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 Mediterrannean 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.

III.

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,

Thevenot, p. 124:

sub silentia lunæ, and casting 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 you were pleased to offer incense to his vanity, by asserting, with so much earnestness and so much affection, that it seemed to be his fate, as well as that of Constance, frequently to suffer from persons, 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

2 A

VOL. III.

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, the west, the south, and the 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 in the bosom of the Eternal!

CHAPTER V.

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 laid down; nor leaned against any thing.-He sate 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, 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. Bazil carried this taste for seclu

1 Vide Theodoret. in Vit. Patrum, lib. ix., 854.—In the Acta Sanctcrum (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'sies des Pères du desert :-Ross weide's Histoires des Vies des Pères des deserts;—and Villefore's Vies des Saints des dèserts d'orient et d'occident.-Of the monasteries in Tartary, vide Memoires 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. Something resembling the monastic and conventual orders prevailed among the ancient British Druids and Druidesses-as may be seen by references to Ammianus Marcellinus,* and Pomponius Mela.+

sion 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 seats 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. St. Jerome first introduced the Hallelujah into the service of the church.