ledge, new and more perfect institutions spring up for assuaging the miseries of our common nature; and all those glorious establishments, which are the most solid monuments of human improvement, and distinguish, to his advantage, civilized man from his savage brethren, have chiefly originated in private benevolence. All the institutions which have arisen for the healing of the sick,-for the care of the infirm, for the cure of those infirmities to which human nature is subject, have flourished under the superintending care of individuals, and have been supported by voluntary bequests and donations. It has never been found necessary to resort to the authority of law in such cases. The funds have been raised by voluntary contributions, and this first difficulty being surmounted, there can be no doubt that all establishments of this nature are better managed under the care of individuals, than under the authority of law. If, then, we have been enabled to provide funds for the support of the institutions which have been already described, and which, from their nature, must comprehend such a numerous class of sufferers,-if private benevolence has been found equal to such extensive objects, the funds for the support of a charity necessarily more limited, might surely be raised upon the same principle, and thus the authority of law, with all its imposing apparatus of district and general commissioners,—and with all its positive and peremptory rules, might be dispensed with. There is something in the regulations of law which does not harmonize well with plans of benevolence. The law confers authority,-it proceeds mainly upon compulsion, and compulsion engenders terror. But if our purposes be purely benevolent, we have no need of compulsion. No man, more especially if he is poor and destitute, will require to be compelled to receive benefit, and, in plans of this nature, therefore, far from considering the authority of law as any benefit, it seems, if not a positive evil, at least wholly unnecessary.

In various parts of Scotland the object of the plan has been already attained by the joint efforts of benevolent individuals; houses on a small scale have already been built for the reception of lunatics, and these have,

in many cases, been placed under such excellent management, as to have been of the most signal utility. Now, why may not the same excellent principle of private exertion be made subservient to a similar purpose in other places, and thus the necessity of complicated and expensive institutions, to be supported by heavy assessments on the property of the country, would be superseded. Mankind have manifested, in all ages, a propensity, which cannot be too narrowly watched, to a system of busy officious legislation in matters which are far better left to individual prudence; and, in general, the devices which arise from the influence of this intermeddling spirit, will be found more shewy than useful. They are always imposing and magnificent in theory, but, in practice, they are rarely so beneficial as those more humble institutions which arise from the limited means of private benevolence. The reason of this is plain; legislators proceed always upon great general rules, which they apply indiscriminately to all objects, however different; they sketch out their projects upon paper in all the beauty of ideal perfection, without condescending to examine all the minute and troublesome details to which individuals are forced to accommodate their plans. What they produce, therefore, is generally nothing better than a specious bauble, beautiful to look at, but wholly unfit for use. Individuals, on the other hand, having no money to squander, and being backed by no authority, are debarred from all that is systematical and magnificent, and they aim, therefore, at what is merely useful. Having no power of compelling individuals into an acquiescence with their schemes, they are forced to convince them of the utility of what they propose. They must produce their reasons,-they must shew their passport at every toll; and their projects, whatever they may be, are thus thoroughly sifted, and brought down, if they require it, from the altitude of theory, to the standard of sober practice. In every view, therefore, it would be preferable, if the object proposed in Lord Binning's bill could be attained, without resorting to the authority of law. A county tax for the maintenance of pauper lunatics is a species of poor-rate; it seems to be

the beginning of a system against which we cannot be too much on our guard, seeing that we have before us such lamentable experience of the unhappy effects which it has already produced in England, and for which political wisdom has not yet been able to devise any adequate remedy.

Such seem to be the chief objections to the principle of the bill; and, if we examine its details, it will be found fully to bear out the general character of these legislative devices, which are calculated more for shew than for use. The bill provides for the election of district commissioners, and general commissioners; and in these last, two of whom are appointed by the Secretary of State, and only one by the county, is vested the whole manage ment and control of the establishment, the appointment of officers, the fixing of their salaries, and the regulation of all the internal details of the house. This clause is in the highest degree objectionable, as it wholly supersedes efforts of individuals, and vests the regulation of a private establishment for private purposes in the officers of the crown. For what purpose should the superintendents of a lunatic asylum be clothed with this character of political authority? There is no danger that their regulations for the management of the asylum would be resisted, and the interference of the crown, or any of its members, seems, therefore, wholly

unnecessary.

There are other clauses, however, which are of equally dangerous tendency, and equally absurd. The whole country of Scotland, it appears, is to be divided into four large districts, with an asylum in each. Now, this provision, of which the disadvantages are obvious, completely exemplifies that passion for system to which legislators are generally so much addicted. Such a distribution of the country would not have occurred to individuals; they would not have had the power; and thus they are obliged to yield to circumstances, in place of vainly endeavouring to bend circumstances into a compliance with their views. In place of four large houses in distant parts of the country, for the reception of lunatics, they would have erected a greater number of smaller houses, which would have afforded accommodation and facilities that can

not be derived from houses of a larger description, and placed at a greater distance; though this, no doubt, would not have made so fine a figure on paper. It might happen that a poor lunatic might be at the distance of forty or fifty miles from the asylum to which he would have to be sent. Of course, the warrant of the justice to deport him to this place, might operate as effectually to separate him for ever from his friends, as a sentence of transportation to Botany Bay; and when it is considered that the present bill proposes to fill those houses, not by the voluntary application of poor persons, who may desire to have their friends taken care of in these receptacles; but that those who are thought proper objects of this (it can scarcely be called) charity, are to be carried before a Justice of the Peace by the kirk-session; and, after undergoing an examination by physicians, are to be forcibly taken away from the care of their relations, to be transported to the general asylum of the district, possibly never more to be seen,-when it is considered that this is the harsh process by which these houses are to be filled, all the objections to the plan are aggravated tenfold. There is a want of all delicacy, not to say humanity, in those arrangements, and it is easy to conceive that, under such a system, the most cruel cases of oppres sion may occur. How many absurd and meddling people are there, who, without any violent propensity to tyranny, but from the mere officiousness of their dispositions, might, under such a scheme, be rendered the instruments of great vexation and cruelty. There ought clearly to be no compulsion, for it is manifest, that, if the poor are burdened with a relation who is insane and furious, they will gladly avail themselves of the opportunity of having him taken care of. On these and other grounds, the proposed measure is highly objectionable; and it seems highly desirable, if the distress occasioned by the want of receptacles for lunatics in Scotland has been so general and so great, that individual exertion should first be tried to accomplish the object wanted, and that only in the event of this failing, Parliament should be applied to for some legislative measure on the subject.

Edinburgh, March 1818.

B.

LETTERS FROM ITALY.

(Continued from p. 312.)

[It will be necessary for the reader to connect the concluding paragraph of these extracts in our last Number, with the first of those that follow, as we were obliged, from accidental circumstances, to break off somewhat abruptly in the middle of a letter.-Edit.]

Florence, 5th January 1818. Ir is not so much the warmth of their constitutions, as the customs of their country, that corrupt the women of Italy. Where the sexual passion is uncontrolled by the dread of disgrace or punishment, is it surprising its indulgence should be unlimited? Certainly not; and, therefore, those who ascribe the immorality of the Italians to a peculiar degree of inherent vicious inclinations, judge erroneously, they mistake the offspring of custom for that of natural depravity. Transport the people of Great Britain into Italy; supply their place with Italians; let the laws and customs, and religions of the two countries remain the same; in a word, let the people change places in all respects, and we shall find that virtue and vice are not the creatures of this or that climate,-they are the creatures of education and legal restriction, -take away these two means of human improvement, and look at the condition of the people thus left to themselves.

端 * *

A few days ago we had a thunder storm here, with very brilliant lightning. On the evening of the 29th ult. a hard frost came on, and the weather has been very cold ever since. The tops of the neighbouring mountains are covered with snow. On the 27th ult. I visited what was originally the Convent of Santa Caterina, (in the via Larga, near San Marco,) and which was converted by the French into a school. It is now called the Luce dell' Antichita, and serves for the instruction of young Italians in natural philosophy, &c. The professors are paid by Government, and, as I understand, do not receive fees from the students, who are not able to give them. It contains, 1st, a room, with chemical apparatus. 2d, A library of 12,000 volumes, chiefly in French and Italian. In the midst of the library is the room called the School of history and mythology; a statue of Dante is at the farther end of this

VOL. II.

room, which contains also the busts of celebrated Italian authors. 3d, A school for the study of mechanics, containing models of mechanical inventions. This room contains a number of very old paintings-the earliest specimens of the art-by Cimabue and others. Among those, gold-leaf blazes in the skies with imperishable splendour, to represent the glories of the "far-darting Apollo." The paintings are much injured by time, but enough is left to shew their striking resemblance to those paintings, that you may have seen from the East Indies,-the same minuteness and laborious finishing, and the same want of spirit and grace. In a part of this room (separated from the rest of the room by a temporary curtain) two young men were drawing from a large painting, intended for the Duomo at Leghorn; the subject of the painting was only finished in dead colouring. 4th, The President's room, containing some paintings and books. Among these paintings are the present Grand Duke of Tuscany, and some of his ancestors; the unfortunate Queen of Etruria, and her little son, the King, standing beside her; a portrait of Galileo, and of a blacksmith monk, who holds in his hand, with great compla cency, a key, which he has just made. 5th, A school for music and declamation. There are several rooms in this department; one fitted up like a little theatre; a school for counterpoint ; a school for the violin; and another for I know not what, with two old miserable-looking harpsichords and an organ. In a room off the library is a tree of Italian sculptors, painters, architects, engravers, and so forth.

The two great theatres here, the Cocomero and the Pergola, are filled with bad actors and indifferent singers; they are really not worth writ ing about.

and extraction, and which used to be burned as fuel, contained a considerable quantity of oil, that might be extracted by a more minute and careful process; he, therefore, erected a manufactory for this purpose, which has been copied by all the neighbouring gentry and nobility who have olive farms. It consists of a common vertical water-wheel, (such as one of our water-mill wheels,) acting upon a very simple system of horizontal and vertical cog-wheels, which again act upon two perpendicular wooden cylinders, which are turned slowly round on their centres, each in the middle of a large circular vat. To the one of these cylinders, in the first vat, is closely joined a large mill-stone, in a vertical position; to the other a kind of large iron rake, with the teeth upwards, stretching horizontally along the bottom of the second vat, from one side to the other. Into the first vat is thrown the sansa as it comes out of the hair-cloth bags of the common manufacturers, and cold water is added to it, and it is mashed by the pressure and friction of the stone for a certain time. A sluice communicating with the second vat is then opened, and the mash runs from the one into the other. In the second vat more water is added to the mash, and it is for some time stirred about by the rake. These vats are in the upper part of the building. After some time a sluice in the second vat is opened, and the mash falls into the first of a series of five receptacles of stone. Here it is allowed to settle for some time, and the water and oil are drained off' into another immediately below, and, after another settling, to a third, and so on till it reaches the last, in the form of a thick, impure, oily substance, Hence it is put into a boiler, and, after being boiled, is strained through hair-cloth bags, and, finally, put into filtering vessels, whence it drops slowly in the form of a coarser sort of olive oil, fit for lamps and for other common uses. In this way there is a great quantity of oil saved, which was formerly lost. In the common way, the olives are gathered, mashed, and pressed in hair-cloth bags, while, from time to time, boiling water is thrown upon the bags, to wash out the oil. The first pressure, and the first settling in the tubs, produces the finest oil. The subsequent pressures

The Campanile, (or Belfry,) just beside the Duomo of the famous Cathedral of Florence, designed by Brunelleschi, in the thirteenth century, is a curious square tower of considerable height, and rich workmanship. It is coated with marble, and looks very like the work of one of the inlaid boxes that you sometimes see. By the by, talking of marble, a cele◄ brated English traveller says, somewhere or other, that the Ponte della Trinità of Florence is built of marble. It is not; for I went on purpose to look. It is built of common stone, and has no marble about it, excepting the four statues at its extremities, and two or three pieces of marble, forming two central ornaments above the middle arch, and a small tablet or two at the ends.

19th February.

Yesterday I visited the Medicean Chapel, remarkable for the beautiful incrustation of pietra dura, with which its inner walls are decorated. Pilasters of Egyptian granite shoot up as high as the perpendicular walls reach; jasper, Sicilian agate, and the pietra dura, which is found in the neighbourhood of Volterra, and elsewhere; and, in short, a profusion of hard and beautiful stones, susceptible of a fine and brilliant polish, please the eye in the interior of this building, and surprise us when we reflect upon the incredible labour necessary to cut and give lustre to these stones, and to form them into the elegant shapes in which they appear upon the walls. The coats of arms belonging to Florence, and to other towns in Tuscany, are inlaid upon the walls in agate, jasper, lapis lazuli, coral, &c. &c. in a beautiful manner, and all in their appropriate colours. These are displayed regularly along the lower part of the walls, in oblong compartments, of about two feet by eighteen inches. But, alas! alas! begun under the golden auspices of the Medici, this chapel is unfinished!

The encrustations are carried as high as the base of the dome, but all above is bare and rugged stones and lime, and forms a most disagreeable contrast with the splendour and richness of the various coloured walls below. I looked up to the dome, and asked the old Italian who shewed the chapel why it was not yet finished? "Ah diamine! it will soon be finished according to that design which you see there," (pointing to a wooden model exhibiting a section of the chapel, painted as it is to be,)" but the Grand Duke is afraid that the weight of the pietra dura might destroy the dome, and occasion some serious accident, and therefore it is to be painted." The ancient design was, to cover the whole inside with pietra dura; but the Grand Duke has something else to think of, and cannot, or will not, finish the chapel as the Medici intended. Thus you see the salvation of the dome, and of the skulls of the Catholics, serves as an apology (and perhaps a good one) for discontinuing the incrustation of pietra dura. In the sacristy of this chapel are some of the celebrated works of Michael Angelo; of these sculptures I shall not speak particularly, being no connoisseur in that art, and of course not able to enter into all the merits of the celebrated artist's design and execution. The groups are unfinished, some of the figures only beginning to assume the contours of the human form, and to start into life. They are all marked with the shadowy tints of time, and some of them (such as the figure of Night) smoothed into a disagreeable greasy glitter of polish by handling, or other friction. I looked upon them with sentiments of great respect, although without that rapture which a learned eye might have taught me to feel, and which so many ridiculous travellers pretend to feel, without knowing the true nature of the things about which they rave. Such a profound knowledge of the actual appearances of the human body in different states of action and repose, and also so many other things are necessary to enable one to judge fairly and rationally of these sculptures, that it is mere folly and childishness to pretend to criticise them minutely without having well studied the art which produced them. Indeed, the same observation applies to all the fine arts.

Florence, 24th February.

I shall set out for Rome on the 27th or 28th. To-day I learned that our route was uncertain,-either by Sienna or Perugia, but which I do not know. It was to have been by Sienna, but the Perugia road is better, and more interesting.

I have visited the Laurentian chapel and library. I had been told that in that library was a very curious manuscript, containing the remarks of Cosino the Third upon England, written during his travels in that country about the middle of the 17th century, and containing also a number of drawings, executed by a painter whom he carried with him. I also learned that a certain Lord was negociating for a copy of this curious and valuable MS. and copies of the drawings, and that the whole would be published in London at no very distant period. Being (from dearly bought experience) rather inclined to trust to my own senses, than to other people's sayings, I went, on the 18th instant, to the library, in order to see the MS. in question, and to make such inquiries as I thought proper ;-I did see it. It is an enormous volume, bound in red Morocco, and opening lengthways. It contains a great number of drawings in Indian ink, of different cities, and towns, and remarkable buildings, &c. in England, as they appeared to the eyes of Cosmo the Third, and his painter, in the year 1669. On the pages opposite to each drawing are Cosmo's remarks upon the place drawn; and a regular journal is carried on through the whole volume regarding the places which he visited, the remarkable sons with whom he met and conversed, and his remarks upon men and things as they appeared to him in England at that period. There is, however, less writing in the volume than I expected to find. One of the largest drawings represents the city of London minutely delineated, as seen from the opposite bank of the Thames. I presume the view was taken from St George's Fields, as the city seems to have been then confined to one side of the river. I asked the librarian if it was permitted to copy any of the MS. or any of the drawings in the volume. "No; the Grand Duke would not allow that." "Was no part of the volume ever copied by any body?"

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