inculcated by that reformer, and Zuinglius. Maximilian, in an age of persecution, declared publicly his repugnance to all religious violence, and his unalterable opinion, that " to the Supreme Being alone, it belonged to judge the confcience." Nor did he content himself with only afferting this principle: his active benevolence impelled him to make every exertion, to stop the destructive influence of bigotry, in other countries. Touched with the cries and complaints of the Flemings, he dispatched his brother, the archduke Charles, to Philip II. with directions to remonftrate with him on his violation of their privileges, civil and religious; though this humane interpofition was ineffectual. He did not conceal his deteftation of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, for which Rome and Madrid made public demonstrations of joy; and when Henry III. king of France, passed through Vienna, in his flight from Poland to his own country, the emperor strongly exhorted him to commence his reign, by maxims and principles of toleration. It would have been happy for Henry, and his people, if he had been capable of profiting by the advice. Account of the Consent of Nuns of Clarije, at Cologne; from Mrs. Radcliffe's Journey through Holland and the II etern Frontier of Germany. a fides, and there was scarcely any entire intermiffion of them till evening. The places of public amusement, chiefly a fort of tea-gardens, were then set open, and, in many ftreets, the founds of music and dancing were heard almost as plainly as that of the bells had been before; a disgufting excess of licentiousnels, which appeared in other instances, for we heard, at the same time, the voices of a choir on one fide of the street, and the noise of a billiard-table on the other. Near the inn, this contrast was more obfervable. While the strains of revelry arose from an adjoining garden, into which our windows opened, a pause in the music allowed us to catch some notes of the vefper service, performing in a convent of the order of Clariffe, only three or four doors beyond. Of the fevere rules of this fociety we had been told in the morning. The members take a vow, not only to renounce the world, but their dearest friends, and are never permitted to fee even their fathers or mothers, though they may sometimes converfe with the latter from behind a curtain. And, left fome lingering remains of filial affection should tempt an unhappy nun to lift the veil of leparation between herself and her mother, she is not allowed to fpeak even with her, but in the prelerce of the abbefs. Accounts of fuch horrible perverfions of human reafon make the blood thrill. Their fathers they can never speak to, for no man is fuffered to be in any part of the convent used by the fitterhood, nor, indeed, is admitted be UR inn had forn erly been 0 convent, and was na part of the town where fuch focieties areyond the gate, except when there is inore numerous than elfewhere. At five o'clock, on the Sunday alter our arrival, the bells of churches and convents began to found on all a neceffity for repairs, when all the votaries of the order are previoufly fecluded. It is not easily that a cautious mind becomes convinced of 1 the exifience of fuch fevere orders; when it does, astonishment at the artificiał miseries, which the ingenuity of human beings forms for themselves by seclufion, is as boundless as at the other miseries, with which the most trivial vanity and envy fo frequently pollute the intercourses of focial life. The poor nuns, thus nearly entombed during their lives, are, after death, tied upon a board, in the clothes they died in, and, with only their veils thrown over their face, are buried in the garden of the convent. Observations on the diflinct Characters of Modern Whigs and Tories; from Belsham's Memoirs of the Reign of George III. THE HE established appellations of whig and story, as descriptive of the two grand political parties which, under these or equivalent terms of diftinction, will doubtless fubfift fo long as the present conftitution of government shall remain, though greatly changed from their original fignification, it would nevertheless be faftidious to reject. The gradations of fentiment and principle which mark their progress it is however of indispensible importance occafionally to specify. The principles of whiggism may indeed, in this respect, be faid to have gained a complete triumph over *those of the ancient tories, inasmuch as the once favourite maxims of toryifm-paffive obedience, nonrefiftance, and the divine and indefeasible right of monarchy-have fallen into general contempt. Nor can any doctrines bearing the most distant analogy to these monftrous absurdities be now maintained, without the use of fuch artificial and ambiguous phraseology as, however magnificent in found and show, shall vanish from the touch of reason as mists and vapours from the noonday fun. Agreeably then to the viciffitudes which have, in a long series of eventful years, taken place in the views and fentiments of the oppofing parties of the state, a whig muft now be understood to mean a man who, in addition to the speculative principles of liberty, civil and religious, which have descended to him from his ancestors, entertains a lively and well-founded jealoufy left the prerogative of the crown should, in confequence of the prodigious increase of its influence, ultimately absorb the whole power and authority of the other branches of the government, and with them the liberties of the nation at large, in its vast and tremendous vortex. A modern whig acknowledges and deeply regrets the improvidence of his ancestors in contributing, by the facility of their compliances, to the accumulation of an immenfe public debt, and the establishment of a standing army, both of which are yet in a state alarmingly progreffive. He can scarcely forgive those extravagant ebullitions of loyalty which could facrifice the most facred principles of the conftitution to the interest or ambition of the reigning family, in prolonging, by a most unjuftifiable ftretch of power, the existence of parliaments to a term of dangerous duration, and in furnishing to a minifter, little fcrupulous of expedients, and regardless of confequences, the means of univerfaland unbounded corruption. Whatever palliations of the fatal [*A3] fyftem 4 system then adopted, the peculiarity of that minifter's situation, and the fituation of the country at large, in a political view, might then afford, had, it was affirmed, been long fince entirely at an end; but the fame system is nevertheless resolutely and uninterruptedly purfued, recovering, Antœus-like, from every apparent or accidental fall with renewed and redoubled vigour. and had well nigh subverted the empire. This party, now grown strong and confident, by an unexpected re turn of profperity, affumed, with oftentatious audacity, the appellation of the king's friends, in which novel capacity they hefitated not to give their eager and ardent fapport to those measures of court policy, which had been ever reprobated by the tories of elder days, as in the highest degree pernicious and unconstitutional. The standing army, fo long the theme of their invective and reproach, was now affirmed to be necessary for the prefervation of the national tranquillity; the public debt was pronounced a public benefit; the connection with Hanover was honourable and useful; the influence of the crown was the happy means of confolidating the harmony of the different branches of govern ment; a long parliament was faid to be attended with no fuch inconvenient consequences as had been previously and erroneously apprehended: and every attempt to restore that equality in the reprefentation, or rather to remove those glaring inequalities so inconfiftent with the spirit of the conftitution and the practice of former ages, was opposed and rejected by them in terms of unbounded obloquy and deteftation, as leading to nothing less than the absolute fubverfion of government. They profeffed, on all occafions, their dread of innovation and novelty-not adverting to the conitant declaration of the ancient tories, that the things to which they objected were themselves innovations wholly extrane On the other hand, the modern tories, although the defcendants of those who long entertained a most inveterate enmity against the family upon the throne, and who, from motives not of the purest patriotifm, vehemently opposed, in the former reigns, the unconftitutional measures of the whigs, having at length entirely shaken off their old attachments, and being taken into favour and invested with power under the marked and too partial protection of the court, fuddenly became its open and zealous advocates-combining, as far as the spirit of the times would admit, the fpeculative errors of one party with the practical errors of the other. The neceffity of strengthening the prerogative of the monarch, and of fupporting the dignity of the crown, was from this time the incessant theme of their argument and declamation. Conceffions and indulgencies were, in their estimation, things incompatible with the majesty of the regal character. The high, harth, and peremptory tone of authority uniformly marked every act of government under the almost constant predominance of this dangerous faction during the present reign, from the commitment of a printer, or the profecution of a libeller, to those measures of pro- ous to the conftitution-and that vocation and oppreffion, termi- they who merely wished to restore nating in a war which rent in twain were most unjustly accused of a fondness fondness for innovation, or a dangerous propenfity to tamper with the conftitution, by trying new and hazardous experiments Although the high and preposterous notions once prevalent respecting the authority of the church had, in common with the old opinions relative to civil government, gradually fallen into difrepute, the tories of the present reign have been invariably characterized by the ftrength of their attachment to the ecclefiaftical establishment, which they are delighted to applaud and extol as a model of purity and perfection. Any fuggeftion of the expediency of a reform in the church, whether in relation to the irregularities of its difcipline, or the errors of its doctrine, as exhibited in a fet of obsolete and unintelligible articles of faith, are received by this class of men with a fort of horror, as leading to foul fufpicions of fectarian heresy, or atheistical profaneness; while the dissenters of all denominations are, on the contrary, viewed by them with eyes of jealousy and hatred, and affiduously held up on all occafions as the inveterate enemies of at least one part of the constitution, and as the doubtful friends at best of the other: and every idea of enlarging the limits of the toleration allowed them by law, and much more of extending to them the common privileges of citizens, they have uniformly exclaimed against with affected terror and real malignity. Description of the feveral Merits of Albert Durer, Michael Angelo, and Leonardo da Vinci, by Mr. Fufeli; from Scward's Anecdotes. as far cation of artists. Albert Durer was a man of great ingenuity without being a genius. He studied, and, as his penetration reached, established certain proportions of the human frame, but he did not create a style. He copied, rather than imitated, the forms that furrounded him without remorse, and tacked deformity and meag nefs to fullness and beauty. He sometimes had a glimpse of the fublime, but it was only a glimpse. The expanded agony of Chrift on the Mount of Olives, and the mystic mass of his figure of Melancholy, have much fublimity, though the expreffion of the last is weakened by the rubbish he had thrown about her. His Knight attended by Death and the Fiend is more capricious than terrible; and his Adam and Eve are two common models shut up in a rocky dungeon. Every work of his is a proof that he wanted the power of imitation, of concluding from what he saw to what he did not fee. Copious without tafte, anxioufly precife in parts, and unmindful of the whole, he has ra ther shewn us what to avoid, than what we are to follow. Though called the father of the German school, he neither reared fcholars, nor was imitated by the German artifts of his or the succeeding century. That the importation of his works into Italy should have effected a temporary change in the principles of fome Tufcans, who had studied Michael Angelo, is a fact which proves, that minds at certain periods may be subject to epidemic [*A4] influence. 1 1 influence as well as bodies. That feffion of Mr. Coke, of Norfolk, M. Angelo, when a boy, copied with a pen Michael Wolgemuth's print of the Temptation of St. Antony, and bought fith in the market to colour the devils, may be believed; but it requires the credulity of Wagenfeil to fuppofe that he could want any thing of Albert Durer, when he was a man. The legend contradicts itself; for who ever be-, fore heard of the bronzes of Albert Durer? MICHAEL ANGELO. M. Angelo, punctilious and haughty to princes, was gentle and even fubmissive to inferior artists, Gulielmo Bugiardini, a man of tiney talents and much conceit, had been applied to by Meffer Ottaviano de Medici to paint the por trait of M. Angelo for him. Bugiardini, familiar with M. Angelo, obtained his confent. He fat to him; defired to rife after a fitting of two hours; and perceiving at the first glance the incorrectness of the outline, What the devil, said he, have you been doing? You have shoved one of the eyes into the temples; pray look at it. Gulielmo, after repeatedly looking at the picture and the original, at last replied, with much gravity, I cannot fee it; but pray fit down and let us examine again. M. Angelo, who knew where the cause of the blunder lay, fat down again, and patiently fubmitting to a long fecond infpection, was at last peremptorily told that the copy was correct. If that be the cafe, faid he, nature has committed a mistake; go you on, and follow the dictates of your art. There exifts now at Holkham, among the pictures collected by the late lord Leicester, and in the pof the only copy ever made of the whole composition of the celebrated Cartoon of Pisa. It is a small oilpicture in chiaroscuro, and the performance of Bastiano de St. Gallo, furnamed Ariftotile, from his learned or verbose descants on that furprifing work. It was painted at the defire of Vafari, and transmitted to Francis I. by Paolo Giovio, bishop of Nocera. How it could escape the eyes of the French and English connoiffeurs or artists, who had accefs to the collections, of which it conftituted the chief ornament, is a mystery, which, for the honour of the art, none can wish to un ravel. Nothing is trifling in the history of genius. The following strange incident, extracted from the life of M. Angelo, written by his pupil, or rather attendant, Afcanio Condivi, deserves notice, because it is related from the mouth of M. Angelo himself. Some time after the death of Lorenzo de Medici, Cardiere, a young improvisatore, entertained by his fon Piero, fecretly informed M. Angelo, with whom he lived in habits of friendship, that Lorenzo de Medici had appeared to him in a ragged pall of black over his naked body, and commanded him to announce to his fon, that in a short time he should be driven into exile, and return 3 more. M. Angelo exhorted him to execute the commands of the vifion; but Cardiere, aware of the haughty insolent temper of Piero, forbore to follow his advice. Some mornings after this, whilft M. Angelo was bufy in the cortile of the palace, Cardiere, 'terrified and pale, comes again, and relates, that the night before, when yet awake, Lo renze, |