The Allies were twice repulsed at Belleville. The French being protected by garden walls. A Russian colonel attached to Prince Schwarzenberg's staff said that the loss of the Allies was six thousand. The loss of the French was about three thousand troops of the line, and sixty killed and one hundred and fifty wounded of the National Guards,* among the killed was Fitzjames, the celebrated ventriloquist, who kept a coffee-house in the Palais Royal, and who was killed at the foot of Montmartre. The Prussian guards sustained a very great loss in the battle. Fifty-seven Prussian officers were wounded or killed. About half after one o'clock, news was brought to the Luxemburg palace that the King of Prussia and his staff were taken prisoners. This was the signal agreed upon for the wife of Joseph Bonaparte to fly. She immediately entered her carriage and set off for Blois. M. Frederic Cuvier, as National Guard, was on duty at the barrier des Gobelins, from the 28th at night until the 31st in the morning. During the battle, officers of the line came round to the barriers, informing those who were there that the Emperor was at the battle. At five in the afternoon they came, and said the enemy were repulsed, and the King of Prussia taken prisoner. But at seven in the evening the evacuation of Paris began, and continued, without intermission, the whole night. The men appeared greatly dejected, and those whom we questioned, though ignorant of the force of the Allies, yet asserted they had been sold to them. At the Prefecture of Police, the architects attached to that establishment were in waiting by order of the Prefect, lest accidents should eventually happen to the city from the explosion of shells. At ten o'clock in the morning, the following appeal to the passions of the people was laid on the desks of the different offices of the Prefecture, and police officers sent into the streets to distribute them; which they had scarcely begun to do when an order came to recal them. They were even taken from the persons who had them, and burned together with several official papers from the bureau of the first division. Though this appeal was reprinted in one of the newspapers a few days after, yet very few persons had seen the original. I never saw but one. It is printed on both sides of a duodecimo size. Nous laisserons-nous piller! Nous laisserons-nous bruler ! Tandis que l'Empereur arrive sur les derrières de l'ennemi, 25 à 30,000 hommes conduits par un partisan audacieux, osent menacer nos barrières. En imposeront-ils à 500,000 Citoyens qui peuvent les exterminer! Ce parti ne l'ignore point, ses forces ne lui suffisaient pas pour se maintenir dans Paris. Il ne veut faire qu'un coup de main. Comme il n'aurait que peu de jours a rester parmi nous, il se hâterait de nous piller, de se gorger d'or et de butin: et quand une armée victorieuse le forcerait à fuir de la Capitale il n'en sorterait qu'à la lueur des flammes qu'il aurait allumées. Non! nous ne nous laisserons pas piller! nous ne laisserons pas brûler! Defendons nos biens, nos femmes, nos enfans, et laissons le tems à notre brave armée d'arriver pour * As stated to the writer by Count Alexander de Laborde. aneantir sous nos murs les barbares qui venaient les renverser! Ayons le ferme volonté de les vaincre, et ils ne nous attaqueron pas! Notre Capitale serait le tombeau d'une armée qui voudrait en forcer les portes. Nous avons en face de l'ennemi une armée considérable; elle est commandée par des chefs habiles et intrepides, il ne s'agit que de les seconder. Nous avons des canons, des baïonettes, des piques, du fer. Nos faubourgs, nos rues, nos maisons, tout peut servir à notre defense. Etablissons, s'il faut, des barricades; faisons sortir nos voitures et tout ce qui peut obstruer les passages; crénelons nos murailles, creusons des fossés montons à tous nos étages les pavés des rues, et l'ennemi reculera d'epouvante. Qu'on se figure une armée essayant de traverser un de nos faubourgs au milieu de tels obstacles, à travers le feu croisé de la mousqueterie qui partirait de toutes les maisons, des pierres, des poutres qu'on jeterait de toutes les croisées ! Cette armée serait detruite avant d'arriver au centre de Paris. Mais non! Le spectacle des apprêts d'une telle défense le forcerait de renoncer à ses vains projets, et elle s'eloignerait à la hâte pour ne pas se trouver entre l'armée de Paris et l'armée de l'Empereur. Three of the enemy's spies were brought to the Prefecture of Police, from whence they were sent to the Etat Major. A quantity of papers were burned at one o'clock in the Minister of War's court yard, Rue de Lille (now Bourbon.) The iron gates to the Palais Royal garden were locked the whole day, all the shops and lateral entrances were shut; as were also most of the shops in Paris. During the battle, the Boulevard des Italiens (Coblentz) and the Café Tortoni were thronged with fashionable loungers of both sexes, sitting, as is usual, on the chairs placed there, and appearing almost uninterested spectators of the number of wounded French, and prisoners of the Allies, which were brought in. The wounded French officers were carried on mattrasses. This astonishing instance of want of deep feeling was confirmed to me by many persons. A black flag was displayed on all the hospitals, that the cannon should not be directed on them. About two o'clock, a general cry of "Sauve qui peut" was heard on the Boulevards from the Porte St. Martin to Les Italiens; which caused a general and confused flight, which communicated as the undulations of a wave until beyond the Pont Neuf. In a short time, however, this panic subsided. This was confirmed to me by several persons who experienced it at different places from the Boulevards, to the other side of the river: but of the cause I could never obtain any satisfactory information. One story was, that two Austrians had dashed into Paris by the barrier St. Martin, and galloped to the Boulevards where they were killed. The other, that a Polish lancer, who was drunk, had galloped down the faubourg Montmartre, as far as the Boulevards, crying " Sauve qui peut," and that he was there shot. During the whole of the day, wounded French dragged themselves into the streets of Paris, and there lay down to die. Favart saw one, who had crawled as far as the Rue de la Université, and was there lying on the pavement: one of the bystanders asked him if he wished to be SEPT. 1825, D carried any where? All he requested was to be allowed to die quietly, which he did a few minutes after. Several were supported by their comrades, and even carried on their backs. Mrs. G- saw many brought down the Rue Rochechouard in the afternoon. At about four o'clock, the Duke of Rovigo set off for Blois from the hotel of the Minister of Police, Quai Malaquais, and went up the Rue de St. Peres at full gallop, in a calêche with his wife, followed by a second calêche, and escorted by about twenty gens d'armes d'elite. Comte Alexander de Girardin arrived at Paris at three in the afternoon, announcing the Emperor's speedy arrival, and exhorted the people to rise in a mass. After seeking in vain le Roi Joseph and the Minister of War, he went to Talleyrand, then to his own house, and at midnight quitted Paris to return to Napoleon. Count Alexander de Laborde was without the walls at five o'clock, with several of the National Guards; the gates of the palisades being fastened, they were obliged to assist each other to clamber over, the Cossacks and troops looking on, but not offering the smallest interruption. The inhabitants of the remote parts of Paris remained ignorant of the capitulation all the evening. Miss M told me, that in the neighbourhood of the Rue de Charonne they were not acquainted with it when she retired to rest. The King of Prussia's head-quarters this night were at Claye, where he slept. Marshal Marmont informed me that Joseph Buonaparte having sent him an order to capitulate when he should consider all defence useless, and perceiving a column of twenty-five thousand fresh troops of the enemy advancing on his left, he sent four officers with flags of truce to try to penetrate to the head-quarters of the Allied Sovereigns. This is always difficult in a battle, and indeed one only arrived. About three o'clock in the afternoon he was at the extremity of Belleville so closely pressed upon by the enemy, that eleven men were killed by the bayonet near his person. In this extremity, and being cut off, he forced his way with forty men through the streets of Belleville. At this moment the officer who had succeeded in penetrating to the head-quarters of the Allies returned with the flag of truce, accompanied by two of their officers, and the capitulation was soon concluded. The Duke also informed me that the Allies lost ten thousand men and the French four thousand. He likewise said the Emperor of Russia told him the Allies had two hundred and ten thousand men between Meaux and Paris, and that it was their belief that fifty thousand French troops were assembled to defend the capital. Marmont further observed that there never was a more foolish attack made than that of the Allies, as they might have entered Paris on the side of the Bois de Boulogne without resistance; instead of which they attacked on the side of its strongest defence. The Moniteur of this day was a full sheet; no notice taken of the war or the army; nearly four columns and a quarter were taken up with an article on the dramatic works of Denis, and three columns by a dissertation on the existence of Troy. The theatres announced as usual. Between eleven and twelve, Favart saw a squadron of carbiniers near the Porte St. Martin going to the battle, they met about fifty or sixty prisoners who had just been taken. The carbiniers full of spirits boasted to the bystanders that they would soon bring in more. But about half after one o'clock he saw them returning quite dispirited. Some of the cannon balls came into Paris. I saw a window frame shattered in the faubourg St. Martin opposite the junction of the two roads. In the Rue St. Nicolas between the Rue du Montblanc and Thiroux, a man was mortally wounded in a house; he was carried to the hospital and died. During the battle, the President and Governors of the Bank of France assembled at the Bank, and ordered the copper plates of the Bank notes to be destroyed; they were preparing to burn all the notes when the news of the capitulation arrived. The colours and standards taken by the French in their different wars and which decorated the chapel of the Invalids were, on the approach of the Allies, taken down and packed up for the purpose of removing them. But on the night of the capitulation, in consequence of an order left by the Minister of War, these memorials of triumph over public virtue, over the faith of treaties, and over the rights of nations, were unpacked and burned in one of the court yards of the hospital. The sword and scarf of Frederic, King of Prussia, which were suspended from the centre of the arch, leading from the nave to the dome of the chapel were destroyed at the same time. Towards evening several ambulances came down the Rue Rochechouart full of wounded French, and one cart laden with the slain. In the evening of the 31st, about thirty wounded Russians laid themselves down under the arcades of the Rue Castiglione. General Scott lodged in the house, and an English medical man who was dining there dressed their wounds, the Miss Scotts made lint, and the pavement was covered with straw; he left them about eleven o'clock, the next morning they were gone, but as not one could speak French it could not be found out how they came there. The French were very humane to them. [To be continued.] ON THE PRESENT STATE OF ITALIAN LITERATURE. Rome, Aug. 1825. MY DEAR FRIEND, -I comply with your request, though not without fear and trembling; I will endeavour to bring you acquainted with the history of the present state of Italian poetry. If there be a country favourably situated for judging of the poetry of other countries, it is unquestionably England-In dramatic poetry she possesses a genius who not only sets her above the reach of all competition, but whose distinctive characteristic is extreme variety. The nation which has the happiness of enjoying in its native tongue the character of Richard III. and that of Ariel, that of Imogen, and that of Lady Macbeth, may have an equal relish for the deep and concise energy of Dante, and for the humourous and too licentious graces of Buratti. Who is this Buratti? you would ask. He is a very great poet whom you know nothing of, and who suggested the idea of Don Juan to Lord Byron. My strongest motive for undertaking to write at some length on the subject of Italian poetry is this the Italians are the only people whose poetry has not been either utterly spoiled, or, at the least, vitiated for a time by imitating the philosophical and artificial style of Parisian verse. In 1793, Italy was the scene of a great literary phenomenon. Vincenzo Monti, by the publication of his Bassvigliana, a poem, atrocious as to its subject, -saved Italian poetry, and rescued it from the degradation of becoming a mere imitation of Pope, Boileau, and Voltaire. You English can form an accurate estimate of the extent of the danger, and the value of the service; since, at the restoration of Charles II. you did not escape the contagion. Thanks to Monti, Italian poetry has preserved its character of originality and energy. More than a century ago a ridiculous Jesuit, named Saverio Betinelli, undertook to turn Dante into ridicule. Betinelli had the merit of serving two conflicting interests at the same moment. In the first place he served the order of the Jesuits, which has invariably persecuted the reputation of Dante. The works of that great poet tend to inspire a taste for private investigation. This taste, which leads direct to the exercise of the reason and to protestantism, is the bug-bear of the Court of Rome, and of its most enlightened defenders, the Jesuits. By abusing Dante, Betinelli also became an auxiliary of the poetical school founded by Voltaire. The courtly energy of Voltaire, destined to touch the empty and frivolous beings which filled the salons of Versailles and Paris in the year 1750, could not brook the strength and awful vigour of Dante, which was fitted to act upon the men really worthy of that name, who peopled Italy in the twelfth century. Dante is inferior to Shakspeare only because he is less generally interesting. He has always been an object of aversion to the school of Voltaire, and to the supporters of that effeminate style of poetry which, in France, has suc |