under the arch of the upper end. The number of the Abyssinians who professed neither of the three dominant religions, the Christian, the Jewish and the Mahometan, was insignificant, and limited to the Waitos dwelling on the Zana lake, and to a part of the Agows in western Abyssinia, whose religious rites I am unacquainted with. I have already described the adoration of a water-spring which I saw in tained a very low degree of civilisation in the ages anterior to the Christian era. They appear to have had no intercourse with the civilized tribes which dwelt in Æthiopia along the Nile, and founded the kingdom of Meroe; but the colonies of Syrians which Alexander the Great, according to the testimony of Philostorgus, planted on the coasts of Abyssinia, probably developed in them, with the Jewish religion, the first germs of cultivation. (I must entirely Haremat. Pearce mentions besides a kind of dissent from the opinion of the Rev. Michael Russell in his work upon Nubia and Abyssinia. That the land of the Pharaohs was indebted to Æthiopia (Abyssinia) for the rudiments and perhaps even for the finished patterns of architectural skill, is no longer questioned by any writer whose studies have qualified him to form a judgment.') From these Jewish emigrants, who were undoubtedly far superior to the indigenous occupants of the country in intellectual acquirements, and who introduced their own religion among them, is derived the singular tradition, considered throughout Abyssinia as an irrefragable truth, that Menilek, a pretended son of the Israelitish king Solomon and a queen of Saba (Sheba), came into Abyssinia in the eleventh century before Christ, and that from him are descended the imperial families who have occupied the throne down to the latest periods. means "The religious ideas of the ancient inhabit- | ants are wholly unknown. That the intercourse with the Greeks who settled on the coast of Abyssinia during the reign of the Ptolemies, ostensibly for the purpose of hunting elephants, introduced a pantheism into the Axumitish kingdom, and displaced the Mosaic religion, probably already corrupted, is by no incontrovertibly proved by the contents of the Greek inscriptions at Axum to which Salt has drawn attention. For the name of 'the invincible Areos' which occurs in the description might also refer to Jehovah, and whilst marking one of his qualities, according to the intention of the compiler of these words, have been arbitrarily rendered by the Greek translator by the divine name of Areos. In any case it stands as a remarkable fact, that no trace of the Egyptian religious mythism is visible throughout Abyssinia, although this last was diffused through the whole kingdom of Meroe. For since not one imitation of the Egyptian idols has been discovered in Abyssinia, it is very probable that the small stone with hieroglyphic characters of which Bruce has given a representation, and which he received from the Emperor Tequela Haimanot, and states to have been found in Axum, has been conveyed from Egypt through some casual circumstance. Stones of exactly similar form | and sculpture are frequently discovered in the ruins of Egypt. "None of the relics of antiquity found in Abyssinia afford direct proof of monuments having ever been erected there to pantheism. Thus the ornamentally carved obelisks of Axum were unquestionably erected at a period when Christianity had already penetrated into the country, for this is apparent from the excavations worked for the fastening the Greek cross divine reverence paid to snakes, as observed by him in the province of Endesta, and Bruce says that the Agows reared tame snakes in their huts from idolatrous motives. But what Bruce affirms of the sacrifices which the Agows offer to the star Sirius, at the source of the Nile, for the space of ten days, and of an altar constructed with great art in the middle of the nascent stream, is calculated to excite astonishment, as there is no apparent reason why the Abyssinians should distinguish this river by any religious celebrations, since it confers no especial benefit either upon those who dwell near its source or on its banks in the country it flows through, and many other river sources exist in the same country unhonoured by any similar rites. Why should the Shum, standing at the source of the Nile, slaughter a victim to the stream with the exclamation, "Most powerful God, Saviour of the world," when he knows nothing whatever of the fertility caused by its waters to distant lands, with the names even of which he is scarcely acquainted? If any adoration of this kind is practised at the source of the Nile, it must have had reference rather to the enormous caverns which Bruce described as existing in the vicinity, and in which he was nearly lost. "The kingdom of Axum seems to have been the only part of Abyssinia in which, in ancient times, and probably as a consequence of the introduction of Christianity, any degree of civilisation prevailed. This attained its highest point from the fourth to the seventh century, and we have every reason for believing that within this period those structures arose of which Salt saw the remains at Abba Asfe, and Pearce at Quened. In succeeding ages, the Abyssinians Abys wasted their strength in furious religious contests; in the tenth century, the Jewish sectarians obtained dominion of the country from this cause, and in the early part of the sixteenth, the imininent danger of conquest by the Mahometans was only averted by calling in the Portuguese. An obstinate struggle then ensued between the different Christian sects, fomented by the efforts of the Roman Catholic priests to obtain unlimited supremacy, and which ended in the expulsion of all Catholic ecclesiastics, and restoration of the Coptic ritual. The helpless decay into which the empire fell two hundred years after, had this deplorable consequence to Christianity, that a total indifference to any dogmas of faith sprung up. This ruined the hope in the Romish Church of at last effecting the long wished-for suppression of Arianism. Moral cultivation of the people seems not to be in the least the object of her endeavours, which only aim now, as three centuries before, at the introduction of certain out ward ceremonies and the establishing belief in gratifying as it is chiefly by the example of her tenets. How little ground therefore is there their good writers that this disease may be for hope that the gross ignorance and immo- arrested before its contagion be further exrality in which the whole population of Abys- tended. sinia is sunk will be eradicated! "From my own experience, the followers of the Mahometan faith rank far higher in morality than the Christians of either the Arian or any other sect, and their religion is gaining ground in Abyssinia. Should any new contest arise between the Roman Church and the ignorant ART. V.-La Donna Saggia ed Amabile. Abyssinian clergy, the result might easily turn to the advantage of Mahometanism. In the present degraded state of the ministers of religion in that country, controversy would work little good, and indeed could only be maintained Libri Tre di Anna Pepoli, Vedova Sam pieri. Capolago, Tipografia Elveica.1838. by procuring a Koptic patriarch from Cairo, IF it were always permitted to draw an obwhich is chimerical. I must acknowledge that vious inference from the most irrefutable prefrom the lawless anarchy to which the land is at present a prey, there is not the slightest ray of hope of any moral regeneration, and that the total absence of any powerful government is the chief obstacle, and the more difficult to be removed as not one single fraction of the nation at hand. cedents, without incurring the sneers of scepticism, we might almost venture to affirm that the days of man upon earth are drawing to a close, and that the long-dreaded millenium is think of bringing about its establishment. The Yet a few more efforts of mechanical ingelast shadow of a common political sovereignty nuity and the plough will ride unguided over disappeared with the deposition of the Emperor the field like a railway train, steamers will Saglu Denghel. The history of the last sixty glide like ducks over the waters without noise years shows a complete political dissolution in the country, and turns solely upon the chiefs, or smoke, and balloons will be curbed and who, having risen to independent power in the bridled like Ariosto's hippogriffs. different provinces, have taken off their rivals Already the influence of climate has been either by treachery or violence, and then fallen utterly neutralized. Our coal has been made in turn by the perfidy of their allies. Continual to answer all the purposes of an Italian sun. civil wars are raging, the only object of which It has all its warmth, its light, its life. Eng is to attack suddenly an antagonist lulled to security by promises and oaths, and to plunder the inhabitants of any district who have managed to collect a trifling property. The necessary consequence is the universal arming of all land has become the metropolis of the vegetable kingdom, and the horticultural gardens at Chiswick are the flora of both continents. A shop in Regent Street has been turned into classes; landed property is valueless, agricul- nature's own workshop, exhibiting within its ture more and more neglected, herds of cattle genial temperature all the mysteries of an ardaily becoming scarcer, commerce often wholly tificial maternity. Mr. Espy of Philadelphia interrupted, so that the price of native produc- has thrown his spell over the storms and ofthe circulation of specie is almost stopped, and fers to sell rain by the bucket to the highest I believe that the whole amount of gold and bidder. In short, it will go hard with us if, silver in Abyssinia would scarcely produce more ere we are many years older, we do not see than 100,000 crowns."-vol. ii., p 326. tions differs enormously in contiguous provinces, the isthmuses of Suez and Panama cut through, a railroad tunnel driven through the bowels of the Alps, and a suspensionbridge launched across the Atlantic. With these extracts we conclude our notice of this excellent work. It has been said that Germans do not know how to write, and this is true of the style of many Then will there be rest for man and beast. of their even celebrated authors. Generally Then will men grow weary of watching speaking they are not skilful in using their with folded arms the progress of their selfrich and powerful mother-tongue, and one acting tailoring apparatus, and, impatient of growing defect of their writers is the engraft- a state of inactivity inconsistent with their ing foreign words into a language which, of nature, they will, like Alexander, complain all European dialects, least requires such re- that their fathers left nothing for them to do, cruiting, and these besides are often so awkwardly naturalized, so disguised and cumbered with augments and final syllables, that the Nor do we hesitate to affirm that the moGerman can neither understand the strange ral improvement of the human race has kept word, nor the foreigner recognize his own. pace with physical discovery. The teetoDr. Rüppell's style, although not entirely tallers strive boldly to undo the work of free from unnecessary exotics, is generally Noah. Wilberforce has raised the patriarch's pure and national, a circumstance the more curse from the heads of the devoted children and look out for another world, the earth being much too narrow for them. of Canaan; the peace-societies hope to rivet definitely laid aside and the field open for a the sword of war to its scabbard and to turn fair and impartial discussion, we have no all the nations of the earth into a vast Quaker doubt but women will in the end talk men community. Reason and justice are soon to out of countenance. But to whatever extent obtain an undisputed ascendency over force. these ladies may carry their female radicalThe Russians will be made to feel the pro- ism, they will easily perceive that their priety of withdrawing from Poland, the Aus- social reforms will not be immediately applitrians will suffer themselves to be talked out cable to all countries alike; and as we hear of Italy. The French are raising a Chinese every day of nations being unripe for the wall round Paris, to save them the trouble blessing of liberal institutions, as we see of fighting for their country. All ancient statesmen insisting on the necessity of fitting grievances will be amicably settled. All na- a people for better destinies by the gradual tions will vie with each other in forgetting influence of civilisation and culture, so it old grudges, and redressing time-sanctioned will be likewise understood that the fair sex injustices. But the most natural as well as cannot be everywhere equally ready for an the most glorious result of this voluntary ab- immediate enfranchisement, and that, for negation of the right of the strongest will be instance, the Georgian slave of an eastern the cessation of an abuse of power as ancient harem could not be as easily trained to take as Eden, a revolution to be operated by the her share in the weighty deliberations of the suppression of a single word in the marriage sublime Porte, as a Yankee girl might be ceremony, the rehabilitation of a much injured being into its natural rights-the emancipation of women. called to sit among the members of Congress. These reflections were awakened in our mind at the sight of the work of which the Already the champions of the trampled title stands at the head of the present article, sex, the Chapmans and Martineaus, have un- and we were curious to ascertain what notions folded the standard of independence. Having concerning woman's mission might be enterat first trained themselves to public contro- tained by a lady born and bred up in a counversy in the cause of abolitionism, they soon try in which the persons of her sex are kept learnt to stand up, like Cicero, pro domo in something like a middle station between sud, in vindication of their inalienable right oriental seclusion and-what would strike of sitting in senates and parliaments and every other traveller but Miss Martineau as being elbowed and squeezed on the hustings. -the total independence of American woAnother more formidable combatant, the fair men. authoress of "Woman and her Master," We like to look over a book written by a after searching in the treasures of the past lady. There is, we believe, an immense with unwearied diligence, has fully demon- tract of unknown world in the female heart; strated that woman in all ages and countries there exists between these two sexes, created (not excepting even such characters as Aspa- so essentially to belong to and to be necessary sia and Messalina) has been and is a middle to each other, to share all hopes and fears, all creature between a lamb and an angel, perverted, fettered and tortured by another selfish being, half-demon, half-brute. She has raised Medea's war-cry: cares and enjoyments of life, a barrier of conventional dignity and propriety, of sexual etiquette, which almost every lover and husband flatters himself with removing, but which perhaps no living man ever succeeded πάντων δ' ὅσ ̓ ἔστ' ἔμψυχα, καὶ γνώμην ἔχει, in so doing, and which we do not know but γυναῖκες ἑσμὲν ἀθλιώτατον φυτόν. it were, perhaps, unadvisable that every one should attempt to remove. With all our heart do we congratulate Yet it is but too natural that we should all these lovely emancipators on the favourable stand on tiptoe to catch a glimpse of this prospect that everything is taking before terra incognita, and we would willingly rethem, and wish them a speedy success in an nounce all the pleasure derivable from one enterprise which, as it would most power- of Captain Parry's voyages to the North Pole, fully contribute to bring about that new or from an American South Sea expedition, order of things, that golden age of peace and to be enabled to overhear, without indelicacy, justice which has been hitherto considered a conversation between two fair "bosom incompatible with the frailty of human friends" in some trying and unguarded monature, would be the most infallible sign of ment, or to possess the key to that magic the forth-coming close of time. telegraph of nods and winks and smiles by Female writers in England, France and which two female spirits commune with each America, are pretty nearly a match for their other othe before company, to the utter mystificamale opponents, and if the sword is to be tion of the duller sex. Next to this would be the other no less for an improvisatrice, is for them an anomaly, unhallowed gratification of intercepting one an exceptional being who has cast aside all of those four-page, small-hand, close-written, the delicacy, grace and modesty, which concross-lined feminine epistles, to the uninitiated stitute the peculiar charm of her sex, and conveying scarcely any meaning at all, but thereby forsworn its inalienable privileges, where, in every turning in every letter, the corresponding parties are enabled to decipher so much "more than meets the eye." Next to this, again, is the pleasure of perusing the works of a female author; for although the fair writer, knowing that her page is to stand the full glare of broad daylight, may be constantly on her guard lest she should by any involuntary indiscretion and rendered herself liable to the disrespect of the other. Female authorship in Italy is looked upon as a kind of moral hermaphroditism; nor would the high station and still higher character, the noble and irreprehensible life of the lady whose name graces this page, have secured her against the sneering comments of her jealous countrymen, had she not made jeopardize the secret interests of the commu- choice of that only subject which exclusively nity, yet some unlucky expression, some belonged to one of her sex-the illustration half-word may, in the heat of inspiration, of the domestic and social virtues which happen to drop from her pen, which will ought to characterize "a wise and amiable shoot like wild-fire across the benighted un- woman," and the degree of moral and intelderstanding of a man who can read, and do lectual distinction to which it is not only more than an age of learning towards his lawful, but even desirable that she should initiation into the mysteries of female free- aspire. masonry. Anna, Countess Pepoli, and widow of the Of these voluntary confessions and invol- Marquis Sampieri - for her titles, according to untary revelations, thanks to heaven, in our the Italian custom, are carefully omitted in the own country, we have enough; and the new title-page-belongs by birth to one of the most novels and essays by ladies, misses and mis- ancient and illustrious historical families of tresses, issuing every year from the English Bologna. Her brother, Count Carlo Pepoli, press, bid fair to leave scarcely one fold of already well known to the republic of letters the female heart unexplored, scarcely one as the author of the melodrama " I Puritani" blush of the maiden's cheek unaccounted for. and other poems, is an exile from his native But if this be the case in Old and New England as well as in France and Germany, the same can hardly be said of the Italian peninsula, where, with the exception of a very few Petrarchesque poetesses, and still fewer moral or ascetic writers, man seems still almost completely to monopolize the trade of book-making. For this apparent sterility of the female mind in the land of Vittoria Colonna and Olympia Morata, it would not perhaps be difficult to adduce many important reasons. But the most insurmountable obstacle against country and belongs to ours for various reasons, because he fills the chair of Professor of Italian Literature in London University College, and because he evinced his preference in favour of our ladies by choosing a bride among the daughters of Albion. The Countess Anna has been a wife and a mother, and it was only after having performed her uxorial and maternal duties in a manner that won her the admiration and esteem of all who knew her, after having trusted to another the happiness of the only daughter, whom she had brought up with all the soli female authorship lies in the deep-rooted an- citude of love, that she endeavoured to draw tipathy, or, if we must call it so, prejudice of up a theory of those countless and nameless the people of that country against any attempt cares by which woman can make a heaven of on the part of a woman to call upon herself a husband's home, and indemnify the world the gaze of the multitude, or court notoriety. for the unavoidable, however remote, con The Italians, a highly sensitive and cultivated nation, are as far from grudging the tender and timid creatures whom they associate with their destinies through life, the advantages of a liberal education, as any other people can well be; but a fond notion tingency of her loss, by leaving behind her what has been not unaptly called " a second edition of self." But besides her desire of communicating to her countrywomen all that her own experience had taught her respecting the duties -may be a mistaken one-prevails among of woman as a house-keeper or (reggitrice) as them, that all a lady's accomplishments and ac- an instructress (educatrice) and as a social quirements should be exclusively consecrated being (donna conversevole), the Countess to enliven that little domestic circle which harboured in her bosom a higher object, comshe is called to bless with her presence. mon in Italy to every person who thinks or Hence an authoress, no less than an actress feels no less than to all who write, that of vindicating the women of Italy "from the likely to exercise the most pious and salutary unjust judgment" and "false accusations" influence. brought against them by partial or prejudiced We need scarcely repeat here the wellforeigners; the rehabilitation of the national known maxim that woman is invariably such character being the aim of the most anxious as man wishes her to be that the female endeavours of every generous soul that lives mind and heart are moulded according to the between the Alps and the sea. ideas prevailing in the society in which she ages and countries. Certainly this plea in favour of the national is brought up, and that, by a natural reaction, character is neither uncalled for nor inoppor- she exercises an equal ascendency over sotune; for the Italians write comparatively ciety itself, that as she is physically a daughter little, and that little must undergo the ordeal and a mother, so she is by turns also a pupil of a most odious censorship, which scruples and a mistress; so that her sex may always not to proscribe even the most harmless book, be taken as a fair representative of the moral under no other pretext than that it bears the standard reached by the human family in all obnoxious name of Italy and Italians; so that even the work that we have undertaken to In proportion, therefore, as our authoress examine, holy and pure as its subject may succeeds in demonstrating how far her counappear to us, and meek, gentle and moderate trywomen have attained a high degree of the spirit in which it has been dictated, could, feminine excellence, so shall we feel inclined however, only be printed at Capolago, in to judge more or less favourably of the morals Switzerland, and on its first appearance in of the nation at large; and every proof she the papal states was put to the Index, seized may be able to bring forward in support of upon, and subjected its authoress to endless her subject will have the force of a hundred petty annoyances and vexations on the part of his holiness's government. arguments in refutation of the charges brought against the Italian name. Meanwhile, since men are willing in our days to lay so great a stress on the philosophy That the character of the Italians has been wilfully misrepresented by ignorant travellers, who have hurried through the country under of language, we deem it worth our while to the influence of illiberal prepossessions, is a study the sex in a country, whose tongue has fact sufficiently demonstrated by the more no such word as woman, the only analogous mature and rational reports of other visitors, appellation being "Donna" a corruption of who had leisure to ground their estimate on a the latin Domina or Domna (lady) which is closer observation and a more intimate ac- still equally applicable to a female of the quaintance. We do not believe that those lowest order, to the proudest matrons in the writers have any wish or interest to be unjust land, and even to the worshipped "Queen of to other nations, but the poor honest Milanese, the Angels." or light-hearted Florentine who happens to The work of our authoress seems from its read a smuggled French or English news- very beginning calculated to overthrow our paper, or a stray volume of a novel where it long cherished ideas of Italian female educais unblushingly stated that "Italian life is a tion. No mention of convents is made. mass of rottenness and corruption," that That strict rule of monastic seclusion to every man is there a swindler, every woman which every young lady of high rank was a wanton," (we quote at chance from a lead- almost universally supposed to be condemned ing article in the "Britannia" newspaper) in Catholic countries, there to be walled up must be sympathized with, if taking such in a narrow cell, only to pass from the sicompliments literally and supposing such un- lence and solitude of the cloisters, to the charitable animadversions to be implicitly glare and bustle of the wide world, affianced relied upon abroad, he feels sore and bitter on to a husband, whose very portrait she had the subject, and considers himself bound to never seen, we know that many of our readseize every opportunity to stand forth as his ers will be astonished and scandalized to hear country's sworn champion and advocate. it is neither better nor worse than one of We shall always be willing to open in the thousand and one absurd fables by which these pages a list where such national contests Italian life is rather romantically than veritamay be fought on equal ground; and our bly represented. duties to the sex no less than our sense of Countess Pepoli does not inquire into the right are equally engaged to allow the Coun- good or evil effects of monastic education. tess Pepoli to plead in favour of a class of She does not advocate or inveigh against the women, of whom her virtues no less than her system. She seems not even to suspect, to rank have made her one of the brightest orna- dream of its existence; belonging by birth to ments, and upon whose morals her book is and moving all her life among the highest cir |