AN UNLUCKY ESCAPE.

Lucas Holstenius was dining one day at the table of the Cardinal Francis Barberini, in company with two or three learned men; and as he was warmly engaged in dispute, there escaped him in the heat of the debate, a clear and decided explosion a posteriori. The cardinal smiled; the guests to whom he was speaking burst out in a broad laugh. Holstenius, without being disconcerted, turned to the cardinal, and said; "I can very well apply to your eminence the following passage of Virgil in my

own name,

Tu das epulis accumbere Divûm,

But not the next line,

Ventorumque facis tempestatumque potentem.

This was thought very happy, because neither the cardinal nor the others recollected that in Virgil it is nimborumque and not ventorumque. ENEID. 1. 80.

ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE TRADE.

The struggle to abolish this most infamous traffick was maintained, with various success, by the friends of justice, humanity and religion, for about one hundred years in the United States and Great Britain, before their hopes were accomplished. It originated among a small number of quakers, at one of their meetings, in Philadelphia, when only eight persons were present, near the commencement of the eighteenth century. The question arose in a scruple of conscience. The sect never lost sight of the object afterwards. The beginning of the nineteenth century saw it finally destroyed in the United States and in Great Britain. Sweden and Denmark had prohibited it several years before. It may be resumed by the Dutch, French and Spaniards, but not while the present war continues. And should this last a few years longer, it may be out of their power to revive it; as the factors and agents who kept alive the wars among the Africans, that produced the victims, will be done away, and perhaps some of the attempts to introduce civilization in Africa may so far succeed as to prevent a renewal of this inhuman

commerce.

MOTTO FOR A DENTIST.

He

There was a dentist in Paris, remarkable for drawing bad teeth, and replacing them by others with great success. had his picture in his shop, with this motto from Virgil,

Uno avulso non deficit alter.

FOR THE ANTHOLOGY.

ORIGINAL LETTERS;

FROM AN AMERICAN TRAVELLER IN EUROPE TO HIS FRIENDS IN THIS COUNTRY.

MY DEAR SISTER,

LETTER THIRTY SECOND.

ROME, NOVEMBER 22, 1804.

ANIMATED by the examination of objects highly interesting in themselves, and peculiarly so as they are connected with those parts of ancient history which made the first and therefore the strongest impressions on our minds, one hardly knows how far others, who cannot partake of the enthusiasm produced by the presence of the objects themselves, will feel an interest in the description of them. What an unpleasant dilemma! If I am silent, I shall either be accused of indifference to my friends, or of cold apathy towards those interesting scenes which have excited the zeal of travellers in all ages. If I am as particular as I feel disposed to be, in the description of this scenery, I fear I shall disgust by tedious prolixity.....I have resolved, however, to hazard the last, and I shall shew you Rome as it has appeared to my eyes, simply and naturally, without any affectation or embellishments of style.

Rome, even modern Rome, is more varied in its beauties, more singular, and more interesting than any city in Europe. Nature has done every thing for it, and human genius, as if grateful for the favours of heaven, has exerted its utmost powers to decorate nature. The surface of the country within and around Rome is neither rough nor smooth; it consists of swelling lawns, of gentle acclivities, of picturesque mountains, of smiling vallies, of cultivated plains, and the whole is intersected by various streams which pour their united treasures into the majestick Tiber. I have seen some writers, or I have heard of some travellers, I cannot now, nor do I wish to recollect whom, speak contemptuously of the Tiber. I cannot conceive the grounds of such an opinion. It is little, if any inferior to the Seine or the Thames. If it lacks a few feet of the width of those rivers, it is not perceptible to the eye, and it certainly has sufficient width to give it both beauty and respectability. Virgil and Horace then had as fair a right to celebrate the Tiber, as Pope or Denham to sing the praises of the Thames. The envi

rons of Rome are vastly more beautiful than those of London or of Paris. There is more variety of surface, and richness of scenery. The continued and constant occurrence of ancient ruins near Rome, covered as they all are with ivy, or ornamented with ever-greens, which have sprung up spontaneously in the crevices, made by time, would of itself be sufficient to give it a decided preference over its rivals. Of the nature and extent of this species of beauty, I can give you but a faint idea in description; perhaps some sketches that I may bring home will furnish a more correct notion.

There are within the city of Rome two distinct classes of objects, both of which are interesting, but whose interest depends on very different grounds; the ancient relicks, and the modern works of taste and luxury. Time, prescription, history, taste have consecrated the one.....wealth, luxury, genius have conspired to render the other equally imposing. If Rome had her Grecian sculptors and architects in ancient times, she has been no less celebrated for her own painters and sculptors in modern days. Praxiteles and Polidorus would not blush to own the works of Michael Angelo, nor wrest the chisel from the hands of Bernini.

Before I enter into a detail of the curious and interesting works of art which Rome at present boasts, it may not be useless to make some remarks upon the ancient and modern artists. If they are not new, they will have the merit at least of being stated without reference to the opinion of any writer, and without my being conscious of Jeing indebted to any one. Perhaps you will think, that I might have spared myself the remark, and that no one would have suspected that I had borrowed such ideas.

It seems to be conceded, that the moderns excel the ancients as much in the art of painting as the ancients excelled the moderns in any art whatever. Dr. Moore, to be sure, suggests a doubt upon this point, and says, that we ought not to judge of the works of the ancients in this branch of taste, because we have seen none of their chef d'oeuvres, but as all the paintings of the ancients which have been discovered, are deficient in one of the first essentials of all good painting, perspective, I think it is fair to conclude, that they had never attained to any great perfection in this art. What most fully confirms me in this opinion is, the infinite pains the ancients took to represent their histories or remarkable events in bas relief, which is, you know, a picture sculptured in marble, stone, or bronze, so as to relieve the figures from the surface. Now this art was very laborious and expensive, and painting produces the same effect, with the additional advantage of natural colouring.

In sculpture it has been fashionable to say, that the ancients vastly exceeded the moderns, and to be sure it would be but a grateful return in the artists of the present day to grant them this claimed pre-eminence, because it is unquestionable, that the fine models of the ancients have been the schools in which

the moderns have studied with success, and perhaps it might even be conceded, that no effort of modern talent can be said to equal the grace and dignity of the Belvidere Apollo, the beauty and infinite delicacy of the Venus de Medicis, or the agonizing tortures of the Laocoon; but we must not suffer ourselves to be deceived by names, we must not believe, that the chisel of the ancients universally, or even GENERALLY, like the pencil of the moderns, distanced all comparison. No: far from it. You find an immense number of ANTIQUE, clumsy, ill designed, worse executed statues, and but a very small proportion of good ones, among a thousand; and on the contrary, the works of Michael Angelo, Bernini, John of Bologna, and Le Gros excite a deep interest in the same gallery with the works of the first masters of ancient times. There is a living artist, Mons. Canova, who has executed a Hebe in a style, which Praxiteles would have been willing to acknowledge. Where then is the boasted superiority of the ancients? Is it fled? or have you undertaken to overturn established opinions? Not at all; but I think it my duty to give my own opinions, and not those that others may have made for me.

It is in architecture, that the ancients had a superiority, which the moderns have hitherto vainly, and I believe will ever vainly, attempt to imitate. Works of genius always partake of the character of the age in which they are produced. The modern Italians are more refined than their predecessors the Romans, Sculpture and painting are refined arts. The subjects require delicacy rather than boldness, research rather than simplicity. The Romans were bold, masculine, noble in their sentiments, characters, exploits. Their architecture partakes of these traits. It is simple, grand, imposing. The extent of their palaces, baths, circuses, appal the moderns. To build them would exhaust a modern empire. It would alarm the courage of Bonaparte to attempt the arduous task of moving to Paris from Rome one of the vast obelisks, of which the Romans moved twenty from Egypt. How these things were effected is now a matter of fruitless inquiry and wonder. The modern buildings are surcharged with ornament; they are rich and magnificent, but only with the spoils of ancient edifices. I am correct in saying, that the most splendid of all modern buildings * owes all its richness to ancient magnificence and taste.

MY DEAR SISTER,

NOVEMBER 26, 1804.

THOUGH you are addressed last, you are not least, I do assure you, in my affections. I have written your husband some days since, and you are so much a disciple of the old school, that I am fully persuaded you think him your better half. Without settling this point so delicate between you, I write to you both, * St. Peter's at Rome.

which I think will take away all occasion of umbrage or jealousy. With this you will also receive my tenderest wishes for the health of your dear infants, for the reasonable charms of your girls, for the masculine firmness and good sense of your son, and for the happiness of you all. I have commenced the description of Rome by some account of the columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, and I am now about to give you some account of the Obelisks.

Of this species of ornament, peculiarly beautiful and noble in a great city, there formerly existed a great number in Rome. They are all of Egyptian origin, and are most of them ornamented with hieroglyphicks, a species of imperfect language, by which the Egyptians expressed ideas by symbols. Antiquarians, though they agree in the general use of hieroglyphicks, are yet so imperfectly acquainted with the manner in which they were used, that they are not agreed as to the ideas which were meant to be conveyed upon any one of the existing obelisks. Some think that they were intended to record historical facts, while others contend that they were only the calendars of their religious feasts.

Leaving these learned points to be settled by great men who choose to puzzle their brains, and spend their lives in this unavailing research, I shall state simply the points in which the obelisks are really curious, and give some account of those which remain.

They are then curious, first from their immense size, composed as they all were of one single stone; and secondly from that species of stone which is extremely rare in Europe, the oriental granite, excessively hard, resisting wholly the bold, and to every other body, the irresistible attacks of time; and yielding only to the most laborious exertions of human power. Though the ancients brought them from Egypt, yet so vast appeared the labour of moving them, that it was considered one of the most glorious events of the Pontificate of Sixtus V. that having found one of these obelisks in a recumbent posture, he had been able to raise it to a perpendicular; and this event they have taken care to commemorate by a learned inscription on the base.

Of the whole number of Egyptian obelisks which formerly contributed so much to the splendour of Rome, there remain at present erected only seven.

The first, which strikes your attention from its position in the Piazza del Popolo where you enter Rome, was raised in Heliopolis (the city of the Sun, as the name imports) by Sesostris, king of Egypt, and was afterwards transported to Rome by Augustus Caesar, and placed in the Circus Maximus, where it was thrown down by the Goths probably; and in 1589, Sixtus V. the reigning Pope, transported it to the place where it now stands. It is ornamented with hieroglyphicks, and is 74 feet high.

The second is placed on Monte Citerio, the place of justice in Rome. This was erected like the other in Heliopolis, by the