winter through the snów. In winter, when the snow is upon the ground, the mountaineers, like the Laplanders, bind either small baskets, or long thin narrow boards, to their feet, on which, with the help of a stout staff, they descend with great velocity from the mountains; when the snow is frozen, they make use of skaits for the same purpose.

Topography.] Illyria is divided into two governments which are subdivided into 9 circles.

GOVERNMENT OF LAIBACH.] The two provinces of Carinthia and Carniola-with the exception of a part of the former which has been given to the government of Trieste-compose the government of Laibach, which contains 25 towns, 42 boroughs, and 5,947 villages and hamlets, and is divided into 5 circles. One of the loftiest mountains in the Austrian dominions, occurs in this quarter, it is called the Terklou, and is elevated 10,194 feet above the level of the sea. It is the principal summit of the southern Alpine chain, which runs in an eastern direction through Carniola. The declination of Carinthia and Carniola, as well as of Styria, is, for the most part, from west to east-a circumstance clearly evinced both by the course of the rivers, and the aspect of the mountains, which after they pass the summit of the Terklou, decline greatly in height.

1st. Circle of Laibach.] The capital of the government is Laibach, which contains a population of about 9000 souls. This town has acquired celebrity in later times, as being the scene of the famous congress, so fatal to the liberties of Italy, which removed its sittings from Troppau to this city in December 1820.

2d. Circle of Neustaedt.] The chief town of this circle is Neustaedt, with 1,690 inhabitants. Around the town of Gottschee there are located about 40,000 Gottschewarians, a German tribe, distinguished by language, customs, and manners, from the surrounding population. They conduct a considerable commerce as pedlars.

3d. Circle of Adelsberg.] In the north of this circle is the famous cave of Adelsberg, consisting of 3 grottoes, which rise one above the other; through the lowest one flows the Toigk, the uppermost forms a dome of ten fathoms height, with remarkable stalactites. At some distance is the Magdalen cave, which is 600 fathoms long, and is also full of stalactites. Idria, on the Idrizza, the seat of the mines already described, contains above 4000 inhabitants. The lake of Czirknitz is situated in this circle.

4th. Circle of Klagenfurt.] The northern part of this circle is occupied by Germans, and the southern by Wendes. Among the mountains of the south is the Loibel, over which leads the great road to Laibach, which, if we regard the length that it has been carried over a very elevated tract of country, is hardly surpassed by any other road in Europe. The chief town is Klagen, with 9,143 inhabitants. Serbach has a famous manufactory of fire-arms, and an extensive one of silver-lace. 5th. Circle of Villach.] The great body of the in this district; the few Wendes are Catholics. inhabitants, is the chief town.

Lutherans are found
Villach, with 4,623

GOVERNMENT OF TRIESTE.] This government embraces the whole Austrian coast, from Grado to Novi, and forms the southern part of Illyria, to which have been added the former Austrian Friouli, and some parts of Venetian Friouli, both Istrias, the old district of Trieste, some districts of Carniola, the Hungarian Littoral, a part of the district of

Agram, on the right side of the Drave, and the two islands of the Quarnero, Cherso and Veglia. It is divided into 4 circles.

1st. Circle of Goerz.] The circle of Gorizin, or Görz, is inhabited by Slavonians, Italians, and Germans, which latter, however, consist only of nobility; the language is a corruption of Italian, and the religion Catholic. The principal town, which gives its name to the circle, is built on the Isonzo, and contains 9000 inhabitants. Gradiska, a fortified town upon the Isonzo, contains 805 inhabitants.

2d. Circle of Istria.] The inhabitants of Istria are chiefly Slavonians. Some districts are inhabited by Italians, and there are a few Germans, Armenians, and Greeks. The language is Italian, and the religion Catholic, except some Lutherans at Trieste. This is a poor tract of coast-land around the gulf of Trieste. Trieste, the chief town of the government, contains 36,000 inhabitants, and conducts a very animated commerce, being the principal commercial town of the whole Austrian empire; the harbour is large and safe. The principal trade is with the Levant. Most nations of Europe have consuls here to manage their respective interests. The town has many manufactures of different kinds. The fishing of anchovies at Rovigno produces annually 30,000 ducats.

3d. The Circle of Fiume.] The inhabitants of this circle are chiefly of Slavonian race; but there are some Italians, Germans, Greeks, Jews, and Gypsies. The Catholic religion is predominant Fiume on the gulf of Quarnero, is the chief town. It contains 7,526 inhabitants, and has a good harbour, which is annually visited by 1,200 or 1,500 vessels. It is to Hungary, in commercial respects, what Trieste is to the German States. The island of Veglia is situated in the gulf, and has, with the two other islands of Traunich and Tarvichio, 10,414 inhabitants, all Slavonians and Catholics. A considerable quantity of wine is produced here. The island of Cherso has 6,003 inhabitants. The mountains rising in terraces are covered with vines and olives. The inhabitants are Slavonians and Catholics. They are very industrious.

4th. The Circle of Karlstadt.] This circle is inhabited by Croatians; there are also a few Greeks. Karlstadt, with 3,224 inhabitants, is the chief town.

IV. THE TYROL.

The Tyrol is an extensive and very mountainous country, inferior to none in Europe for grand and romantic scenery, extending from Italy to Suabia, and from the duchy of Carinthia to the Grisons. It has its name from the castle of Tyrol, situated on a mountain near Merau. Under this appellation are included, not only the Tyrol, properly so called, but the bishoprics of Trent and Brixen, the seven lordships of the Voralberg, and the counties of Feldkirch, Schellenberg, Monfort, Pludenz, Hohenems, and Sonneberg: the whole-excepting the seigniory of Weiler-comprehending, according to Lichtenstern, 514 square German miles, or 10,280 British square miles. Its greatest extent from N. to S., or from the southern frontiers of the bishopric of Trent to the northern frontier of Suabia, is 140 British miles; and its greatest length from E. to W., or from the western boundary of Carinthia, to the lake of Constance, is 160 miles; but its figure is extremely irregular. In the S., its breadth is not above 70 miles; in the NW., not above 40 miles;

and in the NE., where it forms a narrow angle between Upper Bavaria and Salzburg, not more than 35, and decreasing from that to 15 miles, being merely a long valley of 60 miles in length, watered by the Inn. Another angle, reaching from the moor of Sterzing to the frontiers of Carinthia, interposes between Salzburg and Italy; extending 50 miles in an eastern and western direction, and from 30 to 20 miles in breadth, from N. to S. The population, according to Lichtenstern, excluding the lordship of Wieler in the north of the Vorarlberg, amounts to 692,000; according to Stein, the population is 755,401. The Tyrolese are chiefly of German origin; but there are about 160,000 Italians in the southern part of the country. A very small part of this population is collected in towns, as Innspruck the capital contains little more than 9000 inhabitants, and Trent 11,000.

1

History.] The Tyrol is one of the most ancient possessions of the House of Austria, to which it fell by inheritance in 1363. Although from the very commencement of the connexion of the Tyrolese with Austria, they had on various occasions given proofs of firm attachment and unshaken loyalty, it was not till the Succession war that the Austrian family were duly sensible of the value of such subjects. Even when Frederic, the founder of the Tyrol line of Austrian princes, abjectly yielded himself and his possessions to the emperor Sigismund, these mountaineers continued faithful to him, fortified their passes, set the imperial troops at defiance, and preserved for him a country and race of which he was utterly unworthy. The ungrateful Frederic rewarded them by the imposition of heavy taxes; but at the same time secured to them their rights and liberties, and, indeed, their constitution itself. Villanage and servitude continued unknown; and the land was tilled by a free peasantry, whose representatives formed one of the branches of the legislature. Amidst their mountains an asylum was found in the worst ages of persecution. Many of the Waldenses took refuge here. But in the latter part of the 17th century, the bishop of Brixen, and the archbishop of Salzburg, having discovered that the posterity of these good men continued in the faith of their fathers-which was neither, strictly speaking, the system of Luther nor Calvin, and therefore not within the letter of the law which had compelled them to tolerate these two main sects of the reformers-ordered them to go to mass; whereupon, in 1681, 20,000 Tyrolese left their mountains and vallies, though loving them with all that passionate attachment which is peculiar to mountaineers, and went to seek for liberty of conscience in the Protestant states of Germany and Switzerland. Happily, however, the house of Austria soon perceived it to be its interest to pursue a milder policy; freedom of conscience was allowed, and the Tyrolese peasantry were more gently taxed than any other of the emperor's subjects. The Tyrol, therefore, is almost the only corner of the dominions of Austria, where people with all the love of liberty have remained really attached to the dynasty of Hapsburg. During the Succession war, the French entered the Tyrol on one side, and the Bavarians on another, at a time when there were no troops to defend the country; but the peasants blocked up the passes, broke down the bridges, and prevented their junction, nor was a single man found who could be bribed to carry intelligence from one army to the other, impossible as it was to guard all the passes among the mountains. In 1744, this country again became the seat of war, and the French, at that time in alliance with Prussia and Bavaria, invaded it,

The people upon this rose in a mass,- -a chain of fire along the mountains was the signal of insurrection,-the women drove away the cattle into the recesses of their frozen mountains, and the men supplying the want of cannon-like the Catalonians in the late Spanish war-with the trunks of trees hooped with iron, compelled the French to retire. In 1796, they drove the French, under general Vaubois, out of their country; and, in 1797, when Bonaparte was adding conquest to conquest, they rose en masse, under general Laudohn, and descending like a torrent from their native mountains, drove the French out of their country; and had not Francis been terrified into the preliminaries of Leoben, by the menaces of Bonaparte, who well-knew the danger of his own situation, the French general and his army, entangled in the defiles of the Styrian mountains, might then have been destroyed, as the Tyrolese had made themselves masters of Verona, and were joined by all the neighbouring mountaineers, to the number of 50,000 men. In 1799, they drove Massena out of the Voralberg with great slaughter. In 1801 and 1805, they were also successful; particularly in 1805, when they thrice defeated Ney and the Bavarians; but by the treaty of Presburg, in January 1806, their country was delivered up to Napoleon's Bavarian ally, with a futile stipulation that their ancient privileges should be preserved to them. By the constitution of the Tyrol, the sovereign did not acquire a right to the allegiance of the people until the oath of fealty had been taken, in the name of the community, by the four Estates convened in full assembly at Innspruck. The Bavarian government neglected this ceremony, and took possession of the country by a set of French commissioners; the Estates remonstrated, and the new monarch answered them with gracious promises. At last the constitution of the Tyrol was abolished by a royal ordonnance, and the country deprived of its very name by its subdivision into the circles of the Inn, the Eisach, and the Etsch, under which denominations it was incorporated in the Bavarian monarchy, then newly remodelled into a dwarfish resemblance of its great foster-mother the French empire. When war again commenced, in 1809, between Austria and France, the Tyrolese, under the command of the gallant Hofer, took arms to emancipate themselves from the Bavarian yoke, and were for a time eminently successful, till deprived of Austrian aid by the defeat of Wagram, and the armistice that followed, they were left to maintain the contest alone, and after a brave, but ineffectual defence, were compelled to yield to the power of Bavaria, aided by the numerous legions of France. The most horrible atrocities were now committed by the victors on the vanquished. Forty-one towns and villages in the Upper and Lower Innthal, and the Pusterthal, containing 7000 houses, were burnt, besides Nauders, Molo, and Schuderus. In the last action, near Brixen, where the wife fought by her husband, and the maiden by the side of her father or betrothed husband, 350 women were cut down by the cavalry. All the patriots who survived were delivered over to the military tribunals, and condemned to be shot. The gallant Hofer was seized in his hut, and conducted barefooted through the snow, to Botzen, and thence to Mantua, where he was shot, pursuant to a sentence of a military tribunal, on the 24th of February, 1810. He refused to let his eyes be covered when led to execution; and died as became a hero and a patriot, rejoicing that he had done his duty.37 By

"Andreas Hofer was a native of Sand, in the valley of Passeyr, and was born in the year 1771. His excellent moral and religious character procured him at an early

the congress at Vienna in 1815, the Tyrolese and Voralbergers were released from their hated subjection to the Bavarian yoke, and restored to their former sovereign, the emperor of Austria.

Physical Features.] The Tyrol, and the whole south-western part of the country above the Ens, may justly be denominated German Switzerland, being, in respect of physical features, a continuation of that country. Of this extensive and highly diversified region, the bishopric of Trent forms the southern division; that of Brixen, the N.E. division; the Voralberg, the N.W. division; while the proper Tyrol occupies the centre. It is bounded on the N. by Bavaria and Suabia; on the E. by Salzburg and Illyria; on the S. by Austrian Italy; and on the W. by part of the same, the country of Bormio, the Grisons, and the Lake of Constance. The Voralberg is separated on the east, by a chain of mountains denominated the Mountains of Eagles, from the Tyrol; and is called in gazetteers, the county of Bregenz; having the counties of Pludenz, Sonnenberg, Feldkirch, and Schellenberg, on the south. This country was the ancient Rhetia; and was by the Romans divided into Upper and Lower, the former answering to the Grisons and the Italian Tyrol, and the latter to the German Tyrol and Salzburg, the heights of the Brenner being the boundary between the two. This country is full of mountains; but the principal chain stretches from the Valteline, on the S.W., to the duchy of Salzburg, on the N.E., which, as Saussure remarks, is the general course of the Alpine chains. The Brenner, or burning hill,' as it is called in German, the modern name of this chain, rivals the grand Alps of Switzerland, in numerous glaciers; and, like other grand chains, presents exterior barriers, that on the north being distinguished by the name of Spitz, while that on the south is termed Vedretta. The breadth of the Tyrolian chain from Trent to Innspruck is 70 British miles directly across from S. to N. The primitive, or highest elevations, are to the north of Sterzing, whence precipitous streams descend to the river Inn on the north. The naked and rugged peaks of the mounts of Lorinzen, Fartschel, and Tschafateh, raise their towering heads towards the N.W.; and on the S.E. are those of Glander, Schloss, Pragls, and Pallanser; whose summits are entirely bare, and seem to be composed of granite. The glacier most easy of access is Stuben, 4,692 feet above the level of the sea, with beautiful pyramids of azure, which in sunshine reflect a blaze of light. The Brenner is, according to Beaumont, only 5,109 feet above the level of the sea. The Bok-kogel is another vast peak; in the opinion of Mr. Eustace, equal in height, if not superior to Mont Blanc, and presenting a more sublime and majestic appearance. Towards the west and north of Innspruck are several detached mountains covered with constant snow, amongst which those of Verner are the most remarkable. The Great Glockner, between Tyrol and Salzburg, is said to be 12,780 feet in age the esteem of all the inhabitants of his valley, among whom he was appointed to fill an office, which nearly corresponds to that of our justice of the peace. When his country was brought under the Gallo-Bavarian yoke, he thrice repaired to Vienna to represent the situation of his countrymen to the emperor and the archdukes, and to implore their succour. Encouraged by the emperor, Hofer returned, and, with two of his companions in arms, concerted a plan for attacking the French and Bavarian troops. It was agreed that the sign for a general attack on the enemy should be given by saw-dust thrown into the river Inn. In all the places upon the banks of that river where there were persons to whom the secret had been confided, the meaning of the saw-dust was perfectly understood. They instantly hastened to ring the alarumbells, the inhabitants rose en masse, and complete success crowned the undertaking. Hofer was invested with the title of commander-in-chief of the whole country.