realizes the agony of moral suffering and the of the cities of Italy is socialism a dangerpower of evil, the more difficulty he will feel in. reconciling it with the goodness of the God who permi's it. Let it be observed, however, that this is a difficulty which comes, not from our ignorance, but our knowledge. There is so much provision for innocent joyousness in the universe, such facilities for cheap happiness in its beauty and in human feelings, that we see everywhere marks of benevolence, and we feel tempted to have recourse to the hypothesis of a good Being limited in power. This is to misread the phenomena of the universe; it does not bear the aspect of weak benevolence; it wears the sad look of yearning, unrequited love."

From The Spectator.

THE CONDITION OF ITALY.

ous power. Milan is increasing by streets a month. Venice is regaining an Oriental trade. It can be proved by official statistics that the price for the wine of Piedmont and Tuscany received last year exceeded fourfold the price received before the emancipation. Even in the South, rents, wages, and the demand for luxuries have increased from fifty to a hundred per cent., and throughout the Peninsula the upper and middle classes are betaking themselves with the old Italian avidity to industrial enterprise, working endless industrial companies, while the smaller cities are dusty and disagreeable with new masons' work.

There are, however, two marked excepceptions to this national prosperity, one accidental and probably temporary, one longTHE truth about the present state of enduring. The old Exarchate of Ravenna affairs in Italy is, that the English system is in a frightful condition. Encouraged by of administration has been applied in some- the legality of the administration, two or what too undiscriminating a fashion. The three secret societies, one of them at least Lanza Ministry, as they are called in Italy, very old, headed by men of family and pofrom the Premier's name, or the Sella Min-sition, contrive to set all law and order at istry, as we call them here, from the name of the Minister of Finance, resolved from the beginning to govern on what are styled on the Continent " English principles,". to restore the credit of the Treasury, to abstain from revolutionary legislation, and to trust for the maintenance of order to the ordinary laws. This policy, pursued with remarkable tenacity, approved in the main by Parliament - -a Parliament very like our own before 1832, though the governing influence is official, and not aristocratic and accepted by the King, though he does not like it, at the price of non-inquiry into the frightful debts on the Civil List, has, in North and Central Italy that is, in Piedmont, Lombardy, Venetia, Tuscany, and most of the Roman States completely succeeded. The credit of the Treasury has been re-established, and the taxes, though very heavy, do not cripple commerce. The Army is in a position which, were war to break out, would make of the Italian War Office a distinct element in European politics. Order is rigidly maintained. The prosperity of the people is increasing at a rate which affects the national character, producing a trace of that worship of wealth from which Italians, of all men, have been free. The spirit of industrial enterprise has revived till Turin, ruined, as she thought, in 1862 by the departure of the Court to Florence, has regained her population and 35,000 more, has become a Manchester, and is so overflowing with wealth that in Turin alone

defiance. Their object is partly money, but mainly release from law whether human or divine, their rule is self-defence, and their single penalty, death. If their demand are refused, or their members brought into Court, or their friends punished by the law, those who refuse, or sue them, or condemn them, die within the next few days by the dagger. So perfect is the terror they have inspired that the regular law is powerless. The chiefs of police dare not arrest them, for they know that no juryman would convict, and that three days after acquittal they themselves would be buried. The very Generals are in danger for supporting the police, though under Lanza's ultra-legal system they are comparatively powerless. Witnesses will not give evidence. The very sufferers, if not dead, conceal the names of their assailants, and hundreds, we fear thousands, of wellplaced gentlemen pay these villains blackmail. It is believed that they are few in number-though from our own information we doubt this, believing that they have a certain support among the labourers, who for Italians are overworked and badly paid-and it is certain that they could be put down in a month. All that is wanted is a law making adherence to any society which keeps the penalty of death among its rules a capital offence, the suspension of trial by jury for such offences

- trying instead by Special Commission, as we do in Ireland and a resolute Prefect, aware that he must protect himself

and the Italian gentry outside Lombardy have not yet learned to act without the leadership of officials, still less to understand that with the existing suffrage they can carry any measures of which the offi cials do not disapprove. We have, moreover, ourselves a belief, though our informants earnestly deny this, that the mob at heart favours the Societies, as being friendly to the poor against the rich, and in that case a Vigilance Committee would need military support, which it might be difficult to accord.

66

for a month as carefully as in an enemy's
country, and the terrorism would cease at
once. It did so cease in Lecce in 1817.
That city fell in that year into the hands
of a terrorizing society of the same kind,
which was managed with considerable
brain, and became so absolute that it is
known to have summoned rich men to come
out of their houses for execution, and to
have been obeyed. The Government grew
angry at last, and accepted the offer of an
Englishman in its service, General Church,
to restore the supremacy of the Law. He
was invested by Royal decree with virtual- Matters in the South, throughout the
ly absolute powers, and announced to the old Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, are in a
Society through well-known channels of very different way almost as deplorable.
communication that it must cease to exist. The criminal class has there allied itself
The Society, emboldened by years of im- with a population full of agrarian discon-
punity, replied by a sentence of death on tents, the jury system has utterly broken
him, and within a week all its leaders, men down, and the lives of landed proprietors
of standing and repute, sentenced by su- have become almost unbearable. The way
preme order, were hanging dead in the the evil works is this. A landed proprie-
great piazza. Incredible efforts were made tor becomes unpopular, as in Ireland, with
to change their sentence into one of trans- the tenantry, who, however, do not venture
portation, and offers of great rewards were directly to attack him. The moment, how-
inade to General Church; but the ever, that he stirs out of his house, the
stern Englishman knew his duty, and from brigands"
"either shoot him or carry him
that day to this we speak on authority off to the mountains, demanding, under
- there has never in that licence-loving penalty of mutilation, enormous ransoms,
Southern town been the faintest attempt at which when paid do not secure him from
resistance to the law. To put down being shot next day. The peasants, who
anarchy in Ravenna, it would only be ne-alone know the brigands and their haunts,
cessary to put the province for one month will give no aid and no evidence, and
in a state of siege, to arrest about fourteen when the police make a capture nothing
persons, four of them men of standing, and whatever comes of it. The jurymen either
to hang the fourteen as hostes humani gen- take the heavy bribes offered for acquittal
eris, pirates, persons at war with human £800 was paid in one case this year-
society, and the province, with a sigh of re- or afraid of immediate death for a ver-
lief, would sink back into order and securi- dict of guilty, agree among themselves
ty. If this course is too violent, the next that they "cannot be accessory to the
best would be to suspend the institution legalized murder called capital punish-
of the jury for a twelvemonth, try the as- ment," and therefore must either let off
sassins by special commission, and execute the accused, or find them guilty of some
on conviction, a process which, though minor charge. So completely has the sys-
slower, would be equally effectual. Lanza, tem been organized, that there are lawyers
however, will do neither of these things. in the South perfectly well known as “ac-
A thorough doctrinaire, he is convinced quittal men," and that we can give names,
that the English system "will ultimately dates, and evidence that would satisfy an
right all evils, and forgets that even Eng- English jury as to the literal truth of the
lishmen have occasionally been compelled, following statement:-A great family in
as in India, to suspend the ordinary action Italy draws £100,000 a year from its es-
of a law which the moment juries are ter- tates, and pays to the Government and
rorized or bribed becomes worse than in- the communes £38,000 a year in direct
effectual. The extraordinary point about taxation. It is very old, not specially un-
the Raverna case is, that the Respectables, popular, but we suspect, though we do not
who know the guilty men perfectly well, do know, somewhat rigid in the exaction of
not form a Vigilance Committee, take the its rights. No member of that family
law into their own hands, and obtain a vote dreams of riding five miles on their own
of condonation from the Italian Parlia- property without an armed guard, and its
ment; but this is easily explained. Self- head, a man of the best intellectual class,
reliance of that kind was under the old is as we write journeying from Naples, his
Government an offence of the worst sort, own capital, to his own country seat es-

66

corted by fifty armed followers, certain | being Northerners, they entertain that that without them he would either be put kind of internal contempt for the South to death or mulcted in two years' income, which many Englishmen still feel for Ireand probably his ears. We can easily be- land. It is the "nature of Neapolitans, lieve, indeed we feel quite satisfied, that the peasantry in the South have serious grievances; there is a burning question, for example, between them and the nobles about the untilled lands, which, as the peasantry hold, are communal lands; but this state of affairs is thoroughly disgraceful to the Italian Parliament, which will neither remedy agrarian grievances nor maintain social order by repressive measures. The causes of this weakness, as represented to us, we believe truly, are two, one creditable, one most unworthy of civilized statesmen. The Ministry are extremely reluctant, by proposing exceptional and violent measures, to enable the Catholic party throughout Europe to say that the South is only held down by force and to alienate the peasantry from the new régime, and sincerely believe that time and "English institutions" will ameliorate an evil still curiously local-for there are Southern districts as safe as Suffolk-and

they think, to commit crime and kill landlords and sell their consciences as jurymen, and they cannot help it. We need not, we suppose, in England point out the absurdity of this idea. The Neapolitans are not a very wise or a very moral people, and they have been shockingly misgoverned; but they certainly are not less wise or moral or independent than the people of the districts of Berar, where an Irish Major, under precisely similar circumstances, restored perfect and permanent order in three months. If the Italian Executive is incompetent, it had better apply to the India House, which has 2,000 servants any one of whom would in three months put down brigandage in Calabria for ever; but it is not incompetent at all, but only composed of men who will not see that the state of affairs in Naples is their own opprobrium and their country's most serious and pressing danger.

NOTWITHSTANDING our boasted Western saperiority, we have still something to learn from the Russians. Like ourselves, the subjects of the Emperor Alexander have found increase of railway communication to mean increase of danger and accidents, though in their case the fault is not unpunctuality and carelessness, but

THERMO-ELECTRIC CHARACTERS OF CRYSTALS. - H. Hankel has made an examination (Der Naturforscher, No. 22, 177) of the nature of the electricity developed in crystals, especially in topaz, by a rise or fall of temperature, and has arrived at the following conclusions: 1. The thermo-electricity of a crystal is not directly due to hemimorphism, but appears to be a prop-injuries maliciously done to the lines from spite, erty of all crystals where other physical charac- revenge, or mere mischief, or else from "interters favour its development and accumulation. national" principles, to which the appalling 2. As in crystals that are not hemimorphous the number of conflagrations is attributed. Unlike terminations of one and the same axis are crys- ourselves, the Russians have not, however, tallographically similar, these crystals have sim- contentedly submitted to the abuse, but the Emilar electrical characters, or, in other words, ex-peror has evinced a praiseworthy "fatherlihibit the same polarity, provided their develop-ness" of administration by at once causing ment is actually the same. 3. The distribution searching inquiries to be instituted and rigorous of electricity on crystals that are not hemimor- measures to be adopted. General Levachoff, phous depends not alone on their molecular his own aide-de-camp, is appointed chief of a structure, but also on exterior form, and may by any change occurring thereon undergo modification. 4. As hemimorphism is to be regarded as an exceptional case in crystallography, the development of opposite electricities at the two ends of the axis, a direct result of hemimorphic structure, is likewise exceptional. Au alteration of the outer form of hemimorphic crystals appears to cause no quantitative change in the distribution of electricity, which appears therefore to be materially conditioned by want of symmetry in the molecule.

committee, which all Goverament authorities are bound to assist to the best of their ability, so that by stringent regulations the evil promises to be speedily remedied. Also, unlike ourselves, the Russians have not suffered the work of five men on the lines to be done by one; the first injunction issued by the Czar being that the staff shall be at once throughout materially increased, in order to enable the men to attend conscientiously to their duties.

Pall Mall Gazette.

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