SKETCHES IN THE PYRENEES.

THE maiden speech of the late Lind LIVERPOOL was charac- terized, by some complimentary opponent, as resembling a piece of French lace, in which the value of the raw material, consisting of thread, was only a few pence, but the fabric, in consequence of the delicate ingenuity exercised in its manufbcture, was worth many pounds. How far the illustration was true as applied to the oratorical art of young Mr. JENKINSON, may be questioned, but it is perfectly characteristic of the work before us.

The subject of these Sketches is a journey from Paris to Baur- deaux ; the account of a soj urn at several of the chief watering- places in the Pyrenees; and the narrative of a tour through part of the South of France, beginning at Toulouse, and ending at Toulon, or rather at Genoa. Throughout the two volumes, there is nothing like adventure ; there is not, strictly speaking, an inci- dent, or even a character, to enliven the pages. The writor passed so rapidly through the chief towns as often not to have had time to see their sights; so there are no sketches of society in France Proper, awl there seems to be none worth describing at the Pyrenean Cheltenhams. Solid information was scarcely to be looked for; but we have not stumbled upon any thing of that practical kind which even lady-like housewives might impart. Time matter of the book consists of a " number without number" of sketches of the impressions which a landscape has made upon the writer's mind; and these, if almost as beautiful, are as fleeting and unsubstantial, as the pictures in the sky. Some individuals, and groups of figures—townspeople, peasants, and the many- nationed crowds that throng the streets or quays of the great com- mercial ports of the Mediterranean—have more distinctness; and there are a few accounts of Bearnois habits and manner of life, which possess still more reality and solidity. With these timings little stories are intermingled; several historical allusions (for the writer seems tolerably well versed in the names and exploits of the chivalrous cut-throats that infested France during the English and the civil wars) are gracefully called up at the scene of the ori- ginal actions; many reflections or reveries are suggested by passing circumstances, and frequently reminiscences of bygone personal occurrences. The reader who happens to know that the work consists of two volumes containing nearly a thousand pages, will be apt to ask how they can be filled with such slender materials. Generally, it may be answered, by a very fertile but superficial mind, rather obeying impulse than judgment, and by a delicate and ingenious skill. But as rules are obscure without examples, we will give instances of what we mean, which will serve at the same time as specimens of the book and as themes for criticism. Very often, the writer does not deal so much in actual descrip- tion, as in reflections to which the reality gives rise. The follow- ing passage is a happy specimen of this kind.

Except its recollections and its state bed, the Chateau of Rambouillet has, I believe, little else to boast of. I do not know whether the flower-knots and

straight pieces of water spread out before the palace are called pleasure-grounds; but if they are, the same words have a very different signification in the Bien- Deign dictionary. This is Chinese scenery, where a dislocated lady, with her head on one site, might paddle about in a painted skiff, and seem quite of a piece with her accompaniments. Formal gardens hold their beauty less as a possession than a grant on certain conditions of care and nicety, which grant is rendered void by neglect. The wild flowers and gaddIng branches, whose rude luxuriance accommodates itself to the ins and outs of natural scenery, assume, when they find their way into a trim enclosure, a briary and forgotten aspect that misbecomes the quaint parterre, shaped into the precise counterpart of its opposite neighbour. The parterres of Rambouillet look at this moment foul and tangled, the palace varnish fast rubbing off; and neglect, like the brown paper of a lacquered screen, begins to show itself through the crevices.

If she sees a thing, especially a monument of antiquity, she describes it; and if not, she has something to say of the feelings which this particular thing might have excited, or of those which similar things have excited. If there is something in a scene, well ; she tells what it is. If not, she tells of something it suggests; which is equally well. Here is an example.

We do not always know what the forest hides when we look upon it. I re- member once (it was in Worcestershire) passing a narrow forest-path that zig• raged pleasantly up a hill, and was soon lost among the trees, and moposing to my companion to follow its windings. I had often remarked its ochre line as a cheerful point in the rustic landscape; but fancied it merely a track which the wood .cutters had beaten out through the briars. It soon carried us off from the toad, and through many a brake and hollow, until at last, and just as we began to think of turning back, it suddenly emerged from the thicket into a hamlet of six or eight cottages; not placed, country-dance fashion, opposite to each other, but scattered round a green spot covered with short-nibbled grass, and almost as circular as a fairy ring; one turning its gable to the sun, an- other running away from it into the apple-trees; here a hawthorn-bush, there a broad stumpy elder, flowering over the garden wicket. A cow gazed at her- self in a still pool, and a little boy lay on his back beside her, looking up at the sky; the ground rose gently all round the hamlet, and the trees which grew on it covered the roofs with their shade.

I never saw a sweeter apparition—and it really looked like one; for, except the little boy, there was not a human being visible, or audible either ; plenty of cock•crowing, and some flurried gabbling from a dozen or so of ducks, who had tucked their legs under them, and were warming themselves on a sunny spot, which they had made puddle of by the pool's side; but otherwise a still and sultry silence—the silence of a summer noon, when the air seems heavy with sweetness. If I had been suddenly asked for a name for this secluded spot, I should have said Rest. The inhabitanta were all out cutting wood or gathering sticks, or working in the distant fields, children and all ; and the babies too—nobody left behind but the little boy and an old woman, whom we discovered spinning in the midst of her bee-hives. She had been preparing her grandson's supper, she told us ; and that being done, had sat down to her

wheel to spin till his return. I never saw a more perfect picture of comeliness and cottage comfort,—and of wonder too, at seeing us in her rosemary and

gillyflower garden; for no one ever rambled that way, she said, except now and then an autumn sportsman. There were no candles burned in the hamlet ; when evening darkened, she put by her work, said her prayers, and then went to bed by the last ray of daylight—in winter at four o'clock or earlier. What a beautiful conscience the kind old soul must have had !

When we turned away from this pretty, unexpected scene, and had descended twenty paces through the wood, we lost sight of it entirely ; and could hardly believe that the close trees, whose branches seemed knit together, hid so many homes in their bosom.

And so, having stepped over from Touraine into Worcestershire, and, as I find on looking about me, stepped back again, I shall pull off my seven-league boots and repose a little.

Let us turn to some pictures of a more fit, if not of a more finished kind.

SPANISH PEASANTS.

We are continually put in mind here of our vicinity to Spain, by the sight of the Spanish peasants who stand about idly in our .Place, with their dry little wives, as shrivelled as winter apples, knitting beside them. Their dress consists as coloured handkerchief tied round the head, with the large Arragonian hat, slightly turned up all round, thrown over it in a careless way that might become better visages; a scarlet sash binding the waist, a vest without sleeves, and stockings without feet, kept tight by a strap that passes under the sole of the sandal. This last article (called spartillc) is made of hempen cord flattened : it just takes in the top of the toe, and, forming a very low socket for the heel, leaves the rest of the foot, to which it is attached by strings tied over the instep, entirely bare. This is the fair-weather equipment ; but should the day be cold, they lay a sort of plaided blanket across the chest, and, letting the ends fall over the shoulders and hang down behind, contrive to give to this simple drapery consi- derable stage effect. Notwithstanding their dirt and ugliness, these men have something remark- able about them : their non-conformance with the fashion of trousers, the knee- garter, tight stocking, spartille bound and fastened with light blue tape, btoad hat, and draped blanket, give them, at a favourable distance, a complete identity

with the Don Ciesars and Don Pedros of the old comedies. Their bearing is usually grand and disengaged, their movements free, and even vaunting. At this moment a man treads and retreads a space of a dozen paces opposite to my window, who looks as if he called Gonsalvo de Cordova his ancentor: his bold step, sometimes springy, sometimes lounging, has nothing of the peasant trot in at; and though rags and patches, tangled hicks and unwashed face, may, when this dramatic figure is approached, disenchant the imagination, yet, details effaced, the effect is admirable.

PAL—A LANDSCAPE, The willies in the immediate neighbourhood of Pun, after passing the river, are of exceeding sweetness and beauty. They are suit, open, paatoral vallies, and close wooded ours watered by cold clear streams, that filter through beds of granite or flow on swiftly or loiteringly through charming meadows and along wood-sides, that seemed made for their sweet companionship. Sometitnes the road bangs on the brow of a hill, and catches over the fresh ridges that enclose the low grounds the alpine chain, glowing at the fall of day like lapis lazuli; at others runs along with the wild stream through leafy solitudes or bright lawns, every one a pastoral. Of these meadows some are just mown, soft and even as our garden grass-walks—and such a green! not metallic-, not verdigris, but steeped through and through till the depth becomes dazzling : others all flowery and scented, waiting for the seithe , and all enclosed within hedgerows chiefly of oak, (here superb,) or wooded banks that form an irregular border encroach- ing gently on the meadows, or retreating from them into sylvan depths. Through every opening, from every height, the mountains, shadowy or pronounced, are visible, unless it be when the clouds drop low, and then the rich and lovely c6- teaux have it all to themselves, and make another kind of country of it ; peaks and eagles vanish, and vines, ploughshares, woods, and woodlarks, the thrush, the linnet, aud the hawthorn-bush, come into play. I have never seen a country more beautifully ridged : one wooded line runs parallel with another, not stiffly, but in soft and graceful undulations; a third

and higher one stretches off beyond ; valley after valley lies behind them, full of silence, shade and freshness; and as there are literally no bad bits here, every country-house has at least a fine position, usually a pleasant country character, and often woods and lawns that we love to liken to our own of England.

BERN A DOTTE.

Of Bernadotte, all speak with respect : nothing, it is said, can be better, kinder, or more judicious than his conduct towards his relations here. He does not invite them to Stockholm, or countenance their uninvited approaches : he does not push his subjects out of old posts to make room for them ; and has not yet thought of turning a prifecture into a principality for their aggrandizement. But he occupies himself about their welfare, even to that of his distant and ob- score petits cousins, aiding, encouraging, taking a personal and misute interest in their education, from the conviction that, as he himself expresses it, in the present age the only powerful protection is personal merit; and all this with such activity of heart and litter absence of ostentation, and above all so much good sense—the moral faculty the soonest overact by sudden elevation—that one cannot hear of it without a feeling of respect.

The parts of the book that seem to us to possess most living interest, are the descriptions of Marseilles and Toulon. We can, however, only quote a scene and a sentiment from the author's visit to the Bagne—the receptacle of the galley-slaves—at the latter.

I have said that in a Bagne there are few tears—no blushes ; but said it hastily, for I have seen both. As we were quitting the docks, an unfortunate man sat on a beam at the end of the Cordetie, with a decent-hood:Mg female beside him ; both were sobbing bitterly : condemned for a first offence, and only recently arrived, he had not set been hardened into shamelessness. The boy to 160111 he was ironed had, perhaps from sonic natural feeling of pity or delicacy, withdrawn himself as far from the wretched pair as the length of the chain would permit, leaving them to their sad communications—and sad indeed they seemed. Shame is the homage which vice in its beginning pays to virtue ; and the proof that the principle of good is not yet extinct, though guilt wrestles with it and keeps it down. The prisoner covereol his face with his hands as we passed, while the poor woman was too much absorbed in grief to be sensible of our approach. It was his sister, our conductor said, who had obtained per- mission to visit him for a few moments ; addiog, '‘ It is the first time she has seen him in his prison-dress." Poor creatures! what a meeting of sorrow and of shame! of shame even for the innocent. We gave the man a trifle; and when he would have thanked us, both burst into tears, and we could hear the sobs as we quitted the building.

Beautiful stories are told here of woman's love; of the fond hearts that come with their grief and their devotedneas, watching and working for their guilty husbands, fathers or sons; and waiting patiently till theday of freedom arrives, that it may not be also a day of loneliness for the freed, but that the voice of affection may help him to welcome it. How lovely is the image of virtue, purifying by its presence the abode of vice ! How the soul reposes on its steady, unfearing, straightforward aspect, growing young again in such noble companionship !

When we returned to our inn, I asked a question of the waiter, which I had forgotten at the Bagne,—that was' whether the f orests who died there were in- terred within the precincts of the prison, or had a burying-ground allotted to theta elsewhere? lie replied gravely, that be had never beard of their being buried anywhere and seemed to think it an unnecessary form, lie knew that they had a chapel and a priest, a guillotine and an executioner ; but as to their being buried, he had never heard of such a thing.

Every one will admit that all these extracts are distinguished by a refined elegance both of sentiment and style; and these are by no means selections—the book abounds with passages of a similar kind. And if grace and delicacy were alone sufficient to create enduring interest, the Sketches of the Pyrenees would be among the most interesting of books. But it is too extended for its character. In nature all delicate things are small, and perishable; solidity, perhaps clumsiness, is visible in every thing adapted for endurance. In life, mere elegance soon palls, and we require something of strength and substance in all who are to be our companions for long. Hence, a big book devoid of solidity, information, or the interest of a story, is rather a sub- ject for praise than pleasure. One fifth part of these Sketches would have enabled the writer to stand next to BECKFORD, though below him : as it is, her volumes must be ranktd among that class which "the reader lays down and forgets to take up again."