those rules are inadequate to the support of the principles of good taste, and have been arbitrarily laid down on a confined and imperfect hypothesis. Notwithstanding our opinion of the principal figure, we consider Mr. Haydon's performance highly honourable to himself and his country, and anticipate from his future labours (if wholly devoted to his elevated art, as we hope they will be) works which may equal the productions of the most auspicious times. MARCIAN COLONNA. WE have watched, with very pleasing interest, the gentle and roseate dawn of Mr. Cornwall's genius. His "Dramatic Scenes," and his "Sicilian Story," have combined more of fancy with more of conversational ease - have blended more of freshness with more of luxury-have exhibited more of moral nobleness with more of abandonment to the impulses of joy-than any other poems of our age. In these charming pieces, exquisite beauties are produced without seeming effort; the characters with whom we mingle are native to the element of poetry, and breathe forth human passion in the language of delicate spirits, without appear ing to know it. The imaginations drop from their lips like the rain from overcharged blossoms. In the lovely region to which these works have introduced us, the stream of passion is ever fresh and profound, though it is "fringed with roses." Soft as is their whole tenor, there is in them nothing effeminate; their sadnesses are mellowed by fancy, but not refined away; and their "nectared sweets" do not satiate. If airs breathe to us as from the "sweet south," we are always" clipped round" only by the free heavens, not by the gay creations of an artificial elegance. The music of humanity comes to our enchanted ears from the scenes of ill-fated love, or the grave of young hope, mild indeed and harmonious, yet still in its own sad and natural tones. That works like these should become speedily popular, afforded a timely proof that the taste for pure beauty was not lost in the worship of mere energy. Still we wished to see Mr. Cornwall attempting a bolder range-not, indeed, leaving his fairy bowers for the desolate regions of imagination, where all is dark, barren, and gigantic, but penetrating into yet holier and more varied scenes of loveliness than those which he had trodden. That in these inner retirements of the Muses he will be as free a ranger, as in the dainty vales where he has been accus tomed to linger "with soft, reluctant, amorous delay," is amply testified by the volume before us. But though we rejoice to find in Marcian Colonna indications of an intenser spirit, and glimpses of a further nobleness, than in Mr. Cornwall's preceding works, we do not consider his story as very felicitously chosen. The main spring of its distresses is not the motive of a moral agency, but the workings of hereditary madness a calamity which should, we think, be shaded from the thoughts as one of our being's most awful mysteries. The hero, a younger son of a noble family of Rome, is sent in childhood, by his heartless parents, to the convent of Laverna, where the disease of his mind is sometimes developed by the wretched superstitions around him, and sometimes soothed by the majestic scenery of the mountains. His elder brother dies-he returns to his home-and marries the lady who had shone before his boyish eyes in all "the glory and the freshness of a dream," but who had been given to another, and now regarded herself free by the reported death of her husband. But that husband lives to claim her, to awaken the fury in her lover's veins, and finally to drive him to murder her by poison. The author, in all this, has shewn his capability of treating a fearful subject tenderly-has imparted to the aberrations of madness something of the grandeur of destiny-and has irresistibly inculcated the practical lesson that a disease, whose strangest excesses have no moral obliquity in them, is capable of being softened and rendered gentler by the soothings of affection and the placid varieties of nature. Still though we would on no consideration have lost the tendernesses and the majesties of the work-we do not think the subject fit for poetry. When madness, like that of Clementina, arises from some great moral cause-or_sets loose a stupendous intellect, as in Lear or makes sweet discord in a lovely * Marcian Colonna, an Italian Tale, with three Dramatic Scenes and other Poems, by TV Cornwall. I vol. svo. mind, as in the instance of Ophelia it may have a place in high fiction. But a simple malady derived at the birth-though the most intellectual of diseases should, we think, be treated only by those who study it with a view to its cure. Indeed, to our feeling, not only absolute insanity, but all morbid emotions are unfit for the noblest uses of the bard. Fresh, healthful humanity, healthful even when erring, is the only fit theme for a poet of so pure a heart, and so sweet a fancy, as the author before us. The excellencies however of this poem, as we have already intimated, are of a very rare and exalted order. The description of the scenery around Laverna is striking as one of Salvator's wildest pictures. All the loves 'of Marcian and Julia when the visitings of disease do not break in on them-are at least as beautiful as any thing of the kind in the author's former poems. The little words and figures seem like the overflowing drops of hearts too full of passion and of joy. But perhaps the finest of all-certainly the vastest piece of contemplative imagination ever embodied by the author, is the following address to the ocean, which we prefer to the celebrated apostrophe with which "Childe Harold" closes. O thou vast ocean! ever-sounding sea! Ruffles its surface, and no spirits dare A will, a voice, and in thy wrathful hour, "Thou trackless and immeasurable main ! On thee no record ever lived again To meet the hand that writ it; line nor lead Hath ever fathom'd thy profoundest deeps, Where haply the huge monster swells and sleeps, Make music in earth's dark and winding caves, And hearken to the thoughts thy waters teach- There is a great deal of exceeding beauty in the minor pieces of this volume, but we can only enumerate a few which have particularly pleased us. "Amelia Wentworth," a dramatic scene, has a deep pathos and an affectionate familiarity, which are most soothing and resistless. The "Rape of Proserpine" is a piece of pure Greek beauty, and has the merit of redeeming Pluto from the grimness usually attributed to his frame. The scenes which represent the last moments of the apostate Julian are entirely in a different style from any which Mr. Cornwall has hitherto attempted-they are calm, philosophic, and speculative-though their dissertations on life and immortality are very beautifully checquered and relieved by touches of the genuine pathetic. One argument for the renewal of our existence is put with a beauty which convinces, and which no speculator, unless a poet, could devise "I cannot think that the great mind of man This sentiment is manifestly the expression of a mind which feels and knows its truth, and is to itself, as well as to the world, a high evidence of its hopes. Well may one, who can feel and imagine like him, recognize the imperishableness of his being. Well may he feel in his own conceptions, the proofs of a glory to be revealed hereafter; and in his sensibilities, some trains of emotion, which must "have in heaven their perfect rest." Our author has a right to these assurances of his "natural piety," for the "vision and the faculty divine" are his-the clear purity of thought which this world cannot destroy. The words he has uttered will live. May he long continue advance in his noble career, and pursue it rejoicing! MR. EDITOR, ITALIAN WATER-PLANTS. AS some of your readers may possibly have it in view to visit Italy in the course of this summer, or, what is better, in the succeeding autumn, allow me to point out a service, which any of them having a taste for botany, might render to the horticulturists of this country. In passing from Ferrara to Venice you embark on the Po at Ponte del Lago Oscuro; you then sail down this river, and at a certain point, the name of which has escaped me, you enter the first of a chain of canals which lead to the lagunes, or shoals of Venice. In these canals are many very curious and beautiful water-plants in the greatest luxuriance. Besides a yellow-flowered floating Villarsia, the specific name of which I have not been able to ascertain, there is the Salvinia natans, Trapa natans, and Valisneria spiralis; none of which have been yet introduced here, with the exception of the Trapa natans, which existed a few months in the pond of the Hammersmith nursery some years ago. The shortest way of acquiring such a knowledge of these plants as will enable any person of observation to recognize them floating on the water, will be to get a sight of the figures or dried specimens in the Banksian or Linnean Libraries. The two first species are instances of complete plants floating in pure water, without touching soil with any part of their roots. The Salvinia resembles at a distance a tuft of mountain-ash leaves which had dropt into the water, and its curious yellow flowers proceed from its roots. The Valisneria affords a singular proof of the sexuality of vegetables. "This plant," Keith observes (Physiology of Vegetables, ii. 320.)," is of the class Diccia, producing its fertile flowers on the extremity of a long and slender stalk, twisted spirally like a cork-screw, which uncoiling of its own accord about the time of the opening of the blossom, elevates the flowers to the surface of the water, and leaves them to expand in the open air. The barren flowers are produced in great numbers upon short upright stalks issuing from different roots, from which they detach themselves about the time of the expansion of the female blossom, mounting up like little air-bubbles, and suddenly expanding when they reach the surface, where they float about in great numbers among the female blossoms, and often cling to them in clusters so as to cover them entirely; thus bringing the stamens and pistils into immediate contact, and giving the anthers an opportunity of discharging their pollen immediately over the stigma. When this operation has been performed, the now uncoiled stalk of the female plant begins again to resume its original and spiral form, and gradually sinks down, as it gradually rose, to ripen its fruit at the bottom of the water.' I have picked up some of these female flower-stalks which, having been broken by the oars, or some other accidental circumstance, were floating on the surface of the canals above-mentioned, which, when uncoiled and stretched out, measured ten feet in length, which shewed that the canal must be of that depth at least. The Valisneria has been introduced more than once into the Jardins des' Plantes at Paris and Ghent; but never ripened its seed in either, and 'being an annual, was of course lost. The only botanic garden on the Continent in which I found it, was in that at Avig non, the director of which, Mr. Esprit Reynien, is a botanist of great zeal and activity, and is at present engaged on a Flora of his environs, including the celebrated Vaucluse, which is, if possible, still more rich in plants than in ideas relative to poetry and "that vulgar passion which we have in common with the beasts that perish." Though the Valisneria grows most luxuriantly in Italy, it is found in various places in the south of France; as near Avignon in the mains of the variegated meadows; in the marshes at Carcasson, and near Nismes,and in the canal of Languedoc, where, report says, it once suddenly grew up from the bottom of the water in such abundance as to prove an impediment to navigation. This was at the time the plant was in flower, when it had shot up its female flower stems to the surface. A consultation among the directors was deemed necessary, to know what was to be done; meanwhile, as this occupied some time, the spiral stalks found time to coil themselves up and retire to the bottom of the canal, so that, by the time the remedy was agreed on, the disease had disappeared. This story I heard at Lyons from a gentleman who found the plant once in that neighbour 1820.] hood-what credit is attached to it, I dare not say. It is not unlikely to have happened under such a government as was that of France before the revolution. Mr. Audibert, a zealous botanist and nurseryman at Tenelle, department des Bouches du Rhone, Mr. Sarrette jun. botaniste et fleuriste at Marseilles, both know the plant and would furnish it to any person passing their way in the spring or autumn. The late severe frosts prevented me from receiving it from the former gentleman along with a number of other things which I received this spring. The safest way, and that which I ordered to be adopted, was, to sow the seeds in a pot in autumn, and send them off by coach in February or March-this was done, but the severe winter killed the plants. inches As to the Salvinia natans, I pursued the following plan. I procured in Venice a glass jar or gally-pot, about six with a round mouth square, about four inches diameter. Having spread out the plant between two square pieces of gauze, I sewed their edges to a piece of brass wire, bent so as to fit pretty exactly the inside of the square part of the jar. A little bending and care was requisite to enter the plant by the more narrow and round mouth, but this done it was easy to rebend the wire into the square form, and so leave the plant floating on the water in the jar the plant thus incased in gauze. The jar being three parts filled with water, over this was placed moss, to prevent the motion of the gauze while the plant was en route. In this way the plant travelled all day, the jar being placed in a wicker case, and set on the roof of the common vehicles of the Vetturini. Every evening, when we rested for the night, the moss was removed, and the water renewed. Having stopped a few days at Milan, Geneva, Basle, and Strasburg, the plant was freed from its envelope at each of these places, placed naked on the water, and the jar set outside the window. In this way I succeeded in bringing the Salvinia to Paris; but there, alas! I was destined to suffer the mortification of losing it; for, having placed it, as usual, outside the window in a fine evening about the end of September last, on my getting up next morning it was gone. What I felt can only be conceived by those whose delights, like mine, are in the vegetable world, I hope this account (which to some will be dull enough) of my failure both with Valisneria and Salvinia, may induce some traveller of taste and leisure to bring over those rare and curious strangers, and more especially Salvinia.. S. H. T. Bayswater, May 4, 1820. P.S. The following memoranda may be useful to the juvenile horticultural or botanical traveller.-An immense variety of seeds and plants may be collected round Avignon, and especially at Vaucluse. Above forty varieties of orange and lemon may be purchased, at ten-pence each, at Nervi, near Genoa. Melonseeds and paper-narcissuses from Naples. Above fifty distinct varieties of Bengal rose are to be seen in the Royal Gardens at Monza-a good collection of succulents-and abundance of pines. A good many Alpines may be collected, with no trouble, by stopping two days at the post-house on the Simplon. Collection of Swiss plants from Geneva or Basle-general collections and cheap, from Ghent. All the botanic gardens on the Continent, with a very few exceptions, sell and exchange seeds, as is done by our Liverpool garden; but, excepting the Paris garden, they have nothing worth asking for. DRURY LANE THEATRE. THE DRAMA. THE long-expected tragedy of Virginius, at this Theatre, was a complete failure. It had neither nature nor art-poetry nor passion-the variety of the romantic drama, nor the stateliness of the antique. It was a frigid imitation of the tragic poets of France, written in a cold declamatory style, without much of swelling pomp of numbers or sentimental elegance to fill up the mighty chasm which the absence of truth and nature occasions. There were however some vigorous lines, and a general smoothness of diction which proved that the author might have done better, if he had not been seduced by a false notion of tragic dignity. In vain did he raise Virginius to the rank, or at least the costume of a general, give Appius a regal palace, and exalt the young Roman school-girl into a boisterous heroine. To supply the place / of marvellous incident, of which the story is so barren, he made the modest unconscious virgin wander out in the evening on the banks of the Tyber to meet her lover, brought Appius thither in his stead to enjoy a keen encounter of words with the formidable lady, and Virginius himself to fancy his daughter impure, find her only imprudent, and protect her from the decemvir. He could not be content to take the catastrophe from the historian, but, as he first deprived the youth of Virginia of its gentleness, he took its sacrificial glory from her fate. He represented her father as striking the dagger to her heart, more from pride than patriotism; and instead of giving its true dignity to her death by exhibiting it as awaking the spirit of freedom from its slumber, and restoring liberty to Rome, he made us feel it as a mere tragical mistake, arising from a chimerical sense of danger; a rash act which a moment's delay would have prevented! Mr. Kean, as Virginius, did not improve the author's conception. The measured verse rolled heavily from his lips in a drowsy tone; and his touches of beauty, though not absolutely wanting, were exceedingly rare. The piece, astonishing as it may seem, was treated by not a few of the regular critics as on a level with the exquisite production of Mr. Knowles! The town, however, suffered it to lannish and expire; and we trust that its fate will teach the author, who undoubtedly possesses some talent, to be contented, for the present at least, with nature and with history. The revival of Giovanni in London met with, and deserved, a very different success. This pleasant extravaganza, which was originally produced at the Olympic by Mr. Elliston, is well worthy of the more extended sphere over which he now presides. The Don Juan of the Opera, with his infinite gaiety and spirit, would, to our feelings at least, be too gross and selfish for endurance, were not his story little else than the means of combining a series of the divinest harmonies. Here his exploits are merely exuberances of the animal spirits, his wickedness is changed into frolic, and all his worst libertinism becomes an airy jest. The idea of opening the piece in Tartarus, of representing Giovanni as flirting with the Furies and making love to Proserpine, of sending him back into the world because he is not fit for the infernal regions, and of suffering him to steal the old thief Mercury's wings and Charon's boat to take back himself and three ladies to the earth, is very daring and happy. The lower parts of Greek story were never burlesqued so pleasantly, or their gloom laughed away in a spirit of humanity so genial. There are few things better on the stage than the song of the three happy widowers, whose wives Giovanni so maliciously brings back to their unexpecting arms, or the demeanour of the ladies on resuming their old prerogatives. The piece is agreeably variegated by snatches of well-known tunes-old favourites quaintly applied and happily introduced-which often startle us into a train of agreeable associations on a sudden. Madame Vestris, as the hero, plays with much liveliness, and sings in the truest taste. But we do not think her equal to the original Giovanni of the Olympic, Miss Burrell, who went through the character, from Pandemonium to the altar, in a free spirit of frolic and of joy we have never hailed on the boards since Mrs. Jordan left them. Her acting was a real, genuine, hearty thing-a high sporting with mischief without harm-the triumph of a jocund spirit, and a single heart, thinking and fearing no evil. How triumphantly did she defy the terrors of the burning marle, or sing "Giovanni |