'It is somewhat remarkable, that in voyages and journeys so extensive and uncertain as those I have made from Falmouth to Mexico and Cincinnati, I arrived at and departed from the principal places, in which I had important engagements to fulfil, within a day or two of the time I had anticipated before leaving London.' Mr. Owen makes an engagement personally with Mr. Campbell, in Western Virginia, not far from the Ohio, to meet him for the great logomachy at Cincinnati, not a year subsequent to the time of the challenge. He proceeds over the mountains, by the way of Baltimore and New York. He crosses the Atlantic, traverses England, Scotland, &c., recrosses the Atlantic, visits Jamaica and St. Domingo, sails to Vera Cruz, stops at Jalapa, visits Mexico, sees every body, goes by invitation to the theatres, balls, and processions, visits the ancient temples and the prodigious cypresses, converts the only bishop of Mexico, General Santa Anna, and various other distinguished Mexicans to the social system, and, more than all, Mr. Poinsett; meets his quondam collaborator, Mr. McClure, going to Jalapa-sees the escort of those departing Spaniards, who carried off such great sums of specie, and some of whom, we believe, are now sojourning with us-sails from Vera Cruz to New Orleans, and thence to New Harmony, and thence to Cincinnati; and accomplishes all these wanderings, terraque, marique, within a day or two of his appointments and calculations, made a few months before. Italy, during the Consulate of Napoleon Buonaparte. Translated from the Italian of CARLO BOTTA, by the author of the Life of Joanna, Queen of Naples.' 2 vols. in one: pp. 392. Philadelphia: Tower & Hogan: 1829. THIS distinguished historian has pre-eminent claims upon the interest of American readers, apart from the intrinsic worth of his talents, as a writer. It seems to be generally conceded, that the most connected, fair and impartial history of the American revolutionary war has been written by this author in his native language of music. We shall, therefore, deem apology unnecessary for introducing a brief sketch of the life of this extraordinary living author. Carlo Botta was born, 1766, in the town of San Giorgio in Piedmont, and graduated as a physician at the university of Turin. In 1792, he was arrested for promulgating republican principles. The charge against him not being proved, he was liberated, after a short imprisonment. In 1794 he identified his fortunes with those of the French republic. The king of Sardinia was deposed in 1798, and he was appointed a member of the provisional government. The country was unfortunately managed by this commission, which had the fortune to become odious both to the French and Piedmontese. The terrible Suwarrow overthrew the French government in Piedmont, and Botta was obliged to fly to France. The battle of Marengo once more restored the French ascendency in Piedmont, VOL. III.-No. 3. 5 and Botta with Carlo Bossi, an advocate, and Carlo Gicolio, a physician, were appointed to govern Piedmont, under the name of an executive commission. The triumvirate, unfortunately, all held the Christian name of the deposed king. The wags of the country took leave to ridicule them under the I tre Carli the three Charles.' Some malicious wit made them the subject of the following epigram. Le Piedmont versait des larmes, Piedmont shed tears, while Charles was her king. What tears and what alarms, now that she has three Charles! Different writers attacked them incessantly with ridicule, and the bitterest satire. The motto was 'sutor ne ultra crepidam.' Cobbler, go not beyond your last. It is probable, that the great historian felt, that some part of the ridicule and satire had a foundation, and that it was impossible for them so to govern Piedmont, as to render it tranquil and happy. Piedmont was annexed to France, and the triumvirate were again out of place. Betta became a member of the legislative council, as representative for the department of Dora, and in 1803 its vice president. From this time, till 1810, he employed his leisure hours in writing his history of our revolutionary war, which was much admired in Italy, and which is cited even here, as the best account that has yet appeared of that contest. During this period he received the order of the legion of honor. In 1814 he obtained an employment under Louis, 18th. Unhappily, in Napoleon's short reign of a hundred days, which followed, he received from him still further promotion. This of course deprived him of all his offices on the return of the king. He was, however, permitted to reside at Paris, where he has since employed his time in literary pursuits, chiefly in writing history. He has been long occupied in writing a general history of Italy, commencing, where Guicciardini closes, and bringing it down to the period, when the work before us commences. We have derived no inconsiderable pleasure from comparing this history with that of the various French, English and American annalists of that period, and biographers of Napoleon, who have travelled over the beaten ground of his Italian campaigns; particularly with historical details upon the same theme by Sir Walter Scott, in his recent life of Napoleon. So many writers, and of such high fame, have handled this subject, that ordinary readers will generally suppose the theme exhausted, and think of his work with the disgust of those, who have surfeited on the same banquet before. Such will be the weak and false judgment of those, who have not learned, or do not know that the real and endowed historian, who travels in his might over the hackneyed materials of his predecessors, imparts to them a plastic character of novelty and originality, moulds them to a new form, vivifies them to a new life, and causes the reader to feast upon the trite and worn out theme with all the eager appetite of novelty. To us, it was constant cause for admiration, that variation apparently so trifling and unimportant in the narration, and in the arrangement of ma terials, and the order of events, should cause the same general subject to have an interest and freshness, as though we had never read Napoleon's Italian campaigns before. To give any thing like a summary of the great historical events narrated in this large and closely printed volume, would far overgo the space intended for this article. We shall touch here and there on some points of peculiar interest, in which the heart of the historian seems to have been most ardently engaged, and quote a few passages, which seem to us most calculated to convey a just idea of his peculiar characteristics, as a writer and a historian. A word of the character and manner of the historian in the commencement. He has been called the modern Guicciardini. He is clearly a strong and unhesitating anti-Buonapartist. Never has a portrait of the moral motives of that man been drawn in darker colors. He allows him strong talent, and particularly military talent. But moral virtue, beyond seemingly accidental and transient amiability, and rushes of impulsive good feelings of a moment, he never ascribes to him. The historian is all Italian, heart and soul throughout; and his national bias is constantly and obviously apparent. But his mind seems uniformly imbued with unshaken purposes of impartiality and scrupulous fidelity, as a historian. His style is sometimes inflated, and aspires to an epic declamation and grandeur, which will seem to American eyes hyperbole, and transgression of the modesty and simplicity of truth and nature. But the reader will bear in mind, that Italy is the country of impulse, of feeling, which to us would seem extravagant and exaggerated, that figurative and glowing and impassioned language naturally runs to an extent there, which our manners do not tolerate. The descriptions, however, strike us, as exceedingly graphic, and sometimes in the highest degree eloquent, spirited, and even sublime. It will be perceived in a moment, that the historian finds his models in Herodotus, Thucydides and the ancient historians, rather than the modern. Both Botta and Sir Walter Scott are men of an infinite fund of imagination; and yet no two histories can be imagined more unlike each other, than the scenic display of the latter, and the straight forward and never interrupted narrative of the former. It may further be remarked, that the Italians are a people, who having been for centuries under the bondage of foreign masters, have learned concealment, and carry on their own unshared train of thoughts in the deep and secret chambers of their own minds. Hence his reflections are generally laconic, sparing, conveying concealed sarcasm, and the meaning of a page indicated by a broken or half suppressed thought; while the natural craving of such a people for copious, exact and full narrative carries him into the minutest and most ample detail, where that is called for. The book opens with the return of Napoleon from Egypt, his abolition of the directory, and assumption of the supreme authority under the title of first consul. Thus early in his career, his exact and wonderful knowledge of human nature began to unfold itself, and to penetrate the secret springs of action of those monarchs and states, with whom France was then involved in war. His unlimited ambition may be clearly inferred from the vast designs, he began to manifest from the first moments of his power. The most striking account in this chapter, is the siege of Genoa by the Austrians, its obstinate defence by Massena, and the terrible famine which ensued for the unhappy inhabitants. . Having here to describe the aspect of Genoa in these latter days of the siege, I cannot, but deplore the fate of an Italian people reduced to the extremest misery,-not in a struggle decisive of misery or slavery, but to determine whether a city, desolated by rapine, slaughter, famine, and pestilence, should, in the end, be subject to Austria or France! Keith prevented the entrance of supplies by sea, Otto by land. Provisions became scarce-scarcity grew into want. 'Men and women, in the last agonies of starvation and despair, filled the air with their groans and shrieks. Sometimes, while uttering these dreadful cries, they strove with furious hands to tear out their agonized intestines, and fell dead in the streets. No one relieved them, for no one thought but of himself; no one heeded them, for the frequency of the circumstance had made it cease to seem horrible. Some in spasms and convulsions and contortions groaned out their last amidst crowds of the populace. Children, left by the death or the despair of their parents in utter destitution, with mournful gestures, and tears, and heart-broken accents, implored the pity of the passing stranger; but none either pitied them, or aided them; the excess of his own sufferings extinguishing in each man's breast compassion for the misery of others. These innocent deserted beings eagerly searching in the gutters of the streets, in the common sewers, in the drainings of the washing-houses, for a chance morsel of some dead animal, or any remains of the food of beasts, which, when found, was greedily devoured. Many who lay down alive in the evening were found dead in their beds in the morning, and children more frequently than adults: fathers accused the tardiness of death, and some hastened its approach by the violence of their own hands-citizens and soldiers alike. Some of the French preferring death to the anguish of hunger, destroyed themselves; others disdainfully flung down those arms which they had no longer strength to carry; and others, abandoning a habitation of despair, sought in the camp of the enemy, English or Austrian, that food and that pity which was no longer to be found amidst the French and Genoese. But cruel and horrible beyond all description was the spectacle presented by the German prisoners of war, confined in certain old barges anchored in the port; for such was the dire necessity at last, that for some days they were left without nutriment of any description. They eat their shoes, they devoured the leather of their pouches, and, scowling darkly at each other, their sinister glances betrayed the horrid fear of being at last reduced to a more fearful resource. In the end, their French guards were removed, under the apprehension that they might be made the sacrifice of ravening hunger: so great at last was their desperation, that they endeavoured to pierce holes in the barges in order to sink them, preferring to perish thus, rather than any longer endure the tortures of hunger. As common. ly happens, a mortal pestilence was added to the horrors of famine: the worst kinds of fevers carried off crowds from the public hospitals, the lowly hovels of the poor, and the superb palaces of the rich. Under the same roof, death might be seen in different shapes: one died, maddened by hunger, another stupified by fever; some pallid from extenuation, others livid with febrile spots. Every thing brought grief-every thing fear; for he who was still living awaited either his own death, or that of his nearest friends. Such was the state of the once rich and joyous Genoa; and the bitterest thought of all was, that her present sufferings could conduce nothing to future good, either as to her liberty or her independence.' -The second chapter is marked by a most graphic account of the crossing of the Alps by Buonaparte with the army of Italy. We have met with no description of that achievement, from which a painting could be so readily made, as this of Botta. 'From St. Pierre to the summit of the great St. Bernard there is no beaten road whatever, until is reached the monastery of the religious order devoted to the preservation of travellers bewildered in these regions of eternal winter; narrow and winding paths, over steep and rugged mountains, alone present themselves to the eye. But here the pertinacity of human resolution, the power of human ingenuity shone conspicuous. Every means that could be devised was adopted for transporting the artillery and baggage; the carriages which had been wheeled, were now dragged, those which had been drawn, were carried; the largest cannon were placed in troughs and sledges, and the smallest slung on strong and sure-footed mules. And thus this same passage, which Trivulzi accomplished in the severest season of the year, hauling up the artillery of Francis the First, from rock to rock, over the wintry barriers, Buonaparte effected in the service of the republic by means of sledges, carriages, and beasts of burden. The ascent to be accomplished was immense: in the windings of the tortuous paths the troops were now lost, and now revealed to sight. Those who first mounted the steeps, seeing their companions in the depths below, cheered them on with shouts of triumph; they answered in turn, and thus excited each other to their perilous and laborious task. The vallies on every side re-echoed to their voices. Amidst the snow, in mists and clouds, the resplendent arms and coloured uniforms of the soldiers appeared in bright and dazzling contrast; the sublimity of dead nature, and the energy of living action thus united, formed a spectacle of surpassing wonder. The Consul exulting in the success of his plans, was seen every where amongst the soldiery, talking with military familiarity to one, and now to another; and, skilled in the eloquence of camps, he so excited their courage, that, braving every obstacle, they now deemed that easy, which had been judged impossible. They soon approached the highest summit, and discerned in the distance the pass which leads from the opening between two towering mountains, to the loftiest pinnacle. With shouts of transport the soldiers hailed this extreme point as the termination of their labours, and with renewed ardour prepared to ascend.' A long and striking bulletin of the great battle of Marengo follows, and contains the touching anecdote of the last words of the gallant Dessaix. In less than a year the first consul had conquered Italy and Austria, contracted a friendship with the Russian emperor Paul, promised a reconciliation with Francis, and raised the fortunes of France from the lowest ebb to the flood tide of prosperity. The next chapter enters more fully, as we may remark this volume does throughout, into the difficulties between Buonaparte and the church, than any other history, with which we have met. It is amusing in these dis |