voitures en portait 80 à elle seule. Comme c'était une des premières sorties de la machine, et que même le magasin à eau et à charbon n'etait pas encore arrivé, la marche des convois n'a pu être aussi rapide, aussi regulière, qu'elle le deviendra lorsque le service sera réglé. Cependant les résultats obtenus sont tres satisfaisans: vingt lieues ont été parcourues en deux heures et cinquante minutes de marche effective. Le trajet de Feurs à Montroud, d'une longueur de trois lieues, a été parcourue en quinze minutes, ce qui donne une vitesse de douze lieues à l'heure; par moment elle s'est élevée à 13 et même à quatorze lieues à l'heure. La machine brûle du coke et ne donne aucune fumée; la vapeur projetée dans la cheminée dispense du ventilateur ou d'autre machine soufflante. Toutes les personnes qui ont assisté à cette fête d'un genre si nouveau, et particulièrement les dames, se sont retirées tres satisfaites de la celérité et de la sureté d'un voyage qu'elles ont pu faire sans éprouver le moindre fatigue, et elles ont senti tout le prix dont serait ce chemin de fer prolongé jusqu'à Paris, pour l'etablissement d'une communication rapide entre le midi et le nord de la France."

Here then we arrive at the conclusion of the whole matter. We find that the failures which have hitherto attended all attempts at the steam-carriage have arisen, not from any necessary incompatibility between the nature of steam and this particular application of its power, but from the deficiency of the inventions that have been produced in some of the great elements of structure which we have shown to be essential to success; that it would have been easy, from the construction of these engines, to predict their failure, as we now predict the failure of all constructed on the same or on similar principles; that it was an error to suppose that they were deficient merely in practical details which further experience would supply; that every one of them contained elements of self destruction; that they had attained all the perfection of which they were capable; and finally, that success may yet be expected from such as may be constructed in compliance with the requisites we have pointed out.

III. On the ways and means by which the invention may be fostered and brought to perfection, our limits permit us to do little more than refer our readers to the evidence of Mr. Farey, as it is given in the Report of the Committee of the House of Commons. He there recommends to government the institution of such a reward, say 10,000l., as should call forth the talent required to produce greater improvements. We certainly think that there is at present very little inducement to any man of the requisite science and skill, to embark in a course of doubtful experiment, at once dangerous and expensive. In the present state of the law, a royal patent is little better than blotted parchment; but even on the supposition of its efficacy in se

curing the private benefit of the inventor, we have no doubt that government would do the nation a much greater service by rewarding the inventor and throwing the invention open to the public, than by stifling it under the restrictions of a monopoly.

Although we concur with Mr. Farey in the opinion, that the class of individuals who have hitherto been almost the only inventors of steam-carriages, are not the persons to whom we should look for its final perfection, we by no means admit that ordinary engineers and manufacturers of engines are likely to be more successful. With respect to them, we should consider that the whole course of their experience has been a course of disqualification, and this opinion receives support from the circumstance of our having witnessed the first and the final trials of four steam-carriages on different principles, constructed by engineers of ability and great experience, two of them at the head of their own departments in ordinary engineering: these, we do not hesitate to say, were the worst engines we have ever seen. The reason is plain enough. The qualities of stationary engines, which they are in the habit of constructing, are the very reverse of locomotive: the excellence of the one being derived from strength, rigidity, immobility, and weight; the other requiring in the highest degree qualities the very opposite. Locomotion, in this sense, is in fact an entirely new science, and must derive its maturity and perfection from the head of a scientific and original genius, rather than from an experienced and plodding artificer. The task of forming a locomotive carriage is nearer to that of creating an animal than any design which the versatile ingenuity of man has yet attempted; an animal combining with the speed of the stag, the strength of the elephant. By the study of the structure of an animal, the union of strength, lightness, and pliability requisite in a steam-carriage may be understood and appreciated. By such a combination only is success to be attained, and from no practical projector, who does not unite science with skill, can success be fairly anticipated.

On the benefits that may be derived from such a consummation, the Committee of the House of Commons are of opinion, that "the substitution of inanimate for animal power is one of the most important improvements in the means of internal communication ever introduced." The moral, political, and commercial results are fully and ably detailed by Mr. Gordon, in his work on Elemental Locomotion, already referred to; but he is, perhaps, rather sanguine in his views of a favourite subject, when he proposes it as a panacea for all the diseases that now prey on the energies of the empire. We are not quite so sanguine in the powers of an untried prescription as to propose it seriously as an

infallible cure for the redundancy of our population, a substitute for the emigration bill, an antidote to famine, a remedy for the evils of Ireland, an abrogator of the corn laws, and an extinguisher of the national debt. Nevertheless, we do look forward to the change as the instrument of great good. If, while it provides us with an accelerated mode of conveyance, economising valuable time, and concentrating the energies of the country, it also opens up to more distant parts of the empire the avenues of wealth and industry;—if, while it diminishes the amount of cruelty to brutes, it also prevents that moral degradation which invariably accompanies its infliction :-if we shall succeed in displacing horses by the very machinery that formerly displaced men, and thus remedy by machinery a few of the evils of which it has been the cause:-if, by diminishing the consumption of corn, we take one penny from the price of the poor man's loaf, or one pang from the ills of his lot, we shall attain a high and noble end, an end worthy of " a Newton's genius and a nation's boast."

ART. VIII.-It Paradiso Perduto di Milton reporta in versi Italiani da Guido Sorelli da Firenze. Terza edizione, rivista, corretta e Toscanamente accentuata. Londra. 1832. 8vo. We know nothing of Signor Sorelli, beyond what he has kindly communicated to the world in his preface: namely, that ten years ago he left his native country in very low spirits, presaging nothing but misfortune; that when he reached Domo d' Ossola he wrote a melancholy sonnet on the occasion; that on his arrival in England he began to find it was possible to live out of Italy, and neither the climate nor the people seemed to him so very bad as he had imagined; that these ten years of exile have been employed on his part in this translation; and that all his sufferings and labours are amply repaid to him by the gracious permission he has received to dedicate his book to Queen Adelaide, "whose heart is itself a Paradise"-not lost. He speaks of himself and his work with some complacency, but with honest feeling:

"This Paradise Lost,' which I submit to the judgment of the public, is the labour of many years. The divine original, and the divine language into which I have undertaken to translate it, leave me no shadow of excuse, if I have done wrong to the former, or used the latter amiss. If ten of the finest years of life, entirely consecrated to the study of one author, while the same sun, under which he was born, has warmed me with its beams, and I have

been residing amongst his compatriots, animated with the desire of well-doing, and always upheld by courageous hope-if this can contribute to my having succeeded in any thing further than a mere intelligible rendering of that author, then may Sorelli say of Milton as Dante said of Virgil,

Tu sei lo mio maestro, e il mio autore.

Oh that I could add with Dante, but I dare not, "Tu sei solo colui, da cui io tolsi

Lo bello stile, che m' ha fatto onore !'

Time, courage, patience, diligence, are not, however, sufficient. One who attempts to translate a poem such as Milton's into another language, and into verse, should be dear himself to the Muses, or he will certainly fail. So great an enterprize does not admit of mediocrity. Either the translator must elevate himself so near his author, that he will be illuminated by the effulgence of his light, or he must fall to a lower depth than if he had never attempted to rise."

With deference to the judgment of Signor Sorelli, we consider the opinion expressed in this last sentence rather rhetorical than just, and we certainly think his own interest should induce him to agree with us. We have perused his translation with pleasure; and we doubt not it will be considered a valuable addition to Italian literature. The version is generally exact, as to sense, and in many parts is executed with great spirit. But while we approve it as supplying a deficiency, and as likely to convey to those ignorant of our language a correct notion of the general plan of our great poem, and of the lofty sentiments contained in it, we cannot rank Signor Sorelli with the fortunate few who constitute his first class of translators. The spirit of Milton has certainly not descended upon him. He shows less sense than we could desire of that mighty, individualizing, concentrating power, which controls the lavish riches of Milton's imagination, like an oriental despot, disposing with unresisted will his oriental treasures. The whole of Paradise Lost is one continued tension of imaginative strength, never relaxed for a moment, active on all sides, but with a single activity, and subduing irresistibly all that lies in the direction of its force. It stands before us like a perfect statue, in which the rich finish of the separate parts heightens rather than impairs the predominant expression of individual character. Or, we might perhaps more aptly compare it to the effusions of Milton's favourite art, to the glorious streams of music that gushed from the soul of Haydn or Mozart, vital throughout as with the ubiquitous expansion of one plastic mood, which, full and perfect in every part of

the linked harmony, yet never loses its appearance of singleness and indivisible power. In a poem of this kind, every word occupies an important place; or, if this should seem too bold an assertion, we may at least safely pronounce that, before we dared alter the position of a single word, many more elements must be taken into account than the mere thoughts contained in the passage, which constitute, indeed, its general sense for the understanding, but by no means produce all its poetic effect on the feeling. If this be true, must not translation, strictly speaking, be an impossibility? How poor and meagre a part of any masterwork can be transplanted into a foreign mould?-It is so; and we should be unjust to Signor Sorelli if we visited on his head a fault inherent in the nature of the labour he has attempted. As Englishmen, we cannot but feel that any transposition of Milton, however excellent, would seem to us like a discord in some favourite tune. But as critics, we have only a right to require that this unavoidable mischief may be of the least possible amount. Tried even by this criterion, Sorelli appears frequently negligent. Sometimes the effect of a whole passage, well translated in other respects, is damaged by the substitution of a flaccid paraphrase for an energetic expression, or the insertion of a parenthesis that weakens instead of explaining. In other places, we have been agreeably surprised by a felicitous selection of words, conveying as nearly as possible the substance, where the form was incapable of transfer. Signor Sorelli has a good ear for versification; but he has not always resisted with sufficient watchfulness the dangerous facility of his metre. It is above all in this point that we feel the utter hopelessness of seeing a real translation of Milton. Much as has been said on the subject of his verse, much more, many volumes, indeed, might be written, before it would be exhausted. The deep harmonies of the Paradise Lost are beyond admiration as beyond measurement. We feel, in hearing them, the presence of an oracular inspiration; they are not the poet's own, but

"Her's that brought them nightly to his ear."

Not the metre merely, nor the pauses, nor the balanced numbers; but every word, every syllable, every combination of vowels and consonants, appears the offspring of consummate art. A chain of harmonizing impressions unites the lowest articulate sound with the sublimest conceptions and farthest insights. The Northern languages are perhaps particularly adapted for the expression of Thought blended with Feeling, through all the various shades of intermixture, which such a combination may assume. But those of the South, however uniformly pleasing in the language