Leave the hall and the bower-leave palace and cot-- All, all but the last and the holiest flame, That burns for our country in sorrow and shame. From the slumber of years, fallen Poland, awake, When freedom contends, there is hope for the brave; H. AMERICANS IN ITALY. NAPLES,, 18-. A RIDE up the side of Mount Vesuvius is delightful in a pleasant spring morning. It is enough to say of the morning air of Italy, that it is as fresh, pure and exhilirating, as the breezes which used to blow over our native hills or meadows, when we visited them at an early hour in our boyhood. It revived in me all the feelings of youth as I proceeded; but the antique walls around me, and the quaint dresses and foreign dialect of the peasants I met, on their way to the Naples market, mingled in my mind some strange reflections at every step. Leaving the noisy streets of Torre del Greco, we were soon silently winding our way, at the slow pace of a mule's walk, up the stony paths, by which the annual crops are carried down the mountain, and hundreds of travelers, of different nations and characters, are transported to one of the principal points included in the tour of Italy and of Europe. My old Neapolitan companion, who had left the city thus early, only for the pleasure of accompanying me, unfortunately knew nothing more of ancient days, than the other uneducated Italians of the inferior classes, whom I have commonly met with, appear to possess ; so that for any information concerning the ruined cities around the bay of Naples, or the great events and names associated with that region in history, I might much better have consulted one of my old schoolmates at However, he entered into some reflections on the modern state of Italy, which showed his observation to be acute, and his character in some respects of a higher grade than I had before regarded it. One reflection, which I have been induced to make, after my remarks on the course and habits of his mind, is this-that I must in a degree forget books, and study men. He has adopted views, from his personal observations on society, although ignorant of every letter in the alphabet, which I never found in a mere man of reading; and which some of my learned friends, I am sure, if they had obtained them, would regard as being among the most valuable of their acquisitions. And then his style of conversation! Without a classical allusion, without any trace of Greek or Roman influence, be yond the correspondence between the Italian and ancient languages.! I was not prepared to think that a moment in Italy could be tolerable in such company. "Here we will dismount and rest ourselves a little," said he, as we reached the hermitage; and the seat we chose, on the verge of the broad court-yard, offered a resting place very welcome to me, who had not been accustomed to the short, jolting motion of my mule. Here, thought I, many a traveler has admired this expansive and delightful scene. Our eyes ranged without interruption over leagues of land and water. "Americano!" exclaimed my companion, "I have brought you here safely. When you go home, tell your parents, brothers and sisters that you have one friend in Italy as true as any of them. Here is the city; yonder is the way we came; there we turned off to ascend the mountain; and here we are, safe and happy. Look around you! Are you melancholy? Why don't you sing and dance like me? Such a sight as this makes me as active and cheerful as a boy, See yonderthere on the plain and at the base of Vesuvio, are scattered a thousand-yes, ten thousand habitations. You can see them all at a glance; but you do not know the people who live in them, and you never will. I know them, I have talked with them as I now do with you. I have been in many of their houses, reposed in some, eaten in others, and might be now, at this minute, welcome in all. Many of them I like, some of them I love, or I did love when I was a youth, and when many of those, who are now in their graves, were among my companions; but whenever you go back to your country, I must go with you. Old as I am, I feel as if I could not live, or willingly even die here." 66 "But," said I, "would you cross the Atlantic at the age of sixty, and adopt a country where every thing would be unknown to you?" My friend! my son!" exclaimed the old man, "when I think what the state of the country is, how every year we are exposed to war, what war is, and what I have seen of its doings amongst those very habitations, I feel ready to go any where, if I might but find a land of peace. Are not the people of America, where you say they have no wars, perfectly happy and perfectly good?" [Oh, party spirit, intemperance, immorality! if I could now give utterance to the feelings which such a simple question excited in my mind against you!] "The sight you now behold is peaceful and tranquil to you; I know it is. You cast your eyes over these regions, and see the morning light on the fields and villages, the ships in the bay, and the islands on the coast; but I know who once lived in many of those cottages and palaces, what enjoyments they used to hope for, and what sorrows they have ere this undergone. The wars have passed, it is true; and though they may not soon return, the traces they have left are not to be effaced. There! let a soldier tread there," he said, springing upon his feet, and stamping upon the ground; "the place is accursed for ever after. You can make nothing grow upon it. Plant a vine there, the earth will not give it nourishment; the rain will not come down upon it; the dew will not touch it. It may stretch out its boughs, and spread its leaves wide open, but it cannot get a drop of water; and when you come again, you will find it withered. Troops have been all over this country; and every spot where they have encamped, and every house they ever entered, I would rather have seen struck by lightning. Soldiers have been in Naples, in Resina, at Civita Castellana, at Baia, Ischia and Capri, by St. Antonio! and what is the result? "When War comes, he enters a palace, and says, Where is your most noble and lofty-spirited son, Sir Duke? Harness his horse, give him his arms, and take your last farewell of him. I will spare you those who are corrupt and profligate. Such as may disgrace their ancestry I am willing to leave you. But this youth! Ah, I will save you the expense of his funeral. War enters a cottage and says, Peasant! who plants your little field; who reaps your little harvest; who hoards up for you the remnant which is spared by the laws; who fills your humble house with plenty and with hope ? There is he who does all this, replies this old gray-head. Young man! come with me, says War. You are the seed I sow; you are the harvest I reap; you are one of the ears such as I glean out of the crop. Old man, who made this warm garment to cover you; who spread this soft bed under your aged limbs; who furnishes this table with your daily food, and cheers your humble habitation with her music and her smiles? There she is; there is my daughter, replies the old man. Leave your employments, says War, such as your father I kill with starvation and sorrow; such children as these I take for my portion. In return I have brought you such rewards as I give ; a broken heart and an early grave. "Americano!" added my companion, now go down from the mountain, ask at each of those cottages whether I speak the truth and they will answer, Yes! Ask them again and again, and they will say, Yes, yes. Ask them all, and they will say, Yes, yes, yes!" ; From this moment America assumed a new aspect in my eyes. My country, free from the scourge of war; from the incurable moral plagues of standing armies; from the chilling influence which the apprehensions and exposure to war excites; would that she could be delivered from those intestine dissensions, and self-created sources of immorality and ruin, by which she is so deeply injured and debased! Would it not be better, if we were to spend some portion of the breath, which we waste in reproaching the poor peasantry of Europe, and especially of Naples, in confessing some of our faults and offences? They are committed against clearer light, and in the midst of far greater advantages. If, with all the opportunities the people have so long enjoyed, we are no better than we are, what should we have been, if, like the Italians, we had had our population decimated, every few years or months, by war, and for centuries, without intermission, had suffered under the complication of political evils, which have trammeled and sunk the mind, and ruined the hearts of the people, by setting one class in society at sword's points with the other in questions of vital interest? Minds and feelings like those, exhibited by this old man, have been repeatedly displayed in my limited travels, under all the disabilities from which he suffered; and, in comparison with individuals I could remember at home, there was the more to admire and approve in them. The invaluable early advantages, for which each of us is accountable, who has been educated in America, have been often brought to my mind. I have peeped into some of the few little schhools which here and there are met with, and formed in my mind an idea of the immense waste made of precious time in the years of infancy, childhood and youth, in a land where education is not properly appreciated. Among a group of lively peasants, which I took an opportunity to mingle with for a few minutes, on that sublime eminence where the hermitage is situated, was a little boy about six years of age, whose sprightliness greatly interested me. Poor thing though you know it not, moral and intellectual barriers are raised around you, which a giant could not break through. You I recognize as one individual of the great community we call mankind; of which some are so distinguished, others, merely through the influence of less favorable circumstances, are kept in a state of humility and debasement. You are one of the fairest and sweetest members of that great family to which we all belong : how hard that you should not have had assigned to you a brighter and more desirable apartment in our vast mansion, where you might enjoy more of the beams transmitted through the sky light. Though one portion may be gloomy as a vault like Kamtschatka, and China may seem isolated like a barbarous citadel, and Africa still remain unexplored, we claim it all as one building, constructed for one object, the habitation of the same race. Every part will one day appear, as it is, in some way necessary for the proper proportions and solidity of the whole; and thou, though an humble infant, art still a necessary individual of the vast band, whose number would be incomplete, whose variety of talents and capacities would be less immeasurable and glorious without you. Ah, had you been placed in some more favored apartment, Jenner's talismanic pencil would have inscribed on your marble skin that cabalistic cypher, which puts one form of disease and death to flight. Lancaster would have commissioned a host of your gay companions of the nursery, gently to raise the veil of darkness from your mind, and generously yielded you intellectual light for the price you pay for rain drops and this morning air. The arts would readily have added to their complicated machinery one wheel more, a hammer or a card-tooth, to dress you in the livery of their votaries; and while the cotton-looms were spontaneously weaving an extra yard of calico for so sweet a child, the press would have been imprinting the sheets of your little library, and collecting rays of knowledge, like a concentrating lens, from the sciences, in all their courses and constellations, into one bright little focus to delight your eyes. Were you in our country, my sweetest, at your lovely age, every tender and delicate plant would have been called by its name in your hearing, and every question you fain would ask, about the flowers and stones and birds around you, the clouds and stars above, would have been delightfully answered before you had studied how to frame them. Even at your early age, the charming vista of knowledge would have been opened to you. You would ere this have begun to discover the attractions of that course, and already have entered on that career, which the greatest of our species have pursued for years and years with great and increasing delight. Kind friends would ere this have thrown about you the silken bands of maternal and friendly instruc tion, under the protection if not the express authority of refined laws, and led you gently along in leading strings, by the path which is trodden by gay groups of your age, who would welcome you into their company. How it grieves me, dear boy! to think that you must be left behind! How fain would I lend you a helping hand! How fain would be many of those benevolent and devoted friends to useful knowledge, those volunteers against General Ignorance and the numerous armies of darkness, to receive you into their files, and train you after the manual of practical intelligence and virtue. Oh that I might apprentice you to learning and goodness, and have you trained up to the art and mystery of public usefulness! And am I to leave you to suffer, another victim to that old system, by which the way to knowledge is heaped up and obstructed with obstacles, too great for the exertions even of a mature mind? And these reflections, I find, have led me to think of my own country also, where, although great improvements have been made in early instruction, they have not been either brought to perfection, or extended in the necessary degree. D. * JUNIUS AND HIS LETTERS. WITHOUT regularly reviewing this entertaining book, we propose to state, in our own order and as summarily as possible, the main arguments which it furnishes in favor of the author's theory. His object, it is well known, is to identify Junius and Lord Chatham. Whether his success corresponds with his confidence, or with his ingenuity, may be seen in the sequel. He relies, in the first place, upon the political situation of Lord Chatham at the time when the letters appeared, as explanatory of the motives of Junius. He had entered the administration in 1757, and abandoned his first place in it in 1761. He retained the privy seal, however, for several subsequent years; and did not finally retire, until within a few months previous to the coming out of the letters. These, it is now supposed, were the elaborate result of his first leisure; the medium, by which he still supported his party, while he defended his own principles, and avenged himself both of his personal and political enemies. Under the circumstances of " age and incapacity," which even Junius attributes to Lord Chatham, it was the only resource left to him. All this is thought to be confirmed by the general spirit of the letters, and still more by the particular hostilities which they indicate. Of the most inveterate of these, the Duke of Grafton is the object. The very first letter attacks him. The twelfth gives a history of his intercourse with Chatham. "From Newmarket, White's and the opposition, he gave you to the world with an air of popularity, which *An Essay on Junius and his Letters; embracing a Sketch of the Life and Character of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, and Memoirs of certain other distinguished individuals; with Reflections historical, personal, and political, relative to the Affairs of Great-Britain and America, from 1763 to 1785. By Benjamin Waterhouse, M. D. |