noble edifice, and boasts some clever paintings, the work of a native artist named Ferrari, Ludovico Carraccio, Spada, and Palma.

The library is very extensive, and is rich in books of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and a collection of the works of the authors of Reggio. The theatre might put to shame those of the most considerable cities in other countries, being not only of a size peculiarly well calculated for the accommodation of a large audience, but also for scenic effect.

PARMA.-Silent, gloomy, and deserted, Parma seems to offer a striking picture of the altered fortunes of its mistress. There still hangs around it the semblance of grandeur, but it is grandeur "fallen from its high estate:" and on beholding its empty streets, and decaying buildings, one cannot refrain from pitying her who was once empress of the gayest and most brilliant capital in the world, for being condemned to reside here, and support the mimic form of regal splendour shorn of all its dignity. The fate of Napoleon, chained Prometheuslike on his ocean rock, had a sublimity in it: but she who shared his throne, whose brow was encircled by a diadem, before which the proudest monarchs

bowed, to be reduced to hold her state in this poor town.-O! it is pitiful! and Maria Louisa must have less pride or more philosophy than falls to the share of most of her sex, to be enabled to support it with such equanimity.

We went over the ducal Palace to-day, which has nothing regal about it; and no greater number of apartments than generally appertain to the residence of a private individual. Its appearance is mean and common-place, divested of dignity or good taste. The furniture, is like that of a Fermier-General de France, after long use, rich, tasteless, and faded.

The carriage of Lord and Lady Burghersh was at the entrance, and the custode who shewed us over the apartments, reverted with no little complacency to the fact, that "the ambassador Inglese, and the niece of the great Wellington, were then sitting with Maria Louisa!"

In a lumber-room was shown us the toilette presented to the Empress of France, and the cradle given to the King of Rome, by the city of Paris! As ill did this mean and vulgar apartment seem fitted to enshrine these costly gifts, the wrecks of an empire unparalleled in history, as did the palace itself to be the residence of her who has been mistress of France!

There was the subject of a whole epic poem, and more touching than most of such productions are, in the contemplation of these trophies of the former state of Maria Louisa. There was the toilette meant to adorn the person of her whom all France delighted to honour. Once lodged in a gilded chamber of the Thuilleries, with proud and titled dames surrounding it, to deck their royal mistress, now, neglected and covered with dust, it was put aside in a lumberroom; and exhibited by a custode, who was little conscious that by this venal display of it, he elicited observations far from favourable to its owner. And there stood the cradle given by the capital of France to him whose birth was hailed with such universal rejoicings; the child, whose coming into the world was looked upon as the security of that dynasty doomed so soon afterwards to be overthrown. That rich and gorgeous cradle in which slumbered, unconscious of the fate which awaited him, that fair boy over whose pillow Napoleon has bent in rapture, forgetting the fierceness of the warrior in the all-absorbing tenderness of the father, there it stood tarnished and dimmed, to be scrutinized by strangers for the payment of a few francs!

If the fallen empress, to gratify curiosity, or to enrich her menial, could allow the gift made to her

in her palmy days, to be thus exhibited, surely the heart of the mother ought to have protected from desecration the infant couch of her son; over which, the great, the wondrous, and the since fallen father of that ill-starred child had often stooped to impress the kiss of melting affection on the fair cheek of his sleeping cherub! Ought not this cradle to have been placed in some chamber sacred to the memory of that father, whose heart yearned with such tenderness towards the wife and child he knew he should never see again?—that husband whose lips never uttered a reproach at the desertion of her, who having shared his splendour, could leave him when fortune forsook his banners, to pine a prisoner on a desolate rock, without even a line to sooth his grief, or to tell that he was still remembered?

I turned from these neglected trophies of departed glory with no increased respect for her, who having allowed them to be offered for sale, and finding no purchaser, now permits them to be shown to all who desire to behold such mementos of the mutability of fortune; and to moralize on the fallen greatness of one whose name will ever remind posterity of the most signal example of mortal instability.

greater the ascent than the downfall!

Not

Went over the Steccata church; containing the

usual number of pictures and monuments. The ceiling of the gallery, behind the high altar, has Moses breaking the tables of the law, and another fine, though unfinished work of Parmegiano, Adam and Eve, said to be the last he ever touched.

The Palazzo di Giardino, or old ducal palace, contains a room well worthy attention, the ceiling being painted by Agostino Caraccio, and the walls by Cignani. These frescos are charming; and their beauty excites regret that one compartment was left unfinished, Caraccio having died while engaged on it. We lingered long in contemplating them, instead of hurrying round the various churches to which our cicerone was anxious to conduct us; such persons attaching in general more importance to the quantity than to the quality of what they show. He pointed out to us the spot once occupied by the house of Petrarch; that house in which he received the account of the death of Laura, and had the remarkable dream in which she appeared to him.

PIACENZA. This is a cheerful though not a fine town, and the country around it is fertile and smiling. The cathedral and church of the Madonna della Campagna have some good pictures and frescos ;