THE TAGUS AND THE TIBER. * Tirre work exhibits a very

striking improvement over its prede- cessor, Impreasions of Central and Southern Europe. The worser qualities of the writer are rooted out, and as a consequence his better qualities have fair play. The dogmatism and all but swag- gering sufficiency of the former book are sunk ; the writer's ex- perience, lively perception of the salient points of things, and for- cible manner of hitting them off, are preserved. Perhaps, how- ever, the merits as well as the faults are subdued ; and the reader may miss a little of the dashing vivacity which tackled everything and everybody in turn or out of turn.

• The Tagus and the Tiber; or Notes of Travel in Portugal, Spain, and Italy, in 1850-1. By William Edward Baxter. In two volumes. Published by Bentley. The Tagus and the Tiber is an agreeable account of tours per- formed by Mr. W. E. Baxter in Portugal and Spain in the autumn and early winter of 1850, and in Italy during the summer of 1851. In the first tour, he set out from Southampton; rested at Lisbon, steamed to Cadiz, Seville, Gibraltar, and theme travelled to Madrid by Grenada. The Italian tour embraced the usual cities

of Italy, except Venice. .

For individual pleasure, novelty enhances the charm of travel- ling; everything is delightful to those to whom everything is new. In recounting travels, somewhat more than rapturous de- scription is wanted. The reader desires information, and this is best given by a mind which brings something to what it sees ; which can compare the actual place with other places, and test social, economical, or political circumstances, by a knowledge of other countries acquired by observation and study. Mr. Baxter exhibits both these advantages. He is familiar with many parts of Europe and with the settled parts of North America : he is a Protestant, a student of politics and politi- cal economy, with opinions the result of thought, (though many readers will differ from him,) embodying definite principles, and capable of being applied to the conditions of the life before him. Knowledge and experience of this kind do to a certain extent the work of original genius, by selecting for remark those peculiarities that unmistakeably ;tamp a character on a country. When we learn, for example, that Portugal has really no road, we at once realize the " primitive " condition of the country. Every observation bearing upon her economical state receives force and aptness from this cardinal fact. Spain is bad and backward enough, but those who wish to have an idea of the middle ages in material matters should go to the highways of Portugal. In some other respects the country has been forced on merely to go back again. The property of the Church has been seized, and the priest. hood degraded, though superstition is still rife ; and surely when Wellington was at Torres Vedras, there must have been a better road than this- " At this village we left the cultivated district to cross bare gloomy hills, on a paved track so rugged and full of dangerous holes that our postilions fre- quently diverged from it to seek a smoother way over the fields. No words can convey to civilized ears any adequate idea of the execrable path, over which four hardy horses dragged our vehicle at the rate of two and three- quarter miles an hour to Torres Vedras. Sometimes we descended an inclined plane, more like a timber-slide than anything else ; sometimes the horses scrambled like cats up a precipice ; sometimes the wheels settled down into deep holes, out of which violent efforts were required to drag them, and at others we were jolted over huge boulders and shelves of rock, until every bone in our bodies ached. Many mule-paths in Switzerland are well made in comparison with this high-road between Lisbon and Oporto. I would rather ride forty miles on the mountains of Scotland than ten on the leading thoroughfare of Portugal. How Antonio managed to hold on, no man can tell. At the termination of the journey he complained of innumerable bruises."

The composition of Mr. Baxter is plainer, more unaffected and agreeable, if less striking than before ; it distinctly conveys his own thoughts and the external images before him. If not profound in reflection or striking in description, he now makes few preten- sions to either. Neither does he labour over his ideas, but dis- misses, them quickly and passes on. This, with his comparisons, and a habit of judging for himself, gives great variety and a degree of freshness to his book, notwithstanding that some of his subjects have been often handled. His greatest drawback is a habit of digressing from his course, without sufficient motive either in the thing itself or what he has to say upon it.

The best, as being the freshest, most lifelike, and practically in- teresting parts of the work, are those passages which relate to the present state of Italy. Go where he would, encounter whom he would, our author met a general detestation of the Austrians and the French, the Bourbon of Naples, and Pope Pie Nino in a lesser degree, as the tool of others. This feeling, Mr. Baxter thinks, is affecting religious belief; and when opportunity enables the Italians to throw off the foreign yoke, the Papacy will be swept away with it. An Italian gentleman with whom he travelled expressed what many religious men feel : for the superstitious practices and gross immorality of the priests, with the tyranny of ecclesiastical government, have rendered great numbers infidels— disbelieving the Church, they believe nothing. " I was struck by the effect which political grievances had produced upon the mind of this patriotic man. I am a Roman Catholic,'. he said ; but when I see the Pope leading the vanguard of despotism, indebted for his safety to the bayonets of France, intriguing to garrison Rome with Austrians, shedding the blOod of his people, and encouraging that treacherous Nero the King of Naples—when I look around and find Protestant countries enter- Prizing, happy, and free, while Papal countries are deserts like Spain, and trampled on like my poor Italy—canyou wonder, sir, that I begin to doubt the Divine origin of the faith of my fathers ? ' "

In Milan, and indeed throughout Lombardy, there is no disguise in the feeling of the people towards the Austrians. This is the state of passive resistance Mr. Baxter found there.

"In the year 1844, the Corso, or Boulevard which surrounds the city of Milan, presented on fine summer evenings an animated spectacle of carriages and equestrians, rich liveries, and gaily-dressed fashionables : it was pleasant then to sit under the elms, and look on the one hand towards the Alpine summits tinged by the setting aim, on the other at the glittering pageant which these pleasure-seekers displayed. Now all is changed. On the even- ing of a festival, I sauntered along this spacious drive, and found it forsaken, desolate, lonely. Here and there a grim Austrian soldier guarded a cannon, or a tradesman and his wife jogged along in a rickety gig; but the nobles, the equipages, the prancing steeds, had all disappeared,—gone to Turin, to Paris, to London—to any place where the hated uniforms of Hapsburg are not seen. Those who remain have sold their studs, appear seldom in public, sad, living retired and obscure, wait the good time coming, when Hungary shall sound the loud tocsin, and Austria, paralyzed, behold the political eman- cipation of Italy. "I had observed, daring my previous visit to Lombardy, the dislike felt by all classes towards their German masters : no one even then could spend a

few days in Verona, Padua, and especially Venice, without observing it. But that dislike was love in comparison with the unconcealed hatred the un- governable detestation, expressed in 1851, by man woman, and child, when speaking of i

Tedeschi.' We travelled always in the public conveyances, and conversed with a great many people iu every walk of life ; but we only met one man (and he was a Tuscan officer) who did not openly avow him- self an advocate of national independence, a sworn enemy of the bayonets of the North. In Bologna, in Florence, in Rome, in Leghorn, in Pisa, bayonets

moat

of all in Milan, did this dislike manifest itself. In none of these cities, nor on any of the roads in the country, did we see a single German officer or soldier speaking to an Italian. The military rulers have been everywhere sent to Coventry; and when new commotions take place across the Alps, they will be sent somewhere else with very little ceremony. "I looked for any mark of intercourse between the people and the troop& in the streets, in the churches, in the carriages, and at the balconies of the capital of Lombardy ; but in vain. There are two principal cafés, occupying different sides of the Piazzo del Duomo. The Café Mazza was always full of Austrian officers, not a single Italian ever entering it ; while the Milanese gentlemen and ladies crowded the café opposite; and if a German dared to intrude there, every citizen instantly rose and departed. Tobacco is, as many know, a Government monopoly : to injure the revenue of their de- tested rulers, the Lombards have given up using it; not a man was to be seen smoking in the streets ; and scarcely had I entered that, as well as other cities, when I was warned not to put a cigar into my mouth and thereby break the rules of the Invisible Government.' If you smoke, sir, you will be knocked down,' was repeatedly remarked to me."

While in the countries ruled over by the Bourbon, the Pope, and the Austrian, Mr. Baxter found poverty, discontent, or both, in Piedmont he met traces of rapid advance, the consequence of a constitutional government and liberality in matters of commerce. " Once Piedmont was the persecutor of the Waldenses, the incarnation of bigoted cruelty; now she has established liberty of worship, and a Protestant chapel is being erected at Toxin : formerly her ministers approved of that prohibitory fiscal system from which commerce has suffered so much in the Mediterranean ; but during the past year they have concluded a Free-trade treaty with England, and prosperity has returned to Genoa to an extent even beyond the expectations of the most sanguine mind. What a change has this liberal policy produced within the last few Sears! "Not long ago, the city of the Dories seemed rapidly hastening, like Venice, to a premature decay ; but of late that retrograde movement has been stop- ped; in 1849 I observed manifest symptoms of improvement, and in 1861 the appearance of the Porto Franco, or quarter of bonded warehouses, quite surprised me. One could scarcely move for the crowd of merchants, clerks, warehousemen, and porters, busily engaged among bale-goods and produce ; the quays resembled those of Liverpool or New York, more than the deserted wharves of a declining land ; and the business there transacted has so out- grown the capabilities of the harbour, that it is said Government have de- termined to abandon the arsenal and dockyards to commercial purposes and

remove their establishment to La Spezzia. •

" It is really heart-cheering now to stand on the pier of Genoa and con- template the forest of masts within the mole, to mix with the commercial men on the Bourse or at the Porto Franco, and to see the vast amount of traffic on the road toward the lighthouse. I had heard of the rapid strides being made by Piedmont, but the reality surprised me. From Pietra Santa to Nice, from Spezzia to Genoa, marks of industry, energy, and progress on every side appear; admirable roads, well-cultivated fields, silk-works, can- vass-manufactories, shipbuilding, railways, new villas, all bear witness to a rising people—a people who must infallibly lead the civilization of Italy. They have no ruins amongst which to meditate, unless they be the venerable walls of Genoese palaces; but the mantle of England has fallen upon them; and when a period of freedom has brought forth its proper fruit, we may ex- pect to sec all that is good and great in the Peninsula rallying round the throne of Turin. How mysterious are the ways of that God who has so ordered it that a country once the high-place of ignorance has become the very strong-hold and refuge of Italian patriotism ! Watch well, ye enemies of tyranny, over the independence of Sardinia, and the liberties of the Pe- ninsula are safe."

The work is closed by disquisitions on several questions, sug- gested by the subjects before the writer. There is an essay on the political influence of Romanism in Italy; another on the question of peasant proprietors, in which a comparison is drawn between the state of agriculture abroad and at home, and the latter severely handled ; a third on the effect of the pursuit of the fine in opposi- tion to the useful arts, in which the palm is assigned to the useful, for giving strength to the mind and manliness to the character ; and a fourth on popular education abroad and at home, where the German schemes are examined and censured.