points of projection. Such is the city taken in one broad view. To describe its buildings I leave to the guide-books: its environs belong to the painter."

Such is the exterior view of this celebrated city; the picture of the interior is touched with all the genuine humour and the realizing effect of a Hogarth or a Teniers.

"Naples, in its interior, has no parallel on earth. The crowd of London is uniform and intelligible; it is a double line in quick motion; it is the crowd of business. The crowd of Naples consists in a general tide rolling up and down, in the middle of this tide a hundred eddies of men. Here you are swept on by the current, there you are wheeled round by the vortex. A diversity of trades dispute with you in the streets. You are stopped by a carpenter's bench, you are lost among shoemaker's stools, you dash among the pots of a maccaroni-stall, and you escape behind a lazarone's night-basket. In this region of caricature, every bargain sounds like a battle: the popular exhibitions are full of the grotesque; some of their church-processions would frighten a war-horse. "The mole seems on holidays an epitome of the town, and exhibits most of its humours. Here stands a methodistical friar preaching to one row of lazaroni: there Punch, the representative of the nation, holds forth to a crowd. Yonder, another orator recounts the miracles per. formed by a sacred waxwork on which he rubs his agnuses, and sells them, thus impregnated with grace, for a grain a piece. Beyond him are quacks, in hussar uniform, exalting their drugs, and brandishing their sabres, as if not content with one mode of killing. The next professore is a dog of knowledge, great in his own little circle of admirers. Opposite to him stand two jocund old men, in the centre of an oval group, singing alternately to their crazy guitars. Further on a motley audience seated on planks, and listening to a tragi-comic filosofo, who reads, sings, and gesticulates old Gothic tales of Orlando and his Paladins."

The reader will readily acknowledge, that such a scene could have been painted only by a minute and attentive observer of nature. After detaining us most agreeably amidst these scenes of classical renown, he quits Naples with the following reflections:

"To a mere student of nature, to an artist, to a man of pleasure, to any man that can be happy among people who seldom affect virtue, perhaps there is no residence in Europe so tempting as Naples and its environs. What variety of attraction! a climate where heaven's breath smells sweet and wooingly-the most beautiful interchange of sea and land; wines, fruits, provisions in their highest excellence; a vigorous and luxuriant nature, unparalleled in its productions and processes; all the wonders of volcanic power spent or in action; antiquities different from all antiquities on earth; a coast which was once the fairy-land of poets, and the favourite retreat of great men. Even the tyrants of the creation loved this alluring region, spared it, adorned it, lived in it, died in it."

We are unable to follow the author to Portici, to Pompeii, to Paestum, and to profit by the just and happy remarks which are suggested by the various objects that diversify such an excursion.

At page 330, we find our traveller at Venice; but he is still so full of Naples and Baiae, that nothing seems to please him in what he terms the moated imprisonment of a town.' He hastens forward to Turin with the following remarks: which con- • tain some good hints to our countrymen, who are now eagerly flocking to those scenes, over which we are so pleasantly accompanying our tourist.

"My stay at Venice was short. We make the tour of Italy, as we make the circuit of a gallery. We set out determined to let nothing escape us unexamined, and thus we waste our attention, while it is fresh, on the first objects, which are not generally the best. On advancing we are dazzled with excellence, and fatigued with admiration. We can take, however, but a certain dose of this pleasure at a time, and at length, when the eye is saturated with pictures, we begin to long for the conclusion, and we run through the last rooms with a rapid glance. Such a feeling as this will account for the hurried manner in which I passed through the five final towns of my journey, and this feeling was enforced by the dread of an impending war, the love of home, and the impatience of my companion.

"Whoever goes abroad merely for observation, should avoid his own countrymen. If you travel in a party, your curiosity must adopt their paces: you must sometimes post through towns rich in art or antiquity, and stop where the only attraction is good cheer. While you linger with fond delay among the select beauties of a gallery, your friends are advancing into other rooms, and the keeper complains when you separate; you thus lose the freedom of inspection, your ears ring with impatience, and often with absurdity. If you travel with one who is more ignorant of the language than yourself, you must stand interpreter in all his bickerings with the natives; and will seldom content him, for a man is usually harsher, when his spleen is to pass through the mouth of another, than when he speaks for himself.”

We are detained at the Dominican convent at Turin to examine the chef-d'œuvre of Da Vinci's pencil. The original cartoons of this celebrated picture are in our own country, and have been liberally permitted to adorn the gallery of the British Institution. We cannot let this opportunity pass, without paying our mite of applause to the public spirit and the liberality of feeling by which this gallery was formed, for the purpose of raising a fund for the encouragement of native merit; we know of no establishment that more fairly promises to promote the cause of the fine arts in our country. Under these considerations, we shall be excused for making an extract from Mr. Forsyth's account of this painting.

"Here is the great supper itself! Though incorporated with a wall, the superb picture has passed through a chapter of accidents. Da Vinci, the dupe of his own inventions, contrived for this work a new kind of ground or imprimatura, containing oils which were foreign to fresco. In half a century, half the picture was effaced. ing, only three, it is thought, are original, and the due to the pencil of restorers. When faded,

Of all the heads remaincolouring even of these is it fell into neglect, and

became the sport of various barbarians. It was once whitewashed by the monks themselves. It was shot at wantonly by the Sclavonians who were lately quartered here: it was blistered, they say, by the corrosive fumes of the cavalry horses which were stabled in the refectory. At last it was rescued from perdition, and has lately acquired immortality from Morghen's unparalleled engraving. But Morghen found this picture so altered by restorers, that he was reduced to seek the original in its copies, two of which were painted in Da Vinci's time upon more fortunate walls. Like Euphranor in painting the twelve divinities, Leonardo began with the apostles, and exhausting his powers on them, he reserved no preeminence for the master. Having lavished his last touch of excellence on the celestial beauty of John, he left in despair the head of Christ unfinished. Why had he not recourse, like his copyist, to that portrait which they pretend, was sent by Christ himself as a present to king Abgarus? The Judas is generally supposed to be a likeness of the prior; but the painter, it seems, did not execute his threat."

We are now brought to Florence; but for particulars of this interesting city, we must refer the readers to the volume itself. We shall content ourselves with selecting Mr. F's just and liberal remarks upon the numerous charitable institutions that render that city more celebrated than all its works of art.

"A society of gentlemen, called the Bounuomini di San Martino, has been for four hundred years collecting and distributing alms among the poor who are ashamed to beg. The rank of these philanthropists, and their objects of relief, induce the rich to contribute, and sometimes to bequeath very considerable supplies. All bequests are turned directly into cash; nothing is funded, nothing belongs to the society, except the oratory where they meet. The receipts of every year are distributed within the year, to hundreds who are starving under genteel appearance: decayed gentlemen whose rank deters others from offering relief; ladies who live in garrets, and, ashamed of their poverty, steal down to mass before day-light; industrious women whom the failure of the silk-manufacture has left without any resource; such are the objects whom these Buonuomini go weekly, privately, to visit and relieve. They were a kind of benevolent spies upon the domestic miseries of Florence, and used to search for the retreats of suffering delicacy.

"The Misericordia is an institution diffused over Tuscany. At Florence it consists of 400 men, chosen promiscuously from every rank, and classed into fratelli, giornanti, and straeciafogli. These philanthropists volunteer their service to the sick, the hurt, and the dead. On the toll of a bell they repair to their chapel, where they conceal themselves in long black vestments, which mask the whole head, and then set out with a covered litter, to convey the patients to the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova. There you will find the first noblemen in Florence, with their aprons and ladles, following the soup, which is wheeled along the wards, and dealing it out to the sick, as a check on the administration of the hospital. In the same lugubrious garb they convey, in the evening, the corpses of the day to St. Catherine's Church, where all the dead are collected for the midnight cart, and sent to the common burying-ground at Trespiano. This benevolent society has never paused for the last 500 years, nor desisted from its fatal

duties during several plagues. Leopold was a member, and occasionally assisted in bearing on his shoulders,

"Con sollecito amor gli egri e feriti."

The author does not, however, spare the Florentines; but is very severe upon their vices, their credulity, and their superstition. Among other miracles and wonders, the following is recorded in his usual strain of pleasantry.

"After this miracle come a ghost from purgatory, and haunted the wood of Villamagna, near Florence, to tell the secrets of its prison-house, and beg a requiem of eight paternosters a-day. It appeared, and spoke only to a little shepherdess; but people of all ranks, priests, and physicians, flocked from the city, suggested to her questions, and received with reverential awe the answers which she reported from the spirit. A crucifix was raised in the haunted spot, myriads of seraphim (“ un nugolo di bambini,’ said the child) fluttered round it, and the multitude fell down in devotion. "Cantando miserere a verso a verso..

32.

"These parties lasted during the hottest months of 1800. Paolitti, a writer celebrated in agriculture, records the whole transaction, as rector of Villamagna, The archbishop examined the shepherdess, gave his sanction to her tale, and sent her round to the convents, to satisfy the pious curiosity of the nuns. I must not, however, omit that the master of this visionary had a large stock of wine, which the excessive heat was then spoiling. Providentially for its sale, the ghost continued its visits till all was drunk up by the thirsty multitude. It then thanked them for the holy charity of their prayers, and announced its departure to paradise. Indeed the scandalous chronicle mentioned a few barrels which were also turning sour in the rector's own cellar."

Thus we have attentively followed Mr. Forsyth through his delightful and picturesque tour; throughout which he has admirably succeeded in imparting his own vivid impressions, and in giving strong and living pictures of the scenes he has visited. Even when describing places with which we are familiar, from the accounts of late travellers, he possesses the happy art of throwing so much novelty and spirit into his narrative, that we read it with all the satisfaction of a first. visitant. Our readers will feel the truth of these observations, if they do but compare the extracts we have here given, descriptive of Rome and Naples, with those of two celebrated tourists quoted in former numbers. It might have been imagined that Eustace and Chateaubriand had exhausted the subject; but Mr. Forsyth has shown, what new beauties a man of genius may discover in the most common and beaten tracks. But his observations on painting, sculpture, and all the productions of the fine arts, form the most valuable part of the volume. The reader is not wearied with hacknied criticism, nor disgusted with the cant of connoisseurs and dilletanti.

But while we speak so warmly of its merits in these particulars justice demands that we should notice its numerous defects.The great object of the traveller who sits down to write an account of his tour, should be a love of truth-a desire to correct the pre

judices of his countrymen, and not to detail the scandalous reports of the day, and copy from previous travellers the hereditary tales and falsehoods that have been propagated for successive ages. The latter is the prevailing error of Mr. Forsyth. He travelled rapidly through Italy; and yet he enters into a disquisition upon the manners and character of the inhabitants, with all the gravity of a philosopher who had lived in those countries for years, and had had leisure to study all the varieties of human character there. Hence, instead of a portrait of Italian manners, he has drawn a caricature; he has detailed, with curious accuracy, the scandalous anecdotes, and exaggerations of the tea-table, as pure matters of fact. Another of his faults is, that he is always aiming at effect; he is resolved to say something good, and his determination frequently leads him to have little respect to truth. There is a certain flashy manner about many of his delineations of character, where it is evident he has not scrupled to sacrifice truth to effect. All this is no less disgraceful to the character of the writer, than the indecent anecdotes, that " blur the the cheek of modesty," in more than one part of the volume. With these exceptions, which we yet hope another edition will correct, the work may be justly considered as a valuable addition to our stock of travels, few of which surpass it in power of language, and justness of criticism.

A summary statement of the origin, progress, and present state of the Washington Benevolent Society of Pennsylvania: with an account of the opening and dedication of the Washington Hall, on the first of October, 1816; including the religious services performed by the right reverend William White, D. D. and an oration by the honourable Joseph Hopkinson, M. C. a member of the society. To which is added an Appendix, containing the Constitution and By-laws, and a description of the building and other property belonging to the society.

(Continued from our last.)

WE proceed now to give an account of the splendid edifice, of which our engraver furnished a view in the last number of this Journal.

The plan of the Washington Hall is a parallelogram, seventy-three feet in front, by one hundred and thirty-eight feet nine inches deep. The elevation presents one principal story, raised upon a high, rustic basement. The façade on Third street is distinguished by a grand niche of twentytwo feet diameter, sweeping into the building, on the principal floor, fronted by a screen of columns of the Greek Ionic character, surmounted by their entablature, over which springs, from a blocking course, a semi ́circular arch, equal in diameter to the niche. In this great niche a statue