And last, not least" in fitness for submission to the pruning-knife, (" the pruning-knife? - the axe,") of the licenser, there is the following sadly worded remonstrance of King John:

"It is the curse of kings to be attended

By slaves, that take their humours for a warrant

To break within the bloody house of life;

And, on the winking of authority,

To understand a law,-to know the meaning

Of dangerous majesty!"

The words in italics must have been expunged (and indeed the last extract has something of Captain Absolute's rudeness in reading the libel upon Mrs. Malaprop to the old lady herself), and Shakspeare and the world must equally have been exposed to a terrific prohibition. But we have done.. We have endeavoured to lay bare a bad system to our readers. For Mr. Colman, as a dramatist, and a liberal one, we have a sincere regard;-for Mr. Colman, as a licenser, and in our opinion an illiberal one, we have a bitter disregard—but in speaking of this gentleman, we merge the man in the office, at least we endeavour to do so, though he has a wilful way himself of merging the office in the man. At his age, and with his valuable experience, we can expect no healthy reformationbut we do look to the moral courage, youthful disinterestedness, and love of virtuous reform in the present Chamberlain, the Marquis of Conyngham, to effect the great good which it has been our humble attempt in these pages to advocate.

We here conclude our remarks on theatres, on the theatrical laws, and on those who mal-administer them. We have (as we have intimated already) cutrun our limits, or we should be tempted to indulge in a few observations upon our dramatic literature,—that vast attractive power, which with its "elevation or decadence," raises or depresses the moral imagination and power of a country. When the drama has been VOL. II. N° II.

RR

most pure, the people have been comparatively pure with it; and when the drama has been debased, the debasement has sunk into the people, and lowered and tainted their habits and their feelings. At the present time, with all the anti-damning propensities of the licenser, the drama has fallen somewhat into the state in which Charles II. fostered it. We have the same laxity in our Actresses, with something of the same patronage in our Nobility, and our plays appeal to the depraved eye and ear, rather than allow truth and beauty, through inspired language "to come mended to the heart." Accustomed as we have been in our early days, to love-to adore the dramatic muse in all her purity-to look up to her as the sweet promoter of every young and right feeling-we cannot contemplate the prostituted, fantastic, and faded creature which she has in these our times become, without a sombre remembrance of what she was in the days of our first love!— Her glory, like that of Ichabod, is departed!

Crabbe has "looked upon this picture, and on this," with the eye of a sad, severe, but true painter; and though professing himself no artist, realises the painful portrait with dismal fidelity.

"But is it she?-O! yes; the rose is dead,
Its beauty, fragrance, freshness, glory fled:
But yet 'tis she-the same-and not the same-
Who to my bower an heavenly being came;
Who waked my soul's first thought of real bliss,
Whom long I sought, and now I find her—this!

"I cannot paint her-something I had seen
So pale and slim, and tawdry, and unclean;
With haggard looks, of vice and woe the prey,
Laughing in languor, miserably gay;

Her face, where face appear'd, was amply spread,
By art's coarse pencil, with ill-chosen red :
But still the features were the same, and strange
My view of both-the sameness and the change,
That fix'd me gazing and my eye enchain'd,
Although so little of herself remain'd;
It is the creature whom I loved, and yet
Is far unlike her-would I could forget
The angel or her fall! the once adored
Or now despised! the worshipp'd or deplored!”

591

ARTICLE VII.

Inni Sacri. Del Conte T. MAMIANI della Rovere. Napoli: 1833.

Nuove Poesie. Del Conte T. MAMIANI della Rovere. Parigi: 1836.

Del Rinnovamento della Filosofia antica Italiana. Libro uno. Del Conte T. MAMIANI della Rovere. Parigi: 1835.

THE appearance of works, conceived in the spirit and executed with the ability which these volumes display, is well calculated to give fresh colour to those hopes of the moral regeneration of Italy, which the political changes of so many centuries have failed to realise, but which the lovers of beauty and of mankind have never ceased to entertain. We hail with delight every attempt to renew the ancient Italian philosophy, to which the world owes so many of its brightest pages and wisest lessons; but it is with feelings of indignation and sorrow that we read the author's name in that list of exiles, which includes the most illustrious and most national characters of modern Italy. Are foreign types the only means by which the Italian, who combines reflection with patriotism, and the fire of genius with anxiety for the improvement of his country, can impart his convictions to mankind? Must the harp, which sings of the glories of Italy, be a harp hung upon the willows? And are the contemplation of the wisdom of past ages and the ambition of enlightening the present and future generations, crimes to be expiated by exile and proscription? Amongst all the evil consequences of foreign oppression, none is more odious than that wall of separation which it erects between a nation and the minds most qualified to instruct and adorn it. In all the sufferings of banishment, there is none more keen than the knowledge, that thoughts and language eminently suited to benefit the land of their origin, will be less usefully bestowed on the stranger. At this moment two poets, one of the North and the other of the SouthAdam Mickiewicz and Terenzio Mamiani, are banished from the countries which bore and nurtured them. Their chief merit, and their only crime, is the national spirit of their writings. Their works are animated by the same

spirit of christian poetry, the same large views of history and mankind, the same indignant resistance to their oppressors; but they can command a wider audience than that of a few brother exiles scattered over the less poetic land which shelters them from persecution.

Setting aside for a moment the political considerations on which we would willingly and indignantly enlarge, we advert in this place to the debasing influence exercised on society in Italy by the ruling governments. They are too skilful not to know that the firmest security of their unjust dominion is the moral subjection, or, more properly speaking, the moral ruin of the people. It is as much their policy to drive and distort the purposes of enlightened liberalism into reckless violence, as to resist the overt acts of their enemies or their victims. Indeed, so warily have the better and more active minds amongst the Italians been watched by the precautions of the police, that every art has been employed to unfit them for asserting the rights of a free and educated people. The vices of the age are allowed to creep in, wherever they can enervate and subdue. The land is sown with tares; since it seems better to those usurpers to be the owners of a crop of weeds, than that others should reap a harvest of corn. In the language of M. Mamiani,

"Così dal cor gli emunse ogni robusta
Lena, e gli rase dal pensier profondo
Ogni innato ardimento il basso amore

Di se medesmo e cieco. Invan sul labbro
Ricorrongli d'onor, di libertade

I sensi generosi, e dell' augusta
Patria diletta il venerabil nome:

Poco l' alma v' assente, e i forti suoni
S'avvezza a mormorar simile a soffio
D'aura che ignara della sua virtute

Via passando talor sveglia in sospesa

Arpa un concento di soavi note."-(Nuove Poesie, p. 68.)

In Herr v. Raumer's interesting letters on England he incidentally comments on the state of Italy in a manner which strikingly corroborates our own opinion. The passage is as follows:

"The desire to obtain an entire undivided Italy may be right, if we are to understand by it a unity which does not destroy the diversity of the country: but if we are to understand a centralized Italy, with one sovereign capital à la Française, I do not see in such a change even a euthanasia, and still less a real regeneration.

The nobler problem is to retain the rich variety of Italy, and only to render the bond of intellectual union more apparent.

"It is not possible, by means of a paper constitution, either suddenly to renovate a decayed people, or suddenly to civilize one that is uncultivated. It can have no salutary effect till it is the result of all substantial and ideal relations, and harmonises with them; and for this reason, all servile imitation or adoption of external forms is but labour in vain. Introduce two chambers, an electoral system or any other constitutional form you please, into Naples, Rome, or Milan, would freedom and order really be immediately produced by this panacea? I very much doubt it. Let every Italian commence the regeneration of his country with himself; let him employ his aristocratic enthusiasm in improving the situation of the mass of the people, even at the expense of personal sacrifices; let him educate himself as well as his dependants, and with the growth of moral and intellectual freedom political freedom will, unperceived, arise. Nay, in the end it is essentially the same; for he who possesses intellectual and moral freedom will find all the rest come of itself. Every government which throws obstacles in the way of this kind of improvement, is criminal; every government which fancies that its existence depends on police regulations, has a bad conscience."-(Raumer's England in 1835, Vol. III. p. 81.)

It cannot be doubted that the present moral and intellectual condition of the higher classes of Italians must be attributed to the education which they are obliged to receive. The clergy still possesses an uncontested authority over the rising generation. But the ignorance or insincerity of the men who fill the important office of spiritual instructors, prevents them from exercising a due restraint upon the relaxation of public morality, and offering a firm resistance to the inroads of materialism and infidelity. The impression left upon the minds of the larger and better part of the youth of Italy, we fear, engenders a feeling of contempt for the professors in whose hands they are early placed by the custom of the country, and a disposition to treat the high truths, which are thus presented to their minds, with aversion or indifference.

The duties of the Christian priest are still indeed performed in the spirit of piety and of charity, in thousands of obscure hamlets, where a happy race of peasants live in the enjoyment of the same sun, the same fruits, and the same faith as their forefathers. The Austrian government, which presses with SO deadening a weight upon the more influential ranks of Italians, has ventured to extend its own excellent system of primary instruction to the communes of Lombardy. But the inhabitants of cities and the upper