unchanged; and strangers, consequently, as I have had frequent occasion to witness, do not understand our oral Latin. Indeed, it was for some time my own. case; for I recollect having attended the performance of Terence's Phormio by the Westminster scholars, when, from my foreign education, I could scarcely follow the speakers. "Domine, non intelligo Anglice," responded Scaliger to the Latin address of an English student: and can words, I may ask, be more dissimilar than the "Explana mihi" of old Demipho, directed to Phormio, (Act ii., sc. 3, 33,) in an English, or continental mouth? Roger Ascham, who had travelled, and must have experienced the necessity of assimulation, may have equally impressed it on his pupil Elizabeth, as probably did Ludovicus Vives, a Spaniard, in his instructions, on her predecessor Mary. George Buchanan, too, a long and early resident in other countries, may be supposed to have taught James the accent he had himself acquired, and thus enabled the royal scholar to be understood. Milton and Johnson, we find, differed on the expediency of adopting the more general European pronunciation; but the great poet, when abroad, saw that it was indispensable, as Latin was then so much more the medium of communication than a century and a half afterwards, when Johnson published his life of Milton. "Let travellers be perfect Latinists, not only for pen, but for speech. The Latin tongue cements all the learned world, as it were, into one nation. Without it travellers are for some time such silly mutes that it rests with the companies charity to think that they have some reason," says a contemporary of Milton, quoted in this Magazine for August 1840, p. 121. It was in

Latin that Johnson conversed with the learned Jesuit Boscowich, because, said Arthur Murphy,* "he did not understand the pronunciation of the French." (Boswell, vol. iii., page 293.) But assuredly his Latin utterance must have been fully as strange to the accomplished Italian, who, in contradiction to my countryman's further statement, spoke, as he avowedly wrote, the language with classic elegance. The subject vividly reminds me of the contrasted impression once made on my organ at Edinburgh, in the celebration of divine service, with all the sweetness of an Italian accent, by a clergyman educated at Rome, and the same ecclesiastic's delivery of a sermon, immediately after, in his native idiom. It was a transition from the beautiful church-hymn, the "Adeste Fideles," as sung in Venice, to the harsh intonations of a Highlander's pibroch, however inspiriting to the martial Scott-from, I may say, the charm of Paganini's violin to the rugged bagpipe, or the touching simplicity of the final lines of the Iliad and the Paradise Lost, compared with the croaking of Aristophanes'" Frogs," (Act i., sc. 5,) and the grating portals of the infernal regions, in our own great poet's epic. Such, too, it has been remarked, was the variance between the deep-toned brogue of the brigaded Irish officers in speaking English, and the

* This gentleman, it is known, on terminating his collegiate course at St. Omer, was placed in a commercial house of this city. The establishment was that of my great-uncle, Mr. Harold, which, however, Murphy soon abandoned for the more congenial pursuits of the law and letters, but without the slightest ground of personal dissatisfaction with his master, who was a most amiable and highly connected gentleman. Several of his nearest relatives have long enjoyed the most important administrative offices in Catholic Germany, particularly in Bavaria, where the recognised antiquity of the Harold family entitled them to the first distinctions at court.

exquisite polish of their foreign accents, acquired in high military intercourse abroad.

Nor, amongst the important results to France of the prevalence of her idiom, should we overlook the many writers of first eminence, who, by adopting it, have, though of foreign birth, been generally classed with her authors, and thus shed the bright radiance of their names on her science or letters. Proud may France, or any country, be of the associated glories of Lagrange, of Cuvier, of Malte-Brun, and of Humboldt, or of Hamilton, my countryman, and Rousseau, with the old chroniclers, Froissard, Monstrelet, Comines, &c., who were all aliens, though Mr. D'Israeli (Curiosities of Literature, page 445,) calls the last a Frenchman. Among foreigners by birth, yet not by language, we must also number Berthollet, who, by the happy application of science to the pursuits of industry, saved or gained for the chosen soil, whose precincts he had never entered until his four-andtwentieth year, an annual sum of forty millions of francs. Such was the ascertained fruit of the improved processes introduced by him into the manufacture of dyeing or bleaching matter, as well as of glass and soap. Of this last article, so essential to cleanliness and health, and which, in extent of use, may be almost considered a criterion of comparative civilisation, the quantity consumed in consequence of the increased supply has doubled, as every one in recollection of the former and present appearance of all classes in France must be convinced of. Professor Liebig, in his "Letters on Chymistry," (letter iii.,) states, that France formerly imported soda, the element of soap, from Spain, at the cost of about a million

sterling; but Le Blanc discovered how to make it from common salt, doubtless a great advantage to France; and the further facility of purchase from Berthollet's ameliorations, has produced the present strikingly advanced national neatness of personal habits. To no native chymist has France been more indebted, and, though not so eloquent, or rather fluent, as Fourcroy, he too could enliven his course of lectures with various anecdotes. One, in particular, during the memorable expedition to Egypt, whither he accompanied Bonaparte, under whose auspices he co-operated with Monge in founding and enriching the Grand Cairo Institute, as I heard it in glowing recital from his own lips, and may be pardoned for thus dwelling in fond retrospect on the merits of an honored friend and teacher, I shall briefly repeat. Ordered by his renowned commander to try the nerves of, and impress with admiration of European superiority, a native chief, the Sheik El Berkey, he condensed, in accumulated action, the most potent elements of chymical combination, including the terrific fulminating powder of his own invention; but the impassive Musulman stood unmoved, and betrayed not an excited muscle;-"Impavidum ferient ruinæ," as Berthollet added; and the truly astonished witness of this test of firmness was Bonaparte himself, at the barbarian's unsubdued apathy on the occasion. The fact I find also reported by Bourrienne, in his Mémoires, tome ii., page 178.

Thus to France we see ascribed this eminent man, who did not even owe his education to the country; nor did the eloquent and conscientious Joseph Le Maistre; nor, again, did Lagrange, or B. Constant,

with so many more Savoyards and Swiss; nor, we may add, the musical composers of whom she is most proud, Gossec and Grétry, without including Lulli, the boast of the preceding age. It is similarly, though with better right, as subjects of Rome, that the great city claimed the fame of Terence, of Apuleius, and of Claudian, natives of Africa, or of the Senecas, of Lucan, of Quintillian, Columella, &c., fruits of Spain, and Ausonius of France, with numerous others of alien origin. England, on equal grounds, might enlist among her writers, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, &c., born under our sway, or, from identity of language, the subsequent authors of America, if that circumstance could authorise the pretension. And, in other paths of distinction, is not Napoleon himself far more Italian than French, wholly, in fact, the former, even should we, as I think we must, notwithstanding the contradictory evidence of his marriage registry, place his birth in August, 1769, rather than in February, 1768, as attested by his own signature on his union with Josephine, that is, a few weeks after the annexation of Corsica to France, instead of preceding that event by sixteen months? (See Gent. Mag. for December, 1839, page 589.) "Sa tournure, son esprit, son langage sont empreints d'une nature étrangère," as reported of him by Madame de Stäel, who had studied him well in her "Considérations sur la Révolution Française," tome ii., page 198. Neither the blood nor soil of France formed a principle of his being, while both were essentially Italian, as Jersey and the Isle of Man are English, which a native of the Mauritius or the Ionian islands, immediately on the incorporation of these localities, would hardly be 3 E

VOL. II.