'Smile and we smile, the lords of many lands; "Turn, turn thy wheel above the staring crowd; The song in the Idyll of Elaine has a sad and plaintive beauty about it. Ophelia's lament in Hamlet is that of a shattered mind and a broken heart, this of Elaine is that of a broken heart while reason is still enthroned. Both are master-pieces in the delineation of the nature and effects of the passion of love intensely roused and bitterly disappointed. "Sweet is true love though given in vain, in vain; "Love, art thou sweet? then bitter death must be, "Sweet love, that seems not made to fade away, "I fain would follow love, if that could be; I needs must follow death, who calls for me; could have been There is none of There is a fresh wholesome morality about these poems. which we can not too highly admire. It is indeed so marked a characteristic of the old legends that there no truthful reproduction of them without it. the artificial sentimental morality so common in works of fiction at the present day. It is natural, and therefore in harmony with the great facts of the moral government of God. The scene of these Idylls is in a country and time when the relations of society are extremely simple, and the ruder and grosser vices prevail. But on the other hand, truth, and tenderness, and devotion are more unrestrained, and there could be no more beautiful exhibition of all these than we have in the lovely character of Enid. Nothing scarcely could be finer, in a moral point of view, than the whole development of the guilty relation between Sir Lancelot and the Queen The indescribable sorrow to which it gives rise in Sir Lancelot, Elaine, King Arthur, and the Queen, shows in what light such a relation is to regarded, and the retribution which in the natural order of things, under God's providence, must follow it. The King's last words to Guinevere are grand in their noble vindication of wounded honor, and their full and free forgiveness. And what splendor of description is that when the King turned away from her and went forth to meet death upon the field of battle: "So she did not see the face Which then was like an angel's, but she saw, And even then he turned; and more and more The moony vapor rolling round the king, Who seemed the phantom of a giant in it, THE Roman Question* is a sensation book. The author evidently aimed to write such a book, and he has succeeded. It begins with a witticism, and with wit it is highly charged throughout. But marked as is this feature of M. About's brochure, it is not its only or even its chief characteristic. It abounds in statistics, and is more affluent in facts than in fancies. These facts were collected and collated by M. About during a prolonged residence in Rome and the Roman States; and are now published as corroborative of the author's views of the Papacy, considered as a political power. His estimate of this is far from high. Without assailing the *The Roman Question. By EDMOND ABOUT. Boston: J. E. Tilton & Co. 1859. spiritual pretensions of the Pope, M. About exposes the abuses of his government with an unsparing hand. He calls attention to the high rates of taxation, the inefficiency of the police regulations, the insecurity of life and property, the little encouragement to industry, the absence of manufactures, the stagnation of trade and commerce, the decline of agriculture, the consequent poverty of both peasants and princes, and the want of a middle class of proprietors and substantial citizens to incite improvements in town or country. Priests and beggars are the spontaneous and normal productions of the Papal States. The government is nominally paternal, but really despotic; education is not encouraged; the best books are proscribed, the standard of morals is low, religion itself is reduced to a series of scenic displays, degrading alike to its dignitaries and its devotees. Scholars and thinkers are distrusted; active and ambitious men are dogged by spies, and if guilty of word or deed inimical to the existing order of things, dragged to prison. There is no incentive to honorable activity, no suitable spheres for rising talent, no great prizes worthy the high aspirations of genius. The consequence of all this is, that the classes which constitute the strength of free and enlightened states are here discontented, and by the priesthood regarded as dangerous. The priests alone bear rule alike in Church and state, and the result of this unnatural union is equally unfortunate for the proper functions, either of priest or politician. Their ecclesiastical education unfits them for secular affairs, and their political power predisposes them to perpetuate innumerable abuses in their parochial relations. Many enter the priesthood because there is no other avenue to influence, not from any sense of fitness or conviction of duty. The present Pope is granted to be a good-natured man, but precisely for this reason is a ready instrument of evil in the hands of Antonelli, the Cardinal Prime Minister, himself a crafty and subtle politician of the Macchiavelli school. Born and reared among robbers in a mountainous district, Antonelli is described as a cunning and unscrupulous diplomat, grafted on a born bandit. He has the eyes of a snake, the nose of a vulture, and the jaws of a ferocious beast of prey. With such a mainspring, what can be expected of the inferior machinery whose movements it directs and controls? The minds of all classes are, in fact, infected by it, as their bodies are by the deadly miasma exhaled from the adjacent Campagna. The entire body politic is stupified by a malignant vapor which arises from the Vatican, and diffuses itself in every direction. That M. About is not mistaken in the source of the evils by which the whole country is so afflicted, and under which it groans, appears from this, that they multiply as yon approach, and diminish as you depart from Rome, disappearing only as you pass the boundaries of the Papal, and enter the confines. of other countries. And this is Rome-once the mother of nations and Mistress of the World! Rome that "was called eternal," and "arrayed her legions but to conquer." Already, if we but listen, may we hear the voice of the avenging angel proclaim, "Fallen, fallen, is Babylon, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication." (Rev. 14: 8.) Certain it is, that a system so rotten and a rule so iniquitous as the present Papal can not long maintain even the semblance of stability, preserve its ill-gotten gains, or perpetuate its broods of besotted priests and beggars. The people, not wholly insensible to their shame, are ready to revolt as soon as the outside pressure on them is removed, and surely foreign princes can scarcely deem it for their interest or honor to keep this up much longer. There can really be no honor and but little profit in this policy. Louis Napoleon is understood to be greatly chagrined at the existence and increase of these abuses, and anxious to abstain from all appearance of countenancing them. M. About himself is regarded by many as Napoleon's secret agent, and believed to have written this very book, if not at his command, at least with his approbation, as the leading articles of which it is composed first appeared in the Moniteur. Others deny this, and seek to discredit the revelations of M. About, by calling in question his veracity, and by assailing his personal character. Most of these attacks on the book and its author have evidently originated with, or have been instigated by, Romish priests, both in this country and Europe. They do not attempt to refute the reasoning, rebut the statements, or disprove the statistics of the book. This would probably be very hard work for them, and they have no stomach for it. They better understand, and are more practised in the low arts of calumny and personal vituperation. Hence, they assail M. About personally, vainly hoping to counteract the influence of the work by grossly misrepresenting the character, views, and actions of its author. But in all this we have really little or no interest. It is enough for us, and satisfies the public, that M. About confines himself mainly to facts patent to all observers; that he gives dates, names, figures, official reports, and other authentic sources of information; and that, in the main, his opinions, though more explicitly stated and confidently urged, are substantially the same as those of other enlightened and disinterested writers and statesmen, both Italian and foreign. What we value M. About's book for, then, is its lucid exposition of the Papal system of government, and its exposé of the infinite abuses to which that system is subject, the ineradicable ⚫ evils which inhere in its very constitution and nature; an exposé which is sustained by an array of facts and figures sufficient to substantiate all that he alleges against the government, and would warrant even more sweeping conclusions, which, however, M. About as a Roman Catholic could not consistently draw. The conception, form, and style of the volume are eminently French. The author is as exuberant in wit as in wisdom, albeit the wit is not always of the most refined sort. In this respect, M. About is a cross between Pascal and Voltaire, two authors who in different ways, and from different stand-points, have succeeded pretty well in relieving the popular French mind of whatever superfluous reverence it may formerly have contracted for the Roman Pontiff and the priests who prowl through the streets of that once proud but now fallen city! |