Ilk ane maun strive to save himsel, then- Instead o scouring up your swords, The dolefu' screams o' rav'nous birds, That ye an' a' the land affords Will be their prey. Ye hear what baith sides hae to say; On which opinions pass an' stray, When Harper pours his manly sense 'Twere best to draw, But, whan slee Gallatin does growl "Peace, peace," ve cry, " an' moderation Between the parties." But ane may judge, bv vour profession, Which side ye uppermost would wish : For philanthrophick hug an' buss- Or, may be, wish to stan' in sight, Syne, smack! to fa' wi' a' your might Mayhaps I'm wrang-I dinna ken— Gif I'd na trust ould Nicky Ben,t I am a plain, rough kind o' cheil, Ye are sa MEEK, I ken fu' well THE WINGS OF LOVE. 'Tis said Löve flies;-whence came his wings? The boy was born with no such things, *Their attachment to Jacobin principles, by which are meant the doctrines of and mankind will finally revert to that state equality, sovereignty of the people, and right of savage independence, and self-governof resistance, which, unless exploded from ment, which we see our Indian neighbours all free, and legitimate governments no regular system of civil liberty can have long duration Order and the absolute reign of the laws, which a are the very soul of republicks, can never be established. Chaos must forever overspread the political world, so happily enjoy, and which some humane modern philosophers have preferred to the blessings of civilized society. An old name for Satan-This gentle. man's character is, at least, a decided one. The price of The Port Folio is Six Dollars per annum, to be paid in advance. Printed and Published, for the Editor, by SMITH & MAXWELL, NO. 28, NORTH SECOND-STREET. (NEW SERIES) BY OLIVER OLDSCHOOL, ESQ. Various, that the mind of desultory man, studious of change and pleased with novelty, may be indulged-Cowp. LETTERS FROM GENEVA AND FRANCE. Written during a residence of between two and three years in different parts of those countries, and addressed to a lady in Virginia. (Continued from page 184.) LETTER XLIV. WE could not bear that there should be but a few miles between us and a prospect of Italy, and determined to ascend the mountain on the evening of our arrival at Lanslebourg. We had figured to ourselves some projecting rock from which Hannibal might be supposed to have pointed out the fertile plains below to the impatient curiosity of his soldiers ; but no such rock appeared; we found ourselves on a plain when we ascended, and this terminated. by a gentle slope in a very pretty lake of between three and four miles in circuit. There was still some snow on the plain, but in small masses, and there was the commencement of ant vegetation. a most luxuri I have mentioned to you before, that the lake of Geneva is twelve hundred and forty feet above the sea; Lanslebourg is three thousand three hundred and eighty two feet above the lake of Geneva, and the plain of mount Cenis is about two thousand two hundred feet above Lanslebourg, so that the little Inn where your and I found a bed for the night, is nearly seven thousand feet higher than the level of the sea. We began to descend at a very early hour the next day, and found time to admire the great efforts which the labourers upon the new road were making under the direction of a skilful engineer: Our guide pointed out to us also a sharp rock of prodigious height far upon our left, on the pinnacle of which, is a Chapel dedicated to Notre dame de la Neige, whose image has been long renowned for 2 B many miraculous cures, this holy image is still visited and adored by great numbers, in the month of August particularly, notwithstanding the fatal accidents which this dangerous pilgrimage has given rise to two thousand persons have been seen there at a time, and as there is only room on the point of the rock for the Chapel, and within the Chapel for the Priest who officiates, the congregation is in clusters, as they can best place themselves, like pigeons, on a housetop: the priest whose mode of life may be supposed to supposed to have rendered him less expert in climbing, is generally assisted in the ascent and descent by a rope about his body; but it frequently happens, that some one, whom devotion has ceased to inspire, either falls asleep during the service, or makes a false step, or remains too late to find the way home, and is precipitated into the abyss. With a view of saving these pious people from danger, the government had the holy image removed to Sura, a few years before the revolution, but it was missing the next morning from the Sanctuary, where it had been deposited with all due reverence, and was found precisely in the niche it had formerly occupied: so at least are all the inhabitants of the neighbourhood persuaded, nor can they of course have the smallest doubt of the divine interposition on the occasion. I saw another Chapel similarly situated on the Savoye side of the Alps, to which it was customary, I was informed, to convey such infants as die without baptism, and whom the tenderness of their parents very naturally endeavoured to rescue from the penalties attendants, and after the proper It was the opinion of Victor which the Roman church denoun- grandised ces in such cases: the child, after some time past in prayer by the his dominions, and ad ded a regal title to the hereditary honours of his family, but his art and a little half-starved cow fastened to the same yoke: The drivers of carts and waggons were generally fast asleep on their loads. We now began to study the language, as Dean Swift somewhere men tions his studying poetry, and though the Piedmontese be but a sort of half Italian, it was impos sible not to remark its superiour melody over the French of the other side of the Alps. We passed through Suze, once distinguished for its Citadel, but this famous Brunetta, this key of the Alps, has been laid in ruins during the late war and exhibits a most dreary appearance; we next passed through St. Antonin and stoped for a night at St. Ambrosio, where the church though small ap of cunning and intrigue had re- | hundreds might sit for the picture coiled on himself, he was under of Gil Blas's Captain Rolando. the necessity of abdicating, in or- Those I saw at work in the fields der to get clear of contradictory were generally ragged and had a engagements, and having after- hungry look; one poor man was wards expressed a desire to reas-ploughing with a miserable horse, sume his former station, and taken some measures to ensure success, he was torn from his bed at midnight and shut up in a Castle; nothing which has been alleged in vindication of his son, has made me cease to think, with execration of his conduct on this occasion. The Alps terminate by a much more rapid descent on the side of Piedmont than of Savoye, after which, the traveller finds himself din a plain, which is by no means the case on the other side, where the surface of the earth for a considerable distance might be compared to the enormous waves of some great ocean in a storm: on both sides, the effects of an immense body of water in rapid motion at some distant period of time are very apparent from circum-peared to your stances which my former descriptions, if you have not forgotten them, will suggest to you. As soon as the charm of breathing the air of Italy had a little subsided, I began to be struck with the knavery and imposition of the few people we had anything to do with, with the number of beggars in the small towns, and with the apparent poverty and wretchedness of the inhabitants, in what appeared one of the most fertile countries I had seen, where agriculture and the science of irrigation (and I think it deserves the name of science) seemed so well undersood. The Piedmontese countenance is very generally an animated one, but it too generally seems connected with that sort of imagination which would make a man an active member of a troop of banditti; and myself the very perfection of architecture. There were some good pictures too, over the several altars, and we were now, we felt ourselves, in a country, where the arts had long been cultivated. The valley which had gradually widened, was here about a mile and a half across, and the two projecting branches of the Alps were seen to terminate abruptly. Mr. De Saussure, to whom I am indebted for everything that approaches an appearance of science in my descriptions, has described both these eminences with his usual accuracy. On mount Musinet which is to the left of the traveller who leaves the Alps, he found a great many pieces of a sort of stone, which though perfectly opaque to appearance, is rendered transparent by being dipt in water. I ha Doctor Johnson would have called it hydrophanous, and he would have found some other epithet to express its being also rendered transparent when exposed to the action of fire: it would in either case afford a very happy emblem of a drunken or an angry man, who discloses all he has upon his mind. On the opposite mountain, which is called mount Picheriano, stand the very respectable remains of the Abbey of St. Michael, the monks of which having refused to submit to some new regulations towards the end of the sixteenth century, and change their mode of living, which was thought too worldly and luxurious, were removed to other convents, and their Abbey deserted. seen nothing in Europe more calculated to impress the mind with awe than this ancient religious house seated on a pinnacle which rises full sixteen hundred feet perpendicularly above the streets of St. Ambrosio. The church is in very good repair, and a great part of the Abbey habitable; from about the centre of it there descends a stair case between a double row of tombs into a spacious vault below, and there, placed on a projection from the wall, are seen the dead of former times in the habit of their order; they are such probably as were removed from the tombs where they were first placed, in order to make room for others of their brethren, and the bones which are scattered about the immense floor, show that the removal was frequently destructive to what remained of the human frame in these wretched objects; a venerable Benedictine has chosen this place for his residence, and stays here through the year with another individual who rings the bell of the church at cer tain hours and assists the good man in celebrating mass. He is said to be in comfortable circumstances, and to receive with great hospitality such as choose to visit him. What a fine scene would this Abbey have afforded Mrs. Radcliffe! she might have described a traveller as taking shelter there in a stormy night, and as wandering down the great stair-case with one solitary taper; a gust of wind might have extinguished this taper, and in the midst of a noise of desolation over head from repeated peals of thunder, and the howling of the storm; the succeeding flashes of lightning might have disclosed this scene of horrour to his astonished eyes. not unworthy of remark that Mr. De Saussure found several pebbles of various sorts of stone upon this eminence, and that they all appeared to have been rolled along in some current of water. It is The approach to Turin is by a level road which was formerly shaded by a double row of trees, but the greater part of them have been sacrificed at different times to the wants of the French or Russians, who were quartered in the neighbourhood during the war. Turin, which is interesting from its great antiquity, which was beseiged and taken by Hannibal, and relieved by Prince Eugene so many centuries after, and which the Princes of Savoye had adorned with many stately buildings, and all the appendages of a court, has long been distinguished as the residence of several eminent artists: it is a very handsome place of seventy or eighty thousand souls. The greater part of the streets cross each other at right angles and as the houses of the one by which we entered, were set off by tapestry let down from |