the twenty-four first dialogues of Plato, written throughout upon vellum, in the same exquisite character.' This and a few others were purchased, and, by means of a great deal of management, clandestinely got on board the caïque: the monks were extremely solicitous, and with reason, that the people of the island, and the Turkish authorities, should not know that they had touched a trifle of money.

Several of the islands of the Archipelago were visited, and among them Paros and Antiparos, on the marble and the astonishing grotto of which our Author has a number of very interesting observations. At length the course was shaped directly for Athens, and the Cape of Sunium was approached amidst a rare combination of enchantments.

We had such a glorious prospect, that we could recollect nothing like it such a contrast of colours, such an association of the wonders of nature and of art, such perfection of grand and beautiful perspective, as no expression of perceptible properties can convey to the minds of those who have not beheld the objects themselves. Being well aware of the transitory nature of impressions made upon the memory by sights of this kind, the author wrote a description of this scene while it was actually before his eyes: but how poor is the effect produced by detailing the parts of a view in a narrative, which ought to strike as a whole upon the sense! He may tell indeed of the dark blue sea streaked with hues of deepest purple-of embrowning shadows-of lights effulgent as the sun-of marble pillars beaming a radiant brightness upon lofty precipices, whose sides are diversified by refreshing verdure, by hoary mosses, and by gloomy and naked rocks; or by brighter surfaces reflecting the most vivid and varied tints, orange, red, and grey; to these he may add an account of distant summits, more intensely azured than the clear and cloudless sky-of islands dimly seen through silvery mists upon the wide expanse of water shining towards the horizon, as it were a sea of glass:"-and when he has exhausted his vocabulary, of every colour and shape exhibited by the face of Nature or by the works of Art, although he have not deviated from the truth in any part of his description, how little and how ineffectual has been the result of his undertaking!'

The considerably protracted and most active sojourn at Athens, was animated with the genuine fire of that fine enthusiasm, which every classical traveller would recognise the necessity of affecting, if he did not feel; a luxury which some of the home-confined readers of taste may be tempted to ask, somewhat querulously, why it should have been Dr. C.'s lot, rather than theirs, to revel in. The highest advantage was afforded for a discriminative and minute survey and investigation of the beauty and sublimity lingering in decay, and on the eve of departing, never to revive in such captivating forms in any other spot on

the globe, by the kindness and intelligence of Monsieur Fauvel, the French consal, the friend of every traveller of taste; and still more by the friendly companionship and extraordinary accomplishments of Don Battista Lusieri, whom there would be no hazard in pronouncing to be, of all the persons who have ever visited Athens, the individual best qualified to perpetuate by the pencil the images of those objects which are themselves sinking so fast into destruction. Those who have read Lord Elgin's Memorandum,' are apprized that this artist was drawn by his Lordship from Naples into Greece, where it seems he has remained through the long series of subsequent years, indefatigably employed, chiefly at Athens, in works which ought to find their way to the bands of those subsidiary artists in the north-west of Europe, who could so faithfully and so elegantly effect a thousand repetitions of thein.

It might,' says Dr. C. have been said of the time he had spent in Athens, as of Apelles, " Nulla dies sine lineâ," but such was the extraordinary skill and application shewn in the designs he was then completing, that every grace and beauty of the sculpture, every fair and exquisite proportion, every trace of the injuries which time had effected upon the building, every vein in the marble, were visible in the drawing; and in such perfection, that even the nature and qualities of the stone itself might be recognised in the contour. Whoever may hereafter be the possessor of these Drawings, will have, in the mere outlines, (for it is impossible this artist can ever finish the collection he has made,) a representation of the antiquities and beautiful scenery of Greece, inferior to nothing but the actual sight of them. Hitherto no Maecenas has dignified himself by any thing deserving the title of a patron of such excellence. Many have bought his designs when he could be induced to part with them, by which means he has barely obtained subsistence; and he is too passionately attached to the sources which Athens has afforded to his genius, to abandon Greece, even for the neglect which, in his letters to the author, he complains of having experienced.'

We do not hear, from any quarter, of any project (quite a practicable project, it would be undoubtedly,) for obtaining a selection of those performances, for the purpose of preparing a work which might, in the combined character of truth and animation, surpass every preceding graphical exhibition of the finest features of Greece, even, on an estimate of all the excellences of all the representations together, that of De Choiseul-Gouffier.

The readers of Lord Elgin's tract will also recollect that most anomalous personage, Theodore the Calmuck, as one of the corps placed under Lusieri's direction. Dr. C. saw him in this service at Athens; and he is a sample of humanity excellently fitted to put to silence the philosophizings that would aintain the native mental equality of human c.eatures.

With the most decided physiognomy of the wildest of his native tribes, although as much humanized in his appearance as it was possible to make him by the aid of European dress and habits, he still retained some of the original characteristics of his countrymen; and, among others, a true Scythian relish for spirituous liquor: by the judicious administration of brandy, Lusieri would elicit from him, for the use of his patron specimens of his art, combining the most astonishing genius with the strictest accuracy and the most exquisite taste. Theodore presented a marvellous example of the force of natural genius unsubdued by the most powerful obstacles. Educated in slavery; trained to the business of his profession beneath the active cudgels of his Russian masters; having also imbibed with his earliest impressions the servile propensities and sensual appetites of the tyrants be had been taught to revere; this extraordinary man arrived at Athens like another Euphranor, rivalling all that the Fine Arts had produced under circumstances the most favourable to their birth and maturity. The talents of Theodore, as a painter, were not confined, as commonly is the case among Russian artists, to mere works of imitation: although he could copy every thing, he could invent also; and his mind partook largely of the superior powers of original genius. With the most surprising ability, he restored and inserted into his drawings all the sculpture of which parts only remained in the mutilated bas-reliefs and buildings of the Acropolis. Besides this, he delineated, in a style of superior excellence, the same sculptures according to the precise state of decay in which they at present exist,'

Notwithstanding the charms of a Grecian landscape and sky, the brilliant effect of the structures of a marble unstained by time, the open, day-light prominence, if we may so express it, of the city, the lively cast of the leas associated in every mind with Athens, and we may add, the habitual vivacity of our Author's temperament, the aspect of the place, as he approached it, bore, to his imagination, a funereal character. Tombs and monuments, indeed, on the road from the Piraeus, prepared him for this impression, and

As we drew near,' he says, 'to the walls. we beheld the vast CECROPIAN CITADEL, crowned with temples that originated in the veneration once paid to the memory of the illustrious dead, surrounded by objects telling the same theme of sepulchral grandeur, and now monuments of departed, greatness, mouldering in all the solemnity of ruin. So paramount is this funereal character in the approach to Athens from the Piraeus, that as we passed the hill of the Museum, which was, in fact, an ancient cemetry of the Athenians, we might have imagined ourselves to be among the tombs of Telmessus, from the number of the sepulchres hewn in the rock, and from the antiquity of the workmanship, evidently not of later date than any thing in Asia Minor.'

He takes this, and indeed several other occasions, of insisting on the remarkable fact, established by innumerable evi

dences, of the sepulchral signs of the ancient temples. This he had, with a just confidence, asserted against Bryant, in describing the ancient monuments on the shores of the Cimmerian Bosphorus, in Vol. I. of these Travels.

• The discussion which has been founded on the question whether the Egyptian pyramids were tombs or temples, seems altogether nugatory: being one, they were necessarily the other. The Soros in the chamber of the great Pyramid, which indisputably determines its sepulchral origin, as decidedly establishes the certainty that it was also a place of religious worship:

"Et tot templa Deûm Romæ, quot in urbe Sepulchra

"Heroüm, numerare licet."-Prudentius, Lib. I.

The sanctity of the Acropolis of Athens, owed its origin to the sepulchre of Cecrops; and without this leading cause of veneration, the numerous temples with which it was afterwards adorned, would never have been erected. The same may be said of the Temple of Venus, at Paphos, built over the tomb of Cinyras, the father of Adonis; of Apollo Didymæus, at Miletus, over the grave of Cleomachus; with many others alluded to both by Eusebius and Clemens Alexandrinus.' p. 400.

There is something very striking in this fact, as disclosing some kind of conviction, in the minds of a benighted race, that men might become greater, or associated to something greater, by dying; as well as their inextinguishable sense of the absolute necessity of having gods, that is, superhuman objects for their passions of hope and fear.

Art. III. The History of the Waldenses: connected with a Sketch of the Christian Church from the Birth of Christ to the Eighteenth Century. By William Jones. Second Edition corrected and greatly enlarged. 2 vols. 8vo. pp. 480, 492. Price 1l. 4s. Printed for the Author. Gale and Fenner. 1816.

MR.

R. Jones has done well in bringing forward the History of the Waldenses in a popular form. He could hardly have selected from the whole mass of ecclesiastical records, a subject more worthy of the public attention, or better calculated to serve the interests of truth. Should any of our readers be asked- Where was your religion before Luther?' they have only to consult the work now before us, and they will discover congregations of the faithful, who, long before the era of the Reformation, worshipped their Creator and Redeemer in the uncorrupted simplicity of primitive times, and kept themselves unspotted from the world. The Valleys of Piedmont would afford a satisfactory reply to that taunting question, were it not sufficiently answered by a reference to the New Testament.

Give me an honest chronicler,' has been the earnest desire

of many an injured man, whose mind has been conscious of its freedom from imputed crimes, and who has panted after honourable vindication. Just such a chronicler is the present writer. He is the advocate of a noble cause; and though not the first who has volunteered his services to repel the charges which have been brought against a slandered and persecuted people, he is by no means the least able pleader in their favour. We do not however mean to insinuate in the most distant manner, that Mr. J. loses the character of the Historian in that of the Apologist. His work is calcu lated to make a very different impression. Guided solely by the rules of the Gospel, in judging of truth and of error, and never confounding religion with the pomp and ceremonies which have passed under its name, and have but too frequently imposed on men of good understanding, and hiassed them in their relations of ecclesiastical affairs; he advances steadily towards the objects of examination, and exhibits them in their own proper character. It is impossible for a Christian writer, to be either unfeeling or silent in relation to the unjust sufferings of Christians; it becomes his duty therefore to clear their reputation, as well as to narrate the transactions in which they shared. The qualifications for the task in which the Author has engaged, consist less in the endowments of genius, and the attractions of eloquence, than in the love of truth, and an attachment to Christian freedom: and Mr. Jones's claims to these are indisputable. A purer or more correct spirit of liberty has seldom pervaded any work which has come under our notice.

A severe critic would probably object to the sketch of the Christian Church, prefixed to the History of the Waldenses, that, as an Introduction, it is too copious, and detains the reader too long from the principal business of the work. We do not feel disposed to find fault with this preliminary matter; but are of opinion, that on the whole, the manner in which this part of the work is conducted, is entitled to approbation. The Author writes professedly for the benefit of the general reader, who will not be sorry to meet with this epitome of Ecclesiastical History which he has furnished.

The following extracts from the Preface, will afford the requisite information in regard to the various large additions which the present edition has received.

'In Ch. 11. Sect. 3.-the narrative of the persecution at Carthage, and the account of Origen;-a considerable part of Ch. 111. Sect. 4. with the appendix to that chapter;-the note respecting Charlemagne, p. 377, together with much of the third and the whole of the fourth section of Ch. iv. are additions to that part of the work which constitutes the first volume. In the second,