tion, and in the consequent disgust which follows an exhibition of the dripping soup-meat. This is supposed to occasion a sudderi re-action of the spirits, and the first idea so painfully fixed on the mind of the patient yields to the surprise of a yet more disagreeable impression.

If this disease be confined to the vulgar, the higher classes have their corresponding extravagance. This is what they term a disgusto, and may be rendered by the English word mortification, which oftentimes disposes of the patient as effectually as the scanto. One of the remedies also for this disorder is the favourite puppybroth; but here it is administered as a restorative.

Notwithstanding this morbid sensibility of mind, the disposition of the Maltese people is joyous in the extreme. There is, indeed, little society amongst the gentry; but thany causes have co-operated to render them unsocial; ancient habits of seclusion under the government of the order, their wretched frugality, and the factions into which they are divided. The genuine character of a people is, however, rather to be sought, as longest preserved, amongst the inferior classes: and those of Malta, undivided by the various parties which have sprung up amongst the noble and the rich, indulge, where they can, in a frank festivity, of which the first subject of this review presents a spirited picture, in a description of the feast of St. Peter.

It is not an unusual condition in a marriage settlement that the husband shall be obliged to bring his wife to this festival; yet it rarely falls to the lot of the women to partake of similar gaieties: their ordinary dress, their looks, their motions, their whole demeanor bespeak habitual restraint. While the man, gaily attired in white cotton trowsers, and a jacket, covered with fillagree buttons of gold or silver, and sometimes of the most expensive workmanship, his waist girt with a crimson sash, and his head covered with a red cap, nearly similar in form to the Phrygian, walks, though generally barefoot, with an elastic step and an air of confidence; the female Maltese, clad in black, her head and person partially enveloped in a mantle of the same colour, is seen shuffling along with precisely that constrained and aukward gait which distinguishes the cast of English women, who inclose themselves in long cases like caddises. We may still detect strong traces of the Arabic modes of thinking of their ancestors, whose maxim was, according to the work lately quoted, that women should appear but twice in public, the day of their wedding and of their funeral.'

The ceremonies formerly observed on the two latter occasions will be found in this publication. There is something singular, but there is little of elegance in these, nor is there much of wildness or originality in their other ceremonies or superstitions. Some

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modes of speech however might be cited, as remaining shreds of islamism; such is the caution used in the introduction of a pig into discourse, the mention of which is usually qualified with the apologetical phrase of parlando con rispetto. But their superstition is not less gross for having little that is peculiar or picturesque. It is but a few years ago that an almost universal tumult took place against the Jews, which was quieted, with great difficulty, by the singular address and influence of the governor, Sir Alexander Ball. This species of insurrection was precisely similar to those which have happened in Europe at different periods of the middle ages, and was founded upon the same extravagant pretext of the concealment and murder of Christian children. Their other prejudices have been as little softened by commerce: a Mussulman, dis covered in a bye street of La Valletta, is sometimes mobbed with the most persevering malice; and woe to the unfortunate Ishmaelite, Tho, during the three last days of the carnival, is viewed by any of these most Christian revellers, at a distance from protection.

From the people we pass to the country they inhabit. Malta, and its sister islands, which are made first, as viewed from the sea, present a heavy, undulating qutline; nor is there any thing in the whole face of the country which can be called pleasing or picturesque, till you open the harbour of La Valletta. Here indeed a scene bursts upon you equally beautiful and imposing. Two considerable inlets, the largest of which forms a most magnificent port, almost insulate the town, situated on a tongue of land, which rising inland from the sea, exhibits a series of fine buildings, towering one above the other, and crowned with some singular edifices, detached from the mass, which give a striking finish to the whole. Each side of the harbour is strongly fortified with batteries, that appear to grow out of the rock, of which they are composed. The south-east side, sufficiently covered with forts and houses, is defended by a triple tier of guns, suggesting an image of power, which works of the first order often fail to convey to an inexperienced eye. The great visible length of the harbour and its windings, which leave you in suspense as to its real limits, fill the mind with undetermined ideas of extent; and the quantity of shipping of various nations, of different forms, and bearing different flags, together with the crowds upon the Marina, gives gaiety and animation to a picture, which can hardly be paralleled in the world. Nor does the charm end on entering the town. The streets indeed are narrow, but amid the brilliancy of a southern sky, this does not occasion the gloom which renders such a mode of building disagreeable in England. The houses, which are built of stone, are flat roofed, for the purpose of preserving the rain water, on which the inhabitants principally depend, and have

most of them massive virandas glazed or latticed. There is indeed but one building which can pretend to any thing like regularity, but in no place, is the triumph of the picturesque over the beautiful more decisive. Even the mixed character of the architecture of the palace, a union of the European and Saracenic, pleases, and appears justified by the doubtful position of Malta, as well as by the mixed groups of Mahometans and Christians who repose beneath its caves.

Perhaps the most striking thing to a foreigner, on first landing, is the uninterrupted din of bells, rattled with a perseverance which appears to exceed that of all other Catholic countries. If it happens to be a festival, it will require little stretch of imagination on his part to conceive himself disembarked upon the Isle Sonnante, and the idea may derive force from the swarms of manycoloured drones, whom he will see hived in their respective churches amidst this clatter of brass. These processions, however unpromising they may sound, and they are, with some few exceptions, to the full as dull and uninteresting as might be conceived, may fairly rank with the other amusements of La Valletta, with the single reservation of the Italian opera. This is maintained on a very respectable establishment both with respect to the performers and the orchestra; but the buffo style is the favourite of these islanders, who, like all the southern people, if they have not much taste for humour, have an infinite passion for buffoonery. An actor, the words and music of whose song would be nothing without his face, figure, and grimaces, will draw down thunders of applause, and, what is more extraordinary, will draw the purse-strings of the spectators. He sings in Italian, and dollars are tost upon the stage; he is encored, and recommences in Maltese, more dollars follow, and fresh encores. His last performance is in English, and whether it be from the contagion of taste or the pride of emulation, another volley of silver is showered upon him. The opera as well as a regular Italian theatre, which occupies its stage on alternate nights, lasts only a part of the year. The latter might be said to sound the very base string of comedy, if a company of English dillettanti actors had not contrived to reach a chord below it. During the carnival, masqued balls are substituted for the opera, to which the proprietors of the boxes can go as spectators. Here the favourite Maltese dance, a species of cotillon, is performed with infinite delight, and a loose given to every sort of buffoonery, little restrained by considerations of decorum. Occasionally tumults arise, sometimes even the native guard, charged with the police of the theatre, is forced; masquers in every sort of ludicrous habit are seen scrambling into the boxes for protection, and a detachment of English soldiers is called in for the re-establishment

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of order. During the three last days of the carnival, the whole country flocks into La Valletta in masquerade, and from morning to night all is noise, revelry, and extravagance. Grotesque caricature appointments, having no idea attached to them, aiming at nothing beyond a monstrous assemblage of things incongruous, with a large fund of animal spirits, are the qualifications necessary for figuring in these Saturnalia. This, with gesticulating, squeaking, grunting, bellowing, and pelting sugar-plumbs, complete the Maltese idea of an excellent masque. If a character is attempted, it is, perhaps, that of a chasseur, who makes his poodle yelp at you, and pokes his gun in your eye, or that of a fellow, with the imitation of a scald-head, who slips his hat upon those whom he can take by surprise.

Such are the public amusements of La Valletta. A stranger may find a better resource in the public library, begun by the knights, (who, by a late act of the order, were obliged to leave their books to this collection,) and continued by the English. It is tolerably numerous, but incomplete in almost all its parts. That it should be very ill-furnished with works in our own language it would be natural to expect; it is more difficult to explain why it should be deficient in Italian literature. The first foundations can scarcely be said to have been laid of the museum, which is annexed to it; for it is miserably poor in subjects of natural history: though situated in the neighbourhood of the most abundant mines of Grecian pottery, it is not more rich in vases, of which only one is really deserving of attention, and it is yet more deficient in sculpture. There is, indeed, a statue of Hercules, of disputed antiquity, said to be good, but which was not visible when we were in Malta, and a mutilated antique female figure certainly of no ordinary workmanship. Other remains of sculpture and inscriptions are preserved in the island, but nothing particularly interesting in point of excellence or rarity. The most valuable of the latter in different languages have, we believe, been removed; and, together with these, that in Punic, supposed by Sir Wm. Drummond to designate the sepulchre of Hannibal. Malta has as little to boast on the subject of pictures. There are many, indeed, which may pass for respectable, but not more than two which can challenge admiration. One of these, in the palace, a full length portrait of Louis XVI. in his royal robes, presented by him to the order, and said to be by the hand of David, is a painting of extraordinary mechanical execution; the other, which has infinitely higher pretensions, is of the old Italian school. It represents the decollation of St. John, and is suspended in the church dedicated to him; but in so bad a situation and light, that nothing but its supereminent merits could force it upon the observation of the spectator. Much time may be pleasingly

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pleasingly spent in this place: the riches of the altar, and of the chapels, appropriated to the different Langues, the pompous arrangements for the accommodation of the order, the monuments of the grand masters, the pavement blazoned in incastro with the arms of the knights in polished marble, lapis lazuli or enamels, the imposing splendor of the place throughout, altogether take possession of the imagination, which, readily overleaping the period of its corruption and decline, is transported back into the early and heroic ages of that illustrious institution. A contrast is opposed to the graver character of St. John, in the interior of St. Paul's, in Città Vecchia, the ancient metropolis, formerly called Città Notabile, and situated a few miles from La Valletta. The characteristics of this are lightness, elegance, and a festive brilliancy of appearance. When the traveller has visited these, and what else has been here specified, he has but to dive into St. Paul's cave and the catacombs, and he will have exhausted the wonders of Malta.

The country will have few attractions for him; and if this island be, as is now contended, the Ogygia of Calypso, he will no longer admire at Ulysses' rejection of immortality' clogged with the condition of perpetual residence. Divided into a series of terraces, built up with free-stone, for the support of the scanty soil, during the rains, it exhibits the appearance of one vast church yard, a resemblance rather increased than diminished by a few and thinly scattered trees. The only two pleasure gardens of any extent, unless we class the Boschetto, previously mentioned, amongst these, are that of Floriana, a suburb of La Valletta, and that of S. Antonio attached to one of the villas of the governor, at about four miles distance. They are both laid out in the Italian style, but with considerable diversity of design. The latter is the most spacious and the most richly dressed. Near the former of these is also a small botanic garden; it is, however, on a sufficient scale to afford a fair proof of the experiment suggested by Denon in his book on Egypt, namely, the attempting to make Malta an intermediate station for the plants of warmer countries, as a mode of gradually seasoning them to the colder temperatures of Europe. It should seem, however, notwithstanding certain exceptions, that in spite of the absence of frost, there is something in particular winds which prevail here, exclusive of their violence, that is prejudicial to a large tribe of the vegetable creation. Several shrubs, which in our southern counties flourish in the open air, such as the Magnolia Grandiflora, and the less hardy Camelia Japonica, scarcely shiver through a Maltese winter with the shelter of basket-work or matting.

To some useful plants, however, which require warmth, such as the cotton-tree, the produce of which is manufactured here on a

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