capital can boast. Most of the genteeler sort live within the ramparts in winter, but among the suburbs in summer. The gallery of this city contains upwards of thirteen hundred paintings; forty-five of which are by Rubens, and fortynine by Titian. Why is not this gallery translated to the suburbs?

Even the Dutch merchant, dull, cold, and phlegmatic, as he generally is, and whom no one would accuse of being feelingly alive to imaginary delights, pleases his imagination, during youth, with the hope of retiring to a villa, on the banks of a canal; and on its portico inscribing a sentence, indicative of his happiness. "Rest and pleasure"-" shade and delight;" -"pleasure and peace;"-"rest and extensive prospect ;”— 66 peace and leisure :”—These, and similar inscriptions are frequently observed on the porticos of the villas near Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and Leyden.

Nothing can be more agreeable than the terrace or Belvidere of the castle of BEZIERS, in France; commanding, we are told, a most enchanting prospect of the fine country, adjacent to the town, and the valley (through which runs the Orbe); rising gradually on each side, and forming an amphitheatre, enriched with fields, vineyards and olive-trees. The city of DIJON, the ancient capital of the dukes of Burgundy, has delightful walks, both within and without the town :-the streets of DANTZIC are studded with trees: and the inhabitants of BRUGES have planted several stately rows, even in the public market place. Most of the cities in France are embellished with public walks. Those at TOULOUSE, particularly the esplanade on the banks of the Garonne, and the promenade at Aix, in Provence, called the Ortibelle, are represented as being exceedingly delightful. The terrace, too, at MONTPELLIER, called La Place de Peyron, and the esplanade shaded by olives, are remarkably fine. The latter enjoys a noble domestic landscape; while from the former on a clear day may be seen, to the east, the Alps, forming the frontiers of Italy; to the west,

the Pyrenees; to the south, the magnificent waters of the Mediterranean sea.-But of all the public walks in Europe, the Marina of PALERMO is said to possess the greatest advantages: the Parks of Westminster, the Elysian Fields of Paris, and the Prado at Madrid, having, we are told by the Abbate Balsamo, nothing to compare with it. The cities of SUCHEU and HANG-CHEU, in China, too, are said to have so many public walks, that the Chinese believe them to be upon earth, what the heavens are above.

In England many are the towns and cities, which boast of agreeable walks and promenades. At Oxford, Cambridge, Hereford, Worcester, Ludlow, Shrewsbury, Southampton, Carmarthen, and at Brecon, we have witnessed them. Among the last Helvidius and Constance stopt "to dry their clothes after their shipwreck." Their hearts were touched with all that they had suffered. Constance shed tears; but Helvidius walked into the groves adjoining the priory, sub silentia lunæ, and cast his eyes towards the east and south-western horizon, beheld the planets, rolling, as it were, round the summits of the Beacons; and lifted his contemplation to that exalted Being, who alone has power "to bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades, and to loosen the bands of Orion." He returned soothed and satisfied! and the more so, since it was on that very evening that your letter reached him, in which

a The great boast of modern Palermo (and a beautiful thing it is !) is the promenade of the Marina, outside of the Porta Felice. Here a noble line of palaces facing the bay, a fine carriage road, and a broad pavement, called "Banchetta,” for pedestrians, present themselves. At the eastern extremity of the Marina, which is a mile long, there is a botanical garden with a graceful modern building, in which lectures are occasionally delivered, and adjoining to this there is another garden called the " Flora," open to the public at all times, and affording the most delightful walks through avenues of acacias, or orange, lemon, citron, and lime trees. Part of the ground is laid out in parterres of flowers and sweet-smelling plants, which are watered by several fountains. Statues, small temples, and sculptured cenotaphs, all of pure white marble, are scattered here and there with happy effect. This gay and lovely garden is said to occupy the very spot on which the Inquisitors were wont to celebrate their auto da fè. -Anon. b Thevenot, p. 124.

you were pleased to offer incense to his vanity, by lamenting, with so much earnestness and so much affection, that it should be his fate, as well as that of Constance, so frequently to suffer from persons, so entirely beneath themselves.

But LONDON is the city; and its parks the Paradise of intellectual beings. The most picturesque views of this metropolis of the earth,-superior to ancient Thebes, Memphis, Nineveh, Babylon, and even Rome, in every point but architecture, are from the Hampstead and Highgate Hills on the north, the Surrey hills on, the south, and from Greenwich Park on the south-east. The last of these is, of its kind, the finest in the world. There are other scenes in Nature, far more beautiful and sublime, in reference to landscape; but it is impossible to fix upon any spot, on the entire globe, where the reflections, excited by a combination of objects, created by man, are so varied and profound;-and where the emotions, which those reflections create, are so powerful and transporting.-Here-innumerable evidences bear witness to the astonishing powers of MAN; and operate, as so many arguments to prove the divinity of his origin. In other scenes it is the God of Nature, that speaks to us;-in this it is the GENIUS OF MAN. All the wealth, that the industry of nations has gathered together, seems to be extended before us :-and on this spot, the east, west, south, and north, appear to concentrate. From the multitude of objects, presented to our sight, the idea of infinity shoots into the mind:-The first feeling is the feeling of matter; the last feeling is the feeling of spirit. Tired of this diurnal sphere, the soul acknowledges the divinity of its origin; it gravitates towards its centre; it springs forward, and rests, as it were, in the bosom of the Eternal Power.

HERMITAGES, MONASTERIES, AND NUNNERIES.

In the middle ages, all taste for the sublime and beautiful was confined to the monks. This taste did not originate with the earliest founders of the monastic orders; for PAUL, the first hermit, resided in a cave; and ST. ANTHONY on Mount Colzim, a dreary and pathless desert. The lives of hermits and saints afford as much solid entertainment, as the guilty pages of historians. ST. JEROM devoted several years to solitude, abstinence, and devotion, in a hideous desert in Syria: ST. ISIDORE retired to a solitude in the neighbourhood of Pelusiota: PASCHOMIUS, among the ruins of a deserted village, on an island formed by the Nile, erected the first regular cloister; and soon after founded eight others in the deserts of Thebais. This recluse never lay down; nor leaned against any thing. He sat upon a large stone in the middle of his cell; and when Nature demanded him to sleep, he slept with reluctance, and then sitting.

ST. MARON, founder of the sect, called the Maronites, led a life of austerity, in the solitude of a hermitage; ST. HILARION lived forty years in a desert; while SIMEON STYLITES, the celebrated Syrian shepherd, on a column, sixty feet in height, unmoved either by the heat of summer, or the cold of winter, lived for a period of thirty years :-hymning, as he thought,

a

a Vide Theodoret. in Vit. Patrum, lib. ix., 854.-In the Acta Sanctorum (ii. 107.) St. Anthony is called the "Father of Monastic Life.”—Those, desirous of investigating the manners and habits of the monks of the deserts, may consult with advantage Arnaud D'Andilly's Vies des Pères du Désert :--Rossweide's Histoire des Vies des Pères des Déserts ;-and Villefore's Vies de Saints des Déserts d'Orient et d'Occident.—Of the monasteries in Tartary, vide Mémoires concern. les Chinois, tom. xiv. 219.

Buddha, the great god of the Cingalese, is said to have been a hermit. Trav. Marco Polo, b. iii., c. xxiii. And something resembling the monastic and conventual orders prevailed among the ancient British Druids and Druidesses ;-as may be seen by references to Ammianus Marcellinus (lib. xv.), and Pomponius Mela (lib. iii. c. 2).

by his austerities and privations, a requiem for eternal rest.— A church was afterwards built round his pillar; and so persuaded were the inhabitants of Antioch of his sanctity, that they esteemed his bones more efficacious as a defence than the walls of a city.

EUGENIUS instituted the monastic order in Mesopotamia: ST. BASIL carried this taste for seclusion still farther into the East; while ST. MARTIN, bishop of Tours, erected the first monastery in France. The followers of HILARION, and those of the earlier hermits, anachorets, and ascetics, sought, as the seats of retirement, the most uncultivated solitudes and the most obscure wildernesses; where they cultivated vines, figs, and olives, for their daily subsistence. In process of time, however,―particularly after the discovery of the pandects of Justinian, whence we may date the origin of modern science and taste, the love for natural beauty improved: and the founders of abbeys, priories, and other religious houses, became remarkable for selecting the most delightful situations for the scats of devotion :-and, having once established themselves, they were far from being deficient in the art of improving the natural advantages of the spots they had chosen.

The HERMITS of ST. JOHN the BAPTIST lived in a kind of Laura, about twenty miles from Pampelona, in the kingdom of Navarre. They wore no shoes, nor linen; a large cross depended from their breasts; and a stone served them for a pillow. Those of BRITTINI led a life of austerity in almost perpetual fasting: and those of ST. JEROME of the OBSERVANCE, (the order of which was founded by Lupus d'Olmedo among the picturesque mountains of Cazalla) were almost equally abstinent and austere.

There were various orders of hermits. Some devoted themselves entirely to a life of seclusion; and by abstinence thought they best conciliated the approbation of the Deity. Others lived in hermitages, attached to convents. These were