Beneath the shade of waving bowers,
Where sunbeams lightly glancing through,
Kiss the bright dew from off the flowers.

S.N.

* * * * *


NATIONAL VARIETIES.

(_Continued from page_ 165.)


It is almost impossible to lay down any rule which would define the
variations of national manners as having any reference to climate. We
frequently find that the passage of a river, or a chain of mountains,
dividing countries of the same natural features, brings us among an
entirely new people, and presents us with a fresh scene in the melodrama
of life. The inhabitants of Languedoc and Gascony, and the southern parts
of France, are the gayest and most lively of the subjects of Charles X.;
but the moment we have crossed the Pyrenees, we are among one of the
gravest nations in the world, the Spaniards. Again, contrast the
solemnity and deep sense of honour of the Turks, with the vivacity and,
we regret to add, the deceit and bad faith of the unfortunate modern
Greeks. The virtuous spirit will, we trust, revive in the Morea with the
return of civilization and freedom; for, as no one will attribute the
degradation of the modern Greeks from the high moral cultivation of their
ancestors, to any alteration in the climate of their country, so let us
never despair of the return of virtue, of poetry, of the arts and