the curule chair, and the bloody pomp of the triumphal sacri fice. He seems to be transported back to the days when eight hundred thousand Italian warriors sprung to arms at the ru mour of a Gallic invasion. He breathes all the spirit of those intrepid and haughty patricians, who forgot the dearest ties of nature in the claims of public duty, who looked with disdain on the elephants and on the gold of Pyrrhus, and listened with unaltered composure to the tremendous tidings of Cannæ. Like an ancient temple deformed by the barbarous architecture of a later age, his character acquires an interest from the very circumstances which debase it. The original proportions are rendered more striking by the contrast which they present to the mean and incongruous additions.

The influence of the sentiments which we have described, was not apparent in his writings alone. His enthusiasm, barred from the career which it would have selected for itself, seems to have found a vent in desperate levity. He enjoyed a vindictive pleasure in outraging the opinions of a society which he despised. He became careless of those decencies which were expected from a man so highly distinguished in the literary and political world. The sarcastic bitterness of his conversation, disgusted those who were more inclined to accuse his licentiousness than their own degeneracy, and who were unable to conceive the strength of those emotions which are concealed by the jests of the wretched, and by the follies of the wise.

The historical works of Machiavelli still remain to be considered. The life of Castruccio Castracani will occupy us for a very short time, and would scarcely have demanded our notice, had it not attracted a much greater share of public attention than it deserves. Few books, indeed, could be more interesting than a careful and judicious account, from such a pen, of the illustrious Prince of Lucca, the most eminent of those Italian chiefs, who, like Pisistratus and Gelon, acquired a power felt rather than seen, and resting, not on law or on prescription, but on the public favour and on their great personal qualities. Such a work would exhibit to us the real nature of that species of sovereignty, so singular and so often misunderstood, which the Greeks denominated tyranny, and which, modified in some degree by the feudal system, reappeared in the commonwealths of Lombardy and Tuscany. But this little composition of Machiavelli is in no sense a history. It has no pretensions to fidelity. It is a trifle, and not a very successful trifle. It is scarcely more authentic than the novel of Belphegor, and is very much duller.

The last great work of this illustrious man was the History of his native city. It was written by the command of the Pope, who, as chief of the house of Medici, was at that time sovereign of Florence. The characters of Cosmo, of Piero, and of Lorenzo, are, however, treated with a freedom and impartiality equally honourable to the writer and to the patron. The miseries and humiliations of dependence, the bread which is more bitter than every other food, the stairs which are more painful than every other ascent, had not broken the spirit of Machiavelli. The most corrupting post in a corrupting profession, had not depraved the generous heart of Clement.

*

The History does not appear to be the fruit of much industry or research. It is unquestionably inaccurate. But it is elegant, lively, and picturesque, beyond any other in the Italian language. The reader, we believe, carries away from it a more vivid and a more faithful impression of the national character and manners than from more correct accounts. The truth is, that the book belongs rather to ancient than to modern literature. It is in the style, not of Davila and Clarendon, but of Herodotus and Tacitus: and the classical histories may almost be called romances founded in fact. The relation is, no doubt, in all its principal points, strictly true. But the numerous little incidents which heighten the interest, the words, the gestures, the looks, are evidently furnished by the imagination of the author. The fashion of later times is dif ferent. A more exact narrative is given by the writer. It may be doubted whether more exact notions are conveyed to the reader. The best portraits are those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature; and we are not aware, that the best histories are not those in which a little of the exaggeration of fictitious narrative is judiciously employed. Something is lost in accuracy; but much is gained in effect. The fainter lines are neglected; but the great characteristic features are imprinted on the mind for ever.

The History terminates with the death of Lorenzo de Medici. Machiavelli had, it seems, intended to continue it to a later period. But his death prevented the execution of his design; and the melancholy task of recording the desolation and shame of Italy devolved on Guicciardini.

Machiavelli lived long enough to see the commencement of the last struggle for Florentine liberty. Soon after his death, monarchy was finally established,-not such a monarchy as that

* Dante Paradiso, Canto xvii.

of which Cosmo had laid the foundations deep in the constitu tion and feelings of his countrymen, and which Lorenzo had embellished with the trophies of every science and every art; but a loathsome tyranny, proud and mean, cruel and feeble, bigotted and lascivious. The character of Machiavelli was hateful to the new masters of Italy; and those parts of his theory which were in strict accordance with their own daily practice, afforded a pretext for blackening his memory. His works were misrepresented by the learned, misconstrued by the ignorant, censured by the church, abused, with all the rancour of simulated virtue, by the minions of a base despotism, and the priests of a baser superstition. The name of the man whose genius had illuminated all the dark places of policy, and to whose patriotic wisdom an oppressed people had owed their last chance of emancipation and revenge, passed into a proverb of infamy. For more than two hundred years his bones lay undistinguished. At length, an English nobleman paid the last honours to the greatest statesman of Florence. In the Church of Santa Croce, a monument was erected to his memory, which is contemplated with reverence by all who can distinguish the virtues of a great mind through the corruptions of a degenerate age;-and which will be approached with still deeper homage when the object to which his public life was devoted shall be attained,-when the foreign yoke shall be broken, when a second Proccita shall avenge the wrongs of Naples, when a happier Rienzi shall restore the good estate of Rome, when the streets of Florence and Bologna shall again resound with their ancient war cry-Popolo; popolo; muoiano i tiranni!

ART. II. A Description of Active and Extinct Volcanoes, with Remarks on their Origin, their Chemical Phenomena, and the Character of their Products, as determined by the Condition of the Earth during the period of their Formation. Being the Substance of some Lectures delivered before the University of Oxford, with much additional Matter. By CHARLES DAUBENY, M. D. F. R. S. &c. 1 vol. 8vo. London, 1826.

G EOLOGY is the youngest of the physical sciences; and has been but lately put into proper training. Long after the principles of inductive reasoning had been successfully

applied to other branches of knowledge, the most fanciful speculations, resembling rather the fantastic creations of a poetical imagination than the sober deductions of philosophy, were gravely brought forth as theories of the formation of the earth. Until the time of Saussure and of Hutton, few of those who attempted to describe the appearances of the earth's surface, or to reason upon them, appear to have had a just conception of the manner in which geological observations ought to be conducted, of the legitimate end of all such inquiries, or of those limits which man, being no other than Naturæ minister et interpres,' can never pass, without the certainty of being lost in the regions of fancy and conjecture. But the precision which has been introduced into the researches of geologists since that period, and chiefly within the last twenty years, has rescued them from the reproach so justly cast upon their predecessors, of being little better than visionary theorists, and bids fair to bring geology nearer to the rank of an exact science, than there seemed at one time any reason to expect. Much light has been thrown upon the theory of the formation of stony bodies, by experiments in our laboratories, microscopic as they must be considered, when contrasted with the operations of nature. By the careful examination which has been instituted into the phenomena of volcanoes; by the investigation of the nature of those countries which now are, or have been the seat of volcanic action; and finally, by the application of the observations so made to the appearances exhibited by the nonvolcanic unstratified rocks, both as regards their mineralogical structure, and their relations to the strata with which they are associated, more has been done to dispel the obscurity and difficulties which involved some of the fundamental questions of geology, than by any other class of observations. There is, perhaps, no department of this science which possesses a greater degree of interest; and there are certainly few occasions when an ordinary spectator can so largely participate in the pleasure which a geologist derives from his researches. The spectacle of a vast mountain, like Etna, covering an area of a hundred and eighty miles circumference, and rising in solitary 'grandeur' to the height of above 10,000 feet, vomiting forth smoke and flame, and showers of ashes and ignited fragments of rocks, and pouring down its sides rivers of molten stone, some thousand feet in width, is perhaps one of the most su blime and impressive that can be imagined. But if he who has the good fortune to witness a volcanic eruption, besides possessing a mind capable of receiving those deep impressions

which such a scene must leave on every intelligent spectator, has directed his attention to geological inquiries, the effect upon him must far exceed what would be produced upon an ordinary observer, and its full force can be known to those only who, like himself, have cultivated this most alluring field of philosophical speculation.

The author of the work of which we now propose to lay a brief account before our readers, is by far the most accurate and scientific inquirer into the whole range of volcanic phenomena, who has yet laid the result of his labours before the public. Besides much original information derived from his own observations, in the several volcanic districts which he visited, he has collected what was most valuable and worthy of preservation from preceding authors. We consider his work as one of the most useful contributions to geological science that has yet appeared; and it is another addition to the many important donations which geologists have had to acknowledge, of late years, from the University of Oxford. The names of Professor Buckland, and of the Reverend William Conybeare, have long been distinguished among the most eminent geologists of the present day; and we are confident that those learned persons will not think that we do them injustice, by placing Dr Daubeny in the same rank with themselves. In bearing our humble testimony to the value of their labours as men of science, and associating their names with that of the renowned University to which they belong, we cannot omit to notice, and especially in reference to the work now before us, how much classical learning may be made to embellish and diffuse a charm over even the driest details of scientific investigation.

Dr Daubeny, who is now a Fellow of Magdalen College, and Professor of Chemistry at Oxford, appears to have passed the winter of 1816-17 at Edinburgh, and during that time to have attended the lectures of our eminent professor of Natural History, Mr Jameson. The opinions which he heard delivered in the lecture-room, and the discussions that took place among the geologists whom he saw at that time, upon the then so much disputed origin of the trap-rocks, appear to have impressed him very strongly with the conviction, that an appeal to the phenomena of existing volcanoes was most likely to throw light upon the particular structure and relations of these rocks, as well as to explain many of the changes which the surface of the earth has undergone.

I recollect so long ago as the year 1816, when I was pursuing my