presThe

rule of a secret police, and the sure of absolute government. press, with a very few exceptions, has played a most shameful part throughout the crisis. Each new aggressive movement of the populace has been applauded and encouraged. The wrongs of the people have been insisted on in a tone which even the red republicans of France have not yet avowed. A separate sheet of the Cornese di Livorno informed the inhabitants of Rossi's murder, with a grand panegyric on the brave hand that slew the traitor." It is but fair to say, that, one by one, every man of eminence and talent has withdrawn from the daily press.

No longer are the names of Gioberti, Azeglio, Balba, Talvagudli, and others of like celebrity, to be found at the foot of leading articles: the consequence, however honourable to these few, is, that the guidance of the public mind is committed to men of little ability and less character. Truth was never deemed a necessary ingredient in Italian journalism, nor is this period favourable to its cultivation. The articles on England are, as might be expected, vituperative to the last degree, and ingenuity is taxed for motives to lines of conduct which it would be supposed impossible for any malignity to misinterpret. Some months back, when nothing but the most strenuous interference of the English minister at Florence prevented the occupation of Massa and Carrara by the Austrian troops under General Weldon, the story ran that the British envoy had interposed his power to save the Austrian battalions from the just vengeance that awaited them in those cities!

Indeed the English envoy at that court has had no common difficulties to contend against, since to his hands alone have been entrusted the most delicate and dangerous passages of this terrible crisis. It is but a few months back that the Princess of Parma, the sister of the Count de Chambord, sought an asylum in Tuscany, under circumstances which might be supposed sufficient to plead for her, even in presence of the "sovereign people." Deserted by every member of her family, who were compelled to flight to save their lives, she arrived at Modena at night, in a small open carriage, drawn by one horse, and accompanied by a single attendant. She was within a few weeks of her confine

ment, without a friend, and almost without money. In this forlorn condition, she addressed herself to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, whose kindness of heart she was well assured would compassionate her; but times had changed. The power of the people, now in the ascendant, had actually made it dangerous to offer this poor deserted lady a refuge; and on the rumour of her coming, the walls were inscribed with the ominous words, Morte a la Principessa di Parma." It was enough that she was of royal blood and a Bourbon; for she had never, in any way, been political, nor had she been known, save for the courtesy and cordiality of her manner towards all admitted to her circle. Would it be believed that the grand duke did not dare to offer her the shelter she stood in need of, and had it not been for the chivalrous honour of the English minister, who set off at night, and posted to Bologna, at speed, the princess might have remained without succour or counselwithout a friend, or even a roof, to protect her.

He found her in the open street of Bologna, at midnight, sitting in the little carriage which had conveyed her from Modena, while a number of gensd'armes, grouped around her, were demanding the reasons of her journey, and imperatively calling for her passport! On her arrival at Florence, a small villa, belonging to the grand duke, was placed at her disposal, and here his royal highness visited her, accompanied by the grand duchess, but always in secret, and generally at night. This is but one episode of the changeful fortunes which have been rife in these latter days, nor would it claim our mention, except in illustrating the miserable thraldom to which a prince can be reduced, whose measures were based upon the gratitude of a populace!

The abuses of the former govern ments in Italy have been made the pretext for all the violent changes and terrible convulsions the past year has witnessed. With what truth, however, a brief consideration will show. It is undeniable that the system of internal administration in Tuscany, the best governed state of the peninsula, was highly reprehensible. Peculation in every branch of the revenue; irregu larity and disorder in all the public offices; monopolies and restrictions on

trade, in a hundred vexatious forms, pressed upon the people, compelled to maintain a show of submission by the tyranny of a secret police. These were great evils, and might well have warranted the boldest efforts to abolish them. But however plausible as grievances, the democratic party had other wrongs to redress, which they considered of far more moment, and which, so far as their own chance of permanence in power is concerned, they were right in so deeming. Hence we see that the first measures of popular freedom are not the repeal of laws which press heavily on the poor -not the reduction of state expenditure and the lowering of taxationnot the amelioration of the condition of those for whose sakes it is always asserted "revolutions are made." What, for instance, had been more natural than the repeal of that odious "octroi" which is demanded at the gates of the city, and by which the pea sant cannot bring the humblest commodity to market, without submitting it to be taxed? A tax, oppressive in its nature, and almost insulting in the mode of its collection; yet no endeavour has ever been made to abolish it. No; the first steps of the movement party were made with a view to their own permanence. They saw that with a national guard the people cease to be subjects, and can discuss every question of government "de pair" with the prince. An armed force, constituted to protect their own property, first; and, secondly, to uphold any form of government they at the time deem best, is a dangerous ally to a throne. The experience of every state where revolution has prevailed has shown, that their conduct has been uniformly the same-vacillating and weak, when courage was called for; treacherous to the sovereign; truckling to the mob, and only roused to a show of resistance when it became a question of their own chattels.

Albeit the Florentine Guardia have as yet escaped any trying test of their fealty and daring, their conduct upon one or two trifling occasions has well shown what might be expected from them in greater emergencies. The first memorable instance was when a Neapolitan general was passing through Florence, on his return from Lombardy, whither he had carried the orders of his king for the recall of the troops. No sooner was

his arrival made known in the city, than a mob besieged the doors of his hotel, demanding, with savage cries, that he should be given up to them. He was fortunate enough to escape by a back way, and obtain an asylum in a fortress near. Nothing remained, then, for popular vengeance, but his travelling carriage, and this, on their demand, was given to them. They wheeled it into the great square of the "Piazza Vecchia," where already two companies of the national guard had arrived, as some said, to disperse the mob, and rescue the carriage. Far from it! The armed party formed a square around the carriage, and “stood at ease," while the mob, passing through the ranks with faggots and combustible substances, set fire to the carriage, and burned it! This took place about six o'clock of a calm summer afternoon, in one of the most frequented squares of the capital, thousands looking onsome approvingly-many, indeed, with undisguised terror-for it was the first specimen they had seen of popular will, and the first evidence that they were living in a land where the law was at least an "intermittent." Freedom of the press and universal suffrage the stereotyped wants of humanity-have been attended with the customary results. The press, appealing to the lowest class, has been deserted by every writer of ability. The task of inflaming the popular mind against the aristocracy, and attributing base motives to all in high places, might well be committed to very moderate capacities, and so it has been. In like manner, universal suffrage has had no interest for a people who never troubled their heads about political privileges, and in many districts, not all the efforts of agitators could bring a sufficient number of voters to the poll, to make the election valid.

Six months will no more make a parliament than it will an oak. The great element of all constitutions is wanting in foreign countries-no independent gentry class. There is nothing which represents, or even affects to represent this, and you meet with cultivated and highly-informed proficient men, scholars, and savans, of even European celebrity, everywhere. You are struck with the range of the ac quirements, and the exactness, and extent of the knowledge, but the practical, work day, common sense ha

bits of Englishmen, are found nowhere. The titled classes abroad, particularly in Italy, have no other aim or pursuit than pleasure. No career open to them of any kind, they give themselves up to an enervating self-indulgence, which, weakening their natural powers of mind, makes them reserved and shy towards strangers, and consequently deprives them of all the sources of information which conversation supplies. These are not the men to form a senate, nor could it be supposed that they should bring to the dry labour of legislation, the patient research, the calm spirit of inquiry, the laborious attention which characterise a class, which in England is respected for its great services to the nation, rather than its wealth and high lineage.

We have heard more than one intelligent Italian say "We are unfitted for constitutional freedom; the system which works well with you will work badly here;" and there are many reasons why it should. Lord Byron, in one of his letters to Mr. Murray, keenly remarks, when speaking of this people, remember "that their morality is not your morality, nor any of their standards your standards. If we wished, for instance, to say, what quality in a public man here would excite the same amount of respect and admiration as a great character for probity and strict honor would do in England, we should at once say subtlety.' The man whose skilful ingenuity could outwit his opponent, would be the great Italian."

The failure of the present pope, his irretrievable fall in public estimation, is far more attributable to the character of the man than to anything in his political career. The simplicity of mind, the frank honesty of purpose, the confiding credulity, which all preeminently distinguished him, were great blemishes in a land where the brightest intelligences are the falsest, and where the most honorable means are the surest, the speediest, and the darkest." We have heard it asserted in quarters which might seem to claim authenticity, that on arriving at the papal dignity, his whole mind was set upon these moderate, but much wanting reforms, which all lay within his own immediate power, and the granting of which could never have led to popular excesses. To correct the police system, the worst and most

VOL. XXXIII.-NO. CXCIV.

demoralising in Europe to grant an amnesty to all prisoners confined for political offences-to provide for the education of the poorer classes -to reform the fiscal administration of the realm, and in particular that portion applied to religious foundations, were all natural and most laudable objects of ambition; and had he done these, and stopped there, there is reason to believe that we should have been spared much of the terrible drama the past year has revealed to us over the entire of Europe.

No sooner, however, had he entered on his career of reformer, than the whole strength of democratic Italy hailed him as their chief. The enthusiasm became a rage: his bust, his pictures, were everywhere; no other head was seen in brooches, or cut in cameos; the Hymn of the Pope became the national anthem of all Italy; religion itself, sadly fallen into the "sear and yellow" during his predecessor's reign, became fashionable, and none were more prominent, in public places, to seek the benediction of the Holy Father, than the men well known for the boldest doctrines of rebellion against both church and sovereign.

There is no saying what amount of influence this show of returning obedience may have exercised on the Pope himself. Even supposingand it is a favourable supposition for one of humble origin and lowly expectations even supposing him proof against the flattering homage of an entire people, not alone of those beneath his own sway, but of millions in other parts of the peninsula, is it not reasonable to infer that these signs of submission to the church — this newly-lighted zeal for its ordinances might have shadowed to his mind a return to the gorgeous days of the papacy, in all the plenitude of its power over prince and people? Would it be unlikely that a man whose whole soul was in "his order," should dream of the revival of the Church," and that the proud part of a Hildebrand was to be his own? Such a vision had already occurred to one great mind of the present era; and what more natural than to suppose these evidences of popular enthusiasm to be the first dawning of the bright day? There was everything to favour the belief:

Q

never were the churches more crowded by worshippers never were holy shrines so beset by penitents; a species of pious fervour pervaded the great city, which mingled with its daily duties, and blended a kind of solemn enthusiasm through all the joy of the period. Even distinguished conversions to the faith were not wanting to swell the proud triumph; several of those who had deserted the reformed religion were then at Rome, and one, at least, among them, a name of no mean celebrity.

Mr. Whiteside attributes to Pius IX. the hope of Catholicising England; and the supposition perfectly accords with what we are suggesting. This explanation-if we may hazard so bold a word -will account for nearly every circumstance of his brief and eventful career.

The zeal of his first movementshis anxiety for a purification of the old monastic establishments, whose abuses have inflicted so many breaches on the faith-his openly expressed delight at the increased fervor of the people his clemency to the political criminals, conceded in all the phraseology of an act of mercy. Then as he advanced further, his doubts and hesitations about those concessions, which seemed to weaken the powers of the Vatican, and more than all, his determined refusal to proclaim war against Austria, showing how his character of a temporal prince was less the ruling impulse of his mind, than his position as Pope. The very last act of his flight proved, that throughout all it was the churchman, and not the sovereign. It was the priest that hoped-not the politician who plotted. It has been said, we know not on what sufficient grounds, that letters are in existence from his holiness to the Emperor of Austria, and also to some of his ministers, frankly owning that he was carried along in a current he could not oppose; that he deplored deeply the terrible calamity which separated the apostolic emperor from his nearest ally; but that he was powerless. One fact, however, there is little doubt of, which is, that Marshal Welden's occupation of Bologna was at the earnest solicitation of his holiness, who at last, but too late, discovered that the spirit of democracy was an adversary he could not cope with.

The imputation of these acts, however, would weigh lightly in the esti mation of an Italian, compared with

the yielding weakness of his timid character.

The liquefaction of St. Januarius's blood was not a greater miracle for the masses, than the accession of a reforming Pope was to the democrats of Europe. The papacy had long been deemed by them the "great difficulty" of Italy. They foresaw all the powerful antagonism such a mighty agent might oppose; they knew well the immense influence possessed over the popular mind by that black legion, which in every gradation of life, from the palace to the hovel, has its ready representative. It was, then, a success far beyond expectation-almost above belief when they beheld in the first rank of the movement the Pope himself. Not alone in Italy, but throughout France, and even in England, the tidings were hailed with a warm enthusiasm. What an occasion for the Montalemberts and Wisemans to trumpet forth to the world a haughty denial of the oft-asserted reproach, that Romanism was the deadly enemy of all progress-that the very constitution of that church was in direct antagonism to all civil liberty! How much longer could Protestantism arrogate to itself the championship of political and intellectual freedom? The living Pope, Pius the Ninth, the man who, on the steps of the Vatican, bestowed his blessing on the banners Crociati," was refutation strong enough. The triumph, if brilliant, was but fleeting. Nor can there be a more significant evidence of its success than the last date we read on a Papal rescript-"The Fortress of Gaeta !"

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It is but one short year since the sonorous phrases of the language were ransacked to find distinctive epithets for three men, who, in their several states, attracted the admiring wonder of Italy-the Pope, Carlo Alberto, and the Grand Duke of Tuscanyand what are they now? One an exile; the second branded as the "Re Traditore;" and the last, the weak occupant of a throne, bereft of all dignity and power.

If there was neither genius nor heroism but a year ago, there is as little treason and falsehood to be laid to their charge now. The crime is, that they served not "two," but many "masters;" that they were slaves of a democracy, whose vow is to destroy, and whose means are blood!

L.

THE man who, in the present day, sits down to write a ballad, undertakes, perhaps, the most difficult task in poetry. His story must be picturesque his passion or pathos simple, direct, and strong-his language clear, natural, unstudied; and the accessories of his picture, all that gives local colouring, and marks the characteristies of the time, must be suggested without visible effort. But, above all, he must forget himself, and all that is peculiar to his own time. He must be as completely sunk in his subject as the dramatist. His characters must be shown, not described; and, as he has less space to work in, not a word may be thrown away. The poetry must be that of situation, incident, or passion, and as little the poetry of mere expression as may be. A ballad should be the musical expression of the circumstances and emotions of the story, as it might have been rendered by the strong sympathy of a poetical nature living in the time in which the story is laid. It is in wanting this quality that nearly all modern ballads fail. They are not so much poetry in stories, as stories in poetry. The writer is not lost in his subject, but is looking at it. His characters do not speak as they would speak under the given circumstances, but as he fancies they would have spoken; and the narrator or minstrel's own commentaries, or fillings-in of the picture, are more often those of an antiquarian or a critic, than of the sympathetic chronicler of those

"Old, unhappy far-off things,
And battles long ago."

which form the appropriate theme of all genuine ballad poetry.

The Germans far surpass us in this art. Goethe's "Bride of Corinth," the richest and most picturesque of all modern ballads, chaunted in music of the most exquisite beauty, is, to our minds, the model of what a modern

ballad should be. Placed in a classic time and country, it nevertheless needs no classical knowledge to enjoy it; although the scholar may alone, perhaps, be able to feel its recondite beauties, or appreciate the skill and knowledge that have gone to produce so harmonious and truthful a picture. The story is told as if the incidents were reflected from a mirror, and the interest rises gradually and steadily to the last verse of the poem. We forget the poet in his fiction, and when we lay down the book, the quickened pulse and shortened breath remind us how thoroughly the passion of the characters has possessed us.

Schiller is only second to Goethe. His "Fight with the Dragon," "Fridolin," "Cranes of Ibycus," and "The Diver," comprise the best qualities of the old ballads, with something which they had not, in a higher moral strain and wider range of view. Many of Uhland's ballads are perfect in the simplicity and depth of their pathos, and in that invaluable quality of suggestiveness, without which no poem of this class can claim a high rank. The noble ballads of Wilhelm Müller, on themes connected with the revolutionary war in Greece, possess a character of martial fervour, a passionate strength of feeling, and a loftiness of cadence peculiar to themselves, and which have not, we think, been sufficiently appreciated. Besides these, there are Teutonic bardlings, whose name is Legion, who have made permanent additions to the stock of genuine ballad poetry.

How stands the case with our modern English writers? We do not speak of ballads of humour. In these, England may be backed against the field. Cowper, Southey, Hook, Hood, Ingoldsby, our friend and contributor Bon Gaultier, and some or one of the writers in Punch, not to mention others, have distanced all rivals. But what have we to show in serious ballad poetry?