introductory remark, and pointed to the figures before us. The excitement of the times could not destroy their appreciation of art; but, naturally enough we passed from the fixed marbles to the fluent events of Rome at that moment. The morning politics of the Café were running through my thoughts, and, with an impertinent freedom, anxious to sound their value, I said: "You will not fight, I suppose, if the French push you to it ?" "Fight!" both replied, paling with rage as they spoke, "ay-and to the last drop!" The gesture with which the words were accompanied was positively frightful. Their features became suddenly distorted, and they flung their clenched fists up, appealing with an oath to Heaven. The sentiment of these men animated every Roman bosom, I believe, that day. The very gaiety of the Roman looks measured the depth of revenge which secretly consumed them. Even the dames were preparing for the slaughter, should it come to the worst, being armed beneath their dresses; while the Roman women generally, headed by the nobility, were all occupying themselves, when within doors, in making up ball-cartridges and bandages for the expected wounded.

A few hours had scarcely passed, when a sudden change in the aspect of the city left no longer any doubt as to the spirit of the Romans. The streets were swept for a brief interval of all loungers; and suddenly, as by simultaneous movement, the whole population seemed to pour itself out again upon them, dressed in national-guard fashion moving about everywhere, with quick step, full of one great purpose, whatever that might be. The causeways and pavement began to be torn up into barricades, at which everybody worked, for love or money. You heard the clang of hammers in every quarter of the city, as bolts and bars of ponderous strength rose across the street-doors and gateways. The roll of the drum mixed its piercing notes with other sounds, while some recruiting detachment struck into your path for a moment, and then, as another quick peal was muttering in this, died gradually away in that direction. Foreigners were besieging their respective consuls in anxious groups: for, despite all the severity of the Republic in guarding property from licentious hands, the rise of certain low predatory bands in the city was apprehended, so soon as the French should have gained entrance, and the confusion of the barricades have commenced.

Few went easily to bed that night, if they went at all, with a glare of light breaking in upon them from their own window-sills and the opposite sides of the streets (for the entire city, in the expectation of the French, was illuminated), and with the deep, monotonous tuck of the drum, rising from below at all hours, inspiring them, for the first time, with the feeling and the horror of military butcheries. Garibaldi and his legions were in the neighbourhood. A thousand Lombards had come to assist the Romans. The National Assembly was sitting night and day. Provisions had been stored within the walls. Nobody could now doubt the Roman resolution; and you closed your eyes, if at all, expecting to be roused by the struggle at the barricades, or by some villanous fellow, with his knife at your throat, demanding your gold. The panic, as on all such occasions, was indeed ridiculously great; but the chances of war, and especially of street warfare, and still more, for Englishmen, of Roman street warfare, easily assume, to an active fancy,

all hideous forms possible in the circumstances. The greater number of our countrymen had resorted to the apartments of Signor Sezni, on the Piazza di Spagna, with the English flag and a body-guard to defend them; but the wiser and the poorer sort, for different reasons, it may be supposed, though equally good ones, preferred keeping separate quarters: the poorer, from motives not needing mention; and the wiser, because it was believed that, in the event of an attack, the body-guard would fly, and the rabble, like a swarm of bees, be attracted by the golden sweets imagined to be always about the persons of the English. Monte Pincio, especially, and every accessible eminence, were next day resorted to by those having more curiosity than interest in the proceedings; and beyond, with a spy-glass, you could see where the French must be, though invisible; while every ascending cloud of smoke was watched as, throughout the day, report followed report from the guns on both sides, and the wounded, not indeed in great numbers, were brought within the gates. The Princess Trivalzio di Belgioioso, at the head of a committee of ladies, ministered to the necessities of those falling in their country's defence. Everything, indeed, likely to inspire confidence in the republic-order, preparations for the wounded, bulletins of progress full of patriotic enthusiasm, addresses from the different departments of government, concentrating the energies of the people and animating them to heroic efforts by pictures drawn from the glorious pages in Rome's past history-everything which could knit the people to the Triumvirate and Assembly, and fuse different passions into one channel, was resorted to with a skill and vigilance astonishing in their degree, and carrying, as it seemed, the promise of eventual success, problematical though it was in the circumstances. The general population, accompanying bodies of the national guard appointed to give the odour of law and regularity to the proceedings, were trooping on the piazzas, and enjoying the edifying spectacle of burning chariots, once the toys of the cardinals, now ascending-scarlet paint, gilding, and all-in flames and smoke. The sentiment of our own brave Knox, when he pulled down the images of the churches nursing Papistry, lest the crows might return and rebuild their nests in an evil hour, seemed to be animating the Romans at this time. Everything was done, however, with singular calmness; not in a spirit of revolutionary frenzy, but simply as a matter of necessity; while the noble black steeds, which had once graced those carriages, were now clattering through the streets with bearers of despatches, or serving in the Roman cavalry and artillery. At San Angelo, Avezzani, minister of war, in a speech full of pith and ardour, harangued the national troops, who responded with boundless enthusiasm.

Of all the secondary causes of unanimity, however, no one, I am persuaded, acted so strongly on the imaginations of the poor Romans, as the wretched treachery of the French government. Rome, single-handed and forlorn, might well pine at the base intrigue that, despite recent proclamations of fraternity, recent braggadocia speeches, could so coolly betray the republic. "For it was not an enemy that reproached me; then I could have borne it: neither was it he that hated me that did magnify himself against me; then I would have hid myself from him: but it was thou, a man mine equal, my guide, and mine acquaintance."

Everything else was natural: the Neapolitan, the Spanish, and Austrian opposition. The Pope and Cardinals were avowed enemies, and their attitude at this moment was neither better nor worse than was to be ex pected. But France that was another thing. One can scarcely conceive of so concentrated a passion in an individual, as that which convulsed the heart of a whole people on this occasion. It seemed as if, for a time, all other grounds of hate and opposition were buried, or rather included in this one-as if there was but one enemy, and all other foes were, by comparison, friends. As may be imagined, the best feelings of human nature, if our better feelings may ever animate a sentiment of wrath and a passion for revenge, rose up in bitter enmity against the French invasion. The French proceedings were like the acts of madmen, who, it is well known, have a tendency, when under a fit of mania, to attack those to whom, in their reasonable moments, they had witnessed the marks of strongest attachment. What embittered the sentiment, was the fact that, ever since the flight of the Pope, the Marseillaise hymn had been the popular song, and "Viva la Republica Francese" the popular toast and watchword. As if to represent to themselves the full extent of the French meanness and profligacy, the hymn was continued to be played every day at the war-office, at the change of guards; nor could the Romans devise any more inspiring war-cry when they advanced to meet the French troops, than the Viva la Republica, which brought the present and the past attitude of France so vividly before them.

The interval between the repulsion of Oudinot and his return to the attack, was improved by strangers for quitting a city which was no longer propitious for the idler, the invalid, or the artist. I left at nightfall by the Porta Angelica, with my face towards Florence, doubtful whether safety lay in or out of the city; for, within, was anxious turmoil, and without, if reports were true, the traveller, at this moment, was exposed to the attacks of brigands prowling in the neighbourhood, waiting for the defenceless wayfarer as he forsook a place no longer able to protect him.

In another paper, the aspects of Romanism at this epoch, more especially, will be indicated.

EMERSON'S "REPRESENTATIVE MEN."

MR EMERSON, in this singular book, has followed uniformly the plan of splitting up his heroes, somewhat in the fashion he himself describes"The microscope observes a monad, or wheel-insect, among the infusories circulating in water. Presently a dot appears on the animal, which enlarges to a slit, and it becomes two perfect animals." He slits up his animal into even slices of praise and blame, putting the praise first, the blame last, and then leaves it without ever attempting to connect the two into a whole again. This plan we mean to follow in the review of his own work, with two differences-first, we mean to put the

blame first and the praise last; and secondly, to try, at least, to get the two to coalesce ere we be done.

Were a book without blemish to appear some sunshiny morning, what a commotion were the consequence-a commotion, not of applause verily, but of envy and rage. "How dared you write such a work," might be seen written on the faces of nine-tenths of the professional critics in the empire. In the corner of every newspaper and review office would be seen this and the other snarler, scribbling at his shell of ostracism against the hapless author. And to the work itself what millions of magnifying, diminishing, distorting glasses would be applied, if so be that somewhere a speck, or its shadow, or its shadow's-shade, could be detected. And the author himself would feel that to have no fault was the fault of faults, and that the most damning of phrases might be "angelic" and "divine," when they had become not approximately but absolutely true.

We may infer from this, with too much truth, what a heartless business reading at last frequently becomes, and how the critic differs from the boy. He regards every book as his friend, i.e., if he be a boy of enthusiasm and mind, he takes it up with eagerness, he glares into its face for beauties, and, if disappointed, his grief is greater than his indignation: whereas, the thorough-bred critic holds every new work, unless written by an author of established name, at arm's length-receives it as he does the visit of a foe-plunges into its midst, not for pearls, but for platitudes, or plagiarisms, or faults of taste-and if compelled to admire, does it with a reluctance which renders his praise forced and ungracious. Sad the change which in a few years so often reduces books from friends and play-fellows into duns to be repelled from the door, or enemies to be insulted within it. If it be said, but this is the mere result of the multiplication of books, many of them bad, and of the necessary disenchantment of years we answer by asking, if the multiplication of moneys become ever so wearisome and hateful-if good books be not frequently thus treated-and if the mind which can be disenchanted of all generous enthusiasm be that of a genuine critic, who, in accordance with Coleridge's definition of genius, should carry forward the freshness and geniality of youth into the powers of manhood, like those trees in Arcadia, where blossoms and full-grown fruit are found together. No, the secret of much of our chilling and censorious criticism lies in a word—the critics are blockheads, if blockheadism consists in the want of insight, added to the want of heart, and often supplemented, besides, by the presence of base party, or baser personal piques.

Holding such views of criticism, and aspiring, with sufficient selfdistrust as to the fulfilment of our attempt to exemplify a more excellent way, we must, nevertheless, speak somewhat freely of Emerson's faults-placing them first, advisedly, that we may have the disagreeable part of our task first done. Our charges are not "few," and perhaps they may not be "well-ordered;" but they are sincere, and certainly express the disappointed feeling of more than one admirer of Emerson's disappointed because in each successive production his cometary splendour seems approaching nearer its aphelion, and, worse still, is mistaking "the ground-burning frore" for the neighbourhood of the sunexcessive cold for heat intolerable.

We need not dwell as a preliminary upon the abrupt, enigmatical, often confused, always curt, and sometimes affected mode of utterance and style our author chooses to adopt. This is comparatively of little moment. If an author prefers to write truth in acrostics or Alexandrines, let him do so, provided the choice of the mode or measure be manifestly the work of whim and not of mere vanity. And we, for our parts, do not quarrel with Mr Emerson that his use of the first personal pronoun sometimes tempts us to think of Argus and his thousand eyes— that the use of the other pronouns he often magnanimously disdains and tramples on-that in search of gramarye he frequently contemns grammar-that he delivers himself occasionally in such periods as the following: "You cannot institute without peril of charlatan"-and that his sentences sometimes, like those of Cromwell, break down, less from weight of matter than from the ambition of depth. But, besides, more elaborately or contemptuously abrupt periods, formed more carefully to assume a rugged aspect-thoughts of years made more closely to resemble the intuitions of yesterday-the air of a recent deliverance from the aboriginal mind more successfully given to long, old, involved, and painful cogitations-we have seldom noticed than in these and other of Emerson's essays. And yet we are far from wishing to urge this as a charge against him of a grave and grievous kind. He has been led into it by the assumption of a perilous style of writing, the oracular-perilous alike in its thunder, and in its still small voice. He that tries at one time to see and speak from the clouds, must ever and anon be content to peep and mutter from the dust.

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We pass to other matters of quarrel with this great transatlantic author, of more pith and moment. We blame, first, his selection of Representative Men," and the principle on which he has selected them. That appears to us extremely arbitrary. Does Mr Emerson mean to intimate that the six men he has selected are the six foremost men of all this world. Might he not have given us Paul instead of Plato, Jacob Behmen instead of Swedenborg, Cromwell instead of Napoleon, and so forth? And is it not strange that, with the exception of Swedenborg, not one of the number has any great moral pretensions-nay, that three of them, Montaigne, Napoleon, and Goethe, were little else than sublime scamps. It cannot be, in short, according either to a strictly intellectual or purely moral criterion that he has chosen and arranged them. The term "representative," indeed, leads us to think that their names "count for nations" of kindred spirits; but are there no other names equally vast and populous, nay, infinitely more influential? What power, for example, has Montaigne ever exerted, compared to Voltaire ? Emerson, we imagine, has peppered his page with those names from a daring spirit of paradox rather than a wise and just choice. Alas for the world if the six-Plato, Swedenborg, Montaigne, Shakspere, Napoleon, and Goethe-are its six highest, holiest, or most influential men!

But we object to the omissions, more than to the insertions, of the list. Where is Milton, the most finished of men as well as most magnificent of poets? Where is Newton, the most modest and receptive of all sages, as meek a child of physical law, as Moses was at Jehovah's feet on Horeb, of moral? Where Bacon, broad-browed parent of method, with a head like the first rude charts of the world, with eyes like bay