two inferences:--the first, that the Count was tired of restriction, and glad to obtain emancipation; the other, that he had made a previous arrangement with Napoleon, which made it expedient for him to visit Europe with as little delayas possible. If the last was his intention, it was disappointed by a long detention at the Cape of Good Hope, where he was allowed to occupy Lord Charles Somerset's country residence. At length, he sailed for Europe; and after various adventures, he appears now to be comfortably settled in his native land, preparing a new edition of his "Atlas."

Art. III. Vestiges of Ancient Manners and Customs, discoverable in Modern Italy and Sicily. By the Rev. John James Blunt, Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, and late one of the Travelling Bachelors of that University. 8vo. pp. xvi, 294. Price 9s. 6d.

London. 1823.

A more instructive and interesting subject of investigation can scarcely be proposed, than that which occupies the pages of the work before us. The coincidence of ancient and modern customs, is something more than a dry antiquarian topic. It enters largely into those speculations concerning human nature, which constitute the true philosophy of history, and without which, history is an amusement for an idle hour, rather than the school of experience. He who is solicitous to imbibe the real spirit of history, and to derive the most profitable lessons from the study, will attentively scrutinize, not only the broad lines of demarcation which separate the great portions of mankind, but those traits which are discernible in the people of the same country at the same or at different periods. To illustrate the influences of climate or locality upon national manners, it will be necessary to trace in the same people, at distant eras, those features of character, those moral lineaments which remain unchanged by the stupendous changes that conquests, invasions, and the various vicissitudes of states and empires, have wrought upon the face of the globe.

No where is this more strikingly illustrated, than in the manners and pursuits of the ancient and the modern Romans. There are vestiges, indeed, of the ancient, in the modern manners of that couutry,-many more perhaps than the learned industry of Mr. Blunt has enabled him to collect. But, although the two pictures present innumerable analogies, the contrasts are happily more numerous still. The ancient Romans, to use the philosophic words of Tacitus, were propriam et synceram et tantum sui similem gentem. It was a state of society to which the

history of man scarcely furnishes a parallel; a state in which, from the rankness of the moral soil, or some mysterious principle of social vegetation, all that is severe in virtue or dignified in wisdom, grew up by the side of all that is relaxed in manners, vicious in taste, or perverted in feeling,—the gentlest and most sacred of affections being darkened and over-shadowed by the most detestable vices. In the still more downward periods of their history, when even those contrasts ceased, and all was crime and sensuality, there arose a contrast even in their vices. At one time, we are sickened at the whining delicacy of Lesbias weeping their extinct sparrows; at another, disgusted by whole crowds of Lesbias witnessing with delight the bloody amusements of the circus, and calmly dooming the vanquished gladiator to death, by bending their delicate thumbs, the signal for his destruction. Among a people almost enslaved by sumptuary laws, a single female carried about her person, jewels equal in value to the capital of the richest jeweller in London.* Boars roasted entire for a Roman supper, present an image of savage voracity which carries the imagination to the banks of the Oronooko; while the same table exhibited dishes consisting of the brains of nightingales, and the tongues of peacocks, and a rôti of singing birds, recommended to the pampered palate only by the beauty of their plumage and the melody of their song. The Roman beau, who bathed for five hours every day, and was anointed from head to foot with aromatics and unguents, had not so much as a handkerchief for his nose, while he carried suspended from his neck, a cloth for the purpose of wiping away a secretion which has no name in polished society. To a table groaning beneath massive vessels of plate, every guest brought his own napkin, into which he openly thrust a portion of the supper, to send to his family. At the most hospitable feasts of Rome, sat parasites invited for the express purpose of repaying the liberality of the host with the grossest adulation, while they sustained at his hands indignities which only the most brutal insolence could offer, or the most stupid servility endure.

To have imbibed the liberal and elegant arts,' remarks Horace, humanizes the manners, and prevents mankind from being barbarians.' Yet, how poor a comment upon the aphorism is to be found in the best days of Roman refinement! Never were the elegant studies cultivated more generally. The senses and the intellect drank delight from the fairest models of art,

Arbuthnot computes the jewels worn by Lollia Paulina at the sum of £332,916, 13s. 6d. + Hor. Epist. 1. i. 18.

and the sublimest products of genius. Every street, every house presented forms of ideal beauty, so infinitely multiplied, that the expression of Cassiodorus, who said, that the statues of the ancient city nearly equalled the numbers of its inhabitants, is scarcely an exaggeration. The lyric, the epic, the comic muse by turns ministered to enchant the soul. But, beneath this florid and gaudy bloom, lurked a moral taint of deadliest poison. Vices at which nature recoils, were not merely tolerated, but made the theme of poetry and of wit. Christianity has effected much, even among the people who have most disfigured and debased her. In no country, has it been more strongly proved, how little the refinements of a polished age are calculated to quicken the real progression of nations to happiness and virtue.

Mr. Blunt has confined his inquiries to Italy and Sicily. His dissertation would have been more complete, had he also travel led into Greece, and collected the strong resemblances of the religious rites and social habitudes that prevail among the modern inhabitants of that territory, to those which prevailed among their Grecian progenitors. The present state of that nation, and the awful conflict in which they are engaged, render the subject, at this moment, peculiarly interesting. Although we can allow ourselves to notice a few analogies only, we cannot abstain from the attempt to point out a few of the most striking correspondences between ancient and modern Greece: we should be happy if our imperfect hints should invite some scholar like Mr. Blunt to complete them by personal observation. For such a task, how well qualified was Villoison! He explored Greece and Turkey with this intent, and much are the circumstances to be lamented, which interrupted his researches. The prolegomena to his Homer contains, we believe, all that remains of his investigations.

A mythology so fanciful and splendid as that of Greece, must have had, from the very constitution of our imperfect nature, a strong hold upon its inhabitants. The exterior worship addressed itself to their ardent imaginations. The pomp of their festivals, their sacrificial processions, flattered and nourished their natural fondness for show and decoration. Every art was consecrated to the service of their divinities. The sacerdotal character, from the earliest ages, was honoured with peculiar respect and obeisance. At length the Gospel beamed upon them; but it was not long before the purity of primitive Christianity was stained by the mixture of ancient rites, and its simple truths interpolated with heathen fiction. When the political extension of the Church became the main object of its rulers, it was deemed expedient to flatter the existing prejudices of the multitude, and Christian churches were built on sites already

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hallowed in their eyes by the temples of their former worship. Chrysostom and others of the Christian fathers frequently lamented the inveteracy of the Grecian customs; and the superstitious character of the ancient Greek has been fully transmitted to his descendants. The feelings of a modern Greek are never, perhaps, in a state of so high excitation as at mass. The Greek is, in this respect, distinguished from the more negligent and formal Latin. A church or a sacred fountain in Greece almost invariably points out the site of an ancient temple; and those who have navigated the Archipelago, have frequently noticed the little white chapels upon the pots axpo (the high promontories) of that coast. At sight of these, the mariner devoutly crosses himself, and offers up his prayers with the punctilious exactness of the sailor who formerly invoked the

Dii maris et terræ tempestatumque potentes,' from the prow of the Argo.

Among the most classical superstitions of modern Greece, may be ranked the agiasmata or holy fountains. Of these, the usual characteristics are, a romantic landscape and the neighbourhood of a cavern or a grove. To these fountains, they repair at certain festivals in crowds, to invoke the saint (the genius loci), and there they disburthen the joyousness and gayety of their hearts in songs and dances. The sick are brought there to drink the waters, and those whom the saint has vouchsafed to heal, never neglect to affix a strip of linen (the votiva tabella) in gratitude for the favour. The description, in the Odyssey, of the fountain Arethusa, would convey an accurate account of a modern agiasma. No business is undertaken, no voyage begun, without an offering at the shrine of a favourite saint. No Athenian ever leaves the Piræus without presenting a taper to San Spiridion, whose monastery occupies the site of the Diana Munychia, and receives the offerings formerly made to that goddess. The manners of the Iliad may be distinctly traced in the violent feasting which accompanies many of the ceremonies of modern Greece. It is not unusual to see a crowd roasting two hundred sheep in the open air. On the first of May, every door at Athens is crowned with a garland. Boccacio and Dryden have judiciously chosen this festival at Athens for the scene of the exquisite fable of Palamon and Arcite. A similar garland is suspended from the prow of a ship, when it is first launched.

Puppibus et læti nautæ imposuere coronas.'

Virg. Georg, 1. i. 382. The master of the ship first raises the cup of wine to his lips as he stands on the deck, and then pours it on the ground.

Might we not trace to this classical custom, the ceremony practised among ourselves on similar occasions? The ceremonies of marriage, their dances, their games, their feasts, their funerals, would present similar analogies.

The intimate and visible union which the forms of religion maintain with all the events of private life in the countries visited by Mr. Blunt, renders it a conspicuous topic in his treatise. Dr. Middleton had indeed gone over the same ground before him, for the express purpose of shewing, that the corruptions of the Roman Church were derived from Pagan ceremonies. But the celebrated "Letter from Rome" left a plentiful gleaning to those who might come after him; especially, possessed as we now are of sources of information not open to that vigorous writer, in the excavations of Herculaneum and Pompeii. Mr. Blunt's object, however, is classical illustration; and he depre cates being supposed guilty of the intention to write a polemical essay.

I feel,' he says in his preface, the more desirous that this should be clearly understood, because otherwise it might be supposed that I am about to renew the warfare against the church of Rome, which Dr. Middleton waged so vigorously in his celebrated Letter.' My present aim is perfectly distinct from his. I mean no attack upon that church; and if I were to attack it, I should do so on more general, and, as I conceive, stronger grounds. I have lived much amongst its members, and have experienced from them many personal civilities. That their faith is erroneous, of course I believe; but I believe that the faith of him who would oppose it with uncharitable bitterness and invective, is no less so. In tracing, however, the vestiges of a classical age which still exist in Italy and Sicily, it is impossible not frequently to refer to the rites and ceremonies of paganism, or to avoid remarking the close connexion which they often have with those at present in use. Many such customs are innocent in themselves, and therefore may be retained by the church of Italy without censure. Some few are more than innocent, they are meritorious, and therefore may be retained with praise. But others, it must be confessed, and those no small class either, are unquestionably superstitious and idolatrous, and therefore ought to be abolished. Of this the enlightened Romanist himself is no less conscious than those who hold the reformed faith; for he cannot defend, nor do I think he would be desirous of attempting it, the gross abuses which fraud or credulity or inveterate custom has engrafted upon the fundamental tenets of his church. Many of these abuses, however, it was necessary to introduce in order to complete my picture; nor had I any reason for passing over unnoticed, objects which are familiar to all who travel through Italy. Where I have discovered then any points of conformity between the religion of ancient and modern Rome, I have fearlessly mentioned them, as I would mention any points of conformity between the houses or streets; neither have I denied myself the full liberty of expressing my own