motion of his fingers, show that he is following out the strain in his own soul through all its dying gradations, the instrument is actually as dumb as the musician is deaf. I have heard him play, but to bring him so far required some management, so great is his horror of being any thing like exhibited. Had he been plainly asked to do the company that favour, he would have flatly refused; he had to be cheated into it-every person left the room except Beethoven and the master of the house, one of his most intimate acquaintances. These two carried on a conversation in the paper-book about bank-stock. The gentleman, as if by chance, struck the keys of the open piano, beside which they were sitting, gradually began to run over one of Beethoven's own compositions, made a thousand errors, and speedily blundered one passage so thoroughly, that the composer condescended to stretch out his hand and put him right. It was enough: the hand was on the piano; his companion immediately left him, on some pretext, and joined the rest of the company, who, in the next room, from which they could see and hear every thing, were patiently waiting the issue of this tiresome conjuration. Beethoven, left alone, seated himself at the piano. At first he only struck now and then a few hurried and interrupted notes, as if afraid of being detected in a crime; but gradually he forgot every thing else, and ran on during half an hour, in a phantasy, in a style extremely varied, and marked, above all, by the most abrupt transitions. The amateurs were enraptured; to the uninitiated it was more interesting, to observe how the music of the man's soul passed over his countenance. He seems to feel the bold, the commanding and the impetuous, more than what is soothing or gentle. The muscles of the face swell, and its veins start out; the wild eye rolls doubly wild; the mouth quivers, and Beethoven looks like a wizard overpowered by the demons, whom he himself has called up.'-p. 280.

In lamenting, however, the despotic nature of the government of Austria, (to revert for a moment to that subject,) we must bear in mind, not only that an Austrian never thinks of politics except by chance, and therefore does not fret about them as an Englishman would, but also that the reigning emperor (whatever the Italians may say of him) is at home greatly and deservedly beloved. Accessible to the meanest of his subjects-twice in the week giving audiences to all, without distinction of rank-patient in listening to a complaint or a grievance, come from what quarter it will and anxious to relieve or redress it-Franzel (for so he is called by an affectionate diminutive which his people delight to use) makes personal friends of his subjects, and binds them to him by the chords of a man. There is something very primitive in the following picture of the imperial family. Close to Baden is the lovely and romantic dell of St. Helena, unapproachable by carriage or on horseback; but resorted to by the highest and lowest of the visitors to the baths, who mingle together on foot in a summer's day.

The emperor himself, (says our author, who strolls thither,) the most plainly dressed man in the valley, was soberly plodding along, with

N 2

the

the empress on his arm, and his eldest son, the crown prince, stalking by his side. The empress had burdened his majesty with her parasol, and his majesty was very irreverently converting it into a staff, and polluting it in various little puddles which some heavy rain in the forenoon had formed here and there in the grass. The empress seemed to lose patience, snatched it from him, and shook it at him, as if in a good-natured threat to castigate her imperial husband-and you might hear distinctly from the passing vulgar the kindly exclamation, "Die guten leute!" To the left a group of homely citizens were enjoying their coffee, (for of course there are coffee-tents,) and close by the Archduchess Charles was resting herself on a rude bench; at her feet young Napoleon, with much more of the Austrian family than of his father in his countenance, was tumbling about in the grass with his little cousins. As she returned the obeisance of Prince Metternich, who was strolling past with the French ambassador, one of the girls cried, "There's papa," and the archduke himself, his coat pulled off and thrown over his shoulder, on account of the heat, came scrambling down the rocks on the opposite side of the river, with one of his boys in each hand.' 'There is a great deal of affectionate plainness (it is added) in the way in which the members of the imperial family move about among their subjects, and it has much more strength in knitting them together, than political theories will readily have in separating them.'-p. 337.

Our anonymous guide now bends his steps towards Trieste, finem chartæque viæque-and on his way pauses at the church of Mariazell, in Upper Styria. To this celebrated place of pilgrimage many thousand good Catholics from Vienna and elsewhere annually repair, some in the honest hope of receiving blessings at the shrine of a Madonna of St. Luke, but more in that frame of mind which distinguished mine hoste of the Tabarde and his company in the Canterbury Tales. We meet, however, with a pleasing hymn to the Virgin, sung by the young women at sunset as they slowly moved on their knees round a sacred pillar, and echoed by the men as they bowed themselves to the earth before the image it supported.

'Fading, still fading, the last beam is shining,
Ave Maria! day is declining-

Safety and innocence fly with the light,

Temptation and danger walk forth with the night;
From the fall of the shade till the matin shall chime,
Shield us from danger and save us from crime-
Ave Maria! audi nos.

'Ave Maria! hear when we call,

Mother of Him who is brother of all ;

Feeble and failing we trust in thy might,

In doubting and darkness thy love is our light :

Let us sleep on thy breast while the night-taper burns,
And wake in thy arms when the morning returns-
Ave Maria! audi nos.'

Indeed a German is laudably disposed to make the picturesque subservient to devotion; and whilst our author, on another occasion, from the summit of the Schneekoppe, was beholding the orb of day as it first illuminated the pinnacle on which he stood, and then levelled its orient beams on the Bohemian mountains, to the south, a clergyman of his party took off his hat, and saying, ' My children, let us praise the God of nature,' began to sing one of Luther's hymns. Right feeling always commands respect, and accordingly even some Burschen who were present at this scene, could not find in their hearts to scoff.

And here we must close these volumes, with a feeling of almost unqualified satisfaction at their contents. Whilst France, Switzerland and Italy have supplied the press with Tours, Journals and Sketches without end, Germany has remained comparatively forgotten. Of the Voyages and Travels which of late years have been published by Mr. Murray and Messrs. Longman, scarcely one in thirty has related to this interesting portion of Europe. Our anonymous author, therefore, has chosen his subject well. Then he has had the means of doing it justice--for his introductions were manifestly good; not that he gives us a number of exotic Joe Millar stories, with Count this, or Baron that, or Prince the other, for the actors, like some modern writers of tours; but unostentatious proofs abound in every page, that his intercourse was not casual with those classes and individuals of society whom Lord Bacon recommends a traveller especially to cultivate. Nor does he seem to have been disabled from prosecuting his opportunities to advantage by a want of leisure or language. His observations on works of art are those of a man of taste and discernment-not technical, but not common-place. In politics he is neither so enamoured of despotism as to think abuses sacred because they are old; nor, on the other hand, does he reckon change and improvement synonimous terms, or see any reason for considering a king much worse than another man. He groups his subjects judiciously, introducing even into the scenery of his Tour life and manners, as knowing how flat even the best landscapes appear without figures in the foreground. Above all, he writes like one who, if he has told much, has the power of telling more; and accordingly his book, (and we press this point on the notice of those who contrive to beat up one or two incidents into as many frothy quartos,) though small, abounds in facts; being thus like water in a well, (to use one of South's characteristic similes,) where you have fulness in a little compass, which surely is much nobler than the same carried out into many petit, creeping rivulets, with length and shallowness together.'

ART. XI.-The Tragedies of Sophocles, translated into English Verse. By the Rev. Thomas Dale, B. A. of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. 2 vols. 8vo. London. 1824.

THAT masterly translations should be scarce in the annals of literature can excite but little wonder, when we consider that success in this department of writing is only to be obtained by an union of qualifications which would tempt an author to aspire to the honours of original composition.. The taste and imagination required in order to feel those relations and discrepancies between two tongues which no general rule will reach, and to perceive how the author would have expressed himself in the language destined to reflect his conceptions, are not every-day merits; and the consciousness of enjoying them will naturally tempt a translator to emerge from his trammels, and enter the lists on his own behalf. When, indeed, the subject in question possesses the stimulus of novelty, it may afford a sufficient temptation to a man of genius to exert his best powers; but in the case of an ancient classic, failure is more conspicuous, and success less flattering. The accomplished scholar naturally prefers the original, and involuntarily connects the idea of an English translation with the bald attempts of his early contemporaries; the dull man associates it with pungent recollections of

some distressful stroke

That his youth suffered'

and the world in general has met with every thought in a different shape, copied, as it has been, into all languages. Hence, when a poet of rising reputation engages in a work like this before us, he deserves credit for his labour of love; preferring, as he sufficiently manifests, to a little more of transient fame, the pleasure of imbuing himself with the style and conceptions of a favourite author, and of leaving a xTηpa es as to the joint honour of that author and himself.

And certainly no classic writer is better calculated to excite this enthusiasm in his favour than Sophocles. Born on the eve of one of those political conjunctures which create intellectual Briareuses with a hundred different faculties ripe for action, he combined the talents of poet, warrior, wit, and sage; and none of his contemporaries have been led so far by the light of nature towards the perception of those purer feelings and motives of action which it is the office of Revelation to inculcate. Fortitude, justice, self-devotion, have found their adequate expression in the works of other ancient authors; but none have imparted such dignity to patience, repentance, long suffering, and mercy's kingly tone.' His sentiments uniformly tend at once to improve human nature, and humble human pride: and his favourite motto seems

Ei

Εἰ δέ τις υπερόπτα χερσὶν
ἤ λόγῳ πορεύεται
Δίκας ἀφόβητος, ἐδε
δαιμόνων ἑδη σέβων,

κακά νιν ἕλοιτο μοῖρα

δυσπότμω χάριν χλιδάς, &c.

It must be admitted that the Ajax and the Trachiniæ are not much calculated either to gratify the taste of the reader, or to awaken the ambition of the translator. One of the best parts of the former play is an obvious plagiarism from the scene between Hector and Andromache, in the Iliad; and the single-hearted, invincible warrior of that poem is represented, in spite of those redeeming points on which Schlegel so eloquently dwells, in a brutal and humiliating light; sullen to the affectionate Tecmessa, and a despiser of the gods. Hector, instead of being slain in battle, is described as dragged to death at the chariot-wheels of Achilles; and in the Trachiniæ, Hercules, the champion of the human race, is degraded into a savage and sensual oppressor, a drunkard, and

a murderer.

The five remaining tragedies of Sophocles, however, are well deserving the exercise of a translator's best powers, particularly the noble trilogy founded on the fortunes of the Labdacidæ, and rivalling the parallel series of the Agamemnon, Choephora, and Eumenides, while it affords such strong contrasts in itself. In the Edipus Tyrannus every thing ad eventum festinat,' and not a moment's pause is allowed from the engrossing interest of the discovery which impends, till its feverish excitement subsides, and an opportunity is afforded for winding up the drama by a scene of pathos exceeded by none with which we are acquainted. We behold, as it were, the clouds gradually overcasting a splendid meridian, until the thunder-storm finally bursts in all its fury, and is succeeded by a gentle shower. The Edipus Coloneus, on the contrary, is like one of those fine sun-sets which succeed a day of tempest-solemn and soothing, but full of fiery and mysterious shapes, in which the imagination bewilders itself. The following passage from Mr. Dale's preface will show how fully he has entered into the spirit of his subject:

'As the life of Edipus had been extraordinary and eventful, so was his death to be awful and mysterious. He had not lived, neither could he die, like an ordinary mortal. He bore a "charmed life;" a life exempted, as it were, from the common assaults of mortality, and only to be terminated by some signal and unprecedented interposition of Divinity. Such is, indeed, the " dignus vindice nodus," which sanctions supernatural interference. Accordingly, the earth convulsed and trembling, the appalling and incessant thunder, the glare of lightning, and the howling of the storm, the solemn intervals of silence, in which the voice