parryings, from a danger which exists only for those who never had any rational principles of faith: as if the mighty spiritual power of Christianity were to be thrown upon her defence, as often as any old woman's legend from Hindostan, (see Bailly's Astronomie,) or from Egypt, (see the whole series of chronological commentators on Herodotus,) became immeasurably extravagant, and exactly in proportion to that extravagance. Amongst these latter chronologers, perhaps Larcher is the most false and treacherous. He affects a tragical start as often as he rehearses the traditions of the Egyptian priests, and assumes a holy shuddering. "Eh quoi! Ce seroit donc ces gens-là, qui auroient osé insulter à notre sainte religion!" But, all the while, beneath his mask the reader can perceive, not obscurely, a perfidious smile; as on the face of some indulgent mother, who affects to menace with her hand some favourite child at a distance, whilst the present subject of a stranger's complaint, but, in fact, ill disguises her foolish applause to its petul ance. Two remarks only, we shall allow ourselves upon this extensive theme, which, if once entered in good earnest, would go on to a length more than commensurate with all the rest of our discussion. 1. The 330 kings of Egypt, who were interposed by the Egyptian priests, between the endless dynasty of the gods, and the pretty long dynasty of real kings, (the Shepherds, the Pharaohs, &c.,) are upon this argument to be rejected as mere unmeaning fictions, viz. that they did nothing. This argument is reported as a fact, (not as an argument of rejection,) by Herodotus himself, and reported from the volunteer testimony of the priests themselves; so that the authority for the number of kings, is also the authority for their inertia. Can there be a better proof needed, than that they were mere men of straw, got up to colour the legend of a prodigious antiquity? The reign of the gods was felt to be somewhat equivocal, as susceptible of allegoric explanations. So this long human dynasty, is invented to furnish a substantial basis for the extravagant genealogy. Meantime, the whole 330 are such absolute fainéans, that, confessedly, not one act-not one monument of art or labour-is ascribed to their auspices; whilst every one of the real unquestionable sovereigns, coinciding with known periods in the tradition of Greece, or with undeniable events in the divine simplicity of the Hebrew Scriptures, is memorable for some warlike act, some munificent institution, or some almost imperishable monument of architectural power. 2. But weaker even than the fabling spirit of these genealogical inanities, is the idle attempt to explode them, by turning the years into days. In this way, it is true, we get rid of pretensions to a cloudy antiquity, by wholesale clusters. The moonshine and the fairy tales vanish—but how? To leave us all in a moonless quagmire of substantial difficulties, from which (as has been suggested more than once) there is no extrication at all; for, if the diurnal years are to reconcile us to the 330 kings, what becomes of the incomprehensibly short reigns, (not averaging above two or three months for each,) on the long basis of time assumed by the priests; and this in the most peaceful of realms, and in fatal contradiction to another estimate of the priests, by which the kings are made to tally with as many Seva, or generations of men? Herodotus, and doubtless the priests, understood a generation in the sense then universally current, agreeably to which, three generations were valued to a century. But the questions are endless which grow out of Herodotus. Pliny's Natural History has been usually thought the greatest treasure-house of ancient learning. But we hold that Herodotus furnishes by much the largest basis for vast commentaries revealing the archæologics of the human race: whilst, as the eldest of prose writers, he justifies his majestic station as a brotherly assessor on the same throne with Homer. THE WORLD OF LONDON. PART VIII. FOREIGNERS IN LONDON. ENGLAND! home of the free, asylum of the brave, refuge of refugees, and so forth in heroic prose, and yet more heroic verse, what fine things have, and may be, said and sung on this self-glorifying subject, to the great joy of the gods and goddesses, in one shilling and two shilling galleries! Something about slaves being free the moment they touch British soil, regenerated, disenthralled by the genius of universal emancipation, or some such stuff; we are not sure whether the passage occurs in Curran's Speeches or Tom Thumb, but it takes pit, boxes, and gallery by storm, upon all occasions; it is truly delightful to witness the ardour with which a British auditory compliments itself upon its excursive humanity, transmarine benevolence, and freetrade philanthropy ! There is a disease well-known to opticians, wherein the patient can see distinctly objects a great way off, but is quite incapable of distinguishing such as lie immediately under his nose: the artist applies a spectacle of peculiar construction to remedy this defect: we think it would be a vast advantage to the public in general, if ingenious opticians would turn their attention to a remedy for that longsighted benevolence, which sweeps the distant horizon for objects of compassion, but is blind as a bat to the wretchedness and destitution abounding at their own doors. We confess we think there is an affectation in this gad about benevolence, of which we see now-a-days so much-too much: there seems about it that sort of pitiful ostentation, which induces an Irish gentleman to ask every body he meets to dinner, when he has not dinner enough for his own family at home. We confess we are of opinion that charity, though it need not end, should begin at home; and that it is time enough when severe distress has been relieved at our own door, to walk to the other end of the earth in search of foreign beggars. There is, no doubt, a highly gratifying pride in seeing this free and happy country the asylum of fallen royalty and discomfited revolutionists-the home of the brave, and of the knave-the polar star of wandering Poles and refugees of all ranks, climes, colours, and nations; but with great respect for Lord Dudley Stuart, there is an order of precedence in charity as in nobility; our fellow-country men demand the pas, and there is quite enough of misery, if we look for it, within the scope of our visible horizon; when we have relieved the pressing necessities of our indigenous tribes, it is quite time enough to cast about for exotics, wherewith to occupy our overflowing benevolence. We know, of course, that it is nauseous and emetical to be told that our fellow-countrymen starve outside our gates; such recitals of domestic misery interfere with the process of digestion, and, like the sad realities of another place, should never be mentioned in the hearing of ears polite. Nothing can be more vulgar, uninteresting, and anti-sentimental, than the distresses of Hicks, Higgins, Figgins, and Stubbs, and all weavers or others who are neither rebels nor refugeeswho are vulgar enough to work if they can get it-who wear no bristles between their noses and lips, and who have no names ending in rinski ! If you stroll down Regent Street, the Quadrant, and Waterloo Place, any fine afternoon, you cannot fail to remark vast numbers of exotics in glossy black silk hats, with mustaches and whiskers to match, hard, inexpressive coats, flash satin vests, unwhisperables plaited ridiculously over the hips, glazed leather boots, and a profusion of Birmingham jewellery and Bristol stones. These gentry smoke very fast, talk very loud, or rather chatter intolerably, and look killing and impudent at the ladies as they pass. There is a polished brass knocker at the corner of Grosvenor Square, which, when we have titivated with a burned cork, as we usually do when passing that way, seems the common ancestor of these gentry; certainly they are great fellows, and it is difficult to conceive that the town is not their own. Like Samson, their strength lies in their hair; flowing locks, well-oiled, brushed, and curled, form a fair proportion of their gene ral stock in trade. By their fashion of wearing their hair, you may get at their politics. The Bonapartist is known by a short bristly mustache and staring hair; la Jeune France is represented by young gentlemen wearing their hair clubbishly, after the fashion of the Jacobins; these posteriorly hirsute gentry are republicans to a man; partizans of the existing dynasty wear whiskers à la Louis Philippe, and cut the mustache; the Legitimists may at once be recognised by dressing like gentlemen. "Parlons donc de la guerre?-Vill you bring me une demi-tasse café, et von grande circonference de toast, buttered on de von side and de oder? le grosse bête, Louis Philippe !Ah! Bah!-Mon Dieu-Sacre bleu Ha! Ha!-have you never got two pennies to give me for von halfpenny? à bas les tyrans!-dem bad café! apropos de bottes, parlons devous le trouverez, j'en vous assure, la Société d'Assasins du Roi, hommes pleins d'honneur-shall it rain yesterday? I tink it vash-le grosse poire, Louis Phil-Sacre nom deToo-too, my littel deer, vill you not give me von littel kiss?-he! he! he! Chantons-tira la la-tira la la !— Savez-vous, mon ami que la Republic toujours- parbleu que le dindon farcée aux truffes c'est la belle chose. mort, ni serait-il jamais-quatre sous pour cette demi-tasse of nasty caféc'est épouvantable, tira la la!-Le National aujourd'hui dit, que Madame Munoz c'est-quelle aille aux tous les diables!—N'importe, I have paid for you to-morrow before yesterday-Shikspur, bah! le Grand Corneille était le seul homme du monde, qui-tira la la, tira la la!— regardez-vous le diaphanisme de ce morceau de pain-Angleterre c'est, sans doute, vilain pays pour la musique et la danse-bring me le change, trois sous, von halfpenny two pennies The avocations of these capillary peripatetics are mysterious, and not to be got at without difficulty. It is to be feared, that the commodities they deal in are chiefly contraband, and, like themselves, very much in the fancy line; artificial flowers, ladies of pleasure, rouge, rouge et noir, smug-0 Ciel! L'Empereur n'était pas gled lace, loaded dice, Chantilly veils, fiddle-strings, gamesters, or-molu clocks, and Chevaliers d'Industrie. The habitat of the animal, as naturalists would say, lies almost altogether about the Quadrant, Waterloo Place, and Leicester Square, especially the latter, where Hotels Françaises and Cafés à la mode de Paris abound, and where may be had diners à la carte, vins a tous prix, and pain à discretion. Hereabouts, moreover, are most of those inferior gambling-houses, or "silver hells," where so many young men about town get relieved of their superfluous cash; houses of no particular reputation, cigar-shops, where other commodities than cigars are saleable-we presume you smoke; cheap gun shops, trinkum-trankum shops; salacious book and print shops, thorns in the side of the suppression of vice society; small shellfish shops, and equivocal emporia of every description. In the coffee-houses about this Frenchified neighbourhood, the gentlemen we have been introducing to the reader abound in such numbers, as to make it necessary to set aside a "petty France" in each, for their particular accommodation. Here, under the auspices of a "Napoleon le Grand" in plaster of Paris, crowned with a wreath of immortelles, they play dominoes, smoke, and read the Charivari, L'Ami du Peuple, and Le National; and may be heard any night of the week, especially on Sundays, discussing politics and things in general, somewhat in the manner and form following, that is to say : Vive la Charte-Ecoutez, demidouzaine huitres de Carcale-bontrois plats au choix-très bon-Vive la Revolution Eternelle !-A bas Louis Phillipe et les proprietaires de tous les Cafès de quatre sous !-Hi! hi!-J'en suis d'accorde-I prescribe to dat❞—and so run they on until the hour of shutting shop. ITALIANS do not muster sufficiently strong here to enable us to depict their peculiarities en masse; nor is there any very striking individuality, still less any marked nationality, giving them particular claims upon our notice. The privation of a national character never fails to have a bad effect upon the character of the individual; it is not merely upon the nation that oppression marks its brand of ignominy, but upon every man, woman, and child, belonging to the nation, which is enslaved. When a people no longer boasts national interests, their pride takes fire at the expense of their fellow-countrymen of the next province-and thus it is with Italy the Milanese looks with dislike upon the Venetian, the Venetian despises the Bolognese, the latter shuns comparison with the serfs of the Church. The Calabrian Highlander abhors the cowardly ragamuffinry of the two Sicilies, although reluctantly submitting to their dominion. The Florentine, rich in the fertility of his exhaustless soil, and supplied abundantly with the necessaries of existence, pities and despises the other children of fair Italy. Yet Italy must ever assert her supremacy. Rome, once mistress of the world, still asserts the shadow of a sacerdotal sovereignty, triple crowned, seated upon her seven hills; forwarding legions of priests, monks, and friars to every corner of the habitable globe, and ever striving to reconquer the spiritual domination she once exercised over ignorant unreasoning men. Italy, once glorious in the songs of Horace and Virgil, and again in the strains of Dante and Ariosto, now, alas! glorifies herself in the flexile trills of a cantalizing Signora, and finds her greatest and most renowned son within the girdle that embraces the vast circumference of the large Lablache. From the empire of the Cæsars, they have descended to the supremacy of cameo cutters-from the Metelli, we stoop to contemplate Mosaics-workers in tufa replace the Tarquins-Palladio is represented by artificers in cork -Dante and Petrarch by the jingling improvisatori-the legions of the empire by multitudes of friars and priests -Michael Angelo is a man of alabaster images-Raphael the "divine," a copier of old masters for the American market. Thus, mighty, powerful, glorious Britain, might it one day be with thee and thy sons-if thy sons consented basely to survive thy fall; then might the representatives of thy masterspirits exhibit penny shows in the streets of foreign cities, and spout doggerel verses at the corners; then might thy merchant princes wander, pedlars of petty wares, from clime to clime; then might thy nobility let lodgings, furnished and unfurnished, and thy daughters go forth dancing women and singing women into all lands; then may thy national glory be represented by chaplets, wreathing the heads of prima donna Johnson, or contralto Smith; then may thy effeminate seamen creep the along shore, and give old ocean his own again; then may thy traffic lie in dancing-masters, sausages, brimstone, bulls and excommunications; then may the men of Kent find their poor ambition in reviling the men of Northumberland-the Yorkshireman and the Cornish man swear eternal enmity; this living without life, this non-existent existence, can never be thy lot; if degradation is to come, death must lead the procession, and whoever would enslave us, must en. slave us in our graves; the good ship Old England has weathered many a tough gale, and will weather many more than we shall live to fight against. If, in the revolutions of empires, our day of decline must come, historians of the future will record of once mighty England-she broke who never bent-she sank who never would succumb-she left no willing slaves memorials of her shame; like one of the guardian giants that once prowled along her coast, she fought to the last, as often she had fought before, against the aggregated might of hostile nations; with colours nailed to the mast, she gloriously descended into the bosom of her subject deep, while the blaze of parting light that heralded her rest, lives along the wave, a terror and a warning to all nations! There is a patrimony in pride of country-let other nations live as they may, when thou art lost-thou pa. rent of noble enterprize, thou nurse of manly virtue-let us die, as we have lived, together! If the native of Italy possesses no national pride, neither has he that flippant, cocksparrow-like licentiousness of manner characteristic of your modern Gaul; those poor men who carry about the streets of London casts in plaster of Paris, are remarkable for good-humour, courtesy, and patient endurance of hardship, hunger, and fatigue. THE SAVOYARDS are noted as the monopolists of our out-of-door's music-the minstrels of the streets and lanes, the grinders of our extrinsic harmony; hateful are they in the sight of porters of Inns of Court, and much beloved of little children and nursery-maids: frumpish old maids and bitter batchelors, who have no music in their souls, drive them away rudely from their inhospitable doors; but tender mothers, with many little ones, welcome them on each returning Saturday with halfpennies, |