294 MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE. 



A Trip to Rome at Railway Speed. By T. BARLOW. 18mo. pp. 

 428. Hamilton and Adams. 



As we have before, in reviewing Cooper's Switzerland, deprecated the prac- 

 tice of fast travelling, we need say nothing on the score in noticing a work 

 whose writer boasts in the preface that the same tour (up the Rhine and 

 through Wertemburg and Bavaria and across the Tyrolese Alps into northern 

 Italy and so to Rome, returning by Milan and over the Simplon through 

 Switzerland and France) has never been accomplished in so short a time. To 

 have done all this in two months may be a subject of congratulation to a 

 private individual whose time of leisure is limited, but when an author writes 

 for public instruction something more is expected than the hurried scribblings 

 of a diary written in a caliche or a diligence. We must not, however, be illna- 

 tured with the author of this volume. His aim has not been very ambitious. 

 As an easy degagee kind of narrative this book deserves some little attention, 

 and the hints given about travelling expenses are occasionally very good. In 

 order to give the reader a notion of the author's style of description we extract 

 a portion of the chapter on Venice. 



" August 7th. Thomas Moore has beautifully written as follows : 



" ' If you would save some dreams of youth 

 From the torpedo touch of truth, 

 Go not to Venice do not blight 

 Your early fancies with the sight 

 Of her true, real, dismal, state. 

 Her mansions closed and desolate, 

 Her foul canals, exhaling wide 

 Such fetid airs as, with those domes 

 Of silent grandeur by their side, 

 Where step of life, ne'er goes or comes, 

 And those black barges plying round 

 With melancholy plashing sound, 

 Seem like a city where the pest 

 Is holding her last visitation, 

 And all ere long will be at rest 

 The dead sure rest of desolation.' 



" Poetically beautiful and strictly correct are the lines above quoted ; 

 though, when we first looked out upon the view from the dining-hall of our 

 hotel, we thought that the desolation of Venice had been too much talked of 

 and written about. The dining hall is a very large, lofty, airy room. It is 

 adorned by several fine casts from the antique and some original marble busts 

 of great merit. Two, the laughing philosopher and the lachrymose one, are 

 worthy of a conspicuous place in any of the celebrated collections on the con- 

 tinent. From the windows of the hall which look upon the harbour and quay, 

 once crowded with the vessels and merchandize of all quarters of the globe, 

 very few vessels are now to be seen. A solitary man of war, stationedt here more 

 for appearance' sake than ought else by the Austrian government, the Trieste 

 steamer, and a few merchantmen, now indicate that Venice is still a port ; and 

 the swarm of country boats, which arrive every morning with cargoes of fruit 

 and agricultural produce, prove that Venice imports the necessaries of life for 

 the consumption of its inhabitants : more cannot be now said of the once 

 proud queen of the Adriatic and its departed mercantile glory. On the quay 

 a busy scene is yet enacted, especially in the cool of the morning. The 

 dealers in fruit, and the water-carriers with their shrill cry of aqua, aqua 

 fresca, keep up a continual tumult, and give an appearance of business on a 

 REDUCED scale. A continual stream of persons throughout the day pass and 

 repass on their way to and from the place of St. Mark's, which is the Regent 



