walk which the Latin poets attribute to their beauties, is still to be seen in all its stateliness at Rome. "Shall I be treated in this manner ?" says Juno, complaining of her injured dignity,-"I, who walk the queen of the gods, the sister and the wife of Jove ?"*-Venus, meeting Eneas, allows herself to be recognized in departing :

"In length of train descends her sweeping gown,

And by her graceful walk the queen of love is known."t

DRYDEN.

A stately verse:-but known is not strong enough for patuit, and Virgil does not say "the queen of love," but simply the goddess-the divinity. The walk included every kind of superiority. It is the step of Homer's ladies.

"Of Troy's proud dames whose garments sweep the ground."

POPE.

The painting has more of Rubens than Raphael; and I could not help thinking, when I was in Italy, that the walk of the females had more spirit than feminine grace. They know nothing of the swimming voluptuousness with which our ladies at court used to float into the drawing-room with their hoops; or the sweet and modest sway hither and thither, a little bending, with which a young girl shall turn and wind about a garden by herself, half serious, half playful. Their demeanour is sharper and more vehement. The grace is less reserved. There is, perhaps, less consciousness of the sex in it, but it is not the most modest or touching on that account. The women in Italy sit and sprawl about the doorways in the attitudes of men. Without being viragoes, they swing their arms as they walk. There is infinite selfpossession, but no subjection of it to a sentiment. The most graceful and modest have a certain want of retirement. Their movements do not play inwards, but outwards: do not wind and retreat upon themselves, but are developed as a matter of course. If thought of, they are equally suffered to go on, with an unaffected and crowning satisfaction, conquering and to conquer. This is evidently the walk that Dante admired.

"Sweetly she goes, like the bright peacock; straight
Above herself, like to the lady crane."‡

This is not the way we conceive Imogen or Desdemona to have walked. The head is too stiffly held up; admiration is too much courted: there is a perking consciousness in it, as if the lady, like the peacock, could spread out her shawl the next minute, and stand for us to gaze at it.

The carriage of Laura, Petrarch's mistress, was gentle; but she was a Provençal, not an Italian. He counts it among the four principal charms, which rendered him so enamoured. They were all identified

with a sentiment. There was her carriage or walk; her sweet looks; her dulcet words; and her kind, modest, and self-possessed demeanour.

"From these four sparks it was, nor those alone,

Sprung the great fire, that makes me what I am,
A bird nocturnal, warbling to the sun."*

And in another beautiful sonnet, where he describes her sparkling with more than her wonted lustre, he says,

"Her going was no mortal thing; but shaped
Like to an angel's."t

Now this is the difference between the walk of the ancient and modern heroine; of the beauty classical and Provençal, Italian and English. The one was like a goddess's, stately and at the top of earth; the other is like an angel's, humbler but nearer heaven.

It is the same with the voice. The southern voice is loud and uncontrolled; the women startle you, bawling and gabbling in the summer air. In the north, the female seems to bethink her of a thousand delicate restraints; her words issue forth with a sort of cordial hesitation. They have a breath and apprehensiveness in them, as if she spoke with every part of her being.

"Her voice was ever soft, gentle, and low,

An excellent thing in woman."

SHAKSPEARE.

As the best things, however, are the worst when spoiled, it is not easy to describe how much better the unsophisticated bawling of the Italian is, than the affectation of a low and gentle voice in a body full of furious passions. The Italian nature is a good one, though run to excess. You can pare it down. A good system of education would as surely make it a fine thing morally, as good training renders Italian singing the finest in the world. But a furious English woman affecting sweet utterance!" Let us take any man's horses," as Falstaff says.

It is an old remark, that the most beautiful women are not always the most fascinating. It may be added, I fear, that they are seldom

So.

The reason is obvious. They are apt to rely too much on their beauty; or to give themselves too many airs. Mere beauty ever was, and ever will be, but a secondary thing, except with fools. And they admire it for as little time as any body else; perhaps not so long. They have no fancies to adorn it with. If this secondary thing fall

*" E con l'andar, e col soave sguardo,
S'accordan le dolcissime parole,

E l'atto mansueto, umile, e tardo.

Di tai quattro faville, e non già sole,

1

Nasce gran foco di ch' io vivo ed ardo :

Che son fatto un augel notturno al sole.”—Sonnet 131.

In this sonnet is the origin of a word of Milton's, not noticed by the commen

tators.

"With store of ladies, whose bright eyes

Rain influence.-L'Allegro.

Da begli occhi un piacer sì caldo piove.

"So warm a pleasure rains from her sweet eyes."

"Non era l'andar suo cosa mortale,

Ma d'angelica forma."-Sonnet 68.

ture.

into disagreeable ways, it becomes but a fifth or sixth-rate thing, or nothing at all, or worse than nothing. We resent the unnatural mixWe shrink from it, as we should from a serpent with a beauty's head. The most fascinating women, generally speaking, are those that possess the finest powers of entertainment. In a particular and attaching sense, they are those that can partake our pleasures and our pains in the liveliest and most devoted manner. Beauty is little without this. With it, she is indeed triumphant, unless affection for a congenial object has forestalled her. In that case, fascination fixed carries the day hollow against fascination able to fix. I speak only of hearts capable of being fixed as well as fascinated; nor are they so few, as it is the interest of too many to make out. A good heart, indeed, requires little to fix it, if the little be good, and devoted, and makes it the planet round which it turns.

I reckon myself a widower, though I was never wedded; and yet with all my love for a departed object, a sympathizing nature would inevitably have led me to love again, had not travelling and one or two other circumstances thrown me out of the way of that particular class of my countrywomen, among whom I found the one, and always hoped to meet with the other. When I do, she may, or may not, as it happens, be beautiful; but the following charms, I undertake to say, she will and must have; and as they are haveable by others, who are not in possession of beauty, I recommend them as an admirable supply. They are far superior to the shallower perfections enumerated in this paper, and their only preservative where they exist.

Imprimis, an eye whether blue, black, or grey, that has given me the kindest looks in the world, and is in the habit of looking kindly on others.

Item, a mouth—I do not choose to say much about the mouth, but it must be able to say a good deal to me, and all sincerely. Its teeth, kept as clean as possible, must be an argument of cleanliness in general; and, finally, it must be very good-natured to servants, and to friends who come in unexpectedly to dinner.

Item, a figure which shall preserve itself, not by neglecting any of its duties, but by good taste and exercise, and the dislike of gross living. I would have her fond of all the pleasures under the sun, except those of tattling, and the table, and ostentation.

Fourthly, a power to like a character in a book, though it is not an echo of her own.

Fifthly, a great regard for the country.

Item, a hip.

AN APPEAL FROM THE OLD WORLD TO THE NEW WORLD.

"Thy towering spirit now is broke,

Thy neck is bended to the yoke."-SMOLLET.

"WE must not sequester into Atlantic and Eutopean schemes of government," says Milton, speaking against visionary forms of policy; but if we may be allowed a little play upon his words, we should maintain that at the present moment we must carry our thoughts to the American shores of that ocean in which Plato placed his Atlantis, if we wish to see any realization of Sir Thomas More's Eutopia. The philanthropist and the friend of human advancement need not despond even when he contemplates the miserable condition of Spain, (the experimental farm of the Holy Alliance, as it has been so happily denominated,) or the degrading subjugation of Italy, both of which are so utterly contrary to the spirit of the age that they cannot possibly endure; but let him extend his view across the Atlantic, and he will find that the numbers who have liberated themselves in that quarter infinitely exceed those who have been enslaved in Europe. It has been said that you cannot put your hand in the sea at Brighton without raising its waters, however imperceptibly, in the other hemisphere; and it is unquestionably the pressure of despotism in Europe that has occasioned the rising of liberty in South America. Tyrants produce freemen, and in this view Ferdinand has been the greatest friend to human regeneration that ever existed. The dragon's teeth he has sewn in one hemisphere came up armed men in another; his brutal misrule made Old Spain so hideous, that it fairly frightened New Spain into successive fits of revolution; and his unfortunate subjects have given freedom to their transatlantic brethren, by wearing a double weight of chains upon their own necks. The Americans, in short, have taken their revenge upon the Spaniards, and have given over their masters to misery and thraldom, while they themselves are regenerated and happy.

But perhaps the most exhilarating point of view in which we can contemplate the New World, is in the prodigious expansion of knowledge and activity of the press, displayed in regions hitherto plunged in a Cimmerian darkness. We speak not of the new republics, though their intellectual energies are developing themselves with an inconceivable rapidity, so much as of those remote islands and colonies, which within our own recollection were plunged in the lowest depths of savage ignorance, and are now, by their civilization and literary progress, affording a gratifying testimony to the general advancement of the human race. We have before us at this moment the first book ever printed at Van Diemen's land, and a not less pleasing literary curiosity-the Reports of the Missionary Stations in Tahiti and Eimeo for three successive years, printed at Tahiti. Let the reader recollect the state of Otaheite in Captain Cook's time, and he will be able to appreciate the importance of the few words which we have put in italics. That he may form a more comprehensive estimate of what has been accomplished for civilization in those unpromising regions, we propose making a few extracts from the pamphlets, which will, we think, satisfy the most sceptical that the labours of the Missionaries have been productive of incalculable good, although we are of opinion that they have

An Appeal from the Old World to the New World. 161

hitherto done very little for rational Christianity beyond a breaking up and preparation of the soil for its future reception. From less questionable authority than their own, from captains in the navy who have touched at the Georgian islands, we have learnt that the natives, since the establishment of the missionaries, have abandoned their ferocious habits to become a humane and trustworthy race; and the papers have lately informed us, that on the same spot in New Zealand, where the crew of the Boyd, amounting to nearly one hundred persons, were not long since cut off and devoured by the cannibal natives, the crew of another British vessel, in an unfortunate squabble with the same people, who had gone so far as to sing their war-songs, and prepare for attack, found effectual protection by sending to the Wesleyan Missionary establishment about twelve miles distant, and getting two of the brethren to remain on board during their stay. These are facts which should for ever avert all sarcasm and ridicule; for though these hordes may not have been converted into rational Christians, they have been at least prevented from continuing to be savages and cannibals, which is a good step towards it. Even in Madagascar such progress has been made from utter darkness and ferocity, that the king has sent a deputation of young men to the Cape of Good Hope "for the purpose of being instructed in the useful sciences." If a knowledge of good government be one of them, we trust they will not apply to Lord Charles Somerset. But we proceed to our extracts, by which it will be seen that the worthy missionaries are high in the royal favour,-the most efficient mode in such countries of disseminating their doctrine.

"Wilks's Harbour.—The queen lay in at this place and was delivered of a son, June 25th. The infant, named Teriitaria, his sister Aimata, the queen and her sister Pomare Vahine, were baptised at Papaoa, Sept. 10th, by the brethren Nott and Crook"

Immediately after we are favoured with a piece of intelligence which savours somewhat of the bathos, though we observe similar notices in all the reports, as if such occurrences were quite as well worth transmitting to Europe as the births and baptisms of legitimate royalty.

"April 10th. Sister Crook was safely delivered of her eighth daughter and ninth child. These are all, through the goodness of God, in good health with their parents."

The report for May 1823, after stating that the whole inhabitants of the islands are already professors of Christianity, gives the following account of the annual meeting.

"The deputation, accompanied by the brethren Barff, Orsmond and Platt, having arrived at Tahiti on Monday last from the Leeward Islands, we the brethren on Tahiti had the pleasure of meeting with them this morning at the Royal Mission chapel, Papaoa, where the king, governors, and the various officers and members of the Tahitian Missionary Society had assembled in order to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the Society. About ten o'clock the people entered the chapel in number about 4000. After service the deputation and the missionaries dined with the queen, Pomare Vahine, the young king, the king's brother-in-law, and some of the principal chiefs, at the king's house near the royal chapel, present also several officers of the French corvette, belonging to the King of France."

Here is a very goodly beginning of the church and state union, which in process of time, if the press should be restrained and the march of VOL. X. No. 56.-1825.

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