of the supporting walls, fig-trees are planted | prevalence of the malaria renders it impossible 10 vegetate under their protection. The owner to live permanently. This region is every akes advantage of every vacant space left be- where divided into great estates, and let ir ween the olive-trees to raise melons and vege- large farms. The Maremma of Rome, forty tables; so that he obtains on a very limited ex-leagues in length and from ten to fifteen in tent, olive, grapes, pomegranates, and melons. breadth, and which feeds annually 67,000 So great is the produce of this culture that, horned cattle, is cultivated by only eighty farmunder good management, half the crop of seven ers. These farmers live in Rome or Sienna, acres is sufficient for a family of five persons: being little more than the produce of threefourths of an acre to each soul. This little space is often divided into more than twenty terraces. A great part of the mountainous part of Italy has adopted this admirable culture: and this accounts for the great population which everywhere inhabit the Italian mountains, and explains the singular fact, that, in scenes where nothing but continued foliage meets the eye, the traveller finds, on a nearer approach, villages and hamlets, and all the signs of a numerous peasantry. Continued vigilance is requisite to maintain these works. If the attention of the husbandman is intermitted for any considerable time, the violence of the rains destroys what it had cost so much labour to create. Storms and torrents wash down the soil, and the terraces are broken through or overwhelmed by the rubbish, which is brought down from the higher parts of the mountain. Every thing returns rapidly to its former state; the vigour of southern vegetation covers the ruins of human industry: and there soon remains only shapeless vestiges covered by briers. The system of irrigation in the valley of the Arno is a most extraordinary monument of auman industry. Placed between two ridges of mountains, one of them very elevated, it was periodically devastated by numerous torrents, which were precipitated from the mountains, charged with stone and rubbish. To control these destructive inundations, means were contrived to confine the course of the torrents within strong walls, which serve at the same time for the formation of a great number of canals. At regular distances, openings are formed below the mean level of the stream, that the water may run out laterally, overflow the land, and remain on it long enough to deposit the mud with which it is charged. A great many canals, by successive outlets of the water, divide the principal current and check its rapidity. These canals are infinitely subdivided, and to such a degree, that there is not a single square of land, which is not surrounded by them. They are all lined with walls, built with square bricks; the scarcity of water rendering the most vigilant economy of it necessary. A number of small bridges connect the multitude of little islands, into which these canals subdivide the country. These works are still kept in good repair; but the whole wealth of Tuscany could not now furnish the sums requisite for their construction. That was done by Florence in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, in the days of her republican freedom. The third agricultural division of Italy, is the Maremma, or the plains on the sea-shore in Tuscany, and the Roman States, where the for the unhealthiness of the atmosphere precludes the possibility of their dwelling on the lands they cultivate. Each farm has on it only a single house, which rises in the midst of desolation. No garden, or orchards, or meadows, announce the vicinity of a human habitation. It stands alone in the midst of a vast solitude, with the cattle pasturing up to the walls of the dwelling. The whole wealth of these great farms consists in their cattle. The farm servants are comparatively few, and they are constantly on horseback. Armed with a gun and a lance, the shepherds, as in the wilds of Tartary, are constantly in the open air tending the herds committed to their care. They receive no fixed wages, but are paid in cattle, which graze with the herds of their masters. The mildness of the climate permits the grass to grow during all the winter, and so the flocks are maintained there in that season. In summer, as the excessive heat renders the pastures parched and scanty, the flocks are sent to the highest ridges of the Apennines in quest of cool air and fresh herbage. The oxen, however, and cows of the Hungarian breed, are able both to bear the heat of summer, and to find food during its continuance in the Maremma. They remain, therefore, during all the year; and the shepherds who tend them continue exposed to the pestilential air during the autumnal months. The woods are stocked with swine, and the marshes with buffaloes. So great is the quantity of the live-stock on these immense farms, that on one visited by Mr. Chateauvieux were cattle to the value of 16,000l. sterling, and the farmer had two other farms on which the stocking was of equal value. In the Terra di Lavoro, or Campagna of Naples, the extreme richness of the soil has given rise to a mode of culture different from any which has yet been described. The aspect of this great plain is, perhaps, the most striking in point of agricultural riches that exists in the world. The great heat of the sun renders it necessary that the grain should be shaded by trees; and accordingly the whole country is intersected by rows of elms or willows, which divide it into small portions of half or three quarters of an acre each. A vine is planted at the foot of every tree; and such is the luxuriance of vegetation, that it not only rises in a few years to the very summit, but extends its branches in a lateral direction, so as to admit of festoons being trained from one tree to another. These trees are not pollarded as in Tuscany and Lombardy, but allowed to grow to their full height, so that it is not unusual to see a vine clustering around the top of a poplar sixty or eighty feet high Under their shade the soil produces annually a double crop, one of which is of wheat of maize. Melons are cultivated in great quan's ties, and with hardly any manure. Thickets charming perfumes over the adjoining country of fig-trees, of peaches, and aloes, grow spon- while the rocky eminences are covered with taneously on the borders of the fields. Groves vines, which produce fruits of the most deliof orange clothe the slopes, and spread their cious flavour. SCOTT, CAMPBELL, AND BYRON.* We have listened with admiration to the eloquent strains in which the first in rankt and the first in genius have proposed the memory of the immortal bard whose genius we are this day assembled to celebrate; but I know not whether the toast which I have now to propose has not equal claims to our enthusiasm. Your kindness and that of the committee has intrusted to me the memory of three illustrious men-the far-famed successors of Burns, who have drank deep at the fountains of his genius, and proved themselves the worthy inheritors of his inspiration. And Scotland, I rejoice to say, can claim them all as her own. For if the Tweed has been immortalized by the grave of Scott, the Clyde can boast the birthplace of Campbell, and the mountains of the Dee first inspired the muse of Byron. I rejoice at that burst of patriotic feeling; I hail it as the presage, that as Ayrshire has raised a fitting monument to Burns, and Edinburgh has erected a fitting structure to the author of Waverley, so Glasgow will, ere long, raise a worthy monument to the bard whose name will never die while hope pours its balm through the human heart; and Aberdeen will, worthily, commemorate the far-famed traveller who first inhaled the inspiration of nature amidst the clouds of Loch-na-Gar, and afterwards poured the light of his genius over those lands of the sun, where his descending orb sets "Not as in northern climes obscurely bright, But one unclouded blaze of living light." Scotland, my lord, may well be proud of having given birth to, or awakened the genius of such men; but she can no longer call these exclusively her own-their names have become household words in every land. Mankind claims them as the common inheritance of the numan race. Look around us, and we shall see on every side decisive proof how far and wide admiration for their genius has sunk into the hearts of men. What is it that atti acts strangers from every part of the world, into this distant land, and has more than compensated for a remote situation and a churlish soil, and given to our own northern isle splendour unknown to the regions of the sun? What is it which has brought together this mighty assemblage, and united the ardent ◆ Speech delivered at the Burns Festival, on 6th Au gust, 1844, on proposing the memory of Scott, Campbell, and Byron. + Earl of Eglinton, who presided. Professor Wilson. and the generous from every part of the world, from the Ural mountains to the banks of the Mississippi, on the shores of an island in the Atlantic? My lord, it is neither the magnificence of our cities, nor the beauty of our valleys, the animation of our harbours, nor the stillness of our mountains: it is neither our sounding cataracts nor our spreading lakes: neither the wilds of nature we have subdued so strenuously, nor the blue hills we have loved so well. These beauties, great as they are, have been equalled in other lands; these marvels, wondrous though they be, have parallels in other climes. It is the genius of her sons which have given Scotland her proud pre-eminence; this it is, more even than the shades of Bruce, of Wallace, and of Mary, which has rendered her scenes classic ground to the whole civilized world, and now brings pilgrims from the most distant parts of the earth, as on this day, to worship at the shrine of genius. Yet Albyn! yet the praise be thine, Midst Cartlane crags thou showest the cave, But the poet who conceived these beautiful lines, has done more than all our ancestors' valour to immortalize the land of his birth; for he has united the interest of truth with the charms of fiction, and peopled the realm not only with the shadows of time, but the creations of genius. In those brilliant creations, as in the glassy wave, we behold mirrored the lights, the shadows, the forms of reality; and yet So pure, so fair, the mirror gave, A world than earthly world more fair. Years have rolled on, but they have taken nothing, they have added much, to the fame of those illustrious men. Time but the impression deeper makes, The voice of ages has spoken: it has given To rival all but Shakspeare's name below. Their names now shine in unapproachable splendour, far removed, like the fixed stars, ground, where the scenes which speak most powerfully to the heart of man are brought successively before our eyes. The east, with its deathless scenes and cloudless skies; its wooded steeps and mouldering fanes, its glassy seas and lovely vales, rises up like magic be fore us. The haughty and yet impassioned Turk; the crouching but still gifted Greek; the wandering Arab, the cruel Tartar, the fanatic Moslem, stand before us like living beings, they are clothed with flesh and blood. But there is one whose recent death we all deplore, but who has lighted "the torch of Hope at nature's funeral pile," who has evinced a yet higher inspiration. In Campbell, it is the mo ral purposes to which he has directed his mighty powers, which is the real secret of his success; the lofty objects to which he has devoted his life, which have proved his passport to immortality. To whatever quarter he has turned his mind, we behold the working of the same elevated spirit. Whether he paints the disastrous day, when, from the clouds and the rivalry of a lower world. To the end of time, they will maintain their exalted station. Never will the cultivated traveller traverse the sea of the Archipelago, that "The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece," will not recur to his recollection; never will he approach the shores of Loch Katrine, that the image of Ellen Douglas will not be present to his memory; never will he gaze on the cliffs of Britain, that he will not thrill at the exploits of the "mariners of England, who guard our native seas." Whence has arisen this great, this universally acknowledged celebrity? My lord, it is hard to say whether we have most to admire the brilliancy of their fancy, or the creations of their genius, the beauty of their verses, or the magic of their language, the elevation of their thoughts, or the pathos of their conceptions. Yet can each boast a separate grace; and their age has witnessed in every walk the genius of poetry elevated to its highest strain. In Scott it is variety of conception, truth and fidelity of delineation in character, graphic details of the olden time, which is chiefly to be admired. Who can read without transport his glowing descriptions of the age of chivalry? Its massy castles and gloomy vaults, its haughty nobles and beauteous dames, its gorgeous pageantry and prancing steeds, stand forth under his magic pencil with all the colours and bril- or transports us to that awful time when Chrisliancy of reality. We are present at the shock tian faith remains unshaken amidst the dissoof armies, we hear the shouts of mortal com-lution of nature, batants, we see the flames of burning castles, we weep in the dungeon of captive innocence. Yet who has so well and truly delineated the we discern the same mind, seeing every obless obtrusive but not less impressive scenes ject through its own sublime and lofty vision. of humble life? Who has so faithfully por-Thence has arisen his deathless name. It is trayed the virtues of the cottage; who has done so much to elevate human nature, by exhibiting its dignity even in the abyss of misfortune; who has felt so truly and told so well "the might that slumbers in a peasant's arm?" In Byron it is the fierce contest of the passions, the yearning of a soul longing for the stern realities of life, amidst the seduction of its frivolity; the brilliant conceptions of a mind fraught with the imagery and recollections of the east, which chiefly captivates every mind. His pencil is literally “dipt in the orient hues of heaven." He transports us to enchanted Oh bloodiest picture in the book of Time, The world was sad, the garden was a wild, And ships are drifting with their dead, because he has unceasingly contended for the best interests of humanity; because he has ever asserted the dignity of a human soul; because he has never forgotten that amidst all the distinctions of time "The rank is but the guinea stamp, The man's the gowd for a' that;" because he has regarded himself as the highpriest of nature, and the world which we in habit as the abode not merely of human cares and human joys, but as the temple of the liv. ing God, in which praise is due, and where service is to be performed. SCHOOLS OF DESIGN.* facturing greatness, why should we be second to any in the arts of design? Have they possessed advantages which we do not enjoy? Had they finer cataracts than the Falls of the Clyde, or glens more romantic than Cartland Crags-had they nobler oaks than those of Cadzow, or ruins more imposing than those of Bothwell—had they galleries finer than the halls of Hamilton, or lakes more lovely than Loch Lomond, or mountains more sublime than those of Arran? Gentlemen, within two hours' journey from Glasgow are to be found combined We stand in this community in a very | Flanders and Holland the wealth and enterpeculiar situation, and which loudly calls for prise of commerce, notwithstanding the disimmediate attention of all interested in their advantages of a level soil, a cloudy atmosphere, country's greatness. We have reached the very and a humid climate, have produced the imhighest point of commercial greatness. Such mortal works of Rubens, Vandyke, and Remhas been the growth of our mechanical power, brandt. Why should a similar result not take such the marvels of our commercial enter-place here? Arrived at the summit of manuprise! But, when we turn to the station we occupy in the arts of design, in these very arts in which, as a manufacturing community, we are so deeply interested, we see a very different spectacle. We see foreigners daily flocking from all parts of the world to the shores of the Clyde or the Mersey, to study our railways, and our canals; to copy our machinery, to take models of our steam-vessels-but we see none coming to imitate our designs. On the contrary, we, who take the lead of all the world in mechanical invention, in the powers of art, are obliged to follow them in the designs to which these powers are to be applied. Gentlemen, this should not be. We have now arrived at that period of manufacturing progress, when we must take the lead in design, or we shall cease to have orders for performance-we must be the first in conception, or we will be the last in execution. To others, the Fine Arts may be a matter of gratification or ornament; to a manufacturing community it is one of life or death. We may, however, be encouraged to hope that we may yet and ere long attain to eminence in the Fine Arts, from observing how uniformly in past times commercial greatness has co-existed with purity of taste and the development of genius; in so much that it is hard to say whether art has owed most to the wealth of commerce, or commerce to the perfection of art. Was it not the wealth of inland commerce which, even in the deserts of Asia, reared up that great commonwealth, which once, under the guidance of Zenobia, bade defiance to the armies of imperial Rome, and the ruins of which, at Tadmor and Palmyra, still attract the admiration of the traveller? Was it not the wealth of maritime commerce which, on the shores of the Egean sea, raised that great republic which achieved a dominion over the minds of men more durable than that which had been reared by the legions of Cæsar, or the phalanx of Alexander ? Was it not the manufactures of Tuscany which gave birth at Florence to that immortal school of painting, the works of which still attract the civilized world to the shores of the Arno? The velvets of Genoa, the jewelry of Venice, long maintained their ascendency after thlitical importance of these republics had declined; and the school of design established sixty years ago at Lyons has enabled its silk manufactures to preserve the lead in Europe-despite the carnage of the Convention, and the wars of Napoleon. In Speech delivered on Nov. 28, 1843, in proposing the Establishment of a School of Design in Glasgow. "Whate'er Lorrain hath touched with softening hue Or savage Rosa dashed, or learned Poussin drew." The wealth is here, the enterprise is here, the materials are here; nothing is wanting but the hand of genius to cast these precious elements into the mould of beauty-the lofty spirit, the high aspirations which, aiming at greatness, never fail to attain it. Are we to be told that we cannot do these things; that like the Russians we can imitate but cannot conceive? It is not in the nation of Smith and of Watt,-it is not in the land of Burns and Scott,-it is not in the country of Shakspeare and Milton,-it is not in the empire of Reynolds and Wren, that we can give any weight to that argument. Nor is it easy drawn in such enchanting colours the lights to believe that the same genius which has and shadows of Scottish life, might not, if otherwise directed, have depicted, with equal felicity, the lights and shadows of Scottish scenery. We have spoken of our interests, spoken of what other nations have done;—but we have spoken of our capabilities,-we have there are greater things done than these. No one indeed can doubt that it is in the moral and religious feelings of the people, that the broad and deep foundations of national prosperity can alone be laid, and that every attempt to attain durable greatness on any other basis will prove nugatory. moral and intellectual, we are active agents. But we are not only We long after gratification-we thirst for enjoyment; and the experienced observer of man will not despise the subsidiary, but still important aid to be derived in the great work of moral elevation, from a due rection of the active propensities. And he is not the least friend to his species, who, in an age peculiarly vehement in desire, discovers gratifications which do not corrupt-enjoyments which do not degrade. But if this is true of enjoyments simply innocent, what shall we say of those which refine, which not only do not lead to longer be delayed. Our wealth is so great, n has come on us so suddenly, it will corrupt if it does not refine; if not directed to the arts which raised Athens to immortality, it wi sink us to those which hurled Babylon to per no dition. vice, but exalt to virtue?-which open to the peasant, equally with the prince, that pure gratification which arises to all alike from the contemplation of the grand and the beautiful in Art and in Nature? We have now reached that point where such an election can LAMARTINE.* and though numerous and valuable books of travels, as works of reference, load the shelves of our libraries, there are surprisingly few which are fitted, from the interest and vivacity of the style in which they are written, to possess permanent attractions for mankind. One great cause of this remarkable peculi arity is without doubt to be found in the widely different education of the students in our universities, and our practical men. In the former, classical attainments are in literature the It is remarkable, that although England is the country in the world which has sent forth the greatest number of ardent and intrepid travellers to explore the distant parts of the earth, yet it can by no means furnish an array of writers of travels which will bear a comparison with those whom France can boast. In skilful navigation, daring adventure, and heroic perseverance, indeed, the country of Cook and Davis, of Bruce and Park, of Mackenzie and Buckingham, of Burckhardt and Byron, of Parry and Franklin, may well claim the pre-emi-chief, if not exclusive, objects of ambition; nence of all others in the world. An Englishman first circumnavigated the globe; an Englishman alone has seen the fountains of the Nile; and, five years after the ardent spirit of Columbus had led his fearful crews across the Atlantic, Sebastian Cabot dis-portance. The vigorous practical men, again, covered the shores of Newfoundland, and planted the British standard in the regions destined to be peopled with the overflowing multitudes of the Anglo-Saxon race. and in consequence, the young aspirants for fame, who issue from these learned retreats, have their minds filled with the charms and associations of antiquity, to the almost entire exclusion of objects of present interest and im who are propelled by the enterprise and exertions of our commercial towns, are sagacious and valuable observers; but they have seldom the cultivated minds, pictorial eye, or powers But if we come to the literary works which of description, requisite to convey vivid or inhave followed these ardent and energetic ef- teresting impressions to others. Thus our forts, and which are destined to perpetuate scholars give us little more than treatises on their memory to future times-the interesting inscriptions, and disquisitions on the sites of discoveries which have so much extended our ancient towns; while the accounts of our acknowledge and enlarged our resources-the tive men are chiefly occupied with commercial contemplation is by no means, to an inhabitant inquiries, or subjects connected with trade and of these islands, equally satisfactory. The navigation. The cultivated and enlightened traBritish traveller is essentially a man of en- veller, whose mind is alike open to the charm ergy and action, but rarely of contemplation of ancient story and the interest of modern or eloquence. He is seldom possessed of the achievement-who is classical without being scientific acquirements requisite to turn to the pedantic, graphic and yet faithful, enthusiastic best account the vast stores of new and original and yet accurate, discursive and at the same information which are placed within his reach. time imaginative, is almost unknown amongst He often observes and collects facts; but it is us. It will continue to be so as long as eduas a practical man, or for professional pur- cation in our universities is exclusively devot poses, rather than as a philosopher. The ge-ed to Greek and Latin verses, or the higher manins of the Anglo-Saxon race-bold, sagacious, thematics; and in academies, to book-keeping and enterprising, rather than contemplative and scientific-nowhere appears more strongly than in the accounts of the numerous and intrepid travellers whom they are continually sending forth into every part of the earth. We admire their vigour, we are moved by their hardships, we are enriched by their discoveries; but if we turn to our libraries for works to convey to future ages an adequate and interesting account of these fascinating adventures, we shall, in general, experience nothing but disappointment. Few of them are written with the practised hand, the graphic eye, necessary to convey vivid pictures to future times; Blackwood's Magazine, Nov. 1844. and the rule of three; while so broad and sul len a line as heretofore is drawn between the studies of our scholars and the pursuits of our practical citizens. To travel to good purpose requires a mind stored with much and varied information, in science, statistics, geography, literature, history, and poetry. To describe what the traveller has seen, requires, in addı tion to this, the eye of a painter, the soul of a poet, and the hand of a practised composer. Pro. bably it will be deemed no easy matter to find such a combination in any country or in any age; and most certainly the system of education, neither at our learned universities nor our com. mercial academies, is fitted to produce it. It is from inattention to the vast store of |