they remain monuments of the grandeur of the minds which gave them birth; mysterious, suggestive--perhaps the more suggestive, the more awakening curiosity and interest, from the very obscurity in which their origin, purposes, or fortunes are shrouded. And if individual associations become dim or doubtful, they merge in the clear light which these gigantic fragments, betraying, even in ruin, their original beauty of proportion and grandeur of conception, throw upon the lofty and enduring character of the Roman people. * * * * * These volumes, then, as we have said, will neither replace Murray, nor form a substitute for Eustace. Neither is their interest mainly owing to mere vivid or literal portraiture; by painting in words, as an artist would do by forms and colours, and enrolling before us a visible panorama, such as might present a clear image of the scenes described here to those who had never witnessed them. Their charm--for a charm, we trust, they will have to a considerable number of readers--arises simply from the truth with which they seize, and the happy expression in which they embody, _the spirit of the spot_; marking, by a few expressive touches, the moral as well as the physical aspect of the scene, and awakening in the reader a train of associations often novel in conception, as well as felicitous in expression; but which appear in general so congenial and appropriate, that we are willing to persuade ourselves they are a reproduction of thoughts, and dreams, and fancies, which had occurred to ourselves in contemplating the same objects. Hence it is to those, who have already witnessed the scenes described, that these volumes address themselves. They do not paint pictures, but revive impressions; they call up or steady imperfectly defined images; bring forward into light struggling memories;--and, by a union of brief description, classic or historical allusions, picturesque and significant epithets, and reflections hinted at, rather than wrought out, they very successfully accomplish their object--that of realizing to the eye of the mind that distinctive and prevailing expression which each aspect of nature, like each movement of the human face, wears in itself, and is calculated to awaken in others--cheerful, sombre, majestic, or awe-inspiring, according to the nature of the scene, the associations past and present with which it is surrounded, and the conditions, or, as a painter would term it, accidents under which it has been viewed.