FOR THE ANTHOLOGY.

FRENCH LITERATURE.

[We have been favoured by a friend with an extract of a letter from Paris, dated in May, of which the following is a translation.]

The attention of the literary world has been occupied for a month past by a poem of M. Chateaubriand's, entitled the Martyrs. Philosophers, devotees, and wits are all against him. The first accuse him of bigotry, the second of having detracted from the dignity of God, by placing him in conversation with Jupiter, and the last to have failed in his object, which was to prove, that the christian mythology offered much finer effects for paintings than the Pagan; and that he has produced a monster in literature, which is neither poem nor romance. As for me, who know nothing of the business, and who of course am not obliged to make any pretensions, I am very well pleased with this sort of hermaphrodite; it pleases my mind, and I am content with. that pleasure, without seeking to destroy the illusion by those terrible why's.

Madame de Stael has discovered for us a German, altogether French; and that with reason, we love unreasonably: it is an extract from a work of thirty folios, by the Prince de Ligne. She has given us the quintessence of them; there is grace, delicacy, promptness, de l'apropos, reason, trifling, wit, in short every thing that to this moment we thought could only exist in la gentille nation, as Frederick the Great used to call us, and yet it is from a German.

I do not know whether Fame has carried to the new world the glory of Luce de Lencival, the author of Hector, a tragedy, praised to the skies, and for which they fought, and were crushed to pieces at the doors of the theatre, and which has produced the author a pension of six thousand livres. A good style, the most affecting adieus, a friendship worthy of Patroclus, the interest which a hero, sacrificing his military glory to the good of his country inspires, these have caused its success.

If from the illustrious Homer I may descend to the barriere Pantin, I will tell you that I went a day or two since to the canal of the Oure, which was projected three years ago. The part I saw is charming; a reservoir almost a mile in length, and wide in proportion, a Dutch bridge at the end, communicating with the canal, two rows of chesnuts planted on each side, and the hills of Romainville crowning the whole, makes a charming walk for the cockneys of Paris.

I shall not speak of the embellishments of the great city; they arc infinite, pulling down and building up; it is a scene of edifices and ruins. In viewing their foundations on one side, their

triumphal arches, galleries, collonades, the louvre, I fancy myself at Rome in the age of Augustus.

I had forgot the greatest of all wonders; a man, named Azais, has shewn himself all of a sudden with work after work upon compensations, proving to us that there is as much good as evil in this lower world, and telling the emperour that, during so great a reign, we must necessarily become acquainted with truth, and that God had chosen him to reveal it. He has attempted to shew us all this in a publick course of lectures, in which no body could understand a word; and to this time we consider him as the greatest madman that could escape from Charenton or Bedlam. He has really the air of a prophet, and, as if he had been anointed from heaven, he is eloquent in the highest degree. No man can speak with more genius, nor be irrational with more charm.

FOR THE ANTHOLOGY.

SOME ACCOUNT OF VENICE, AND THE SPLENDID ENTRANCE OF BUONAPARTE INTO THAT CITY, in December, 1807.

BY A BOSTONIAN.

[Continued from page 92.]

OBJECTS of a commercial nature having been the principal inducements to our visiting Venice, we were to attend to those objects first; and accordingly this afternoon we called upon some merchants to whom we had been recommended, and obtained from them such information and advice as related to our affairs. Having been extremely pleased with the first impressions received on entering Venice, we determined to gratify our curiosity a little, and see as much of this celebrated city as the nature of our business and the short stay we proposed to make here would permit.

The first day of our arrival has been noticed; we attended to business, past hastily through several parts of the city, and betook ourselves early to rest. The fatigue of the preceding night, spent in our carriage, prepared us for repose, and no malignant spirit was commissioned to disturb it. This was Wednesday; and the remaining part of the week we devoted much of our time to visiting several places worthy of notice, examining with pleasure various objects in the fine arts, admiring the riches and elegance of the churches, and beholding altogether with wonder the tokens of splendour and magnificence to which this city and republick had formerly attained.

St. Mark's church is very curious for its Mosaick work; all those figures and ornaments of colours and shades which in other catholick churches are paintings, and which appear like paintings here, are done in Mosaick. They are beautifully, they

are wonderfully executed; and one can scarcely believe that the fine art of painting can be so easily counterfeited by artfully arranging different coloured stones. In an alcove on the outside of the church, St. Mark is thus painted or figured in Mosaick as a corpse, surrounded by a number of saints and angels, all larger than life, and executed in a style to please and astonish the most elevated expectations. The inside is decorated with numerous pieces equally beautiful and surprising. The roof of the church is thrown into several arches; which are seen from the floor, and are filled, as well as the walls, with saints and angels in groups, a great many scriptural and some historical pieces, all in Mosaick. It would seem to require ages to collect and assort a sufficient number of these small stones to form so many and such variety of figures, without calculating the labour and ingenuity in setting them. The altar and its ornaments are rich in marble and the precious metals; but much of these last was taken away and converted to more active purposes by the French army, when they first took possession of the city, and overturned the republick of Venice. Round the altar are four pillars of alabaster, which, although near a foot in diameter, are beautifully transparent.

As in all Catholick churches, so in St. Mark's they pretend to have some very extraordinary and sacred relicks, or objects of sacred regard, and religious veneration. The real body of St. Mark, the Evangelist, they tell you, is preserved in this church; and what is cherished with a still more holy adoration, a piece of the cross, upon which our saviour was crucified *. St. Mark is their tutelary saint, and has always been worshipped as the. patron and protector of their city. One would suppose however, that they had offended him of late, for he seems to have withdrawn his patronage, and did not see fit to protect them against the general depredations of the conquerour of Italy.

The top of St. Mark's tower is a tedious elevation to attain, but from the balcony you enjoy a prospect which repays the toil of ascending. From hence we looked down on the city, could mark its shape and dimensions, its numerous canals and bridges, with the busy multitude of men which crowded the streets, had a view of the adjacent isles, a distant one of the Adriatick, and all the variegated charms which the fine bay and beautiful country on its borders could exhibit.

The Ducal palace is a noble edifice; those who see it must admire, but it is too large for me to examine with accuracy, and contains too many interesting objects to attempt to describe. The palace forms a square, and encloses a spacious court.

On board of the vessel in which I afterwards embarked for Trieste, there was a devout sailor who had a small sliver from this piece of the holy cross. It was given him, he said, as a most precious don by one of the priests of St. Mark; he had it fixed in a little locket in the form of a cross, and as the weather looked boisterous when we were about to get under way, he took this from his chest and very piously hung it about his neck.

Round the court in niches are a great number of statues, some in bronze, some in marble. Two ranges of Corinthian columns form the front of the palace, and ornament each side of the square; the first range supports a gallery, and the second a cornice. From the court or square we ascended a flight of marble steps to the gallery, and from the gallery, through other superb stair-cases to the upper apartments, we visited successively, the council chamber, the chamber of audience, the grand assembly room, &c. They are all in the most magnificent style, and ornamented by some of the first paintings in the world. The history of the wars of the republick, and the whole story of Barbarossa are told on canvass, and expressed in almost living characters. The stair-cases are very noble; they are wide, with a fine arch over head, and these arches are filled with sculpture, bas relief, and stucco, richly gilt. Round the walls in the court we observed the lion's mouths, which, from being channels of secret information, were wont to keep the Venetians in so much awe. The rear of the palace is washed by the waters of a canal. As we passed up this canal in a gondola, we observed several back doors which opened into the water, so that a boat might sail into a large entry, and land upon a large stair-case leading to the apartments above.

On the other side of the canal is the state prison, a noble building also, and from this to the palace was a communication by a covered bridge forming a fine marble arch over the canal. It was through this passage that the prisoners were conducted to the palace for trial, or to receive from the senate their sen

tence.

In more prosperous times, when Venice maintained an elevated rank as a naval power, the arsenal here was considered the first in the world. Since her fall it has been neglected, many of the magazines have been stripped and plundered; but like Marius in Carthage, it is great in ruins. Lately a little more attention has been paid to it; the French government are putting the works in operation, and particularly upon the occasion of the expected visit from the Emperour, every exertion is making that it may appear respectable. It is a most spacious enclosure for naval architecture and a vast deposite and laboratory of naval and warlike implements. In it is contained the work-shops for manufacturing every thing necessary for the constructing and completely fitting a ship of war.. Here they are built and equipped for sea; and a ship of the line is completed, from the laying of the keel, until she is ready to fight an enemy upon her own element, without going beyond these walls for a single manufactured article. The cables, the anchors, the sails, are all made here, and the workhouses for these several objects are upon the largest and most convenient plan. The cannon are cast in this arsenal, and the muskets and smaller wea'pons are also manufactured on the same busy stage. The walls enclose two basons of water, and upon the margins of

these are about fifty vast workhouses, in which the ships are built; they are separated from each other by a thick wall of masonry, and these walls support lofty roofs: thus a ship of war is begun and completed for launching, in a workshop, where the workmen are always under cover. Let any one figure to himself the size of a workshop, large enough to contain a ship of one hundred guns, and he will have some idea of the magnitude of objects in the arsenal of Venice. The ropewalk is a conve nient and handsome building; it is upwards of fifteen hundred feet long, two stories high, and the roof is supported by a superb range of columns nearly four feet in diameter.

The cannon foundery is also a spacious and convenient building; and in it we saw some fine brass guns under the operating hands of the workmen, and in various stages of the process, from melting the metal to the last polishing of the piece.

In examining the manufactures of such ponderous objects, one has a flattering idea of the ingenuity of man. It occasions a pleasant emotion, something like the sublime, to observe with what ease they perform operations which seem to require a powerful force. The application of suitable machinery will effect any thing, and effect any thing with ease. A cannon of any size is here suspended and whirled round in a kind of lathe, and thus wrought and polished with great ease and dexterity.

After being sufficiently elevated by viewing things upon such a grand scale, the mind is agreeably diverted in being directed to a beautiful display of smaller objects. We were conducted to the armory, where several adjoining halls are filled with small arms, muskets, pistols, swords, &c. They are kept clean and polished, and so ingeniously arranged and displayed, that on entering each hall a different and beautiful coup d'oeil is presented. Here also we saw some fine pieces of sculpture, and some weapons and pieces of armour, curious for their antiquity, and several trophies of war, which the Venetians are still proud of telling were borne in triumph from their vanquished enemies] Among the many churches which we visited, and which from their riches and elegance we viewed with pleasing admiration, there was one which we were principally induced to see on account of a fine piece of sculpture, among connoisseurs considered a master piece. It is a modern production, designed and executed by Canova, who is at present celebrated as the first sculptor of the age. It is a group, the principal figure of which is Elmo, a Venetian admiral, with ships, gallies, the sea, and a variety of naval emblems; the whole cut from one solid block of white marble, and executed certainly in a very beautiful style.

In this church there were also a great many very fine paintings; but what I saw with most surprise, though not with equal approbation, was a Grecian female statue in white marble, in a recumbent posture, and perfectly naked. The singularity of such a figure in a house of christian worship astonished me, and