heaven. In his portraiture of the two great masters of the romantic epic, Signor Mariotti evidently inclines to the bard of the "Jerusalem," whose high and solemn musings find a readier sympathy in his own breast, than the elegant pleasantries of Ariosto.

The fourth great division of Italian history brings our author to the period of Foreign Dominion, from the middle of the sixteenth to the middle of the eighteenth century, - a period full of humiliation to the history, and in some respects to the literature, of the country. However unpropitious a domestic despotism may be to a liberal culture in its highest sense, it is freedom itself in comparison with the rule of a foreign master. The native prince feels that his own glory is inseparably connected with that of his people. He sympathizes with their tastes, warms with the same love of the beautiful, is open to the same genial influences, which stir the spirit of his countrymen. The foreign ruler is estranged from all these sympathies. He has no part or parcel in their language, their literature, or their annals. He rules over a conquered race, his natural enemies, at least become so by his new position in regard to them. His great object is to secure his authority, not on the affections, that cannot be, but on the fears, of his subjects. He must break down opposition, and the means of it; crush intellectual movement; eradicate, if possible, the very seeds of intellect, and stunt those energies, which, if roused into action, would burst the bonds of the oppressor. Such was the policy of Spain in her colonial empire in Italy under Charles the Fifth. And such has since been that of Austria.

The age of the seicentisti, as the seventeenth century is called in Italy, passes as a by-word of literary disgrace. It is that in which the language became infected with the most deplorable affectations and conceits. It is natural, that a conquered land should take the humble rank and relations of a province, and should look for its models of taste to the capital of the empire. Something of this took place when Spain had set her colossal foot in Italy, in the South first, and afterwards in the North. The drama borrowed something in its construction from the complicated intrigue of the Castilian theatre, and poetry, in general, affected that meretricious ornament, those poor, tinsel conceits, which mark the cultismo of the Spaniards. Though, perhaps, in strict justice

to the latter, the affectations of the seicentisti may be carried up to the original depravity of native writers, and some of these, the most eminent. There is some warrant for Boileau's sarcasm of the clinquant de Tasse. And the imputation lies still heavier on the head of the great father of lyric verse, the bard of love and Laura.

Still, in the general intellectual ferment of this vivacious people, there was many a work produced both in prose and poetry, of a high order, and in a purer taste. This was es

pecially the case in the eighteenth century, when a few scholars, as Parini and Alfieri, for example, resisted the general tide of corruption, and, by the strong power of genius, carried back their effeminate countrymen to the study of the severer models of the fourteenth century. We have not room for it, or we should extract some good criticism of our author on Alfieri's poetical character, and on Metastasio, the latter of whom, with his luxurious languor of sentiment and monotonous melody of versification, may be considered as the antagonist principle of the former. Unhappily, he was much more accommodated to the popular taste of his countrymen.

The last in the series of epochs defined by Signor Mariotti, is the present, or Recent Times, as it is called by him. In this he has taken a rapid survey of the influence exercised on Italy by the revolutionary spirit and movements of France; the efforts, unhappily abortive, made at different times by the Italians for their political emancipation; closing with a consideration of the actual condition of his country, and her future prospects, both in a literary and social view. Though an exile himself, he sees good ground for hope in the intellectual progress which has been already made, and is still going on, in the great masses of the nation. His reflections, though far from desponding, are tempered by a sobriety and good sense, not always to be found in the bosom of the exile. He rightly conceives, that little is to be hoped from a precipitate, spasmodic effort, and that a moral reform must precede a political one, to afford the latter any chance of permanent success. But we shall do more justice to our author by quoting his own words.

"The Italians have been so long estranged from each other; the name of their country has been so long buried in oblivion; their local interests have been so artfully directed into different and opposite channels; that their patriotic ideas,

-I speak of the unenlightened classes, have still something vague and undetermined; the natural boundaries of the country seem to shift from one district to another, so as to induce the traveller to conclude, that, geographically as well as politically, there is no Italy.

"To efface from the minds of the people these last remnants of illiberal provincialisms, rather engendered by ignorance than ill-will; to foster the redeeming idea of Italian nationality, the intelligent classes in Italy are actively employed.

"To bring about the reform and enfranchisement of the national language, the works of Perticari, Monti, Cesari, and other philological writers, have assiduously contributed, since the beginning of the nineteenth century. They have hastened the downfall of that old edifice of pedantry, by which the Academia della Crusca had brought the Italian language to a dead stand. The still surviving universities, no less than the primary and infant schools, recently disseminated wherever they did not, as at Rome, meet with unconquerable opposition on the part of the government, have left nothing unattempted to bring the most uncouth dialects to the level of the purest Tuscan standard. The vocabularies of the Venetian, Sicilian, and every other provincial patois, printed with a view to aid the people in their acquirement of the written language, and the republication of Italian dictionaries at Bologna, Verona, Naples, and Padua, announce a new fact, about which foreigners never entertained any doubt, but which, as I have said, had never been sufficiently established since the age of Dante, that there is an Italian language.

"The annual meeting of eminent scientific men at one of the several universities of the country, will have a most salutary effect on the progress of science, by enabling the most active scholars to meet, to court, to understand and mutually appreciate each other by the assurance of the reward of national suffrage, which awaits the result of their efforts at every reunion of that scientific diet.

"It would be difficult to express with what extraordinary enthusiasm several hundred savants, the representatives of the aristocracy of the mind in Italy, convene from the remotest provinces to make the enumeration of the services rendered by their forefathers to the interests of science, to lay the first stone of monuments to be erected to their memory, to demonstrate, by their own endeavours, that science in Italy is certainly neither in a backward nor yet in a stationary condition; and whoever reflects that this is the first time, perhaps, since the days of Pico della Mirandola, that the Italians have been convoked even for so innocent a purpose, will easi

ly sympathize with people so placed, as to hail the meeting of a few professors and scholars as a national triumph, and make it a subject of universal rejoicing.

"The privilege of copyright will bring the interests of the different petty literary centres of Turin, Milan, Venice, Florence, &c., to a common understanding, secure the free circulation, at least, of all the works published in the country; whilst the increase of daily, weekly, and monthly periodicals, will hasten and extend their diffusion, and lay the basis of a universal Italian bibliography. For hitherto, the Italian despots did not even agree in their system of oppression; or rather, they were sometimes pleased to flatter their subjects by a little display of comparative mildness, and indulge in the specious illusion of a precarious independence. But the equitable intercourse of literary commerce, necessarily attendant upon a mutual guaranty of copyright, will soon bring a beneficial uniformity in the police regulations of the different states; and the Italians, are not, perhaps, too sanguine in their expectations, if they hope, the decree on literary property may be considered as a first step towards the establishment of a moderate freedom of the press. Vol. 11. pp. 367–370.

One may have a sufficient notion of the disastrous effect to authors from this want of copyright protection, by a single glance at the map of Italy, showing into how many separate states the country is divided. Each of them is filled with an active, hungry tribe of publishers, who, the moment any new offspring of the brain is fairly fledged, and has left the parent nest, pounce on it as fair prey for their own cormorant appetites, while the author himself is starving, perhaps, in a garret. Botta's "History of Italy" was making the fortunes of booksellers at home, who published and republished it, while he was an exile, in the extremity of poverty, in Paris. Manzoni's "Promessi Sposi," the most popular novel of the time, brought its author only a trifling sum, and that in the form of a gratuity from a publisher !

We can better appreciate the nature and extent of the evil, from being exposed to a similar one in our literary intercourse with Great Britain. It is true, we are distinct nations; scarcely more so, however, than the different Italian States. We have, like them, a community of language, and, although an ocean rolls between us, the improvements in navigation have brought us nearer to each other for all practical purposes, than is the case with some of the nations of Italy. Yet such is the indifference of our government to

the interests of a national literature, that our authors are still open to the depredations of foreign pirates, and, what is not less disgraceful, the British author, from whose stores of wisdom and wit we are nourished, is turned over in like manner to the tender mercies of our gentlemen of the trade, for their own exclusive benefit, and with perfect indifference to his equitable claims. A very striking case of this national injustice is forced on our notice by the presence of Mr. Dickens among us. No one has enjoyed such a literary triumph in the homage of a grateful public, since the coronation of Petrarch. But what does it all amount to ? We dine him, and dance him, throw up our caps and fête him, in every possible way, till human nature sinks under it; but as to the solid compensation by which the real value of things is settled, we take it all to ourselves. We read and praise. But our praise is not worth a penny to the author. He asks us for bread, and we give him a bubble,the bubble reputation; for which, indeed, he owes us no thanks, since he has blown it up with his own breath. We do not mean to underrate the homage thus spontaneously paid by individuals to this eminent writer, which he has so well won by his remarkable talents employed in the cause of humanity. It is an expression honorable alike to the party which gives, and to that which receives it. But it is all incomplete, unless the nation secures to him, and to other writers of his country who stand in a similar relation with him, the full benefit of their labors, thus enabling itself to demand for American writers a corresponding protection from literary pillage on the other side of the water.

But it is time to bring our hasty remarks to a close. In reference to mere style, the work before us is altogether extraordinary, as that of a foreigner, laboring under all the embarrassments of a language, so different in its organization and genius from his own. It is true, we occasionally meet with phrases and idioms intimating its exotic origin. But they are far from ungraceful, and only show, by the rareness of their occurrence, how intimate the author has made himself with the nice mechanism of the English tongue. In the higher quality of thought, we may commend him for his acute and often original criticism, and his quick perception of the grand and beautiful in his native literature. However we may differ, too, from some of his conclusions, we must admit his liberal