better future may come. Passionately does he exhort Angel to take up the cause of truth where he leaves it, to advance the happiness of his kind, to diffuse the creed of sympathy and toleration which he rehearses; but, in closing his story, he adds, with a resignation as strangely founded as Trenmor's, "Thank God, I have ended my life! my only crime has been to have done no good!" Needs it to point out what manner of spirit is here manifested? Was the Christian faith, which even Father Alexis admits to have been a saving faith, allowed to linger on thus in lonely fruitlessness, a light in a tomb? Was it not a summons for the lowly and the lofty, the weak and the vigorous?—a star to the shepherds as well an angel bidding princes come and worship?-and does the most careless require to be convinced of the aimless inconsistency as well as the inapplicability of a belief which, while it professes to guide the strong, avails itself of the worn-out superstitions of a creed which it boasted could only rule the weak; on the one side credulously welcoming every species of miraculous aid and interposition; on the other, with ingenious candour, wresting mocking Infidelity itself into an impersonation of excessive trustfulness? But a subject opens with this question too wide and too grave here to be followed up; and we will return again to the spiritual progress of the Father Alexis. It is not till many years of questioning and speculation and indulged appetite for mental self-torture have passed before he bethinks himself of the buried book. To seek this he descends into Spiridion's tomb. On his progress thither, in chastisement for his slackness and want of zeal, he is arrested by a vision and led into the temple of Superstition to witness the sufferings of the true believer at the hands of bigotry, and to repent in the dust that cowardice which holds him aloof from partaking joyfully in the glory of such a martyrdom.

"It seemed to me," he begins, "that the descent was eternal; and that I was burying myself in the depths of Erebus; at last, I reached a level place; and I heard a mournful voice deliver these words, as it were, to the secret centre of the earth :-' He will mount that ascent no more! Immediately I heard arise towards me, from the depth of invisible abysses, a myriad of formidable voices united in a strange chant :- Let us destroy him! Let him be destroyed! What does he here among the dead! Let him be delivered back to torture! Let him be given again to life!'

“Then a feeble light began to pierce the darkness, and I perceived that I stood on the lowest step of a staircase, vast as the foot of a mountain. Behind me were thousands of steps of lurid iron-before me, nothing but a void-an abyss, and æther; the blue gloom of midnight beneath my feet, as above my head. I became delirious, and quitting that staircase, which, methought, it was impossible for me to reascend-I sprung forth into the void with an execration. But, immediately, when I had uttered the curse, the void began to be filled with forms and colours, and I presently perceived that I was in a vast gallery, along which, I advanced, trembling. There was still darkness round me, but the hollows of the vaults gleamed with a red light, and showed me the strange and hideous forms of their building. I did not distinguish the nearest objects; but those towards which I advanced assumed an appearance more and more ominous, and my terror increased with every step I took. The enormous pillars which supported the vault and the tracery thereof itself, were figures of men, of supernatural stature, delivered to tortures without a name. Some, hung by their feet, and locked in the coils of monstrous serpents, clenched their teeth in the marble of the pavement; others, fastened by their waists, were dragged upwards, these by their feet, those by their heads, towards capitals where other figures stooped towards them, eager to torment them. Other pillars again represented a struggling mass of figures devouring one another; each of which only offered a trunk severed to the knees or to the shoulders, the fierce heads whereof retained life enough to seize and to devour that which was near them. There were some who, half hanging down, agonised themselves by attempting with their upper limbs to flay the lower moiety of their bodies, which drooped from the columns, or were attached to the pedestals; and others, who in their fight with each other were dragged along by morsels of flesh,grasping which they clung to each other with a countenance of unspeakable hate and agony. Along, or rather in place of the frieze, there were on either side a range of unclean beings, wearing the human form, but of a loathsome ugliness, busied in tearing human corpses to pieces, in feasting upon their limbs and entrails. From the vault, instead of bosses and pendants, hung the crushed and wounded forms of children, as if, to escape these eaters of man's flesh, they would throw themselves downwards, and be dashed to pieces on the pavement. * The silence and motionlessness of the whole added to its awfulness. I became so faint with terror, that I stopped, and would fain have returned. But at that moment I heard from the depths of the gloom through which I had passed, confused noises, like those of a multitude on its march. And the sounds soon became more distinct, and the clamour fiercer, and the steps came hurrying on tumultuously-at every new burst nearer, more violent, more threatening. I thought that I was pursued by this disorderly crowd; and I strove to advance, hurrying into the midst of those dismal sculptures. Then it seemed as if those figures began to heave, -and to sweat blood,—and their beady eyes to move in their sockets. At once I beheld that they were all looking upon me, that they were all

* *

leaning towards me,-some with frightful derision, others with furious aversion. Every arm was raised against me, and they made as though they would crush me with the quivering limbs they had torn one from the other."

**

This imperfect paraphrase of the opening of an allegory as splendid as it is extravagant bears a remarkable coincidence with that less frightful but more awful vision of the "Temple of Superstition" in the notes to Coleridge's lay sermons. We must close the legend. The book is still denied to the grasp of Alexis, and is only at the moment preceding his death disinterred by the disciple, Angel. Alexis having read and explained it drags his expiring frame to the tomb of his beloved master, and is there murdered by a marauding party belonging to the army of Italy, who rifle the convent. Alexis joyfully embraces martyrdom, believing his murder to be simultaneous with the final extinction of Catholicism, and entreats Angel to live, for the purpose of recording his sufferings, and calling all vigorous spirits to listen to his new revelation.

In this brief argument of Spiridion, many of the minor features of the tale have been necessarily overlooked. It has been impossible in so small a space to give any precise idea of the proportions which allegory and reality bear in its web, or to do more than report that, in spite of its general falsity and corruption, "Spiridion" nevertheless contains some episodical gleams of what is true and lofty, some breathings of imperfect faith uttered in the most elevated language of poetry. But though thus considered, it may offer some glimmerings of hope to those who regard with a grave and compassionate concern the free-thinkers of Young France, yet as indicating the state of mind reached by its authoress, "Spiridion" has a grave and saddening moral. For, in the meridian, no less than the commencement of her career, do we read the truth, that neither appetite, nor imagination, nor thought, sensually indulged and riotously wasted, can satisfy or fertilize, however glorified they be by the presence of Genius :-that their issue is for the perishable body apathy instead of repose; and for the immortal soul, feverish dreams expanding only to fade away at the coming of age and decay, in place of those calmer hopes, which strengthen and deepen, year by year, even beneath the shadow of the portal of Eternity!

ARTICLE III.

Dernières intrigues de la Russie en Vallachie et en Moldavie. Paris 1838.

Report on the Commerce of the Ports of New Russia, Moldavia, and Wallachia, made to the Russian Government in 1835, in pursuance of an investigation, undertaken by order of Count Woronzow. By JULES DE HAGEMEISTER; translated from the Original. Published at Odessa. By T. F. TRIEBNER. London: 1836.

Of the various considerations bearing upon, or rather constituting the great eastern question which now engrosses the attention of Europe, those connected with the present state of the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia are amongst the most prominent and the most urgent. Important by their geographical position, their large population and fertile soil, these provinces acquire a still greater interest from the political relations in which they stand to Turkey, Russia, and even to Austria. Their unfixed, temporary, and, if we may use the term, transition-state is clearly evidenced in the nominal sovereignty possessed over them by the Porte, and their real subjection to the Czar, who, by the treaty of Adrianople, assumed the title of their protector. And when we remember that on the first breaking out of hostilities between these two powers, Moldavia and Wallachia must from their position become the theatre of the war; and that on its result will depend, not simply their final destiny, but the decision of numerous political and commercial questions of vital moment to Europe-that of the navigation of the Danube, on the importance of which there can be no dissentient voice, being one of them-we do not, we conceive, over-estimate the subject, by inferring that it calls for prompt attention; and that a brief inquiry into the present political condition of these provinces, and their future prospects, will be of interest to those of our readers who are concerned in forming a complete and correct view of the great eastern question.

Rejecting a detailed account of the original settlement and history of Moldavia and Wallachia as irrelevant to our object,

it will yet be necessary briefly to advert to them. These provinces, together with Transylvania, formed part of Dacia, which was added to the Roman empire by Trajan*. They were peopled principally from the Latin provinces; and whatever were the origin of the inhabitants (some writers maintain that their name and their language were originally Sclavonic) the affinity of the dialect now spoken in the principalities to the language of the ancient Romans, shows that the Roman conquest exercised at least a powerful influence on the whole Dacian community. These provinces however did not remain long under the sway of Rome. Adrian did not consider it good policy, to preserve conquests so remote; and accordingly, in order to effect their separation from the empire, he destroyed the bridge which Trajan had constructed over the Danube. Thus cut off, they refused afterwards to yield allegiance to Commodus; and having been wholly abandoned by Aureliant, they were successively invaded by the Goths and other northern tribes, with which the natives became so intermingled, that it is difficult to say to what race they now really belong. It appears, however, that so early as the twelfth century they had adopted the name of Blachs or Wallachs, a name which according to the Polish historian Narusrewicz is derived from the Polowcians, whom the Hungarians called Ollochs.

In the beginning of the fourteenth century, when the hospodar Bozerad reigned over Wallachia, Charles, king of Hungary, invaded the principalities at the head of a powerful army, with a view to the permanent conquest of the country; but being completely defeated by the Wallachians he was obliged to abandon his ambitious projects, and to leave Bozerad in the quiet possession of his states. After the death of Bozerad, who during his wise and long reign had consolidated the independence of Wallachia, his two sons, Stephan and Peter, succeeded; but their mutual jealousy soon gave

* "The new province of Dacia was about thirteen hundred miles in circumference. Its natural boundaries were the Niester, the Teyss or Thibiscus, the "Lower Danube and the Euxine sea."-Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. i. p. 7. and p. 30.

"But this most important condition of peace was understood rather than ex"pressed in the treaty. Aurelian withdrew the Roman forces from Dacia, and "tacitly relinquished that great province to the Goths and Vandals."--- Gibbon, chap. xi. p. 381.