est pro patriâ scripsi." Pleasantly he does write, but not all his anecdotes would be called, in English, decorous.

Ratisbon, or, as the Germans name it, Regensburg, is celebrated as having been the seat of many diets or congresses of the empire: but, as this privilege is now transferred to Frankfort, the town declines. The bridge has fifteen arches, and is the favourite walk of the inhabitants. There are pleasant islands below it.

Passau, situate on a peninsula at the confluence of the Inn and the Danube, has also a fine bridge: it is a fortified town of 9000 inhabitants, and resembles Coblentz.

Linz is a more considerable place, having 20,000 inhabitants. The suburbs are larger than the original city; the bridge is handsoine; the walks agreeable; the prospect, from the Schlossberg, fascinating. A place of pilgrimage near, called Mariataferl, is stated to be visited by one hundred thousand pilgrims annually.

A geographical survey of Austria follows. So small a portion of the Emperor's subjects are Germans, that our author hesitates whether his imperial majesty would not do better to transfer his metropolis to Belgrade, and to pursue aggrandizement on the right bank of the Danube, at the expense of the Turkish empire. The Black Sea offers an unexplored field to commerce; and the empty provinces near the mouth of the Danube, like the Louisiana of North America, are capable of rapid and high cultivation by the importation of colonists, who would descend the river in any quantities, if allotments of land, and legitimate protection, were secured to the emigrants. A single generation has sufficed to advance the province of Ohio from wilderness to civilization. Europe is now so superabundantly peopled, that a single reign would suffice to convert the wide and fertile valley of the Lower Danube into a flourishing state, if the mere invitation of protection could be extended to voluntary settlers.

A critique of the reign of Joseph II. occurs: he drove too fast in a new road, and was overturned; but there was no occasion for his successors to condemn the road, and resume the old one.

The unused resources of Austria are prodigious, but they cannot be called forth without exciting an activity of mind and conduct dangerous to the public repose. Hence a certain torpor of the body politic is systematically encouraged. The sovereign. fears the people in Germany, the nobility in Hungary, and the priesthood every where. He honestly proclaimed, "I want loyal subjects, not learned men." The army and the public roads are in admirable condition.

The Austrian is much at his ease, and appears happy; he is not heavily taxed, the soil is most productive, the means of subsistence cheap; he is fat and indolent; an eating, drinking, smoking,

laughing, and loving loiterer; he is hospitable and fond of religi ous festivals; ignorant and musical, and a most unwilling traveller. No where less arrogance; the nobility are affable, the emperor popular in his manners.

XII-XVIII. These seven letters describe Vienna.' We have also lying before us a pamphlet, translated from the French, which also delineates " Vienna as it is," in about equal compass. Something we shall borrow, or abridge, from both accounts; the German one has more of complacence, the French one more of satire.

Vienna stands on the right or south bank of the Danube, which there divides into unequal streams, and forms separate islands; and it is, unfortunately, on the lesser branch that the city abuts: its situation would have been far more imposing if the quay had been washed by the main stream. The approach from the north is over a long wooden bridge, which obstructs the course of the rapid stream, and ought to be replaced with marble magnificence. Leopold's suburb is first reached, then the other arm of the Danube, and finally Vienna itself. The steeple of St. Stephen's church is the tallest and most conspicuous monument of architecture, and affords the best panorama of the town. The old city is surrounded by an esplanade, which, like the boulevards of Paris, occupies the place of the ancient fortifications; and contiguous to this esplanade are numerous fine palaces, and behind them vast suburbs. Still one wishes it had been planted; the lack of shade, the fog of dust is tormenting. The city gates offer striking points of view. The streets of the old town are narrow, and the open spaces small: the houses, five or six stories high, are rounded off at the corners of the streets, and have balconies. The shops are splendid; the throng of people incessant, and the more striking for the great variety of costume,-Greeks, Turks, Hungarians, Germans, soldiers, priests, sedans, cavaliers, and carriages. The number of beautiful women visible in the public walks is unsurpassable, but the men have mostly a clumsy appearance. The graben, the market, the Joseph's-platz, the Freiung'splatz, and the Schotten-platz, are the principal squares or openings. The Herren, Kärnthner, Singer streets are fine, and the number of palaces astonishing. The royal palace, and mausoleum, and those of the principal nobility are specified, and catalogues provided of the contained pictures. The favourite public walk is the Prater, a park intersected with fine alleys of trees, in which temporary tents and booths are erected, which supply refreshments and music. The stately Gothic church of Saint Stephen is somewhat less adapted for solemn devotion by the

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toleration of a thoroughfare, in which porters pass with burdens: however, it is open every day, and all day long, to the devout, without paying an admission-fee at the door. The architect had planned two towers, but only one is completed. The church of St. Augustin, of St. Michael, of the Capuchins of St. Carl, and others, are striking. There are five theatres at Vienna; a na tional theatre, an opera house, &c.: but the most characteristic is Casperle, resembling the Vaudeville. Here pieces are given in the provincial slang of the place, and the favourite subjects are parodies of heathen mythology set to music, like our Justice Midas and Poor Vulcan. At Berlin no one laughs; at Vienna every one. Thirty-four suburbs surround the city, and these are rapidly increasing; the inhabitants of the metropolis are known to exceed 300,000, and will probably, ere long, amount to half a million. Hospitals of various kinds have been erected with magnificence, and endowed with liberality. Some monasteries contribute to public education, if not instruction; but many are use less receptacles of idleness, or schools of abject superstition. The police is good; persons and property are respected; the lighting, the fire-enginery, is satisfactory. The streets might be better watered: and there is an extensive secret system of espial, which oppresses all freedom of conversation on subjects of religion and politics, the two great hinges of social human interest. On these points, unless a man can think as he pleases, and speak as he thinks, what is he but a moral eunuch? The taverns, the coffee-houses, are frequented, and much curiosity is displayed to obtain even a censured newspaper. An academy of painting and sculpture preserves the fine arts; but the most meritorious of the schools of instruction is the Oriental Academy, graced with the high name of Von Hammer. The university reckons above a thousand students, who have more discipline and less spirit of inquiry than their brethren of the north. The carnival, and various other religious festivals, amuse the people at regular intervals. Gaming is much discouraged. All the sensualities are freely indulged in this metropolis of the Pays de Cocagne.

The neighbourhood of Vienna offers pleasing walks and rides to Schönbrun, Luxenburg, Hadersdorf, to the mountains, and to the baths. The summer pleasures of the place rival its winter accommodations.

XIX.-XXII. Travels, through Steyermark and Carinthia, to Triest; return through the valley of the Ems.

XXIII. XXVII. The Austrian Alps, Linz and Salzburg, the baths of Gustein, the Gros Klockner, Berchtoldsgaden, Luke König. The salt-mines. Journey from Salzburg to Innsbruk.

XXVIII.-XXX. Excursions in Tyrol, general description of the province; the Voralberg, and the principality of Lichten

stein.

XXXI-XXXV. Bohemia, Prague and its environs, Moravia and Austrian Silesia. The Bohemians and Moravians speak a Slavonian dialect, and have the manners of Hungarians rather than of Germans. They had translated the Bible before Luther, and their literature had secretly prepared not merely the explosion of the Hussites, but the sudden co-operation which Luther obtained among the German princes.

XXXVI. The baths of Carlsbad, Töplitz, Eger, mineral baths; and the approach to Saxony.

When the other two volumes make their appearance, we shall probably give our readers an account of them.

ART. VIII. Die Geschichte der Assassinen, aus Morgenländischen Quellen, durch Joseph Von Hammer. Stuttgard und Tübingen, 1818. In 8vo.

THERE is no term in more familiar use throughout Europe than that of Assassin, yet to the generality of readers little is known of the singular sect from which the appellation has been derived. William, archbishop of Tyre, and the Cardinal de Vitri, bishop of Acre, writers of the thirteenth century, gave some short notices of that terrible band of murderers, the followers and ministers of the celebrated Old Man of the Mountain, with whom the champions of the cross came in contact in Syria; and Benjamin of Tudela, the Jewish traveller, Haïton, the Armenian prince, and Marco Polo, the illustrious Venetian and father of modern travel, made known their first and chief establishment in Persia. The notions concerning them were vague and unsettled; their religious system and political constitution remained enveloped in obscurity; and the wonderful narrative of the last-named traveller, the details of which will be found in the course of this article, tended to cast a veil of mystery and fable over the society to the eyes of Europeans.

But in the eighteenth century, Asia and every thing connected with it began to excite considerable attention, and the subject of the Assassins could not long remain unnoticed. D'Herbelot

had, in his celebrated work, already given some account of them from his oriental authorities; and the copious and even profuse learning of Mr. Falconet, poured forth, (to use the language of Gibbon), in two Memoirs read before the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres, all that was known concerning them. Gibbon's own account, derived from Falconet, does not occupy

more than half a page, and in that short space more than one error may be detected. Latterly, the French orientalists have turned their attention to this interesting subject, and the labours of Silvestre de Sacy, Quatremère, and Jourdain, have tended much to illustrate the history and constitution of the society of the Assassins.

In Germany their history has been written by Witthof, whose work we have not seen, but from the character given of it by the author whose work we are now to review, we should regard it as of little value. The last and completest work on the subject is that which stands at the head of this article, written by one of the most celebrated orientalists that modern Europe has produced. This history brings forward, from purely oriental sources, new and surprising views of the nature and organization of the Order, as Mr. Von Hammer denominates it. In English, we may here observe, there is no satisfactory account of the Assassins, except the short notice given of them by Sir John Malcolm, in his valuable History of Persia; and his statements do not, on every point, exactly tally with those of their German historian. The work has now been published nine years, but we have reason to believe that it is very little known in England, and are tempted to think that the interest and novelty of its details will induce our readers to excuse us for going so far back.

Mr. Von Hammer depicts the Assassins as forming an Order, at once military and religious, like the Templars and the Teutonic Knights, with whom he compares them; and, like them, subject to the control and guidance of a Grand Master, who was named the Sheikh-el-Jebel, corruptly rendered the Old Man of the Mountain, who, from his seat at Alamoot in the north of Persia, like the General of the Jesuits from Rome, directed the motions of his numerous and devoted subjects, and made the most haughty monarchs tremble at his name. This novel and interesting view of the subject Mr. Von Hammer derives from Arabic and Persian authorities, from Ibn Khaledoon and Macrisi, from Mirkhond, Lary, Jelalee of Kaim, and others. His work is divided into seven books, in which, after a very valuable introduction, he narrates the origin, progress, and downfall of the Order, and concludes with a very spirited and detailed account-the first ever given in Europe-of the capture of Bagdad and the overthrow of the Caliphat, which fell, along with the empire of the Assassins, beneath the victorious arms of Hulagoo, the Tartar Khan. From

Das meuchelmörderische Reich der Assassinen. 8vo. Leipzig. 1765.

+ Mariti gives some account of the Assassins, but he only repeats what is to be found in preceding writers. The same may be said of the different historians of the Crusades, with the exception of Wilken.