CAPTAIN BASIL. HALL'S PATCHWORK.

THIS work is a series of miscellaneous papers, sometimes upon single topics, sometimes forming a continuous series. In their general character they resemble the better portions of MARRYAT S 011a Podrida, except in the novelty attendant upon a first publication, and in the greater care which has been bestowed upon their com- position. Still, the principle discussed and (in our judgment) settled upon that occasion may apply to the present—that periodi- cal productions are rarely fitted for collected publication. In this point of view, the formal difference in Captain HALL 's case causes no real distinction ; and although his papers make their first ap- pearance in three volumes, their more fitting place would have been a first-rate Magazine. The Patchwork is in fact a series of " articles."

The major part of these articles consist of recollections of foreign travel, occasionally intermingled with an incident worked up into a short tale or a regular essay. The ground embraced in the trwelling reminiscences is France, Switzerland, and parts of Italy, with a regular tour in the vicinity of Naples, a voyage to Malta and Sicily, crowned by an ascent of Mount Etna. Of the stories, none are of much consequence or character ; of the essays, the best are an account of Protestant chapels abroad, some remarks on public executions—" the Gallows and the Guillotine," and a popular description of the improvements that have lately taken place in the royal navy and mercantile service. This last, however, is founded upon a supplement to Professor ROBISON'S article on " Seamanship," written by Captain HALL for the Ency- clopaedia Britunnica. In the pumper on executions he falls into a singular logical error. Besides a defence of the punishment of death for certain crimes, his object is to show that hanging is more beneficial in its effects on the public mind, than cutting.off the head; and contrasts the case of TuisTrxw000 and his fellow-con- spirators, whose crime was political, and whose execution excited the greater part of the public one way or another, with that of a common ruffian in Paris, whose execution seems to have drawn no attention at all. Even passing this, his objections to the guillotine are resolvable into the mode of execution—the haste, the business- like indifference, and the escape of the blood.

The plan of taking the most striking points of several tours to furnish a number of papers, not only enables the writer to pass over all commonplaces, bat to select those things only for discussion that have made the strongest impression on his mind, or which he is best fitted to treat. On the other hand, the result of the whole is a deficiency in completeness and certainty : a kind of unsatis- factory feeling is left on the reader, who, expecting a book, is put off with sonic articles.

As might be expected from the reputation of the author, the volumes arc very readable. But this merit rather arises from the on-going, off-hand, sailor-like manner of the writer, and his skill in composition, than from the value of the matter. Some- times this skill is displayed in a mode too obvious to be pleasing. When on the summit of Etna, he suggests that Mr. Buaroau should choose the view as a subject for a panorama, and then pro- ceeds to direct him what features to represent, with their various colouring : the artifice is doubly disagrcable—first, because the subject is too vast for the canvass, and therefore the suggestion is unsound ; and secondly' it reminds one of' the old and foolish mode of' writing demolished by STEELE, in which poets " gave advice" to painters how to draw their patrons.

The miscellaneous character of the volumes governs that of the extracts ; which we take pretty much as they come. We begin with something seasonable, and consolatory by comparison.

COLD IN PAU'S.

But if summer in Paris is had lin• man and beast, winter is even less bear- able ; at least tile cold, which set 111 one winter I was there, was such as I serer remember to have seen in England, Scotland, or anywhere rise. It was not a good, honest, lancing, moderate degree of cold, which you could temper out of doors by smart exercise, or subdue within by means of biasing tires. It seemed to MY every such device ; being hard and dry, and so biting, merci- less, and snarly, that there was no possibility of escaping its searching intensity. It subdued all mankind alike—tiat ,t ringers, and at times emit ively cleared the streets of people; leaving the capital like one.of those MN' steriott-ly deserted cities in Hindustan described by travellers in the East, which, wit" all their palaces told temples complete, have been left for ages without a *Ingle inha- bitant in them !

I walked once, the day after Christmas, from end to end of Paris, and lite-

rally net only a stray gendarme or two. • • • • now the wretched coachmen manage to live at all in such weather as I have

seen in Paris, is to me inconceivable ; tbr even to the ii: ids passengers the cold becomes at times so severe, that with all the contrivances they can think of—warm furs, hoti-w met butt les, great-routs, bout-cloaks, and shawls, they can scarcely go from one house to ntiotht r without being frozen to death; a fate which actually befel two poor sentries, mid an unrortunate donkey, one hitter night of tile winter alluded to. The soldiers were found at time hour of their relief. as it is called, wit" their muskets shouldered, smutting as smith-anti erect at their pan at the palace-gate, as when their corporal had planted them.

The honest donkey was found standing across the path in the Boulevards at daybreak, with his tail straight on end, as rigid as a bar! In his death the poor old fellow retained his wonted look of patience and contentment so com- pletely, that the people, thinking him still alive, drubbed him soundly as they passed, for being in the way. To return to the no less passive coachmen. One can understand how an English jarvey manages by reiterated pots of porter, and perhaps a glass or two dim, to keep the cold out of his stomach ; but how the French drivers con- trive, without malt liquor or strong waters, to sit on their boxes at night for two, three, four, or five hours on a stretch, apparently as insensible to the biting frost as if they were made of granite and not of flesh and of blood, is utterly inconceivable. Still less is it comprehensible how their horses can stand for so many hours together, with iron shoes, on the cold ice and stones of those sadly-mismanaged streets.

ADVANCEMENT OF THE ANCIENTS IN COMFORT.

I have alluded to the wheel-tracks which are deeply cut in the stone pavement Eat Pompeii]; but these are not the only marks of actual use which strike the eye everywhere. The stepping-stones at the doors, for example, are mostly worn down by the feet, and the sides of the wells are deeply cut with the bucket-ropes. It is very remarkable, that even the narrowest streets of Pompeii are furnished with commodious raised pavements for the foot-passengers- trottoirs, as they are called in French. And this reminds ins of an odd jumble of circumstances. The French have the word for the thing, but not the thing itself; while we in England have the thing but not the word, which obliges us to use the compound expression foot-pavement. What is perhaps still more curious, the Italians, in process of time, instead of improving, have gone back- wards in this setter; for Pompeii, which must be upwards of two thousand years old, is far better off for trottoirs than any modern town in Italy. It may be mentioned also, that at the crossings in the streets of Pompeii, a line of stepping-stones, six or eight inches high, is always placed ; a contrivance for the accommodation of foot-passengers which I never saw in any other part of the world.

QUARRIES OF ANCIENT SYRACUSE.

Perhaps the most striking proofs of the magnitude of time old city of Syracuse are the enormous quarries from which the stone had been hewn in past ages, to construct the houses and temples, the dwellings and places of amusement, of the million inhabitants whom history tells us resided within the walls. One of these quarries, which is now the garden of the Captabin con- vent, we examined minutely. It is a deep, wall-sided, irregular-shaped cut in the rock, said to be one hundred feet deep. At some places this huge excava- tion is a hundred yards broad, at others it is contracted to a tenth part of that Width. The ground at the bottom is not level, but rises and falls, according, I imagine, as the piles of rubbish were moved hither and thither by the workmen. It is everywhere covered either with vegetables or with flower.beds, either under the spade of the gardener, or thickly grown up with orange-trees, olives, limes, and figs, some of them absolutely like forest-trees; besides almonds, vines, pomegranates, and other trees, and-flowering-shrubs, all luxuriating in the shelter of this singular excavation. The sides at most places are richly clad with a matting of ivy, it is difficult to tell how thick, which occasionally hangs down like a curtain, in front of enormous caverns, receding far back into the living rock. The Principal of the convent, greatly pleased with our rap• tures, showed us over his garden' and was evidently flattered by our saying we had seen nothing in the world so like what we read of in the Arabian Nights. In another quarry of still vaster dimensions, we visited the celebrated Ear of Dionysius; where the echo' is certaittly very wonderful: a pistol was fired near the mouth while we stood at the inner end of the cave, and I counted the re- verberations for twenty seconds. I fief it difficult to describe the solemn effect of this sound, which more nearly resembled a peal of thunder at a short dis- tance than any thing else, but divested of the abrupt, startling, rattling sort of harsh sound which belongs to thunder. On the contrary, though very loud, the report of a pistol tired in Dionysius's Ear was rather of a soft sound, even from the first, becoming more and more mellow at every repercussion of the air. In most of these quarries the marks of the workmen's tools are very sir- rent. It is c.ven possible to tell the size and shape of many of the stones which have been cut out, and sometimes to follow the order in which they were re- moved. These trivial but distinct and indubitable traces of the handiwork of the ancients, carry with them, it strikes me, a peculiar sort of authenticity and unpretending truth, Widels bring old times more vividly before our minds than

the great works of art do. For it may be almost said that time statues and temples belong to a different and higher order of beings, with whom we mu- dues have little resemblance. When we lose ourselves in admiration of the Venus or the Apollo, or stand awe-struck before the Temple of Neptune at Paestum, it is almost us difficult to bring the imagination up to the belief that we are of the saute race with the men who executed these works, as it is when looking at the planet Jupiter, or at the ring of Saturn, to conceive that these stupendous bodies thrum an actual part of the same system to which we pigmies

belong. We know by history in the one MO, and by scientific demonstrations

in the other, that it must be so, but it is difficult to take it all in. But the simple touch of a pickaxe on the face of the rock, in an old quarry like that of

Syracuse, tells quite a different story, and one which none can doubt. We almost hear the sound ring in our ears, and half wonder that we do not see the crowds of Greek or Homan workmen labouring round about us.

THE DORIC REED, BRONTE, AND SEVERAL OTHER 'MINUS.

Another incident amply compensated for the trouble of our uusuceessfus scramble. As we were driving along, we fell in with a party of Sicilian shep- herds travelling, towards the sea-coast. One of these was playing what I sup pose is the celebrated Boric reed mentioned by ancient writers. It was formed of three pipes made of the common cane, to be seen growing everywhere in that country, from whirl, he produced really very sweet music. Three hours' drive next morning brought us to the town of Ifronte, from which Lord Nelson took his title 119 a Sicilian Duke. The estate attached to the title lies near the town, and both were very nearly obliterated by a flood of lava in 1832 ; a fete which the hero would have smiled to think of mad lie visited his property. which I believe he never did. About twenty months before our visit, the inhuhitents of Bronte were thrown into the greatest terror by an eruption of Etna, in the flank just above them, from an opening in which a stream of have came almost uphn their !muses. Ilad it not stopped when it did, it must have gone right over the town and smashed it its easily as a broad-wheeled waggon would do an old woman's basket of eggs. Supposing the people and their effects out of the way, I can imagine no more curious or interesting sight than a stream of lava moving at the rate of a ffiot or two in an hour, gradually driving down, crushing, and finally swallowing tip a whole town, house after house, street after street, churches and all, and

leaving not a vestige behind On propounding this speculation to the guide, he looked at me as if lie thought me a monster worthy of living thyme into the crater; and shaking his head, remarked, that after I had seen the effects of a lava stream, I might probably change my opinion.

In the mean time, we Mewed up the course of the valley above Drente, till we came to the end of the stream of lava which had so lately threatened the town. We found it about a hundred or a hundred and fifty feet deep, and per- haps one-third of a mile wide; time outer surface or crust consisting of huge piles of broken masses of scoriated lava as black as coal, the whole scene being very dreary and desolate to look at. This desolation was rendered more striking Imy the corners of gardens, cods of walls, bits of corn-fields, peeping from under-

neath the lava, all burnt up and destroyed. Every thing indicated the irre- sistible nature of time fiery torrent, and foretold too surely the fate, sooner or later, not only of this fitted spot, but of Randazzo, Catania, and all the rest, which must in turn be overwhelmed again and again as they have been before.

LEARNED EYES AND UNDERSTANDINGS.

Nothing is more remarkable in the practical pursuit of any science than this kind of difference in vision. I have known very observant and quick-sighted men-fail to perceive a double star in the heavens ,• while to others, more prac- tised, though usints' the very same telescope, both objects were distinctly de- fined. The secret often lies in knowing exactly what to look for, and thence knowing ltow to adjust not merely the focus of the eye, but what may be termed the focus of the judgment, so as to be able to pitch the understanding into such a key that the intimation may be understood when it comes. I re- member mace being present at the Geological Society, when a bottle was pro- duced which was said to contain certain zoophytes. It was handed round, in the first instanoe, among the initiated on the foremost benches, who commented freely with one another on the forms of the animals in the fluid ; but when it came to our hands, we could discover nothing in the bottle but the most limpid fluid, without any trace, so far as our optics could make out, of animals dead or alive, the whole appearing absolutely transparent. The surprise of the ig- norant at seeing nothing, was only equal to that of the learned who saw so much to admire. Nor was it till we were specifically instructed what it was we were to look fur, and the shape, size, and general aspect of the zoophytes pointed out, that our understandings began to cooperate with our eyesight in peopling the fluid which up to that moment had seemed perfectly an:chalked. The wonder then was, how we could possibly have omitted seeing objects now so palpable.

The following passage will not be without its use if' it should save one person front an emigration to Sicily in search of a cure for consumption. • " So far as I am able to Plage from what I have seen or been told of the climate of Sicily, I should consider it the best in Europe for a delicate patient ; and cat, by reason of a strange prejudice on the part of the natives, that island is rendered almost entirely useless in this respect. They have unfortunately taken a notion into their head, I believe without any thundation, that con- sumption is not only occasionally infectious—but that it is always so—even worse than time plague or any other disease. Consequently they will not admit is person suspected of having a tendency' to pulmonary complaints into their houses. It' any one afflicted with this malady should die among them, a ban is put on the house, its furniture destroyed, and no one allowed to inhabit it for a period of many months. As this is ruinous to innkeepers and inconve- nient to all, and as every native 'firmly believes in the truth of this persuasion, it becomes impossible fo'r any consumptive patient to find house-room in Sicily. I have even heard of instances of such persons being allowed to perish in the streets or in time country-roads, to which they were driven by the excessive terror of time inhabitants.