ours, in the present state of society, are within their power to bestow. If genius and merit excite the venom of envious and malignant spirits, is this fault peculiar to this city? Is not such the common fate of distinguished men in all ages and in all places? As to those of our clergy, whom this writer has drawn into notice, nothing can be more unfortunate than his selection of instances of "worth neglected, and of 'genius insulted. He could have scarcely named more distinguished objects of the love and esteam of their fellow citizens, or have designated any who are in the habit of receiving more frequent, or more liberal evidences of their affection and reverence. They are men honoured in publick life for their talents, and in private life for their virtues. The guides of our wisest, the com panions of our happiest hours— Venerated both because they are leaders, and because they are examples. We have thought it becoming in us to state these truths, concerning a city thus openly and wantonly assailed. To pass by a calumny so publickly uttered, without some comment, seemed to us like giving it, in some degree, a silent sanction. To have noticed it, in the style of common criticism, would have done justice neither to the author, nor to the subject of the verse. In all ages and nations, writers like Caradoc have the language of scorn and detestation for an inheritance. For the Anthology. ORIGINAL LETTERS From an AMERICAN TRAVELLER IN EUROPE to his friends in this country. MY DEAR SISTER, Florence, February 15, 1805. Rome to this city, between Nami and Terni, you pass the little town of Cesis or Cesium, an ancient village, romantically situated at the foot of a rocky mountain, which appears to threaten it with destruction. From the center of this mountain, thro' certain apertures or caverns, issues constantly a pure, cold, refreshing wind, so extremely grateful in this warm climate, that the inhabitants convey it in pipes like water, to their cellars, to moderate the heat of their climate, and to preserve their wines and fruit. THE Roman poets had more colour for placing the palaces of the Gods of the Winds in caverns, than I once believed. Virgil's description of the cave of Eolus is one of the most whimsical efforts of human fancy, which I ever read. He represents the deity as confining the winds in bags, and letting them out, as occasion might require, as a retailer would a bushel of peas. I find, however, that he had some ground to believe, that the winds had their origin in the bowels of the earth. On the road from A few miles on this side of Foligno you pass the little town of Assisi, famous throughout Italy, France, and Spain, as the birthplace of St. Francis. If it had been your good fortune to have been born in a Roman Catholick (or, as they say, a Christian) country, I should have no occasion to explain to you what St. Francis has done to render his birth-place an object of so much interest; but as you have not had that happiness, I must inform you, that St. Francis was the founder of that extensive, rigid, self-mortifying order, called Franciscans. If I should recur to Catholick legends for the works of this extraordinary saint, who was canonized before his death, I should recount a succession of miracles far greater and more astonishing, than any which our Saviour or his apostles thought proper to perform. I should tell you of his having preached to swallows, and of his having made a woman out of snow, and a thousand other tales, the recital of which would be only a repetition of the many proofs of human folly and credulity. But what he did in fact perform, worthy of astonishment, was to institute, at the age of twenty-five years, an order of monks the most rigid; and by his talents, zeal, and real or affected piety, to render it so popular, as that, in ten years after its foundation, it deputed five thousand brethren to a general convention at Rome, besides the vast numbers who remained in the convents. This order was instituted in 1209, and has subsisted in full force from that period to the present, except in France. There are supposed to be at the present time forty or fifty thousand monks of this order. These men lead a life of great severity and mortification even at the present day. I do not believe the tales, which are generally pro pagated of their extreme licentiousness. That there are bad men in their society, as in all others, cannot be doubted; but as the smallest deviations from propriety, are noticed in men who lay claim to a character of extraordinary sanctity; as we feel shocked to see men, who have separated themselves from the rest of mankind, for the performance of sacred functions, acting only with what we should call levity in other men, it is very extraordinary that these religious orders should have retained so large a share of publick respect. Generally speaking,the Capuchins, Franciscans, and other religious orders, are still looked up to with respect, and, in some instances, veneration. They certainly have fewer temptations than other men ; they are secluded, generally, from objects which allure the senses, and inflame the passions. They are occupied more than one half of their time, by night as well as by day, in acts of devotion; and I will not think so ill of human nature, as to believe, that such habits have no tendency to purify the heart, and amend the morals, even if they are not performed with the most correct views and impressions. In the severest weather these monks go bare-headed; they have no stockings, and only a sandal on the bottom of the foot. Their dress consists of a coarse woolen robe, without any linen under it to defend the skin. In their convents they admit but little light— Their windows never look towards the busy world-Their cells are small, and their chief ornaments are a crucifix and a human skull. Go in at any hour, which you can do freely and without notice, and you will usually find them at their devotions. They abstain from all animal food. Towards their fellow men they are meek and humble. They assume no airs from the respectability and wealth of their order. They still preserve the ancient employment of mendicity, and the habit of begging alms has no tendency to inflame human pride. It will occur to you, no doubt, to ask, what motives have these men thus to mor tify themselves, and to lead so ab stemious a life, in countries where the doctrines of religion do not inculcate it as necessary to salvation? In the first institution of the or der, they were impelled by that enthusiasm, which sectaries inva riably discover; by a desire of ag grandizing their order, and that esprit du corps, inseparable from all associations of men, more es pecially religious establishments. The age in which it originated was filled with enthusiasm and su perstition. Crusades, pilgrimages, and self-mortification were consid ered the surest roads to heaven. Since these motives, which produced and favoured the order, have ceased to operate, others less violent, but uniform and steady, have succeeded. The orders are now wealthy and powerful; they possess the finest edifices in Europe; the noblest churches; the most romantick spots; the choicest lands; the most valuable rents. They possess every thing, which can gratify the taste or ambition of man. The Carthusians at Naples lately made a present to the king, of 60,000 dollars, out of their annual revenues. To be a member of such powerful bodies, even on the condition of personal mortification and self-denial, is gratifying to human pride. Another powerful principle in human nature, operates in favour of these establishments; I mean the Vol. IV. No. 6. love of idleness. The revenues of the convent afford a certain, and never-iailing subsistence; but the most powerful operating principle in favour of entering these orders, is ambition. It is one of the roads to ecclesiastical preferment, and the only one which is open to the common people in these countries. Honours, rank, and office, are here confined to privileged orders, except in the case of ecclesiastical dignities, and even there in point of fact, the exclusion of the lower classes is nearly as perfect. But by a principle adopted in the apostolick chamber, there must be four cardinals out of seventy, taken from the religious orders, or monks. Though the chance is so very small, yet as each order can boast of having given a Pope to Christendom, and as they are always represented in the college of cardinals, there is sufficient to keep alive the hopes of the most humble, and to stimulate the pow erful and inextinguishable spark of ambition. Thousands, to be sure, die simple monks, and breathe their last sighs in greasy cowls, within the cells of their convent ; but one happy brother is ornamented with purple stockings, and clothed in fine linen; and his rare good fortune is a sufficient nutriment for new-born hopes in his whole order, and becomes a new source of general expectation.This principle is not confined to the monks of Italy; we see it operating in our own political affairs. The most humble of our common people are more actuated by personal ambition, than we are apt to imagine. The chances appear to be small, to be sure, in favour of any particular dunce; but the success of one such calf-killer as Sloane, or the Roxbury patriot, kindles ardent hopes in the breasts of thousands of their bloody breth ren of the knife. No delay, no want of success, should discourage the truly ambitious patriot. He should reflect that if like —he has toiled twenty years, meeting with nothing but disaster and disgrace; like him too, he may, to the astonishment of all his friends, one day display the graces of his person in the chair of state; or the charms of his eloquence at the court of St. Cloud, or in the pur lieus of the Escurial. side it is surrounded by the Appennines, which, at two points not very far distant from each other, approach the lake in such a manner, as to form two very narrow defiles between the mountains and the lake. Between these two points the hills recede in such manner, as to form a large bason or plain of about ten miles square, and which is completely environed on the north, east, and south, by the Appennines, and on the west by the lake, with only two narrow passages by the abovementioned defiles. Hannibal allured or seduced the Roman general into this contract attacking him in flank, presented detachments of his army at the defiles to prevent his escape. Possessing the mountain tops by a numerous and well disciplined soldiery, he poured down on the beads of the wretched Romans, like an irresistible torrent. Death by water, or the sword of the Africans, was the only alternative presented to them. Never were the masters of the world so humbled, or the fate of their nation so endangered, which must be my apology for introducing so bloody a subject to a lady.--The revenge which the Romans took for this battle, I have stated to you in a letter which I wrote describing my tour along the Adriatic, on the shores of which Asdrubal, the brother of Hannibal, was completely defeated, and the general himself fell a victim to the conquerors. In the road from Rome to this city, we passed the lake of Perugia, better known to scholars as the lake of Thrasymene, on the bored bason; seized the heights, and ders of which Hannibal defeated the Roman consul Flaminius, and when, if he had pursued his vic tory, and marched directly to Rome, it is probable Rome would have shared the fate which she afterwards brought upon Carthage. This battle has been so well described by different writers, and the ground taken by the respective generals, so accurately pointed out, that a traveller can easily discern upon the spot, not only how the battle was fought, but why it was lost. It is, however, a matter of astonishment to every man of sense, who views the ground, how a Roman general, acquainted with the country, could have suffered himself to be drawn into a spot where defeat was certain. At the same time it is impossible not to admire the talents of the Carthaginian general, who, in a foreign country, on land to which and to whose defiles he must have been till that time a stranger, could have contrived to draw or cajole an enemy into a position so fatal. The lake of Thrasymene is, I should judge, about fifteen miles wide, and forty long. On the east Although I think that Americus Vespucius has very unfairly stolen the honour of the discovery of America, to which Columbus is certainly entitled, in the same manner that John Faust stole from nis master, Laurentius Coster, the discovery of the art of printing; yet as he is the locum tenens of that honour, and passes with the world as such, I had a great curiosity to see his tomb, which is in this city. He was a Florentine, and his tomb is placed in the church of Ogni Senti, or All Saints, belonging to the Franciscans. There is no parade about it. It is a simple, circular piece of marble, let into the floor of the church. and either so obliterated or imperfect, that I cannot make out the date. I wish our literary friends to solve the doubt, as I give you the inscription precisely as it now is : S AmeriGHO VESPucio POSTERISq, Surs M LXXI, You will see by the above, that the Italians called him Amerigus, and not Americus. Why our lit erary men have changed it in trans lation, I know not. It is true, that the Italians render the Roman C often by G, but this was not a Latin nor Roman but an Italian name, and the Italian G sounds precisely like our own. I cannot see the reason why we do not call the pretended discoverer of America, Amerighus instead of Americus. I think it very likely that I shall shew my ig norance by this remark, but I really wish to be informed myself, upon the point, and to state to you, who are as little informed, the fact, that the pretended discoverer of our country was, in his own town, called as I have above stated. Yours, &c. From the General Magazine. CHARACTER OF THE RIGHT HONOURABLE WILLIAM PITT, WRITTEN BY THE RIGHT HON. G. CANNING. THE character of this illustrious Statesman early passed its ordeal. Scarcely had he attained the age at which reflection commences, than Europe with astonishment beheld him filling the first place in the Councils of his Country, and managing the vast mass of its concerns, with all the vigour and steadiness of the most matured Wisdom. Dignity-Strength-Dis cretion-these were among the masterly qualities of his mind at its first dawn. He had been nur tured a Statesman, and his knowledge was of that kind which always lay ready for practical application. Not dealing in the subtle ties of abstract politicks, but moving in the slow, steady procession of Reason, his conceptions were reflective, and his views correct. Habitually attentive to the concerns of Government, he spared no pains to acquaint himself with whatever was connected, however minutely, with its prosperity, He was devoted to the State. Its in terest engrossed all his study, and engaged all his care. It was the element alone in which he seemed to live and move. He allowed himself but little recreation from his labours. His Mind was al ways on its station, and its activity was unremitted. He did not hastily adopt a mea sure, nor hastily abandon it. The plan struck out by him for the pres servation of Europe, was the result of prophetick wisdom and pro found policy. But, though defeat |