THE UNINVITED ONE.

"O noctes cœnæque !"-HORAT., Serm. Lib. ii., Sat. 6.

LITERATURE.

LETTERS FROM THE SOUTH*.

MR. CAMPBELL's rank as a poet will be enhanced by his present achievement in prose-originally given to us in detached portions in this Magazine, but now presented collectively, and with the advantage of revision and considerable addition. All the world once seemed to have shunned the northern shores of Africa, as if a spell had prohibited the step of an European. Some ransomed captive, Marseilles Jew, or rambling botanist alone gave us, from time to time, some mysterious description of dungeons and palaces; sultans and scimitars; glimpses of silk and golden magnificence; traits of barbarian ferocity and barbarian grandeur; and then, after having shown to us a state of society, like the romance of an Arabian Night's Entertainment, dropped the curtain before our eyes, and left us to think of the illusion for another half century. But Lord Exmouth's expedition at length broke the spell, and France, following the example, has brought Algiers within the limits of reality.

Accident has been proverbially the mother of clever things, but it is only when it has happened to clever people. The whole population of Paris might have lounged through the King's Library on any day in the year 1834, and pored over the site of the city of Icosium, without thinking of crossing the Mediterranean to look at its modern wonders, or being able to make a book worth a franc out of the exploration. The fortunate part of the contingency was reserved for the poet of the "Pleasures of Hope." In his own words, "One day that I was in the King's Library in Paris, exploring books on ancient geography, I cast my eyes on a point of the map that corresponds with the site of Algiers." So far might have been the lot of any quiescent, cigar-smoking, literary gossip that ever took his siesta in a tavern of the Palais Royal. But it was otherwise with the man who was then turning over the royally bound books of the fallen dynasty of the Bourbons-a tide of the past and the future came over him.

"Its recent eventful history (says Mr. Campbell) rushed full on my thoughts, and seemed to rebuke them for dwelling on the dead more than the living. The question of how widely and how soon this conquest of Algiers may throw open the gates of African civilization-is it not infinitely more interesting than any musty old debate among classic topographers? To confine our studies to mere antiquities is like reading by candle-light, with our shutters closed, after the sun has risen. So I closed the volume I was perusing, and wished myself, with all my soul, at Algiers. Ah, but the distance the mare sævum et importuosum of Africa-the heat that must be endured, and the pestilence that may be encountered-do not those considerations make the thing impossible? No, not impossible, I said to myself, on second thoughts. The distance is not so great, and the risk has been braved by thousands with impunity. I will see this curious place."

In this sportive yet intelligent style the work proceeds, abounding in descriptions, anecdotes, and adventures-now on sea, now on shore, now

* Letters from the South. By Thomas Campbell, Esq., Author of "The Pleasures of Hope." 2 vols.

May.-VOL. I. NO. CXCVII.

K

in the heart of the French garrisons, now in the camps of the roving tribes, now listening to the canzonets of some Parisian dame, and now surveying the sunset among the tombs of the desert to the accompaniment of a stray lion "roaring for his prey." The whole performance is vigorous, graphic, and admirable.

AUSTRIA AND THE AUSTRIANS*.

THIS is a spirited and striking performance. Not too heavy for the general reader-not too light for the philosophic one; detailing characters, incidents, and peculiarities of the men and things which have so long formed the object of intelligent curiosity, and detailing them with the ease, yet without the frivolity, of a courtly mind. It has often occurred to us to ask-What are our foreign attachés doing with their leisure hours? No men on earth have them in greater abundance. Three-fourths of the foreign courts have as little to do with the actual business of diplomacy as with the business of the dog-star. The young English secretary-often a noble, oftener a man of high education, and always a man whose place in society gives him access to all that is vivid, intellectual, busy, and curious in the system of foreign life -is the very individual from whom we might expect the most important views, the most characteristic anecdotes, the most authentic narrations -in fact, at once the most important and most amusing books in the world. We doubt if any one of them-with the exception of the present author, whom we conjecture to belong to their body-has written a page since the beginning of the century.

It was not so once. The letters of our envoys frequently formed admirable specimens of skill in observing, and elegance in describing. The History of the Swedish Revolution," under the father of the late Gustavus, by Charles Sheridan, remains a classic monument to his memory. At a time when European travel was a formidable enterprise, which rounded the education of the young noble, and of which the citizen world thought, as it now would think, of a pilgrimage among the sands and monsters of Morocco, our chief knowledge of foreign countries was derived from the papers of our diplomatists. The letters of Lady Wortley Montague, who, though but the better half of a diplomatist, had the true spirit of a public functionary in every thought of her stirring soul, were the standard of our knowledge of Turkey, and have still the value of giving us the knowledge of a time that has passed away, when the Turk was a magnificent barbarian, not a puny mimic of civilization; when he was the pride of Asia and the awe of Europe, not the slave of Russia and the suppliant of England; when the skirt of his robe flcated over Persia and the point of his scimitar glittered over Hungary; when, in short, he was the Janizary King, the Father of the Faithful, the diamond-browed Brother of the Sun and Moon,—not when he bargained for the Bosphorus and gave away Syria; not when he had turned his turban into a red night-cap, his Damascus blade into a razor, his embroidered trousers into breeches, and himself into the baboon of the infidel!

The purport of the present work is a personal view of the most * Austria and the Austrians; with Sketches of the Danube and the Imperial States, 2 vols.

simply constructed, yet, perhaps, the most powerful, and certainly the most peaceful, empire of Europe. The writer proclaims himself a liberal, and dedicates to Lord Melbourne. To this we make no objection, if such be his will. But we think that Austria, of all kingdoms, is precisely the problem which to a lover of liberalism would be the most perplexing. It is true that it has had its share of the common casualties of Europe in the French war. The fire-shower rained from the burning wheels of Napoleon's car fell thick and hot upon Austria,―her capital twice captured, her provinces broken off,-the Germanic crown smote from the head of her emperor by the heavy falchion of the Gaul,-slaughter in her fields, sorrows in her streets, and plunder in her palaces ;-and yet, within half-a-dozen years, Austria was seen standing as the actual arbiter of war and peace to the earth, holding in her hand the scale in which the fortunes of the continent were balanced against the fate of Napoleon, and by a breath of her nostrils sinking the mightiest man, and sovereignty of this round world, the one into exile and the other into submission. Yet in Austria alone, none of those questions, which our theorists pronounce to be the life-blood of national existence, have ever been mooted. Is it the less remarkable that she has long since recovered every fragment of dominion torn from her by the tempests of the war, -that she is more the mistress of Italy than ever,—that she exercises in Germany more than all the national influence which she was supposed to exercise when the German crown was locked up in the Imperial cabinet,—and that she is now the great barrier against the ambition of Russia, as she was five-and-twenty years ago against the aggression of France? Must it not strike the intelligent observer, that there is much in the art of national contentment,-much in the spirit of sincere allegiance,―much in the generous love of a paternal dominion,-and much in rational obedience to the laws; when we see the infinite facility with which the wounds of the most dreadful of all wars were healed in Austria? It may be difficult to persuade a popular haranguer in France, Spain, or Portugal, that the essence of public happiness does not consist in perpetual political struggle; but the dungeons and scaffolds, the fields and firesides, of those distracted countries, perhaps have witnessed many a sigh for that tranquil contempt of political dreams, and manly abandonment of impossible perfection, which fills the pastures of Austria with plenty, and its cities with peace, opulence, and happiness.

Vienna is described in these pages as a remarkably pleasant sojourn; cheap, full of activity, animation, and variety--comfortable even to an Englishman, and to all perhaps "the gayest city in Europe." "Madame de Staël observes," says the writer," that Germany is an aristocratic federation." Vienna is an aristocratic city. The nobility from all the provinces crowd to it for six months of the year. "It is amidst the gaieties of Vienna that the lords of Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, and Lombardy mingle, forgetful of the jealousies which they cherish in their respective castles."

This work contains some strong animadversions on the performances of our travelling describers of German manners. It denies their pictures of public frivolity, and accounts for the irregularity of the painting by the ignorance of the limner. In adverting to Madame de Staël's remark,that the principal disadvantage of society in Vienna arose from the distance observed between men of rank and men of letters, and that the result is the want of elegance in the men of letters, and the want of

ideas in the men of rank-the writer appears to coincide with that showy caricaturist of man and womankind. "How different,” says he, " in Paris!"

We doubt strongly whether this exclamation was worth making. If the fruits of this mixture in Paris were all that are to be obtained by a similar mixture in Vienna, we must give it against him. Madame de Staël is but a suspicious authority-a clever, bustling, ambitious woman, living only as the centre of a circle of literary adulation, and miserable when her ears were no longer filled with the echoes of Parisian idleness; her business in life was to talk and be talked to; to see round her a bowing levee of literary mendicants, and to hear, at her suppers, that she was the ninth wonder of the world. In Germany the incense was not offered in equal profusion, and she declared Germany dullness personified. For our part, we share in no author's regret for being unable to find his way among the circles of high life. We have no fellow-feeling for the voluntary slave. We should even regard him as the worst possible representative of literature. The writer who feels his happiness dependent upon the sufferance of richer or more high-born individuals, ought to put on livery at once, call himself valet or butler, and stipulate for his wages. Menial in soul, he may as well have the hire of menialism. The mixture of the nobles and literary men of Paris was among the leading causes of the public corruption. The nobles and the scribblers flattered, fêted, and bewildered each other; until the scythe of revolution swept over the whole weedy crop of the national follies, and left the soil bare for the soldier.

We turn to this lively author's account of the metropolitan drama. "For the first three evenings after our arrival in Vienna the plays acted were clumsy representations of French pieces; and however much the ephemeral dramas of M. Scribe and company may please the world at the minor Parisian theatres, never has false taste been more glaringly exhibited than in the attempt to adapt the writings of French authors to the German theatres. The French,' says Benjamin Constant, in their dramas paint only the passions, the Germans draw characters.' This is critically true.' Melodramas founded on Scott's novels, after having had their day in England, are still making their exhibition on the German stage. Ivanhoe ' seems to have been a favourite, from its scenery and the chivalresque character which finds so many kindred recollections in the sons of Gothland. But the chief performance of the Hoffburg was Schiller's Mary Queen of Scots:' it was highly popular. 'Macbeth' was performed some time before, and in a masterly style. Shakspeare is the universal monarch, to whose sceptre neither rival nor rebel seems yet to have appeared in Europe. "Shakspeare's plays," says our author, "whether tragic or comic, always secure full houses at Vienna. Hamlet' was also acted at the same theatre. It was on a Sunday evening, and drew forth all the rank and fashion from their palaces. The Midsummer Night's Dream,' and The Tempest,' have lately been frequently represented. Shakspeare is at least once a-week on the boards of the Hoffburg."

The volumes contain a great deal of interest of this order; anecdotes of Prince Metternich, the late and present Emperors, the populace, the public gardens, public amusements, national improvements, popular feeling, &c., all forming the mélange which, in our grave political days, it is at once so rare and so pleasant to meet with; so delightful to take up, and so difficult to lay down.