poor curate, and his daughter, we must not part from them yet. This, the eldest of his children, being now qualified by Nature to enter into the world, the old man has accompanied her to town:-she in the waggon, he upon his worn-out beast. He had his choice of two jolting conveyances, and it does not appear that he has selected the more commodious one. We are afraid he has been apt to choose unluckily through life. The travellers are just arrived at the Bell Inn, a well-known house in Woodstreet; and the old man is reading the address of a letter of recommendation to the Right Reverend the Bishop of London ;-a letter that cannot fail to hit the mark, if it be well urged. He is without his spectacles, and is therefore making out the superscription painfully, while his grey steed profits by the minute, thus afforded, to make up for its fast upon the road, and is greedily devouring some straw, in which certain articles of earthenware, here exposed to sale, have been packed up. Flower-pots, pans, and dishes, are inclining themselves most ominously, at the feet of the animal; and we already anticipate, that, when the reckoning comes to be settled, these empty dishes will cost more than the full ones would have done, which the poor pair declined on the road from economical motives-more, too, than the entire value of the letter directed to the Right Reverend Bishop! But we must tear ourselves from this scene of simplicity, for we have still much to perform.

Adieu then, man and horse, ye unfortunate beings! It will be long ere we meet again. Still a little longer endure the rubs and crosses of your joint destiny, until Nature's coup de grace shall terminate all your misery! Thou, affectionate parent, wilt at least be spared the pang of witnessing the horrors that await thy beloved Maria. Alas, it is not yet known to thee, that the toilsome journey which thou and thy faithful servant have made from Yorkshire, was but a funeral procession, conducting the virtue, and consequently the felicity, of thy daughter to its grave. Thou too honest grey-in whose side

I have just discovered a most important mark, close by the spur of thy master-a spot that has cost the artist only a touch of his graver, but which has cost thee thy dearest blood-believe me, that since this discovery, I feel trebly for thy fate! It grieveth me, just as we are about to separate, to meet with this sign of conjunction between thy lord and thee. Yet comfort thyself, for the equality of your respective destinies is greater than thou mayst imagine, He has had throughout life a less compassionate rider than thou hast had; it would have cost the artist more than one stroke to have represented the scars which this poor victim now conceals beneath his coprimiseria!*

Thus our heroine, the good, honesthearted, unsuspecting village girl, has just got down at the Bell Inn, upon her arrival in London. This healthy country flower is now transplanted from its native soil into an immense garden, among innumerable species of weeds and insects, not known in Yorkshire. And unfortunately she is directly placed in one of the most infamous and pestilential quarters. Even before she can take root, a REPTILE (I mean her ladyship with the splendid watch) taints her with poisonous sting, so effectually as to prevent her from ever shooting up, at least in this temporal existence.Hogarth has brought his country lass from Yorkshire-yet why from that county?. The author and the artist, who labour for posterity, do nothing without a particular meaning. Yorkshire, according to statistical writers, furnishes the most beautiful females of all the English counties; and a waggon, laden with some of the poorest, though not precisely the ugliest of these creatures, stops weekly at the Bell in Wood-street. This is where the scene is laid, and now permit me a word or two that I may describe it. The inn-yard is evidently situated in a wretched corner :should there be any dwellings in the neighbourhood that possess decent fronts, most assuredly they do not turn their most respectable sides towards this spot. The house, with the gallery, for instance, on the left,

could not well have presented to its neighbour any thing more shabby. Upon the gallery-which, by the by, is partly supported by posts and partly attached to poles are two utensils, which are apparently accustomed to take their daily station here, for the benefit of sweet air. On the rope linen is hanging-at least something that has been this morning in the suds; but from the single specimen, we cannot exactly say whether it is intended to be employed again in bodily service, or whether it is merely in limbo for the paper-mill. The wench who is there, looking down, is holding a pair of dripping stockings over the parapet, and she seems to be looking at this shower-bath for passengers, hopes of its good success.

with

In this miserable hole, in spite of all its wretchedness, we discern a man of some consequence certainly, for he has a servant with a bag-wig behind him, and is regarded with a look of respectful submission. His legs and thighs, to be sure, are a little crooked. He is come hither merely to await the arrival of the waggon with Yorkshire lasses, and to select for himself the first of the market. Besides his satellite in the bag-wig, he has for his ally the lady with the cul-de-Paris-for she evidently belongs to him. Who can these personages be?—This is what the reader shall now be circumstantially informed of.

The man, who has one foot over the threshold of the inn-door, and the other still in the house; his left hand resting on his cane, and his right privately employed, is the notorious Colonel Chartres. Whoever, therefore, knows with what ease Hogarth could catch likenesses and figures, must be delighted at finding, thus preserved, the physiognomy and person of one of the greatest scoundrels that the graver has ever immortalized. Among the actors in this drama, there are two who actually died upon the scaffold-yet this being is not one of them—not because he did not deserve hanging-most assuredly not-but he escaped being tied up, because, with those innu

merable arts of cheating which conduct to the gallows, and in which he was such an adept-he had most prudently studied that which enabled him to cheat the gallows themselves of their just and legal due. And never were the gallows more grossly defrauded than upon the day when this animal died in his bed. This is no new information to those of my readers who are acquainted with Pope, Swift, Arbuthnot, and the generality of the English classic writers of that period. Sharper, debauchee, knave, and Chartres, are various words which mean the same thing. Pope has expressed his character very briefly, when he says-"Chartres and the Devil," which sounds very much like Chartres and Co. Another Chartres of our own time has shown himself worthy of being admitted into the firm.*

The most excellent epitaph with which the celebrated Arbuthnot drummed the English Chartres out of the world into an infamous immortality, is well known. Why do we not sometimes read similar ones in our churchyards? After reading the lapidary eulogies so common with us, I have been frequently embarrassed to decide to which side of the grave a state of perfection belongs :-Surely there cannot be a "happier and a better world" than this, where every one who has escaped the gallows has lived the exemplary worthy person described on his tomb-stone! It is said, that a few days after Chartres' death, the following moving article appeared, in the Edinburgh Paper, among the advertisements for the apprehension of thieves, and announcement of the merits of quack medicines :

Yesterday evening, at Stennihill, near Edinburgh, 22d May, 1732, at the age of 62, our dear husband and father, Col. Fras. Chartres of Amsfield, after a complete exhaustion, exchanged his active and laborious life for a state of eternal bliss. brave defender ;-the orphan a generous Religion and his country bewail in him a factor. No one feels more acutely than parent; the poor an indefatigable beneourselves this heavy stroke, which fills an entire province with mourning. Convinced how deeply not only our friends, but the

the letters M. H. upon its lid: it contains the maiden's dowry at this her union with infamy and perdition. With a kind of predestination, that nothing in the world can justify, Hogarth has given to his heroine the name of Mary Hackabout, which does not express her present character so much as her future destiny. This, therefore, had better been let alone. The English word hack, when applied to a female, is one of the most insulting that can be used: and if the daughter's name be Hackabout-what then is that of her poor innocent father? It is certainly honourable to the taste of us Germans, that we do not tolerate similar inuendoes on the part of an author-at least not without testifying our displeasure. Woe to the writer who, in order to distinguish his heroes, must invent for them these sort of titles. No man had ever less need to have recourse to such expedients than Hogarth. He gives us the history of his heroine so plainly, that we could not have failed, at its conclusion, to acknowledge her to be a Hackabout, even had the trunkmaker nailed the chaste name of Susanna herself upon the box-lid. Such significant appellations are tolerable

in Latin, in Greek, or in Hebrew, where we are accustomed to regard them merely as Christian names:-thus the godliness of many a Theophilus stands upon the same footing with the blessedness of the incarnate Benedictus Spinoza.

Close to this trunk lies a poor goose, nearly strangled by the label on its neck, which runs thus-" To my lofing cosen in Tems-street in London." Where is this gift to be carried? Many are the lofing cosens in Thamesstreet,-well disposed to receive geese either with or without labels: so that the feathered innocent is not likely to fall into more honest hands than thyself, Maria-and perhaps too thy travelling companions seated in the waggon. There is, alas, reason to fear that in London will be found" lofing cosens" for them all.

There still remains another cordedup box with its direction; we notice it merely to observe, that this direction is quite illegible, and it must therefore, in all probability, remain undelivered, until some honest waggoner, who cannot read, or some cunning rogue who does not trouble himself about the address, provides for it a place of security.

BEFORE the time of Alfieri, Italy, critically speaking, cannot be said to have possessed any tragedies. Her bibliographical catalogues, it is true, boasted, with great pomp, of more than a hundred, but the Italian people never thought of reading themthey remained unrepresented by the comedians-in short, no one of any taste or judgment ever took notice of them. They were all of the tedious, cold, and insipid class, of which the Sofonisba of Tressino, the Antigone of Alamanni, the Rosmunda of Rucellai, the Aristodemo of Dottori, are sad specimens. They were condemned to languish in the hands of certain dull pedants, who sometimes

cited, but who never read them. These persons, accustomed only to judge of books by their title-pages, and full of a silly pride, which they called love of country, but which in reality is but one of the forms of stupidity-stoutly denied the poverty of Italian literature in tragic composi tion; and, with ridiculous boasting, piqued themselves upon possessing an amount of wealth, equivalent in value to a pocket-book full of French assignats of the years 1794 and 1795.

A few men of letters, standing, as it were, between the pedants and their opposers, did not venture to mention the hundred tragedies of their progenitors; but, they had re

course to another subterfuge, in order to preserve to Italy her pretended literary supremacy over all transalpine nations. They confounded tragedy, with the opera; and boasted of Metastasio, as if he had been a poet calculated to have created envy in the soul even of Shakspeare-to say nothing of Corneille and Racine !

It is not our intention to slight the favorite of all the Italian innamorati of the last century; the poet who caused the hearts of the venerable Italian matrons of the present day to languish and palpitate, during their youth, when they were under the discipline of their duennas. We only wish to observe, that, between the opera and true tragedy, there is a difference so wide, that not to be sensible of it indicates total literary blindness. Many are the elements, of this difference; but it would be paying an ill compliment to the sagacity of our readers were we to enter at full into their enumeration. One will suffice for our purpose:-the concurrence of various arts produces the general effect of the opera; but tragedy rests for its success upon the ability of the poet. In the opera the poetry, if we can be allowed the comparison, may be said to resemble a member of the Germanic confederation, who is obliged to furnish a certain contingent of troops, and no more in tragedy, however, poetry is a single power, which must act vigorously from its own weight, and conquer by its own exertions. To place, therefore, the writer of operas on a level with the tragic poet, is as if one should equalize the military prowess of the king of Bavaria, and of Napoleon. If Metastasio had been endowed with more imagination than he possessed, if he had been distinguished by a less effeminate and less monotonous mind than fell to his share,—an intellect more susceptible of sublime and varied fancies,-in spite of all these gifts he never could have composed a good tragedy while he continued to confine himself strictly within the thralling limits assigned by the opera to poetry. Those who

consider Metastasio as a tragic poet, are no friends either to his memory, or to sound criticism, or to good logic. Let us then leave to him the fame of standing the first amongst the Italian writers of opera;-the fame also of a truly admirable poet, in revealing to Italy the secret of that beautiful style most suitable to verses designed for the voice. These, and no other, are the praises which may be fairly challenged for him; these, and no other, are the praises which are alone given to him, even in Italy, by persons of knowledge.

We repeat, therefore, without fear of being justly blamed for rashness or illiberality, that, before the time of Alfieri, the Italians possessed no tragedies-although many of their obscure poets often made miserable attempts, and tottered in the path of tragedy. Of darkness itself, however, it is useless to speak: but we shall indicate, in passing, some twilight glimmerings which appeared about this time.

Vincenzo Gravina, who, in the beginning of the 18th century, and a little previous, was in Italy the founder of true criticism-Gravina, who preached literary doctrines founded on reason and on the nature of things,* not on the caprices and conceits of rhetoricians-and who wrote a book on tragedy, which may be even read in our days with profit-was also the author of five tragedies. Unfortunately the fact proves, that he was rather born to reason upon the art than to be himself an artist. The plans of his tragedies might possibly be dictated by sound philosophy, but their execution convinces, in every way, that poor Gravina was no poet. His five tragedies only lived a short time in their fond parent's disquisitions. When he ceased to write of them, every one else soon forgot them.

The celebrated mathematician, Antonio Conti, the same who was arbitrator in the famous dispute between Newton and Leibnitz, on the invention of the infinite calculus, was excited by his genius to undertake