animating courage. This plain was formerly embellished with vines, but these were cut down by the French for the use of their little camp. We pursued our way on foot through various windings, among laurel trees, over slippery ground; for though it is still a quarter of an hour's walk to the fall, yet its spray reaches as far as this place. The noise of the cataract we had heard above an hour. I advise every traveller before he approaches, to stipulate with his cicerone to conduct him, without any windings, straight to a small house called Casino, built on an isolated crag opposite to the fall; else these people, who are fond of having a great deal to show, take him to situations where he discovers first one, and then another portion of the cataract; and not only lead him unnecessarily round about, but greatly diminish the general effect. The day of our visit was serene, and one of the coldest we had experienced in Italy; for the vapours, rising like dust from the stream, had settled round about, and were frozen into ice, which rendered every step we took near these profound abysses extremely dangerous. Exclusive of the danger, our excursion was truly comic; for our two guides were obliged to spread their cloaks for us on the slippery declivity, in order to afford us a safe footing. As soon as we had all passed from the first mantle to the second, we were obliged to make a long halt, till the first mantle was carried forward, and placed by the side of the other, and so alternately the whole way. At length we reached the object of our wishes; we stood beneath the shed, open on all sides, up to the ancles in water, and exposed to a drizzling rain. But who could here think of any inconvenience for the first ten

minutes? and who could, even at the end of twentyfour hours, conceive the idea of describing this spectacle? From a perpendicular height of two hundred feet, the whole current of the Velino precipitates itself among the craggy rocks beneath, and the scene which it there presents is not a subject either for the pencil or the pen. Your eye is fixed, your ear is stunned, the ground on which you stand shakes incessantly; terror almost seizes you, and obliges you to tremble too. But a spectacle delightful, enchanting, and unparalleled, rivets your attention; you perceive a rainbow-a bow, did I say?—a circle—yes, positively, you perceive the whole variegated circle overarching the fall, and so nearly uniting at the bottom, that not above a twelfth part of its circumference is wanting at the base. This phenomenon is like enchantment. We are so accustomed to see, in the finest rainbows, at most a semi-circle, that we are lost in astonishmet at this spectacle. And what colours! such Iris never painted on the firmament: they all burn; it is an artificial firework in the midst of the water. But this is not enough: nature seems to take delight in surprising your senses with new wonders: the circle is suddenly reflected to the right and left; you see four arches at the same time, and the colours of these very reflections are as vivid as those usually exhibited elsewhere by the finest rainbow. The waterfall of Terni is truly beautiful, but infinitely more beautiful is the rainbow of Terni; and the recollection of its being a sign of the covenant between God and man must be strongest on this spot. I left it with a sentiment of profound melancholy, and shall remember it with transport as long as I live. It is

one of the three objects which will indelibly impress on my mind the recollection of Italy: the flaming Vesuvius, the subterraneous Pompeii, and the rainbow of Terni.

KOTZEBUE.

SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY IN THE COUNTRY.

HAVING often received an invitation from my friend Sir Roger de Coverley to pass away a month with him in the country, I last week accompanied him thither, and am settled with him for some time at his country-house, where I intend to form several of my ensuing speculations. Sir Roger, who is very well acquainted with my humour, lets me rise and go to bed when I please, dine at his own table or in my chamber as I think fit, sit still and say nothing without bidding me be merry. When the gentlemen of the country come to see him, he only shows me at a distance. As I have been walking in his fields, I have observed them stealing a sight of me over the hedge, and have heard the knight desiring them not to let me see them, for that I hate to be stared at.

I am the more at ease in Sir Roger's family because it consists of sober and staid persons; for as the knight is the best master in the world, he seldom changes his servants; and as he is beloved by all about him, his servants never care for leaving him by this means his domestics are all in years, and grown old with their master. You would take his valet-de-chambre for his brother, his butler is gray-headed, his groom is one of the gravest men that I have ever seen, and his coachman has the looks of a privy counsellor. You see the goodness of the master even in the old house-dog, and

in a gray pad that is kept in the stable with great care and tenderness, out of regard to his past services, though he has been useless for several years.

I could not but observe with a great deal of pleasure the joy that appeared in the countenances of these ancient domestics upon my friend's arrival at his country-seat. Some of them could not refrain from tears at the sight of their old master; every one of them pressed forward to do something for him, and seemed discouraged if they were not employed. At the same time the good knight, with a mixture of the father and the master of the family, tempered the inquiries after his own affairs with several kind questions relating to themselves. This humanity and good nature engages everybody to him, so that when he is pleasant upon any of them, all his family are in good humour, and none so much as the person he diverts himself with: on the contrary, if he coughs, or betrays any infirmity of old age, it is easy for a stander-by to observe a secret concern in the looks of all his servants.

My worthy friend has put me under the particular care of his butler, who is a very prudent man, and, as well as the rest of his fellow servants, wonderfully desirous of pleasing me, because they have often heard their master talk of me as his particular friend.

My chief companion, when Sir Roger is diverting himself in the woods or the fields, is a very venerable man, who is ever with Sir Roger, and has lived at his house in the nature of a chaplain above thirty years. This gentleman is a person of good sense and some learning, of a very regular life and obliging conversation: he heartily loves Sir Roger, and knows that he is very much in the

old knight's esteem; so that he lives in the family rather as a relation than a dependant.

I have observed in several of my papers, that my friend Sir Roger, amidst all his good qualities, is something of a humorist; and that his virtues, as well as imperfections, are as it were tinged by a certain extravagance, which makes them particularly his, and distinguishes them from those of other men. This cast of mind, as it is generally very innocent in itself, so it renders his conversation highly agreeable, and more delightful than the same degree of sense and virtue would appear in their common and ordinary colours. As I was walking with him last night, he asked me how I liked the good man whom I have just now mentioned? and, without staying for an answer, told me, that he was afraid of being insulted with Latin and Greek at his own table; for which reason he desired a particular friend of his at the university to find him out a clergyman rather of plain sense than much learning, of a good aspect, a clear voice, a sociable temper, and, if possible, a man that understood a little of backgammon. My friend," says Sir Roger, "found me out this gentleman, who, besides the endowments required of him, is, they tell me, a good scholar, though he does not show it. I have given him the parsonage of the parish; and because I know his value, have settled upon him a good annuity for life. If he outlives me, he shall find that he was higher in my esteem than perhaps he thinks he is. He has now been with me thirty years; and though he does not know I have taken notice of it, has never in all that time asked any thing of me for himself, though he is every day soliciting me for something in behalf of one or other of my tenants, his parish