publics, and has been since continued from the dread of malaria in the bottom of the valleys. It adds greatly to the picturesque effect of the mountain scenery, and gives it a character altogether peculiar. In the Tuscan states, the lower ranges of the Apennines have been the object of the utmost care, and of an almost inconceivable expenditure of capital. They are regularly cut in terraces, and when

and cultivated in the most careful manner, is now almost a desert. It is the region of insaubrious air; and no means have yet been devised by which it is possible to enable the human race to flourish under its pestilential influence. After leaving the highest state of civilization in Florence or Rome, the traveller is astonished to find himself in the midst of vast plains, over which numerous flocks of cattle wander at large under the care of shep-ever an opportunity occurs, water is brought herds mounted on horseback, and armed after the fashion of the steppes of Tartary. This division includes under it all the plains which lie between the Apennines and the Mediterranean, in the Neapolitan territory, among which the Maremma of Pestuni is most conspicuous; and nothing but the vast population of Naples prevents its celebrated Campagna from relapsing into the same desolate state.

from the adjoining canals to every field, so that the whole valley is as it were covered with a network of small streams, which convey their freshness all around. The olives and figs which flourish in this delightful region are foreign to the Tuscan soil; there is not a tree there which is the spontaneous production of nature; they are all planted and pruned by the hand of man.

The fourth great division comprehends the Nothing can be imagined more sterile in plains which lie to the eastward of the Apen- itself, or more adverse to any agricultural imnines, in the kingdom of Naples, and is bound-provement, than the aspect of nature in the ed by the Adriatic sea on the one side, and the irregular line of the mountains on the other. It is in some places from fifty to one hundred miles broad, and in others the mountains approach the sea-shore. The country is flat, or rises into extensive downs, and is cultivated in large farms, where it is under agricultural management; but a great proportion is devoted entirely to pasturage. Immense forests of olive are to be met with in this remote district, and the hills are covered with vines, and oranges, and other fruits, with corn growing under them.

The only range of mountains which properly and exclusively belongs to Italy is the Apennines; and they extend over more than half of the country. Their height is very various; in the vicinity of Genoa they rise to about 4500 feet; above Pontrimoli, on the borders of Tuscany and Lombardy, they reach 5500 to 6000 feet, and the great ridge which stretches from Bologna by Valombrosa, to the south-east, rises in some places to between 6000 and 7000. They are not, in general, very rocky; at least it is only in their higher eminences that this character appears. Their lower parts, everywhere almost, are covered with fruit trees, under the shade of which, in the southern exposures, crops of grain are brought to maturity. Higher up, the sweet chestnut covers the ascent, and supports an immense population at an elevation above the sea where no food for man could be procured in our climate. The pine, the beech, and the fir, occupy those higher regions in which are Valombrosa, Lavernia, and Camaldoli; and at the summits of all, the open dry pastures furnish subsistence to numerous flocks. This great capability of the Apennines to yield food for the use of man, is the cause of the extraordinary populousness of its slopes. In the remotest recesses the traveller discovers villages and towns; and on the face of mountains where the eye at a distance can discern nothing but wood, he finds, on a nearer approach, every spot of ground carefully cultivated. The vilages and towns are commonly situated on the summits of eminences, and frequently surrounded by walls and towers; a practice which began in the turbulent periods of the Italian re

Apennines. Their sides present a series of broken rocks, barren slopes, or arid cliffs. The roots of the bushes, laid bare by the autumnal rains, are, by degrees, dried up by the heat of the sun. They perish, and leave nothing behind them but a few odoriferous shrubs dispersed on the rocks to cover the wreck. The narrow ravines between them present, in summer, only the dry beds of torrents, in which fallen trees, rocks, and gravel, are accumulated by the violence of the winter rains. This debris is brought down by the torrents into the wider valleys, and whole tracts of country are desolated by a sterile mass of stone and gravel. Thus the mountains and the valleys at their feet seem equally incapable of culture; but the industry of the Italians has overcome these obstacles, and converted mountains, to appearance the most sterile that imagination could conceive, into a succession of gardens, in which every thing that is most delightful, as well as useful, is assembled.

This astonishing metamorphosis has been effected by the introduction of the terrace system of culture, an improvement which seems to have been unknown to the ancient Romans, and to have spread in Europe with the return of the Crusaders in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. (Chateauvieux, 300.) Nothing could oppose the destructive force of the torrents, but altering the surface of the hills, and thereby breaking the course of the waters. This was an immense work, for it required the whole soil to be displaced, and built up by means of artificial walls into successive terraces; and this in many places could be effected only by breaking solid rocks, and bringing a new soil from distant places.

The artificial land, so dearly purchased, is designed for the cultivation of fruits and vege tables. The terraces are always covered with fruit-trees placed in a reflected sun. Amidst the reverberations of so many walls, the fruit is most abundant and superior in its kind. No room is lost in these limited situations,the vine extends its branches along the walls; a hedge formed of the same vine branches surrounds each terrace, and covers it with verdure. In the corners formed by the meeting

of the supporting walls, fig-trees are planted | prevalence of the malaria renders it impossible to vegetate under their protection. The owner to live permanently. This region is everytakes advantage of every vacant space left be- where divided into great estates, and let in tween 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. So great is the produce of this culture that, under good management, half the crop of seven 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.

breadth, and which feeds annually 67,000 horned cattle, is cultivated by only eighty farmers. These farmers live in Rome or Sienna, 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.

The system of irrigation in the valley of the Arno is a most extraordinary monument of human 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 In the Terra di Lavoro, or Campagna of Naformed below the mean level of the stream, ples, the extreme richness of the soil has given that the water may run out laterally, overflow rise to a mode of culture different from any the land, and remain on it long enough to which has yet been described. The aspect of deposit the mud with which it is charged. A this great plain is, perhaps, the most striking great many canals, by successive outlets of the in point of agricultural riches that exists in the water, divide the principal current and check world. The great heat of the sun renders it its rapidity. These canals are infinitely sub- necessary that the grain should be shaded by divided, and to such a degree, that there is not trees; and accordingly the whole country is a single square of land, which is not sur- intersected by rows of elms or willows, which rounded by them. They are all lined with divide it into small portions of half or three walls, built with square bricks; the scarcity quarters of an acre each. A vine is planted of water rendering the most vigilant economy at the foot of every tree; and such is the of it necessary. A number of small bridges luxuriance of vegetation, that it not only rises connect the multitude of little islands, into in a few years to the very summit, but extends which these canals subdivide the country. its branches in a lateral direction, so as to These works are still kept in good repair; but admit of festoons being trained from one tree the whole wealth of Tuscany could not now to another. These trees are not pollarded as furnish the sums requisite for their construc-in Tuscany and Lombardy, but allowed to tion. 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

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 or maize. Melons are cultivated in great quanti

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 rank and the first in geniust 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 attracts 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 a 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 August, 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 magni-
ficence 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,
Thy scenes with story to combine;
Thou bid'st him who by Roslin strays,
List to the tale of other days.

Midst Cartlane crags thou showest the cave,
The refuge of thy champion brave;
Giving each rock a storied tale,
Pouring a lay through every dale;
Knitting, as with a moral band,
Thy story to thy native land;
Combining thus the interest high,
Which genius lends to beauty's eye!

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 crea-
tions 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,
As if there lay beneath the wave,
Secure from trouble, toil, and care,

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,
As streams their channels deeper wear.
The voice of ages has spoken: it has given
Campbell and Byron the highest place, with
Burns, in lyric poetry, and destined Scott

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 beTurk; 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 moral 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 Lochfore us. The haughty and yet impassioned 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 less obtrusive but not less impressive scenes of humble life? Who has so faithfully portrayed 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, Sarmatia fell, unwept, without a crime; or portrays with generous ardour the ima ginary paradise on Susquehanna's shore, where

we

The world was sad, the garden was a wild,
And man, the hermit, sighed till woman smiled;

And ships are drifting with their dead,
To shores where all is dumb,

discern the same mind, seeing every object through its own sublime and lofty vision. Thence has arisen his deathless name. It is 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 inhabit 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 im highest 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 manu. prise! 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 Ægean 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 the political 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 to believe that the same genius which has drawn in such enchanting colours the lights 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 moral and intellectual, we are active agents. will prove nugatory. But we are not only We long after gratification-we thirst for enjoyment; and the experienced observer of important aid to be derived in the great work man will not despise the subsidiary, but still of moral elevation, from a due direction 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