snuffy fingers he never used a knife or|-he, whose character you have yourself defork."* picted as most wicked; and she, whose greatest. fault is that she amused herself with her domestics, instead of remaining in utter solitude when the slavish English nobles had entirely abandoned her. It is well known that it was the spies who excited the sentiment against her which exists in Italy. But notwithstanding that strong feeling, all the Italians say that the demn her-and indeed I think they have a Pacchiani was in the Catholic Church, and confessor to the family of Emilia Viviani; he took Shelley and Medwin to the convent where the contessina was immured, and where Shelley and Mary Shelley used afterwards frequently to visit her. "She was lovely," says Med-evidence was certainly not sufficient to conwin her profuse black hair was tied in a simple knot like the Greek Muse in the Florentine Gallery, and displayed a forehead white as marble. Her features were Grecian in contour, her eyes changed from dark to light with her changing feelings. It was Pacchiani also, if Medwin's somewhat florid narrative may be trusted, who, some years after Emilia's marriage and Shelley's death, accosted Medwin in Florence, and asking him somewhat mysteriously if he would like to see an old friend, took him to a dilapidated Florentine mansion, where Emilia, separated from her husband, was dying of consump tion. Before giving Mrs. Shelley's letters, it should be noted that her handwriting is peculiar, irregular, and not always very legible,t and most of her letters to the Hunts seem to have been written in haste. The earlier of the two which follow is in Italian, in some passages rather obscure. A translation is given here. PISA, December 3rd, 1820. Do you believe, my dear friend, that it is very agreeable to us to write thousands upon thousands of letters, and to receive no reply? Why so cruel? In truth I cannot count the days, the long weeks and still longer months, which have passed without bringing us letters. Marianne and you are equally faithless. Who knows what may have happened to you both? Perhaps a Lapland sorceress has transported you, not to the sweet airs and lovely scenes of the South, but to some bleak, dismal, inbound land, which has frozen all your love for us. However that may be, I certainly think that you in England are more hard and severe than we, when I see how few of your nobility defend the unfortunate queen, whom I believe to be perfectly innocent. I feel much pity for that lady; and when one reflects on the great difference between the villainous king and that good, compassionate lady who goes to visit her servant when ill with the plague, one is furious Life of Shelley, vol. ii. Medwin also says that Mrs. Shelley drew Pacchiani "to the life" in her "Valperga,' -probably as Benedetto Pepi whom she describes as "half a buffoon and half a madman." "I wonder what makes Mary think her letter worth the trouble of opening," Shelley asks Mrs. Gisborne; except, indeed, she conceives it to be a delight to decipher a difficult scrawl. She might as well have put, as I will My dear sir-???!!! Yours, etc.'" (Shelley's Memorials, edited by Lady Shelley, p. 141.) I must tell you, my dear friend, of an acquaintance we have made- a professor at Pisa. He is really the only Italian who has heart and soul. He has high spirit, great genius, and an eloquence that carries one away. The poor Pisans think him mad, and tell so many stories of him that they force one to believe he is at all events rather odd-or, to use an English expression, eccentric. He said to me, "They think me mad, and it pleases me that they should so deceive themselves; but perhaps the time may come when they will see that it is the madness of Brutus." He comes to our house every evening, and always delights us with some original ideas. He speaks beautiful Italian, so different from the idiom of today that one might fancy oneself listening to Boccaccio or Macchiavelli speaking as they wrote. Then we have become acquainted with an improvvisatore- a man of great talent, much knowledge of Greek, and incomparable poetic genius. He improvises with wonderful passion and correctness. His subject was the future destiny of Italy. He recalled how Petrarch had said that neither the lofty Alps nor the sea could defend this decayed and vacillat"But," ing country from its foreign masters. he said, "I see the Alps grow higher, and the waves mount up in wrath, to hinder the approach of their enemies." Unfortunately, he, like certain poets in our own country, takes more pleasure in the momentary plaudits of a theatre, and in being fêted by the ladies, than in studying for posterity. You see that as day by day we become acquainted with a few more Italians, we take a It is curious to compare this passage with Shelley's disgust at the "mountains of cant. about this vulgar cookmaid they call a queen," in Mr. Garnett's article before quoted; and the letter to Peacock (Works of Thomas Love Peacock, vol. iii., p. 469), in which he says, "Nothing, I think, shows the generous gullibility of the English nation more than their having adopted Her Sacred Majesty as the heroine of the day.' Mrs. Shelley's remark about the state of feeling in Italy with regard to the trial is, however, fully supported by Byron. "Nobody here believes a word of the evidence against the queen," he writes to Murray from Ravenna. "The very mob cry shame against their countrymen." (Moore's Life of Byron, 3rd edition, vol. iii., p. 23.) greater interest in the threatened war at Na- | Sgricci, who, according to Medwin, imples. What will they do? The Neapolitan pressed Byron almost as much as he did nobles are brave and independent, but the the Shelleys. Mrs. Jameson, in her populace are slaves. Who can tell whether the troops would resist the Austrians? Every Italian sighs for liberty, but here as in all Diary of an Ennuyée," says Sgricci's genius was considered "almost supernat his ural." Medwin tells us that he died countries the poor have no power and the rich are not inclined to risk their money. The young, having obtained a pension from Italians love money even more than the En-government, which "extinguished " and he adds the humane provglish. The wealthy English love gold, but the Italian nobles are enamored of copper and glitter. Their half-farthings receive as much respect from them as shillings do from us. ... There is another acquaintance of ours, romantic and pathetic― a girl of nineteen, the daughter of a Florentine noble. She is beautiful and clever, and she writes Italian with an elegance and refinement equalling the best writers of Italy's best period. But she is most unhappy. Her mother is one of the worst of women, and being jealous of the beauty and ability of her daughter, she shuts her up in a convent, where she only sees waiting-maids and fools. Confined to two little rooms looking only on the very unpicturesque kitchen garden of the convent, she unceasingly laments her hard fate. Her only hope is in marriage. But her very existence is almost a secret-so how can she be married? I will tell you, my friend, how marriages are made in this country. And I can vouch for the truth of what I say, because at this very moment, while writing to you, I have before my eyes a proposal for a Pisan girl. The law. yer who was employed to draw it up begins his document thus: Then follows a rather tedious transcript of a formal proposal of marriage, in which the intending bridegroom's ap pearance, habits, education, and prospects are fully described, but nothing is asked about the young lady except her age and the amount of her dowry. "Such is an Italian betrothal!" exclaims Mrs. Shelley; adding that although tyrants as regards the marriage of their children, Italian parents are kind and indulgent nei affari communi di giorno in giorno. Up to this time we have had no winter. We are enjoying soft airs and bright sunshine in December. The autumn rains are over, and the country, though stripped and bare, laughs beneath a radiant sky. Do you, oh, my friend, leave all your woes, and for a few moments enjoy also my beautiful Italy. I hope this letter may have that effect. God keep you, and all those who belong to you. Shelley and Claire send thousands on thousands of affectionate greetings. Farewell. Your constant friend, MARINA. The improvvisatore mentioned as a new acquaintance in this letter, and more fully described in the one which follows, was powers; erb that "singing-birds must not be too well fed." * MY DEAR FRIEND, December 29th, 1820. We have been very anxious to hear from honored with the peculiar attention of the A. you since we saw that your paper had been G. [Attorney-General], yet no letters come. ... Before this comes to hand you will of which are as rare as fountains in the stony course have written -one of your letters, Arabia, will have given us a brief pleasure. Why do you not write oftener? Ah, why are you not rich, powerful, and enjoying? We have just been delighted with a parcel of your "Indicators," but they also afford full proof that you are not so happy as you ought to be. Yet how beautiful they are! The one upon the "Deaths of Little Children" was a piece of as fine writing and as exquisite feelhave been particularly affecting. Yet there ing as I ever read. To us, you know, it must is one thing well apparent. You, my dear Hunt, never lost a child, or the ideal immortality would not suffice to your own imagination as it naturally does, thinking only of those whom you loved more from the overflowing of affection than from their being the hope, the rest, the purpose, the support, and the recom pense of life. I hardly know whether I do not tease you with so many letters, yet you have made no complaint of that, and besides, you always like to hear about Italy, and it is almost impossible not to write something pleasing to you from this divine conntry, if praises of its many beauties and its delights be interesting to you. I have now an account to give you of a wonderful and beautiful exhibition of talent which we have been witnesses of an exhibition peculiar to the Italians, and like their climate, their vegetation, and their country, fervent, fertile, and mixing in wondrous proportions the picturesque, the cultivated, and the wild-until they become, not, as in other countries, one the foil of the other, but they mingle, and form a spectacle new and beautiful. We were the other night at the theatre, where the improvvisatore whom I mentioned in my last letter delivered an extempore trag. edy. Conceive of a poem as long as a Greek tragedy, interspersed with choruses, the whole conceived in an instant: the ideas and verses and scenes flowing in rich succession, like the perpetual gush of a fast-falling cataract; the ideas poetic and just; the words the most beautiful, scelte, and grand that his exquisite Italian afforded. He is handsome- his person small but elegant, and his motions graceful beyond description. His action was perfect, and the freedom of his motions outdo the constraint which is ever visible in an English actor. The changes of countenance were of course not so fine as those I have witnessed on the English stage, for he had not conned his part and set his features. But it was one impulse that filled him an unchanged deity who spoke within him—and his voice sur passed in its modulations the melody of music. The subject was "Iphigenia in Tauris." It was composed on the Greek plan (indeed he followed Euripides in his arrangement and in many of his ideas) without the division of acts, and with choruses. Of course if we saw it written, there would be many slight defects of management-defects amended when seen. But many of the scenes were perfect, and the recognition of Orestes and Iphigenia was worked up beautifully. of the various authors on the list. Sgricci has been accused of carbonarism, whether truly or not I cannot judge. I should think not, or he would be trying to harvest at Naples instead of extemporizing here. From what we have heard of him, I believe him to be good, and his manners are gentle and amiable, while the rich flow of his beautifully pronounced language is as pleasant to the ear as a sonata of Mozart. I must tell you that some wiseacre professors of Pisa wanted to put Sgricci down at the theatre, and their vile envy might have frightened the god from his temple, if an Irishman who chanced to be in the same box with him (sic, query them) had not compelled him (sic) to silence. The ringleader of this gang is called Rosini, a man, a speaker of folly in a city of fools; bad, envious, talkative, presumptuous, and one—"chi mai parla bene di chichessia, o di quei vivono o dei morte." He has written a long poem which no one has ever read, and, like the illustrious Sotheby, gives the law to a few distinguished blues of Pisa. Well, good night. To-morrow I will finish my letter, and talk to you about our unfortunate young friend, Emilia Viviani. The long account of the contessina. which follows, substantially the same as I do not know how this talent may be ap- that in the Italian letter already given, preciated in the other cities of Italy, but the will be found in the "Correspondence of Pisans are noted for their want of love, and of Leigh Hunt," vol. i., p. 160. In extracting course entire ignorance of the fine arts. Their this passage, beginning with the words, opera is miserable their theatre the worst in "He has written a long poem," the editor Italy. The theatre was very nearly empty on has inadvertently inserted after "He" this occasion. The students of the university half filled the pit, and the few people in the [Shelley], and after long poem" [the boxes were foreigners, except two Pisan fam-Epipsychidion'], misled apparently by ilies who went away before it was half over. the speedy transition to Emilia Viviani. God knows what this man would be if he The singular inappropriateness of describlabored and became a poet for posterity in- ing Shelley as giving the law to the Pisan stead of an improvvisatore for the present! I blues is self-evident. The Italian "Soam inclined to think that in the perfection in theby," so strongly denounced by Mrs. which he possesses this art, it is by no means Shelley, is referred to by Medwin as an inferior power to that of a printed poet." Rosini, author of that episode to the There have been few improvisatores (sic) who have, like him, joined a cultivated education and acquirements in languages rare among foreigners. If however his auditors were refined, and as the oak or the rock to the lightning, feeling in their inmost souls the penetrative fire of his poetry, I should not find fault with his making perfection in this art the end of his exertions. But to improvise to a Pisan audience is to scatter otto of roses amidst the overweighting stench of a charnel housepearls to swine were economy in comparison. As Shelley told him the other night, he appeared in Pisa as Dante among the ghosts. Pisa is a city of the dead, and they shrank from his living presence. The name of this improvvisatore is Sgricci, and I see that his name is mentioned in your Literary Pocket-Book." This had made me think that it were an interesting plan for this same pretty Pocket-Book if you were to give some small account, not exactly a biographical sketch, but anecdotical and somewhat critical, | Promessi Sposi, the Monaca di Monza." * Winter began with us on Christmas Day [Mrs. Shelley continues]. Not that we have had hard frost, but a cold wind sweeps over us, and the sky is covered with dark clouds, and the cold sleet mizzles down. I understand that you have had as yet a mild winter. This and the plentiful harvest will keep the poor somewhat happier this year-yet I dare say you now see the white snow before your doors. Even warm as we are here, Shelley suffers a great deal of pain in every way — perhaps more even than last winter. January 1st, 1821. Although I always think it of bad augury to wish you a good new year, yet as I finish my * Medwin's inaccuracy is often deplored by Shelley commentators. The printers seem to have done their utmost to exaggerate it. Speaking of Peacock's wellknown poem. "Rhododaphne," Medwin is made to say, "I refer to 'Rhododendron' "'! letter on this day, I cannot help adding the compliments of the season, and wishing all happiness, peace, and enjoyment in this commencing year to you, my dear, dear Marianne, and all who belong to you. I thank you for all the good wishes I know you have made for us. We are quiet now: last year there were many turbulences perhaps this there will be fewer. We have made acquaintance with a Greek, a Prince Mauro Cordati* (sic), a very pleasant man, profound in his own language, and who, although he has applied to English little more than a month, begins to relish its beauties, and to understand the genius of its expressions in a wonderful manner. He was done up by some alliance, I believe with Ali Pacha, and has taken refuge in Italy from the Constantinopolitan bowstring. He has related to us some very infamous conduct of the English powers in Greece, of which I should exceed ingly like to get the documents and to place them in Grey, Bennett, or Sir F. B. [Francis Burdett]'s hands. They might serve to give another knock to this wretched system of things. We are very anxious to hear the event of the meeting of Parliament, as I suppose you are in England. Perhaps we exiles are ultrapolitical, but certainly I have some hopes that something fortunate will soon happen for the state of things in England. And Italy? The king of Naples has gone to Troppau with the consent of his Parliament, and that is the latest news. We begin, we hope, to see the crimson clouds of rising peace. And if all is quiet southwards, we have some thoughts of emigrating there next summer. Adieu, my dear Hunt. Most affectionately yours, MARINA. On the side of the letter containing the address, Mrs. Shelley adds a request that "a dozen papers of middle-sized pins, an assortment of good needles, a small pointed pair of scissors, an excellent pen knife of several blades, a steel topped thimble, and a few sticks of sealing wax,'" may be sent to Horace Smith for her. "Add also a few hundreds of Brama's pens," she says, "and let the needles be in a very small morocco case, such as they make on purpose for needles." So ends Mary Shelley's letter; which, like all her letters that we have had the opportunity of reading, confirms Thornton Hunt's statement that the friendship between her and Leigh Hunt "stood the test of many vicissitudes both persons being very sensitive in feeling, quick in temper, and thoroughly outspoken." † Prince Mavrocordato is called in Moore's "Life of Byron" the only leader of the Greek cause "worthy the name of statesman;" and his name is so inseparably associated with that of Byron that it is startling to find him surviving till 1865. From The Pall Mall Gazette. A CHAPEL stands in the Appian Way which is known by the name of "Domine, quo vadis?" It owes its name to one of those legends which, although not always recognized as authentic, nevertheless do so much to surround with romantic interest the events of the early Church. St. Peter, so the legend runs, when a prisoner in Rome, made his escape from his gaolers, and was hastening to a place of safety, when he met his divine Master on the spot where the chapel now stands. "Domine, quo vadis?”—“Master, where goest thou?" asked the Apostle. "I go to Rome," was the reply, "to be crucified anew, since thou hast not the courage to face martyrdom." Humiliated and repentant, St. Peter returned to Rome, re-entered his dungeon, and calmly awaited the time of his crucifixion. No crucifixion awaits Leo XIII. in the palace-prison of the Vatican; but chafing at the loss of the temporal sovereignty, and resenting his inability to smite with the sword of the civil power those who make mock of his spiritual attributes, the successor of St. Peter threatens to fly from the Eternal City. According to M. H. G. Montferrier, who writes from Rome to the Journal des Débats, all the preparations for his departure are complete. The inventory of the treasures of the Vatican is drawn up in readiness for transmission to the ambassadors accredited to the Holy See. But there are so many reasons against his departure that it is extremely doubtful M. Montferrier, is strongly opposed to whether he will go. Cardinal Billio, says the flight from Rome, and he is said to be the arrested flight of St. Peter to prove using with great effect the precedent of that St. Peter's successor should only abandon his bishopric when constrained by brute force. As no one proposes to lay a finger upon the pope he finds it difficult to desert his diocese. The air has been filled with rumors → now officially contradicted- of negotiations between Prince Bismarck and the Vatican, negotiations which were supbehalf of the prisoner of the Vatican. posed to point to German intervention on Pamphlets have been published under the highest auspices, intimating that as the pope in the Vatican did not feel comfortable with the king in the Quirinal the latter had better remove himself without more ado from the capital of Italy. VariOus devices were discussed in "influential political circles" for restoring the tem poral power of the pope, at least so far as the city of Rome and its seaport were concerned. It was understood that the pope was willing to accept such an irreducible minimum, and to establish a modus vivendi with the Italian government on that basis. Even when politicians made no such imaginative flights as are involved in the supposition of discrowning united Italy by the sacrifice of her historical capital, they talked of replacing the Italian Law of Guarantees by an international treaty, or at the very least of a thorough revision of that law in a sense favorable to the papacy. It is very easy to see how such stories could be put about, but it is very difficult to see how any one of them could be realized. The pope is surrounded by ecclesiastics the dream of whose lives is the re-establishment of the temporal power. Mr. Gladstone wrote of them six years ago: "It is the fixed purpose of the secret inspirers of Roman policy to pursue by the road of force the favorite project of re-erecting the terrestial throne of the popedom, even if it can only be re-erected on the ashes of the city and amid the whitening bones of its people." There is no combination too grotesque, no alliance too strange, if only it promises to bring them nearer the attainment of their cherished ideal. There is, of course, no saying what sovereigns and statesmen may not do when they are in straits, and both Prince Bismarck and M. Gambetta might in certain circumstances be willing to use the pope as their tool even if they had to give him Rome as his price. But these circumstances have not yet risen, and unless a war with Italy were resolved upon it is difficult to see how they could arise. The support of the Vatican is worth something, no doubt, even to the czar of Russia; but it is trifling with facts to pretend that it is worth any one's purchasing at the price of a war with Italy. It is impossible for any Italian government to consent willingly either to the re-establishment of the temporal power, which would destroy the unity of Italy, or to the intervention of any foreign State in her internal affairs, which would be equally fatal to her independence. The only possibility of any arrangement being amicably arrived at would be from the desire of Italy to purchase an alliance- say with Germany by modifying the status. quo, so as to make the pope more accessible to the ironclads and soldiers of her ally and herself. That arrangement might suit Italy: it could hardly be expected that it would suit the pope. Yet it is in that direction, and in that direction alone, that any change can be made without provoking a war which would cost more than the support of the pope would be worth. Leo XIII. will do well to let well alone. But we shall be told it is not well-it is "intolerable." The pope says his trials are becoming every day more unbearable. But if there is progression in evil, its term has not yet been reached, and the pope may go farther and fare worse. The recent policy of his party has not been calculated to remove the troubles of which he complains. Ever since the clericals, without the cognizance and against the wishes of the pope, converted the ceremony of the removal of Pio Nono's remains into a political demonstration, feeling has been rising higher on both sides. But from the first to the last nothing has been done to molest the pope. An American who had taken part in quelling the riots in the North when Gettysburg was being fought declared that, if the Roman mob which hooted and jostled the clerical demonstration on the night of the 13th of July had been a New York mob under similar provocation, the body of the pope would have been flung into the Tiber, and but few of the ecclesiastics would have been left to tell the tale. As it was at the beginning so it has been to the end. All that the pope could allege in his address to the cardinals on Christmas Eve was that the ceremony of the canonization was shorn of its pomp and splendor; that "some of those at Rome" ridiculed the ceremony and the saints; and, lastly, that the pilgrims were exposed to "the violence of the populace." But no violence was used to speak of, and what there was the pilgrims brought upon themselves by denouncing Italy in the hearing of Italians. If the pope has no worse grievances than these to complain of he has but slight claim upon our sympathies. The fact that he regards as indispensable to the free exercise of his spiritual authority the power to suppress free speech and gag the press for in no other way can these "insults" be prevented is not calculated to evoke much enthusiasm in favor of the restoration of his temporal dominions. He would have a much better chance of securing a real independence if he were to send his supporters to the polls at the next general election in Italy, and to make terms with a clerically inclined Parliament on the basis of the |