SHADES OF THE DEAD.

NO. II. ALEXANDER THE GREAT.

(had it stood on no other ground), to one of direct selfdefence. It was the prolongation of a contest which had endured for many generations, and in the course of which Greece itself had been twice ravaged by hordes of Asiatics, and its fairest city made a spoil. | THERE is a kind of philosophy adapted to draw- The Grecian patriot, nourished from his boyhood on ing-rooms by which the characters of all conquerors the Homeric songs, and accustomed to hear of the would be at once given over to unmingled and in-names of Miltiades and Themistocles as the greatest discriminate abhorrence. The shedding of human glories of his conntry, and of the oppression of the blood is thereby described as something so detesta- Ionian cities as the chiefest wrong done to a free ble, that only the last necessity can justify it. We people by barbarians, could scarcely conceive of any are told that men should visit with curses the memo- relation between Greece and Persia but that of ries of those who have given rise to contention and deadly hostility. A peace was then no more than a slaughter; and that the meanest peasant is more de- truce, a temporary interruption of that warfare which serving of respect than victorious kings or triumphant was the natural condition of all countries not bound generals. The heroic ideal is brought into contempt together by a common language and worship. by the most ignorant, and the weak and the narrow

minded exult in their philanthropic wisdom, while they expose the real evils of what are called the military virtues.

The wealth indeed of the Asiatic satrapies, and the
factious divisions of every city which made the losing
party seek for assistance even from the enemies of his
race, brought about some change in this state of things.
The neighbouring peril of Macedonian predominance
led the greatest of unsuccessful statesmen to receive
from the ministers of Darius the money which might
enable him to resist Philip. But the laws of politi-
cal society and the circumstances of the world were
stronger even than the will and intellect of Demos-
thenes, who opposed himself and the fame of Athens
against a power to which Phocion, taking calmer
council, resolutely submitted. A man of genius,
king of Macedon, was necessarily leader of Greece;
but let it not be forgotten that, by the same necessity,
Greece, having a leader, was conqueror of Asia.
The knowledge, cultivation, and energy accumu-

Supposing Greece to have been freed from those inward distractions which nothing but Macedonian guidance could have, in fact, allayed, it would have been able, by a succession of various impulses, to rend, to seize, or to mould large portions of the Persian empire. Alexander had been educated between Philip and Aristotle, and looked to do more than this. A hundred teachers, innumerable statesmen and warriors, a noble traditional religion, the most wonderful artists that ever existed, many pregnant varieties of polity, had made the country of his fathers what it was, and therein had given him the means he was to employ. The broad and barbarous East was spread before him, full of tyrannies old and new, decayed institutions, oppressed races, undeveloped powers, and in these and in the hopes of the vulgarest Greek a common man might have found a mighty object without bestowing on them any deep reflection. But beyond fame and domination, the ends which almost the very circumstances pointed out, and which were, at all events, proclaimed by the hopes of the populace, and by the names of found in himself an end higher and more permanent, Pausanias and Xenophon; beyond these, Alexander for he was born with unequalled capacity, and his mind was the complete outward result of that method in thought which has given their godlike stations to Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.

Nor will any one question that it is a bold and weighty matter to be the immediate cause of pain and death to thousands. For though it might be hard to prove that the sufferings of the soldier are greater than those of other men, or that they are not overbalanced by the enjoyments of activity nnd hope, yet he who begins a war does doubtless become in truth the direct originator of many miseries. But, alas! what great good was ever achieved for mankind without accompanying sorrow? The greatest benefactor of the world, the teacher of truth, can hardly accomplish his task without uprooting some old sympathies and disturbing the minds which he enlightens. In the education of an indi- lated by free institutions, by traditionary religion, by mission was nobler than either like a chief of free vidual, his will can be strengthened only by sub-philosophy and the arts, within the circling seas and jecting him to rude and fearful trials. Neither can any great national revolution be brought about which shall not give pain to many. We must judge the leader of every important change with reference to the thought which guided him; we must see whether the shock, the excitement, the exaltation of his name, the pride of transitory victory, were the objects for which he was willing to subdue the immediate impulses of charity; or whether he regarded the innovations, and contests, and bloody triumphs as evils necessarily attendant on a far higher and more lasting end; misfortunes, as much as possible to be diminished by a wise man, but for the avoiding which no effeminate timidity should induce him to sacrifice a great object.

This will not justify such a conqueror as Napoleon, who had no other than a personal purpose, and who was willing, for the attainment of it, to crush whatever was most valuable in Europe. But it will serve as a defence for the general spirit of Roman enterprize, for the conduct of the Spaniards in America, and of the English in Hindostan. And in truth if we are to lop away from the existing culture of Europe whatever has been gained by the results of conquest, we should leave but a meagre and decaying stem. For how large a portion of the character of Christendom may be traced to the Ro

He was the man of Greece, and was to impress on the continent of Asia not only the skill and valour of his country in the field, but also its reverence for religion, and its power as a creator in the arts, and in moral and political wisdom. He knew that his companions, to plunder and lay waste; or, like an mountains of the Hellenic land, must have overflowed oriental conqueror, to trample on all previous rights, on the surrounding countries. Without the aid of institutions, and convictions, and substitute for them Philip or Alexander, bands of mercenary soldiers, the grim and solitary idol of his own supremacy. intriguing politicians, and ambitious chieftains, would He went forth to conquer indeed, for by the sword have torn the empire of Darius, and made the lan-alone could the despotism of the sword be broken; guage and the thoughts of southern Europe familiar but he went also to raise up, to guard, to renew, to in the palaces of the eastern satraps. The methodised cultivate; and first clearing away, with his iron enand accomplished mind would have found its way gines, the hard successive strata of former tyrannies, to the barbarian thrones, with a current as sure and to lay bare to the sky, to water and fertilize the soil perpetual as that which pours the waters of the beneath; to permit the secret seed to grow, and to Danube into the sea. narchy was necessary to give singleness and concenBut the supremacy of a mo- mingle with it many new and some exotic germs. That this is neither dream nor fable, that Alexander tration to the efforts of the many jealous cities. was neither a madman nor a ruffian, nor an advenGreece needed to be split into numerous republics, that it might put forth the first bright fruits of human cultivation; but the hand of a kingly leader was required to gather and to spread the seeds on the banks of the Orontes and the Nile. This was the office of the King of Macedon.

'Demosthenes failed in his opposition to it and
him, for the time had come when mankind could

gain no more by the continued independence of
Thebes or Athens. Democracy had done its utmost
for Grecian culture, and thereafter could only be
mischievous in popularising and enfeebling the civil-
isation which it had in many respects advanced.
The internal ministry of Greek activity was nearly at
an end; and to make it available for the world, a
leader must have been found with a more stable and
unquestioned title than the vote of a populace or the
influence of one among many co-ordinate common-
wealths could possibly furnish. He must have been

turing knight, would have seemed obvious from all his history. But, unhappily, he left no commentaries behind him; he had no Thucydides nor Livy to chronicle his greatness; and his memory has remained only to excite the wonder of the crowd, the detestation of pseudo-philosophers, and the admiration and reverence of a few retired students.

The first year of Alexander's reign was no more than a loud and complex overture to his after life. His only object appears to have been to subdue and awe the invaders of his kingdom, and the rebels against his federal authority, so that he might begin his great eternal enterprize with the utmost possible rapidity and effectiveness. He performed a series

of exploits which (if truly narrated to us) were sufficient to have placed a Roman consul on a level with Camillus and Scipio; but they were merely the transitory and stormy dawn of that day which brought the great luminary of Greece from its rising on the

man and the Teutonic domination! And scarcely has
there been a polity capable to save any nation from
sinking into a horde of savages, that has not been
founded on a conquest. Conquest has been the
great instrument of almost every revolution that has
improved the world, and we in England have espe- of Grecian race and language, for he was to guide Thermaic Gulf till it set on that of Persia.

cially little pretence for denying its beneficial results. The Celtic barbarism was unable to advance human nature beyond the point at which Cæsar found it in Britain; and the Romans brought to the country laws, arts, and Christianity. The institutions had decayed, the national character was weak, and we were strengthened by Saxon blood and youth; but the nation remained apart and hardly at all connected with the other portion of the Christian commonwealth; and the Normans, while they introduced their superior refinement and their riper chivalry, became a bond between England and the rest of Europe. All these co-operated to one end, and that was our actual England."

The oriental war waged by Alexander the Great would have come close, in the eyes of every Greek

a

men of that race, and to spread abroad the rich
nourishment of that language. It behoved him to
be captain of all Greece, for he was to go forth as its
representative, and he needed at the same time
support other than the Peloponnese or Attica could
supply; for amid envies, factions, and revolutions,
that would have been physically inadequate. Above
all, it was necessary that in soul and talent he should
display whatever either of thoughtful or heroic power
the philosophy of the wisest schools could call forth
and cherish in human nature; for to mankind and
to posterity he was to present himself as the imper-
sonation and champion of the highest culture of that
country, which nothing but its moral superiority
could entitle to civil predominance. All this was
necessary, and it all existed in Alexander.

The first recorded deed of the Grecian enterprise is singularly consistent with the purpose of the whole expedition, and with the education and character of Alexander. He visited and honoured the spot with which tradition had associated the names of Homer's heroes and his local descriptions. He had been taught through all his boyhood to delight in lays which, besides their poetic value and their relation to the tendency of his mind as a king and captain, had the merit of recording a portion of the great struggle between Europe and Asia, and of displaying in the brightest light his noble ancestor, the swiftfooted and god-descended Achilles. All history announced that these poems were the lovely flowers of that Asiatic Greece which now lay helpless and enslaved under the sceptre of the great king, and which

Alexander was about to liberate; and they were thus in every way the work naturally, as it seemed, pointed out to be the manuals of his education. The strength of their influence over him was shown by his first proceeding on the soil of the eastern continent. By performing religious rites on the plain of the Troad, he publicly put away from Macedonia the character, which it bore in the Homeric times, of a barbarous country, apart from Greece, and sending forth its chieftains to combat, in alliance with the Asiatics. He who sacrificed at the tomb of Achilles, and made the Homeric works his daily study, constituted himself the representative of the Hellenic mind and the champion of its cause; and when we know that he went to battle with a shield preserved from the days of Agamemnon borne before him, it is not easy to avoid the fancy that those ancient kings and warriors, whose memories he had celebrated, and who live for ever so brightly in the songs of the heroic age, moved round him and before him from the plain, the mounds, the rivers, and the sea of Troy to the hills of Bactria and the banks of the Indus. But in how different a spirit from that of the traditionary ages did he make war against his enemies. It was his aim to found a larger polity, embracing an immeasurably greater variety of circumstances and habits, and acting by a more complicated mechanism than Grecian statesmen had before con

will explain the reverence and awe of the young commander for a priest presenting himself as the teacher of that great principle which was unknown beyond Judea to any but the wisest masters of science, and their most favoured pupils.

The talent which has been shown by some vulgar,
modern captains is all displayed in the means and
mechanism they have employed; their object was
utterly poor, low, narrow, and personal, that of the
meanest and weakest-minded of men. The inge-
nuity and boldness of Alexander in pursuing his
end were not inferior to those of any recent idol; but remarkable as bringing together the representatives
The legend, even if legend it be, is at all events
his vast, his unapproachable superiority, was in the of the two greatest moral forces then existing in the
greatness of that end itself. Others with vigorous world, of Grecian thought and Jewish religion. The
faculties, and large means at their disposal, have en-
two afterwards allied themselves in the Egyptian
deavoured to lessen and compress whatever they
came in contact with, that it might be the more suit-city of Alexander, and conjointly gave a powerful
able to the intrinsic pettiness of their purpose. They union remained to be effected by Christianity.
impulse to the mind. Their perfect conciliation and
have sought, for instance, to cut off from society the
action of many of its chief springs, such as religion,
or historic remembrances, or the possibility of per-
sonal independence; to enfeeble and beat down the
world till it should lie like a crushed and blotted
mantle beneath the feet of him who has slain its
wearer. Alexander habitually cherished and invigo-
rated whatever feeling and thought he discovered in
any nation; his mind even went beyond what moral
energy the world contained, and he aimed at increas-
and of founding on it the power that should govern
ing it on all sides by the wise arts of the statesman,
an immeasurable empire.

and

But it may be replied, in all this Alexander failed. And, indeed, the reality was far below the thought; ceived. And how uniformly, therefore, and earnestly for if the world would conform itself to a great idea, did he, conqueror and innovator as he was, and we should see the mound of primeval Eden opening creator of a fresh epoch in the history of the world, out until it should become the only limit of the how constantly did he seek to find, if possible, old globe: but, in the measure and fashion in which foundations for his new establishments; how abhor- earthly affairs will yield and assimilate themselves to rent was all his system, a far more benevolent and the conception of genius, the design of the Macedoenlightened one than any before imagined, from thenian conqueror was realised. Shall we say that noattempt to root out and desolate the old convictions thing was done in the stir and loosening of all the of mankind. He sought to strengthen men's belief roots of thought designedly produced by these wars and hope in their social condition; to put life into and this policy? Did civilisation not gain any thing the heart of the world; and to substantiate, in a when the world, for the first time, saw a General impolitical body, the subtle and potent spirit of the proving all that he subdued, rather than enriching highest philosophic culture. He did not enslave, himself by his appropriations? Can that language, massacre, or plunder. But wherever he subdued of which the very vocabulary has more of wisdom men, he was ready to respect their human nature. poetry than the literature of other tongues, have Wherever he found any vestiges of ancient law and been communicated to vast regions, and have taught and order, he zealously restored them; wherever any cities the fair posterity of Alexander, surviving when them nothing? Or what shall we say of the many religious faith, he also did worship to the gods revered by his subjects; wherever skill, valour, indus- the blood of his offspring had passed away, and pretry, he encouraged and rewarded them; wherever serving so many centres and radiating points of open enmity, he met it, overcame it, and then forgot knowledge; of the soul of Greece inhabiting and it. To pursue the footsteps of this wise and accominforming a new frame on the borders of the Nile plished genius, would require a comment on every when it had ceased to find a resting-place on the action of the busiest of lives for ten pregnant and banks of Ilissus? Or can the result have been conunexampled years. But there is a unity of purpose the old polytheisms, which, by taking somewhat of temptible of that mixture and inter-communion of in a great man's conduct which may be compre hended and admired without illustrating it by all its peculiar character from each, and weakening the that his life would furnish for its display. And in exclusiveness of the hold of all over the minds of the history of Alexander, above all, is it evident that nations, was probably a great and necessary prepahe had made for himself a generous and permanent rative for the reception of Christianity? scheme of policy, scarcely, as it seems, to have been learned from Aristotle, and certainly opposed to the

views of the democratic writers of Greece.

He acted differently from almost all the conquerors of whom he could have read, and differently from those former heroes of legendary song who, probably, were the ideal of his personal feelings; for in him was blooming the latest ripeness of Grecian thought, and he who sacrificed to Achilles, Hercules, and Bacchus, and exceeded in war their traditionary exploits, was also to show forth the practical results of whatever laborious knowledge and profound meditation of human affairs his country could glory in. And, therefore, instead of finding in him a wild and reckless adventurer, careful only to outstrip the hurricane, and, like it, to lay waste his path, we see in Alexander the severe judge, the benignant fosterer, the man who delighted to pause in his career of humbling subjugation, and recreate the world with more than kingly generosities, with the rites of a beautiful worship, and the shows and splendours of poetry,-the creator of cities in the solitude, and of commerce in the barren haunts of robbers.

There are other conquerors to whom genius equal with his has been popularly attributed, but between whom and him an essential difference is observable.

We know not how far the story of the Macedonian meeting with the High-priest of the Jews may have been altered by the vanity of the people through whom it was transmitted, or adorned and rendered wonderful by the talents of Josephus. There is something so impressive in the image of the young conqueror covered with the dust from the shattered walls of Tyre, bending to the name of God, and proclaiming that his minister had before appeared to him in a vision, that every one, but for our modern dread of the marvellous, would be inclined to believe in it. There appears no reason for denying that a spirit like Alexander's, intent, far-seeing, and imbued with the highest revelations of a religious philosophy, may so have brooded among his native hills, over the field that lay open to his enterprise, and the truths which he had learned to revere, as to perceive that, much as he might do for the world, the circle of its moral capacities would yet remain unfilled; that the unity of God could hardly be made by him to supplant the anthropomorphite polytheisms of the nations; and a shaping imagination would then have naturally impersonated, in the form of a celestial instructor, the truth which no one, but by the fore-knowledge of faith, could then expect to become popular. This may have taken place in the mind of a pupil of Aristotle; and the supposition

Whether this last great consummation was in any way connected with the influence produced by the Grecian conquests on the Heathen modes of belief, is a difficult and perilous question. Most persons will probably think that there is much of mischief in all similar speculations, and will, it is to be hoped, at the same time maintain that Alexander is not to be judged by what we can discover of the distant consequences flowing from his deeds.

the evil results of a great man's actions, when those
It would be melancholy indeed if any theory as to
themselves were evidently generous, arduous, and
the fruits of noble conceptions, should be allowed
to rob Fame of her children and human nature
of its loftiest examples. Shall the praise of cou-
rage, gentleness, endurance, magnanimity, and
zeal in high purposes, perish, because a man who
died before he had reached the middle term of
life, could not complete the largest design that ever
animated a statesman or general? Or shall we
consider but as a mad adventurer the soldier whom
Aristotle advised to treat the conquered as slaves,
and who preferred the far more difficult and less
glittering attempt to make them subjects of a tem-
perate rule, and citizens of a legal polity; the young
and chivalrous leader, who, when the wisest minds
of Greece could perceive no radical distinction
between nations but the broad difference of Greek
and barbarian, studied, comprehended, and turned
to the advantage of all, whatever was valuable and
characteristic in each of twenty races.
We may
measure the importance of his life by the perma-
nence of Grecian influence in Asia, till all was
swallowed up in Rome; and the loss sustained in
his death by the confusion and agonies of empires
which succeeded his domination. He perished,
having lived scarce more than thirty years, still me-
ditating, on his death-bed, mighty designs for the
future; and leaving behind him as his trophy, the

noblest empire that had ever existed. The funeral
games that celebrated his decease, were contests for
kingdoms; and the mantle of the Macedonian sol-
dier was divided into the imperial robes of many

monarchs.

SWEET bird that thro' the budding boughs art flinging
Notes of such wild and tremulous delight,
That round my very soul their web is clinging,
And with the feathery wood's melodious sighing,
Inwoven with the dancing waters light,
Now bursting forth, full as a pillar bright
Of flame upsprung, now fading tenderly,
As 'twere an angel winging its slow flight,
The soul of music in sweet sadness dying,
Would I could float like thee,

Within the sphere where thou apart dost sit,
By thy own flood of melodies concealed!
For never yet, I think, to mortal wit
Hath such surpassing vision been revealed,

Or lesson given of such deep mystery

As thou proclaimest in sounds, to them who listeners be!
Time was, when on my solitary walk
The stars shone kindly, when before my feet,
Turn wheresoe'er I might,

The meadows lay asleep in sunny light,

And skies and streams, and every vision bright
With love and joy, my heart of hearts did greet.
Then daisies trembling on their curved stalk,
The violet-studded bank, the pebbly rill,
The crocus and the sheathed daffodil

Spoke to me in the music of delight,

And with strong incantations, strong but still,
Within my soul awoke its deep indwelling might!
Why past these glorious powers, this strength, away?
Oh, gentle bird, alas, what had I done,
That for so many days the beauteous face
Of nature, with its many-figured grace,
Lay like a blank before me! Twilight dun
Enwrapt me like a pall! Oh, happier lot,
In midnight to be lost, by no dim ray

Of light, called back to think of the clear day,
Which we, with perverse spirit, have regarded not!
Oh, joy! to feel again,

The old affections wake at thy sweet strain!
I feel, I feel thy joy,

Thou happy creature, thou whom no annoy
E'er visited! Oh, pleasant power,
To win the ancient dower

Of natural happiness; to hear the stream
Thus musically babble to the beam

Of noon-tide, and the whispering leaves repeat
The old undying melody, and greet
An answering spirit in my soul, which springs
Out of myself to joy with all created things!

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ATHENÆUM *.'

all rag riches must have an end: so a few months
after her marriage, Malibran's bank stopped pay.
ment. I won't stop here to consider the misery oc-
casioned by this to hundreds of thousands of honest
people; but only think what must have been the
feelings of this sweet woman, suddenly reduced from
elegance and affluence to utter want! Reader, wont
you join with me in cursing the beastly Rag System,
and the ugly, lying feelosofers who uphold it? It
was lucky that she was no fine Madam,' brought
up to think it disgraceful to get her own and her hus-
band's livelihood by honest industry. Instead of
moping and repining, and only adding to her misery,
she strived to remedy it, and came over here to sing.
I am very fond of the opera, and always go when
I can, particularly since last year, as they have not
required me to dress so much like a Tom Fool, as
before. I don't want a 'stall,' because I am neither
a horse nor an ass, and there are always too many of
the latter kind alone for all the stalls they have: so I
go to the pit, and generally take my seat in one of
the front rows, where I hear and see well, I go
there to hear and see, not to stand staring and gaping
at all the base, smudgy-faced, aristocratic fools, who
parade themselves in the boxes to show how much
taxes they eat.

angelic creature in 'The Chronicle.' Bravo, Scotchman! When you're hanged I'll remember this good deed, and make interest with Jack Ketch to tie the knot under your left ear, and put you out of pain quickly.

But the weekly papers are even worse. Two, in particular, have been more base than all the others: I mean a thing called The Spectator,' and another nauseous thing called The Literary Gazette.' As for The Spectator,' I shall not refute any of its low, filthy stuff; because, to do so, I must insert some of his odious remarks, which I don't mean to pollute these pages with, because I wish them to be read by medest women.

But I mean to say a word more to the hireling who vomits forth The Literary Gazette,' because he has insinuated a malignant calumny, which ought to be contradicted without delay. I do not know who is the filthy Scotch hireling who writes 'The Literary Gazette,' but I see the name of one Scripp at the end of it; and I shall treat him as the writer of these vile calumnies which he is vile enough to publish. This Scripp, I have no doubt, is also a Scotchman, a vile, dirty-faced, dirty-handed, dirty-minded Scotchman. The libel of which I complainedBut no, I'll tell you the truth first, that you may see the full enormity of the calumny.

Well, you may be sure I did not miss going to SIR,-The beastly, lying 'Press' has such a natural, I wished to see any body who had lived in a free Romeo. When she fell down dead in the last scene, see Madame Malibran soon after she came, because Last Saturday fortnight, Madame Malibran acted in born love of low, filthy falsehood, that when it has country, and because I had a fellow-feeling for any the sweet young woman was so intent on her acting, no particular purpose to serve by lying, still it will one who was a victim of the vile paper-money delu-thinking of nothing else, that she quite forgot to take lie merely for lying's sake. The knavish gang has sion. I went-I saw her-I heard her. Never, no been working for the last twenty years to injure me; never, have I felt so pure ecstatic a thrill of pleasure and I suppose when it and the Thing' had con- but once, and that was when I heard that Castlereagh trived to drive me out of the country, and plunder had cut his throat at North Cray, in Kent. I have me of all I had, they thought they had got rid of been every night since, that she has performed, William Cobbett. But here I am again in spite of like some of the others, but not so much as her), and all the Thing' and the Press' could do; and here my admiration for her has only grown the greater. I'll stay in spite of them, and Sidmouth, and their Any body might have seen me any of these nights Power of Imprisonment' bills, to work the down-in one of the two first rows. I always wear a black fall of the Thing,' and the lying knaves who live by neckcloth and a blue coat. it, which, I hope, please God, to see before I die, unless the Collective,' in their wisdom, pass a bill I never read the base lying papers; but one day for dissecting me alive, and denying me Christian I thought I would look into them to see if they could burial. Now, I observe, that when these base, hire- speak truth on any subject which had nothing appaling wretches stop a moment from their chief and rently to do with me. Will these scoundrels, thought constant employment of slandering ME, they must, abuse this woman because I admire her? Or will find some other victim for their scurrility. And I observe, that their natural hatred of any thing like talent and honesty always leads them to fasten on any body who particularly deserves praise.

There is a very charming singer at the Italian Opera, called Madame Malibran. I won't attempt to describe her person, her singing, or her acting, because I'm sure no language that I am master of would give my readers any conception of the admiration I feel for her. She isn't yet one-and-twenty -and so beautiful! I'm sure, if heavenly beauty ever was displayed on this earth, Malibran's is such. Her voice has a wonderful compass, the lower part of it being particularly fine. But her acting is above all comparison the finest I have seen. I grant that Pasta is very admirable. But Malibran is equally good in comedy and tragedy: she has certain excel

lencies which Pasta has not; whatever defects we

may presume to discover in her, I have no doubt

age will correct.

Her father was Garcia, the famous tenor. She appeared in England five or six years ago, and was much admired. But her father about that time found out that there was no good in his living here, merely to pay taxes to rascally placemen-so he went over to the United States of America, where, thank God, there are no taxes raised more than are necessary for the government of the country, in order to pamper the insolence of lazy, good-for-nothing sinecurists. And here this beautiful creature married Malibran, whom I recollect well, one of the richest, I may almost say, the richest, banker in New York. But

We give this article, as we found it among the papers in our letter-box: satisfied with its internal evidence

of authenticity, we confess that we have taken no further pains to ascertain if it be really from the pen of the renowned person whose name is subscribed to it.-ED.

I

against the floor; some say she cut it against a piece care of herself, and gave her arm a desperate blow of glass which had been left there by accident. She next day at the Catholic Chapel, in Warwick-street. was very ill in consequence: I heard she fainted the Of course she could'nt act all the next week; and, took the precaution of getting a doctor's certificate, as Laporte behaved in a very shameful manner, she and publishing it in the papers. Well, we were obliged to do without her all that week; and the sun didn't shine; and horrid rainy weather it was, and did much harm to the crops. Last Tuesday, however, she felt herself rather better, and acted Rosina. Sweet creature! she looked very pale, and had her arm in a sling, and whenever any body came near it they think it necessary to vilify her in order to up- she winced, as if the very motion of the air hurt her. hold the VILE PAPER-MONEY SYSTEM? Or will I never saw her lovely face so lovely; she never they run her down simply because she is every thing exerted her sweet voice more; and, in spite of all that's good and charming? I'm sure I can't make her pain and fright, never did she act with more archfound the whole, base, mongrel pack of carrion-fed these exertions, that she could not appear in a new out what was the excellent reason, but sure enoughness and spirit. She was so ill in consequence of curs had opened their nauseous mouths in one beastly and difficult part, which she had undertaken to perdiscordant yelp against her. Old lying Anna Brodie, form for Curioni's benefit, on Thursday. It appears of The Times, of course, was in front of them all; she offered Curioni to play any one of three other for, to do Anna justice, whenever there is any thing parts; but, I suppose, he did not wish to run any base to be done, she is always the first. You never chance of her injuring herself, and accordingly the such filthy venom, such gross, impudent imposture. jured the benefit, and I'm sorry for this, for Curioni's saw such a heap of lies as the beasts had collected- benefit proceeded without her. Of course this inBut it's one consolation, that no one believes any sake. thing they say. One night Otello' was advertised, and the next day base old Walter, or some other of Anna's jontlemen,' stuck in one of the calumnies which he calls criticism, giving a full, true, and parwhereas I, and every body else who had been there, ticular account' of the performance of Otello;' knew that the said Otello' had not been performed that night, some other opera having been substituted der as this was enough to stop even Anna's impudent for it. Now, you'd suppose that such a gross blunjaw for a time. No such thing. On goes her jontleman' reporting, and cratacaizing, and slandering charming Madame Malibran, till the other day out comes another bouncer. After abusing Malibran's Romeo, Anna praises Sontag's performance of Giulietta. Are you stone-blind, Mother Anna? Are you deaf? Or is it all a parcel of lies from beginning to end, and you weren't there at all? I can hardly believe that even you, Anna, are so beastly sottishly stupid as not to know Sontag from Castelli. But it's no matter what Anna says, because no one believes what she says. The other daily papers' are just as bad, except, to be sure, old feelosofer Black, who has let some decent person praise the

Madame Malibran, and said she was shamming; Now, the base papers insinuated base stories against and this base Scripp actually printed these words in his vile journal of lies which appeared the next Sunher undoing Curioni's benefit on Thursday, after all day: Malibran is never a very sure card, (witness his trouble in preparing a treat of a new and attractive order.)'

Now, Scripp! base Scotchman! stop scratching your head for two minutes, and listen to me. Do you see this white, shining, cubic substance which I hold in my hand? This is a substance which you have never seen before, but perhaps you have heard of it:-it is called SOAP. It possesses wonderful properties. Pour hot water on it, and rub it over your face and hands. When you have done this for six weeks, and furthermore rubbed these parts of your body with a hard scrubbing-brush, they will probably lose some of their present blackness, and become-not white, but, possibly, grey. I see you stare, and wish to try the experiment. Well, only listen to me, and I'll make you a present of two cakes of soap as large as this.

Do you think, Scripp, because you have long ears that you are a judge of music? Do you think your knowledge of the bagpipe gives you a right to · cree eceeze? Do you really think, Scotchman, that having the Scotch fiddle makes a man a musician? No, ignorant, vile Scotchman; hold your tongue about these affairs, and keep to your 'leeterature' and feclosofy; or, if you must be gabbling about in your vile Scotch accent, don't be flinging dirt on such a noble creature as Malibran.

What do you mean by saying, in your low, filthy, gambling-house language, that she isn't a sure card? Does it mean that her health is uncertain? and that, when she's too ill to sing, she can't sing? If not, what does it mean? Do you mean that she could sing and wouldn't, and that she purposely spoilt Curioni's benefit? Could she help undoing it, as you call it? Can you prove that she didn't hurt her arm? Can you prove that the doctor's certificate of

her illness was false?

Let us suppose, Scripp, for a moment, that you have some of the common feelings of a man. Did you ever hear of doing to others as you would be done by? How should you like, if you were ill, to have such insinuations directed against you? Madame Malibran injured her arm in a zealous discharge of her duty. Suppose you were to do so in the discharge of your business, which, to do you justice, you do with quite zeal enough. Suppose, some Saturday night, you were to strain your arm in writing some lie too big even for you to manage. Suppose, in consequence, that the next morning your bundle of falsehood and folly could not appear, so that all the Grub-street hacks and milliners were disappointed of their Sunday dinner of nonsense and slander. Suppose that, in consequence, one of these hacks or milliners was to make a great outcry, and say you weren't a sure card? Would you think that fair?

And now, Sawney Scripp, I'll speak to you in language you can understand. I bid you, in your very next number, contradict those low falsehoods; I bid you say you lied, and that you're sorry for it. Its only eating your own words; a beastlier mess, to be sure, even than the parritch' which you make from the oats which you steal from the hackneycoaches. I bid you carefully to abstain from writing about Malibran ever again. You've no business to pollute her name by uttering it in your harsh Scotch

accent.

UNIVERSITY OF LEIPZIG.

Leipzig, 1st July, 1829. Dear Sir,-Though the subsequent details are by no means so complete as I could have desired, yet they will serve to convey a tolerably correct idea of the character and present state of our flourishing establishment. When more leisure is at my command, I will endeavour to supply the omissions with which it is chargeable.

dogmatics, pastoral science, and homilectics, and history of the church and dogmas; besides one professorship of modern institution for exegesis.

2. Jurisprudence, in which there are five professorships of earlier foundation for Roman law, the law of nature, ecclesiastical, feudal, and criminal law; and two professorships of modern foundation for natural and national law.

3. Medicine, to which are attached four professorships of ancient institution for pathology and physiology, therapy, anatomy, and surgery; and clinical medicine, obstetrics, materia medica, and four professorships of modern date for chemistry, botany.

ships; viz. Grecian and Roman literature, eloquence 4. Philosophy possesses ten ancient professorand poetry, the theory of philosophy, practical philosophy, history, eastern languages, politics and and four professorships of modern foundation; political economy, mathematics, and natural history; statistics, natural history, husbandry, and techno

logy.

The ancient chairs are supported out of the revenues of the University, and the appointments vary from 904., 120l., to 150l. a-year; but the modern professorships, the incomes of which vary from 45. to 90l. per annum, are endowed out of the revenues of the state, or by funds assigned by the Regent.

In the year 1409, two thousand discontented professors and students, members of the 'German Nation,' abandoned the University of Prague and came hither: hence originated the foundation of the University of Leipzig, by Frederick the quarrelsoine, then elector of Saxony. This prince and the greater part of his successors, particularly the elector Augustus, (who reigned from 1555 to 1586), and King Frederick Augustus (from the year 1768 to 1827), were zealous patrons of learning, and liberal friends to the University, either in the first stages of its establishment, or in after times, when they endowed it with lands derived from the suppression of monasteries at the Reformation, and assisted it with pecuniary means, a portion of which was directed to special purposes out of their own private purses. From these sources, combined with bequests and endowments originating with wealthy members of the University, and occasionally assigned to specific objects, our institution has acquired a pretty considerable extent of funds, consisting of landed estates, houses in the town, woods, capital at interest, corn, and other items. This property is administered by officers appointed by the University, and is carefully applied to the various purposes for which the several endowments were created. The Universityt possesses a complete The ordinary professors are bound to lecture jurisdiction of its own, both civil and criminal, ex-gratuitously four hours, and the extraordinary protending over all its members, professors, students, fessors, two hours per week, upon subjects within and functionaries, as well as all men of letters, the range of the faculty to which they are attached. physicians, surgeons, and lawyers, who may settle in Leipzig after they have completed their studies. Of the tribunal, by which this jurisdiction is exercised, the rector is the president or præses; its other members are the ex-rector, his predecessor, and three others of the professors; but the rector and members going out of office every six months, and every professor being qualified to sit, there is a perpetual judge of the University in the person

There is a greater or less number of extraordinary professors attached to each faculty, whereof that of philosophy alone possesses from twelve to twenty; those of this class, who distinguish themselves by their erudition, and the copiousness of their prælections receive an annual remuneration, varying from 15l. to 45l., and defrayed out of the public revenue.

In connection with each faculty are five, ten, twelve, or more private lecturers, who must hold the rank of doctors in their respective faculties, and must have publicly maintained a printed thesis of their own composition: this entitles them to deliver lectures, but they do not receive any official remuneration.

Besides public prælections, every professor and

Now, Scotchman, you must have a reason, I sup- of a Doctor of Laws, to whom an actuary and two lecturer gives as many extra lectures per diem as

pose, for doing what I tell you to do. I'll give you two good Scotch reasons. First, if you do as I bid you, I'll give you a whole sheep's head; and if you do it handsomely, I don't care if I give you the tripes and trotters into the bargain. Second, if you dare to disobey me, on Monday next I'll go to your rascally dog-hole, pull you out from under your wife's petticoats, stop your nasty mouth with a pitchplaster, and give your vile carcass to the Collective'

to dissect.

I can't say any more, Mr. Editor, because I expect a man who is coming to buy some of my young beech trees, (which, by the by, are very thriving, and I must go into the City afterwards. I send you this, because I see you have not joined in the vile conspiracy against me and Madame Malibran. You let a red-haired Scotchman write against me in your paper last year; but even he was more civil than the vile daily-press,' and spoke a few words of truth. My Register' is quite taken up in putting down the THING' and the RAG SYSTEM;' so that I may send you some more notices on matters connected with the fine arts.* Your's,

WILLIAM COBBETT.

I have sent Madame Malibran a bushel of my best Indian corn as a token of my esteem for her.

We shall be most happy to find, at all times, space in our columns for the straight forward' views of so honest a correspondent: the more readily so, from our firm conviction that no personal consideration can have influenced his able vindication of a lady in whose cause he has shown himself so zealous a champion.-ED.

registrars are subordinate.

There are four faculties, viz.

ships of ancient institution for Moral Theology,
1. Theology, in which there are four professor-

* There is no portion of the constitution of universities so ancient as that of the classification of their members by separate nations. In the twelfth and subsequent centuries, this denomination implied knots of teachers alone, or of students, or of teachers and students, natives of particular countries, who were congregated into privileged corporations without any reference to the department of elected their own regents and officers, enacted their own learning or science, which they taught or studied: they statutes, and had their own privileges, treasuries, schools, archives, places of assembly, festivals, and peculiar usages. The origin of this institution has been traced by some writers to the sophists of the fourth century, whose schools at Athens possessed classes, which somewhat resembled the classification by nations peculiar to the oldest universities of the middle ages. Meiner's Gesch. vol. 1, p. 29-32.

I apply this designation to our high school in the fullest and, until lately, the true and original meaning of the word as a corporation instituted by the state, and exercising a local and independent jurisdiction over its distinguished by peculiar privileges, especially that of members and pupils, as being a spot where every branch of learning and science is taught, and as enjoying the right of conferring degrees; not as being a mere lyceum or academy, where there is no universal instruction af forded, and no degree conferred, but where the student walks in and walks out at the beck of his curiosity or caprice, irresponsible to any jurisdiction in his scholastic character, and in this sense, unrecognized by the laws and legitimate institutions of his country.

he thinks fit, and the fees for them are left to his own discretion. The half-yearly cost of each course varies from fifteen to thirty shillings.

have already enumerated, the state provides in Independently of the functionaries, which we part for teachers of the principal foreign languages, fencing, gymnastics, dancing, riding, drawing, painting, engraving, and music.

At the beginning of every half-year, there appears a printed announcement of the several lectures, which will be delivered during the ensuing six months by the respective professors, lecturers, and teachers.

No restrictions are imposed upon the student; it is open to him to attend whatever courses he prefers, and in every other respect, he enjoys entire freedom of action. His expense of lodging varies from seventy-five shillings to fifteen pounds per annum, and he may dine at one of the first hotels for forty-five shillings, or at an inferior one for nine or twelve shillings a month. In the articles of dress, amusement, &c. he is in every sense his own master. Though it cannot be denied that this state of perfect independence, both as concerns his studies and his leisure, has occasioned many a youth's undoing, experience has shewn, that it is the only sure means of rousing great intellectual endowments, and forming men of eminent learning.

Though there are few states in Germany which do not possess their own universities, Leipzig has always maintained a foremost rank among them,