system, however well organized, that may them being missed. We mention these twò uot be open to imperfections; and what are classes, for their movements only can we corsuch evils as the above, which are the sum rectly ascertain; but it is a fair inference total of all that has occurred, to ridding the that other natives have travelled in equal world of some hundreds of professed assas- safety. There can be no doubt that if the sins. British government will pursue vigorous meaWe are fully convinced, after taking every sures for a few years, the system will, with thing into consideration, that there are no proper supervision on the part of the ordinatrials in which a man may with so safe a con- ry police, be completely eradicated, never science pronounce sentence, as those of the again to rise; but if exertions are slackened, Thugs; in proof of which we have only to and any fully initiated Thugs left at large, refer to the table in p. 38 of Captain Slee- they would infallibly raise new gangs, and man's work. No less than eleven different Thugghee would again flourish all over Infunctionaries, judicial and political, are there dia. It is certainly incumbent on a governmentioned as having held Thug trials; yet ment which assumes to itself the character the general result is the same in all, as to the of enlightened, and which is now paramount proportion found guilty and acquitted. We in India, to exert itself for the suppression of could mention many individual instances in such an atrocious system. It is impossible proof of the correctness of the information to ascertain with accuracy the extent to which obtained and evidence brought forward, but it has been carried annually, and, could it be will content ourselves with one very striking done, the statement would scarcely be credit case from Hyderabad. About eighty Thugs ed. Reckoning the number of Thugs in all had been arrested in various parts of that India to be ten thousand, and that, on the kingdom by different parties of our appro. average, each Thug murders three victims vers; they were collected into a gang and a year, this will give an amount of thirty sent off to Jubulpoor under a guard. As thousand murders annually committed for they were passing the residence of the local many years past, of which, till lately, scarcegovernor of one of the Hyderabad provinces, ly any thing was known. Frightfully enorhe gave in charge to the guard eleven men mous as this may appear, it is probable that whom he had apprehended on suspicion. both estimates are under the mark, which is The whole were safely brought to Jubulpoor; warranted by what appears on the trials, but it so happened that the papers and docu. where, of course, but a small portion of the ments relating to, their arrest had not been crimes actually committed are proved. received by the time of their arrival; and the "These men are commonly tried for one officer commanding the guard made no re- particular case of murder, perpetrated on one port as to whence the different men who com- occasion, in which case all the gang may posed the gang under his charge had been have participated, and of which the evidence received: they were, therefore, as a matter is most complete. On the average, more of course, supposed to be all Thugs who had than ten of these cases have been found to ocbeen arrested by our approvers. Neverthe- cur on every expedition; and every man has, less the usual form was proceeded in, i. e. tions. The murders for which they are tried on the average, been on ten of these expedithe approvers who remained at Jubulpoor are not, therefore, commonly more than a were sent for singly to inspect the gang: all hundredth part of the murders they have perwere recognized to be Thugs excepting elev-petrated in the course of their career of crime. en men, of whom the approvers said they knew nothing. On the receipt of the docu. ments a few days afterwards, these eleven proved to be the party given in charge to the guard by the local governor, with whose arrest our approvers had no concern.

In the last sessions held at Jubulpoor by Mr. Smith, for 1834-5, thirty-six cases from Hy. derabad, committed by Captain Reynolds, and forty-two cases from other parts, committed by myself, were tried, and two hundred and six prisoners convicted of the murder of four hundred and forty persons. Of these the bodies of three hundred and ninety had been disinterred, and inquests held over them, leaving only fifty unaccounted for."

The success which has attended the exertions of the officers employed to suppress this crime, has hitherto equalled our most sanguine expectations. In most parts of Cen--p. 38. tral India, Bundlecund, Boglecund, and from In the sessions of 1836, lately held by the Allahabad to the Himalayah, Thugghee now Honourable F. I. Shore at Jubulpoor, two scarcely exists: the great proof of which is, that the servants of English gentlemen, and Sepahees, who go on leave into those parts of the country, have, during the last three years, all returned in safety; whereas previously, not a year passed without many of

hundred and forty-one prisoners were convicted of the murder of four hundred and seventy-four individuals, of whose corpses three hundred and fourteen were disinterred, and inquests held upon them.

The results have been hitherto highly sat

isfactory. Within these few years more than | successors of those great bards condescendtwo thousand Thugs have been arrested by ed to imitate the romantic strain of Scott, althe officers attached to the Jubulpoor and though we can scarcely doubt of The Lay, Central India establishment alone. Of these Marmion, The Lord of the Isles, &c. being about three hundred have been made approv- as certainly the progenitors of the more reers; taking in the sessions of 1836 first men- cent Italian narrative poems, as the Wavertioned, the abstract of which is not included ly series of their historic novels; with some in the table at p. 38 of Captain Sleeman's of which we have made our readers acbook, which was printed just before the ses- quainted. The works, however, wherewith sions were held, eighteen hundred and three our present business lies, have, as intimated, were committed for trial. Of these four hun- neither the regularity and completeness of dred and nineteen were sentenced to death; the first-named poet, the life and variety of one thousand and eighty to transportation for the second, nor the strong and romantic life; ninety-five to imprisonment for life; spirit of the last. But if it is easy to say leaving two hundred and nine, who were eith- what they are not, what they are is less reader sentenced to limited imprisonment, allow. ily definable; inasmuch as even those now ed to turn approvers, died in gaol, or were before us differ too widely from each other otherwise disposed of. Only twenty-one of to be susceptible of any generic or collective the whole have been acquitted; and this description beyond that of narrative, written proves the extraordinary care with which the in the regular ottava rima, or eight-lined cases are prepared by the officers to whom stanza. this duty has been intrusted, and the strong nature of the evidence adduced. We cannot but wish them every success in exterminating a system which spares neither sex nor age; whose members never abandon their profession as long as they possess the power to engage in an expedition; who watch for their prey like wild beasts or vultures; and talk of the principal scenes of their crimes as a sportsman would of his favourite preserves. We trust also that no miserable fit of economy on the part of government may arise to thwart the measures in progress, but that every co-operation will be given to those praiseworthy exertions.

Their classification however is of the less importance because we have not hitherto met with one of them of merit sufficient to point out its author as the founder of a new school, though evidently gifted with some poetic powers. The three poems before us we understand to be very popular in Italy, and therefore purpose laying them before our readers in the chronological order of their publication.

The first of the three, Ida della Torre, bears as a poem some analogy to the prose fiction, Giovanna Prima, mentioned in a former number.* Like that, it is a fragment of history developed imaginatively, and, in the present case, poetically also. The poem is little more than a relation of the com. mencement of the Emperor Henry of Luxemburg's expedition into Italy, in the years 1310-11, to receive the imperial and iron crown; upon which occasion he paused in Lombardy to pacify that (in those days) ever turbulent portion of the peninsula. The sub. ject is well chosen. From amongst the Lombard broils the poet has selected for his theme those which distracted their chief city Milan, with the rivalry of the Torriani and Visconti; and which rivalry Henry appeas ed, or rather quelled, by expelling Guido della Torre, and reinstating the exiled Matteo Visconte, Upon this historical event Carcano has superinduced a Romeo and NARRATIVE poetry appears to be reviving in Juliet story-the loves of Alfredo Visconte Italy, though not in its earliest modern form; and Ida della Torre-but unluckily he has neither as the regular epic of Tasso, nor not managed it with the genius of Shakthe fantastically wild, extravagant, and co-speare. His Romeo, Alfredo, who has no mic, but always vigorous and fascinating, father to control his proceedings, unceremo. vein of Ariosto. As little have the living niously, unscrupulously, and without other motive than his passion, deserts his kindred

ART. II.1. Ida della Torre, Episodio
patrio, di Giulio Carcano. (Ida della
Torre, a national episode by Giulio Car-
cano.) 8vo. Milano, 1834.
2. L'Esule Pisano, Canti Tre, di Gio. Bat-
tista Montanari. (The Exile of Pisa, in
Three Cantos, by Gio. Battista Montana-
ri.) 8vo. Verona. 1836.
3. Úlrico e Lida, Novella, di Tommaso

Grossi. 8vo. Milano. 1837.

These sentences are at once carried into execution, and not commuted, as is so common in England.

* See Foreign Quarterly Review, No. xxxiv.,

p. 473.

and party to join his mistress's parent. The made nothing in the way of story. He evionly plea we can allege in his favour is, that dently possesses a strong and fervid imagi his desertion of the Visconti takes place at nation, capable of producing something very the moment when their sun is rising, and superior to Ida della Torre, however ephethat he follows the Torriani when they in merally popular this tale may be in Italy. their turn tread the paths of exile. But the The defects of the poem originate chiefly in lady's father, who is clearly no obstinate the writer's having trusted merely to inspiCapulet, gives his daughter so readily to ration, without duly and previously medita. Alfredo on his, the lover's death-bed, that ting upon, planning, and working out his we cannot imagine why they were not mar- subject. To exhibit his poetic powers we ried when both were alive and well. translate the opening stanzas.

Of this pregnant subject the author has

"Look, Italy, upon thy native sky

Gloriously radiant with the noontide blaze;
See, lingering on thine Alpine bulwarks high,
Aurora drops her veil of roseate rays!
Quiver the gentle zephyrs; kissingly

The water of two seas around thee plays:
And beautiful as thought of God above

Art thou, or new-formed man's first dream of love!

"Thy mountain steeps, and their embosomed dells;

Thy blest enchantment, trees and flowers among ;
Thy nights, whose deep serene breathes magic spells;
The silver mantle of the starry throng;
The balmy air where richest perfume dwells;-
All blend melodiously in nature's song!
Since first this earth by human kind was trod,
Thy sky hath been one ceaseless hymn to God.

"But thrall of guiltier times, thou bear'st their brand;
And fearful still has been thy children's life,
For heavily hath fallen th' Eternal's hand
Upon thy soil, with discord ever rife.

He waked fraternal hatreds;-through the land
Writing in blood the tale of direst strife:
Nor hath the course of centuries effaced
One dreadful character of all he traced."

These, followed, we know not why, by the introduction; which being thus oddly two whole stanzas of asterisks, constitute completed, the poem itself opens as follows.

Yet bitter memories of moments flown,
Too deeply graven on his spirit dwell;
When, banished from the realm so long his own,
He sought, a fugitive, the hermit-cell.
Revenge, regret, hope, yet unoverthrown,
Conflicting wildly in his bosom swell:
Unwonted shame that exiled leader shakes,
And all his soul to new resentment wakes.

"His wife deserted, and their wedlock's fruit,
Banished and distant all, on memory
Resistless rise, in agonies acute

That chill to stone the tear-drop in his eye.
In vain! that wrathful spirit, fixed and mute,
Takes counsel only of his courage high:

For still midst adverse fortune's darkest storm,
The virtues of his race his soul inform.”

This may suffice as a specimen of Car- of Pisa, and the ultimate success of an in cano's poetic ability, and we shall turn from surrection against him; but in direct conIda della Torre, enforcing our former re-trast with Carcano's volume, Montanari gives mark that its faults is incompleteness as a us little of the historical part of his subject, work of art; a defect not necessarily en- occupying himself almost exclusively with tailed by its being an episode of national the loves and adventures of his Ugo and history. Further, it interests us in no hero; Elisa. Of these the latter is a somewhat neither the elderly political antagonists, nor virago-ish damsel, who tells fibs innumeraeven Alfredo, whose love is as much mis-ble, and deserts her aged father to follow, placed amidst the clash of that civil war as not accompany, her lover Ugo, one of the the love in some of Corneille's tragedies. leaders of the insurrection, from their com We would not wish to insinuate with Addi-mon place of exile, Sardinia, inte Tuscany. son's Cato, that this passion is necessarily The lady takes this extraordinary step conout of its sphere in these or any political trary, we apprehend, to the laws even of ro. convulsions, for this would run counter to mance, without any stronger motive than experience on the contrary, such love re-impatience of her lover's absence; and the lieves and breathes a human sympathy catastrophe entirely turns upon this continenamidst the deepest horrors, whilst it impress- tal trip, inasmuch as her unmaidenly esca es us with a shuddering sense of the tre- pade brings her to the scene of action at a mendous devastation of happiness, as well moment so critical, that by cleverly rescuas life, wrought by intestine commotion.ing Ugo from a dungeon, she both saves his The love that can do this, however, is not the life and enables him to achieve his enter. mere youthful fancy of a boy and girl who prise. But Elisa is wholly unacquainted have scarcely exchanged a word, and of with the danger of her lover, whom she thus whose individuality we have therefore no wildly, indelicately, and unfilially follows, strong and distinct conception. It requires merely, as it might be thought, to hamper to be brought before us as a passion not him and disgrace herself. merely told, but which we ourselves deeply feel to be engrossing and irresistible.

L'Esule Pisano is less historical than Ida della Torre; it is likewise less poetical; but we are by no means without a suspicion that it may be more generally popular. It really is a romantic narrative of the past; but, as such, presents us with little graphic portraiture of the misery and horrors to which Italy was every where reduced in those days of mutual hatred and warfare. We do, to be sure, hear something of the tyrannous cruelty of Rambaldo, the usurper

We proceed to offer our readers a speci men of the performance, and cannot perhaps select a fairer than Elisa's measures for Ugo's deliverance. The heroine, to excite less attention, has prudently assumed male attire for her journey, and casually learns at a little Italian inn that at that very house a knight, in the description of whom she recognizes her lover, had lately been seized by Rambaldo's emissaries, headed by his creature Romiro, and remains confined in the dungeous of a neighbouring castle.

"Romiro, whom his master's urgent needs
To hasten with his warriors home incite,
Now quits the castle, and tow'rd Pisa speeds.
Six times the distance of an arrow's flight

Scarce had he ridden, when from midst the reeds
And slime of a near marsh appears a knight;
Disastrous fate his battered arms attest,
Broken his sword and sullied is his crest.

"His bruised and dinted armour many a stain
Displays of blood, that still seems uncongealed;
Pallid his countenance, his eyes amain

Roll sadly round; and tow'rds the marshy field
He seems, with pausing step, each sense to strain,
Listening if danger any sound revealed.
Now the fierce seneschal's meek wife is seen,

Where at the gate she stands with pitying mien."

The knight, who of course is Elisa in disguise, is received with great kindness by his dame:

“The seneschal, with ruby nose, and hair

Grey as his beard, lounged at the festal board,
Companioned with a jovial, wanton fair:

Even then from ample vase the wine he poured,
Nor deigned to notice the approaching pair.
No heed amidst his drink could he afford
Save to his paramour, on whom he leered,
And, pointing at his wife, nodded and sneered.

"The wife, thus flouted, ill the insult bore,

And fled, loud weeping, to her lonely cell;
Thereat Elisa, chafing more and more,

Her silence broke in accents stern and fell.
'Seek'st thou thine ease ere duty's task is o'er-
'Draining huge goblets with thy bonnibelle,
• Whilst plunderers here, before thy very eyes,
Thy Lord Rambaldo's dearest friend surprise?

'Myself that friend; Liguria's shores who left,

To good Rambaldo bearing store of gold
'And weighty letters; now of both bereft

'By robber bands that in your marshes hold.
'Drink ye whilst your kind ford must suffer theft!

The fates conspire against Rambaldo bold,
'Tho' from yon Pisan rebels to ensure
My precious charge, I sought a track obscure.

'Or get me, seneschal, my goods restored,
'Or tremble at the vengeance of thy lord!'"

The seneschal is fairly frightened from his jollification by the threats of the pretended knight, and sets out with his men to seek the supposititious robbers, leaving at home his wife and a single old ruffian in addition. But Elisa, it should seem, had arranged only the first half of her stratagem, trusting further operations to chance; and she is pondering how to profit by the brief absence of the garrison, when the seneschal's kind-hearted wife comes to implore her good offices with Rambaldo in behalf of a noble captive recently brought to the castle, and for whose fate she is under great ap. prehension. Elisa does not reveal her own deep interest in the matter, but quietly promises mediation, and inquires into the possibility of enabling the prisoner to escape, lest her intervention should prove too

late. She learns that the castle is supposed to be haunted by the ghost of Rambaldo's wife, who had been murdered there, and that her companion can communicate with Ugo from a balcony immediately above his dungeon. Our heroine thereupon intrusts her humble friend with a silk ladder by which Ugo is to get out of the castle, and instructions for his course when he shall have thus regained his liberty. This commission is scarcely given when a noise, announcing the seneschal's return, warns his wife to retire to her chamber; whilst Elisa lying down upon a bench pretends sleep, and thus overhears a proposal for her own assassination, postponed by the seneschal until they shall have made another search next morning for the invisible robbers.