We may reasonably doubt whether the author of the Laocoon group ever saw a man and his three sons enwreathed by serpents; and we may be sure that if he had, and attempted to give a faithful and close delineation of the spectacle, he would not have succeeded half so well as he has. Such matter-of-fact critics might quarrel with Dante for never having been in Hell, and with Milton for not having visited Paradise before he presumed to describe it. Away with these plodders with scissars and shears, who would clip the wings of imagination! If we may snatch a grace beyond the reach of art, so may we snatch one beyond the reach of nature; and if I could be transported in propriâ personâ to the scene of my Italian landscape, I have little doubt that I should gaze around me with disappointment, and finally prefer the imaginary to the real scene.

From the operation of this benevolent system of equivalents springs the variety of national character, which depends in a great degree upon climate. Luxuriating in the deliciousness of warm suns, cloudless skies, beautiful scenery, and a soil spontaneously fertile, the Italian finds happiness enough in his external impressions, and, considering the dolce far niente as the summum bonum of existence, suffers his spirit to evaporate through his senses, and dreams away life in a kind of animal listlessness. An Englishman is obliged to draw upon his mind for the gratifications denied to his body, and apply to his fire-side for the warmth withheld from him by the sun: hence the two distinguishing traits of his character-mental

activity and domestic virtue. It is astonishing that nobody has thought of constructing an Intellectual Reaumur, graduated according to the degrees of cold, and shewing at one glance how much literary talent may be calculated upon in the different capitals of Europe. Up to a certain point acuteness would increase with the rigour of the climate; and in all of the knotty and abstruse problems of metaphysics, Edinburgh would be found at a higher pitch than London. There appears to be something in a Scotchman's brain equivalent to the gastric juice in his stomach, which enables him to digest, decompound, and resolve into their primitive elements, the most stubborn and intractable propositions. I should be disposed to assign to Edinburgh the post of honour upon this scale, and to consider this distinction as conferring upon it a much better claim to the title of the Northern Athens, than the fancied resemblance between the Calton Hill and the Acropolis. Farther north, both mind and body must be expected to degenerate; and I should no more dream of ideas flowing from the benumbed scull of a Laplander or a Kamschatkan, than of water gushing from a frozen plug. If my conjecture as to the influence of climate in forming the Italian character be correct, it may perhaps be asked, since the temperature has been in all ages equally luxurious, how I account for their ancestors having built Rome and conquered the world. He is no genuine theorist who cannot annihilate both time and space to reconcile contradictions. But I am not driven to this necessity, as I have only to adopt

the theory lately promulgated by Mr. Galiffe, who, because the grammars of the Russian and Roman languages are both without any article, and the foundations of some of the most ancient cities in each country are exactly similar in structure, boldly pronounces that Rome was founded by a colony of Muscovites. Braced with all the vigour of a northern temperament, they had time to extend their empire to the extremities of the earth, and rear the magnificent edifices of Rome, before they began to experience the degenerating effects of the climate. In fact they were only an earlier eruption of Goths and Vandals, and did not properly become Italians until about the period of the decline and fall. So far, therefore, from militating against my theory, they afford a beautiful confirmation of its accuracy.

THE ENGLISHMAN IN FRANCE.

A FRENCHMAN seeing as he walk'd
A friend of his across the street,
Cried "Hem!" exactly as there stalk'd
An Englishman along the road,

One of those Johnny Bulls we meet
In every sea-port town abroad,

Prepared to take and give offence,
Partly, perhaps, because they speak
About as much of French as Greek,

And partly from the want of sense!
The Briton thought this exclamation
Meant some reflection on his nation,

So bustling to the Frenchman's side,

"Mounseer Jack Frog," he fiercely cried,

"Pourquoi vous faire Hem!' quand moi passe ?"
Eyeing the querist with his glass,

The Gaul replied, “ Monsieur God-dem,
Pourquoi vous passe quand moi faire Hem?''

"

HUMAN OSSIFRAGES.*

"Here's fine revolution, an' we had the trick to see't. Did these bones cost no more the breeding but to play at loggats with them? Mine ache to think on 't."

Hamlet.

It was the latter end of April, which was ripening with a genial warmth into May; the flowers were every where emerging into the gaiety of the landscape that surrounded me, like young belles coming out for the first time at a ball-room; while the bees, like so many beaus, not only fluttered and sung around them, but occasionally kissed the honey from their lips with all that frankness of innocent enjoyment which is visibly inculcated by Nature: the south wind went merrily along, singing to the boughs "like a piping bacchanal amid the flowers;" birds and insects were enjoying in the sunny air their renovated being, new vegetation was gushing from bud and blossom, the ants were creeping out of the crevices of the soil; it appeared as

* That species of eagle termed the ossifrage or ospray is thus called from its breaking the bones of animals in order to feed upon them.

if re-animation was exuding from every pore of Nature, while her face seemed to be lighted up with a conscious smile, as if her mighty heart thrilled with complacent joy at the universal happiness she was diffusing.-A smoky shower, to use one of Chaucer's picturesque words, instead of disturbing, gave a keener relish to my sensations; for nothing is more delightful at this season than to contemplate in the quick alternations of rain and sunshine, carefully watering and warming the earth, the manifest presence of Nature, "dressing her plants visibly," as the author of The Months elegantly observes, "like a lady at her window." We want no miraculous handwriting on the wall, for he who can fail to perceive it on the earth in the punctual recurrence of this vernal process must be wilfully blind, For my own part, I can scarcely help imagining upon these occasions that the visible arm of the Creator is outstretched from the heavens to till and cultivate the beautiful garden of the world, and so dispense sustenance and delight, corn, fruit and flowers, to the innumerable beings, human and animal, whom he has called into existence.

Spring is undoubtedly the most exhilarating of all seasons, not only from its moral associations and promises of a flowery future, but from certain involuntary impulses arising from a quickened circulation and developement of the senses, wherein we sympathise physically with the vegetable and animal kingdoms. But there is nothing gloomy in any period or appearance of Nature. To the superficial observer indeed, who has seen the winds of April rocking as it were the cradle