entirely superseded every other rival institution. Sienna aloue, which was united to the duchy only in 1555, and even then preserved some shade of its primeval municipal charters, continued, to our days, to have a university of its own. An attempt was made last year by the grand-duke to suppress it and transfer its funds to the further endowment of the academy of Pisa. But the prince was thwarted in his intentions by the remonstrances and petitions of the Siennese, and the project has been, we believe, entirely abandoned. The opposition of the citizens of Sienna was not, however, owing to a meanspirited jealousy of their Pisan brothers, or to the municipal pride with which they looked on that last remnant of their republican greatness. It originated in that universal mistrust and indocility which, under absolute monarchies, keeps the subjects in a constant alarm against any measure of government; in the dread in which they stand of a power which enacts, without ever condescending to explain, administers without reckoning, without allowing them any better satisfaction than meekly to repeat," He has given, he has taken Blessed be his name.'

away.

The Siennese could plainly see only thus far, that they were going to be stripped of the funds which their ancestors' liberality bestowed on their literary institutions. Whether those funds were to be employed to add new lustre to the Pisan academy, or to dry the Tuscan marshes, or to feed the pampered courtiers of his highness's household, they had no means to ascertain.

But if the grand-duke's intentions were as pure and sincere, as they were providential and plausible, why did he suffer himself to be deterred by supplications and entreaties? Is he not as absolutely free to do good, as he is omnipotent in doing evil? Could all the petitions of his two millions of subjects wrench from him a decree for the liberty of the press? Did he suffer himself to be moved by remonstrances when all Tuscany interceded in behalf of the ill-fated Antologia? Knows he not how to show himself restive, harsh and self-willed whenever the personal interests of his family are concerned ?*

It would seem, however, from the recent communications of our correspondents, as if the grand-duke were bent on carrying into execution his salutary measures, and had overcome all spirit of opposition. "Great reforms," we are told, "have, during these last few months, been introduced into the University of Pisa. New chairs have been added to the several faculties, such as the Storia del Diritto, Filosofia del Diritto, Diritto Patrio e Commerciale, Economia Politica, Geografia Fisica, Meccanica Celeste, Filosofia Morale, Agraria, Pedagogia, &c." This bids fair to raise the University of Pisa far above the common standard of all Italian universities. It seems rather strange to hear of the reinstalment of such institutions as a School of Political Economy, of Right of Nations, and other liberal studies, which were first introduced into Italy in the palmy age of Genovesi and Beccaria, and were afterwards suppressed either during the tumults of French invasions, or under the iron rule of the government of the Re

Some opposition, on the part of the deep-rooted prejudices and fond predilections of the people, is doubtless to be apprehended. The Italians are aware of the immediate advantages of a university within the walls of every one of their towns, and may perhaps require a little violence in order that the evil attendant on such a state of things may be permanently put a stop to. But if the absolute suppression of universities is either impossible or undesirable, nothing prevents the legislator from introducing into them the most salutary reforms. If the truly philosophical spirit of the Sardinian shepherds could be made to prevail in every part of Italy, there would be no reason to complain of the idle number of Italian universities. It is not that we object to the cobbler's son being as learned as a doctor, if he can afford means and leisure to attain equal knowledge, but it is because if every cobbler's son must needs become a doctor, and no doctor is willing to fill the cobbler's vacancy, we shall soon have a society of laureates, and the world can no more go on without cobblers than without doctors.

But, it is urged, necessity will soon bring the needy to reason, and, after a few ineffectual experiments, the tradesman, volens, nolens, will walk back to his shop. Perhaps so; but then you will have a population of fretting, murmuring labourers, cursing their fate, looking upon themselves as the victims of society, and glad to avail themselves of the first opportunity of political commotions, to avenge what they call their wrongs. Education, under similar circumstances, will lead to chartism! But education, well understood, far from conjuring up, will powerfully tend

storation. We accept it as an omen of a happy reaction towards a better order of things, for, hitherto, the Italian governments have been every year curtailing school after school with unremitting diligence, until scarcely any but the most useless and idle branches of learning and literature were suffered to flourish. Thus, after having done away with all political and statistical sciences, the chairs of Eloquence, History, and even Agraria, or Agriculture, were considered as dangerous, and put under the interdict. Moral Philosophy had been most obstinately warred against. Two professors of that science received pensions from the University of Parma without being suffered to discharge their functions.

"We have already," our informant continues, "several illustrious names in science, such as Mussotti, formerly professor at Corfu and Matteucci. The Marquis Ridolfi, the philanthropic director of the Istituto Agrario Toscano,' an establishment which, as every one knows, owes its origin to that nobleman's unbounded liberality, will accept the Professorship of Agraria, if government will grant him permission for a similar institution in the vicinity of Pisa. It is yet doubtful, however, if government will accede to such terms. All these innovations, good and useful as they appear in themselves, even if carried into effect, far from being sufficient to cure, will only have the result of showing more glaringly the evils of our old social systems; nor can our princes think of opening so unlimited a field of scientific inquiry, if they do not at the same time reform those abuses in their administration, which an increase of knowledge must necessarily tend to expose."

to avert these evils, if its prime object be the diffusion of sound moral and religious principles.

Now there is in Italy no public or private institution, in which, as in the London University College, or at the Jefferson University in Virginia, religion avowedly forms no part of education; yet it may be frankly asserted that religion is nowhere taught in Italy.

The observance of the practices of the Catholic Church is indeed more or less rigidly enforced in every academical institution. In Turin and Genoa especially, where the whole system, as we have said, is given into the hands of the Jesuits, the university is subjected to all the discipline of monastical rule.

Nothing that can be read in the history of the past equals the zeal and discernment of the monarch that presides over the destinies of those happy states. Charles Albert King of Sardinia, a prince evidently cast after the model of his noblest progenitors of Savoy, never distrusted that native instinct which, from his earliest years, prompted him to achieve great things. Atoning for that unfortunate lapse of juvenile levity-for that ill-defined vanity of precocious ambition that induced him to join the Piedmontese Carbonari in 1820-dazzled by that specious title of King of Italy which was made to gleam temptingly before his eyes-atoning for it, we say, by the laurels he afterwards reaped in 1828 at the head of a column of French grenadiers at the Trocadero against the Spanish patriots-he mounted his throne in 1831, restored to credit in the eyes of all the sovereigns of Europe. Hence, having come off conqueror of all political adversaries, and having stifled in blood all revolutionary attempts with what was then called hasty and summary—but what in the end proved to be efficient-justice, he was soon enabled to turn all his thoughts to the arts of peace. We should incline to think that it cannot be without considerable repugnance that he accommodates himself to the quiet and humble tendencies of the age, if we were to believe that, after the style of Alexander or Napoleon, he never sits at table more than ten minutes, and rides every day one of his horses to death. Yet, although a soldier, and a friend of his soldiers, whom he marches and countermarches to their utter exhaustion, it is evident that his heart and soul are with the priests; and those who have seen him at the head of his ten thousand grey, white and black-hooded friars, during the solemnities of the Corpus Domini, or who have witnessed the holy wrath that was kindled in him when his people refused to volunteer their oil for the general illumination that he ordered in honour of the handkerchief of Santa Veronica, will not hesitate to confer upon him

those titles to which he seems so ardently to aspire-of the sceptered Loyola and of King of the Jesuits.

Under the half-chivalrous, half-ascetic discipline of that holy militia, the pious conduct of the rising generation at the university is attended to with a vigilance and solicitude that leaves nothing to desire to the anxiety of the fondest parent; an order and silence pervades those seminaries, as well as the whole of the Sardinian dominions, especially the capital, which strikes the traveller at his first arrival, and suggests to him the idea that he is entering a vast monastery or a prison.

are not

"The scholars of the gymnasiums," says a recent traveller, allowed to read any books which have not been either given or furnished by the prefect. They are forbidden to swim, to frequent theatres, balls, coffee or gaming-houses; to perform in private plays and the like; and it is the business of the police to see these prohibitions attended to.

"The students are not only under strict scientific superintendence, but also under the close surveillance of the police. No student is allowed to choose his dwelling or leave it without permission of the prefect, who appoints the place where he is to lodge and board.

"Whoever wishes to receive students into his house must undertake the responsibility for their observance of the laws which regulate their going to mass and confession, fasting, and even their clothing and their beards. Neglect of these rules is punished by exclusion from the examinations or from the university itself."

Against these paternal provisions the natural indocility of human nature may sometimes be expected to kick. But the magnanimous indignation of the pious monarch has been known to visit the refractory students so severely, that it is to be hoped by this time it has come off conqueror of all opposition.

The students are ordered to confess and communicate once a month at the chapel of the university, although the leniency of the Church of Rome only expects the faithful to perform such duties once in a year. This worthy and wholesome practice proves irksome and troublesome to those bolder and more rebellious youths whose presumptuous reason cannot rest satisfied with the tenets of the Romish Church. A young student of medicine, well known and beloved at Turin for his mental and moral qualities, was suspected to submit with repugnance to the performance of religious duties to which he could attach no heartfelt veneration. One morning he knelt with his fellow students at the communion-table, penetrated with the indignity of that sacrilegious, because compulsory, act of devotion. The officiating priest drew near, and the holy host was laid on the tip of the student's tongue. The priest's hands, he said, were unwasheda circumstance which will not at all appear improbable considering the notorious slovenliness of the lower ranks of the Catholic

priesthood; and the young Turinese, seized with a sudden nausea, turned abruptly, spat the still dry host on the floor, and hoping thus to conceal his rash deed, he laid his foot upon it. No one can describe the fury of Charles Albert when the atrocious profanation of the sacrament was made known to him. He ordered the criminal to be thrown, untried, into a dungeon of the citadel of Turin, where he has lain ever since, and where he perhaps lies still awaiting his majesty's good pleasure.

Certainly, in the eyes of a conscientious Romanist, who goes the whole length of believing what that Church teaches concerning the mystery of transubstantiation, nothing short of parricide can equal the enormity of that unhappy student's misdeeds. It was a crime-according to the letter of the law, but of a law which the pope himself would not dare to enforce-punishable with death. But even if we were not to admit the extenuating circumstance of momentary indisposition, the guilt was to be considered as a natural reaction against that rigid despotism that exacts a more implicit abnegation of reason than is compatible with the inquisitiveness of the human understanding. The prince ought to have reflected that what seemed to him an unheard-of sacrilege would be looked upon, even in its worst character, merely as a wanton profanation among Protestants, and would pass as an idle trick in a Unitarian congregation: that, in short, what shocked his jealous piety as the most dreadful of transgressions, is merely a matter of opinion,-of that opinion on which neither cannons nor bayonets, nor kings nor Jesuits, can have any effectual control. Another set of law-students, on the eve of receiving the highest degrees, were tempted to celebrate the happy close of their academical labours by a friendly banquet in the privacy of their lodgings. They were not over-scrupulous in the choice of their amusements, and some young ladies of rather ambiguous character were introduced among them to cheer with their presence the young candidates' convivial festivity. Midnight had long since struck, and Turin, as usual, unlike every other Italian town, was for more than an hour plunged into the death-like stillness of sleep, when a loud knocking at the house-door announced the unseasonable, but not at all extraordinary, visit of the prefect. The boarding-houses opened for the accommodation of students are liable to frequent interruptions by day and night, on the part of the officers of the university charged with the superintendence of the students' conduct at home. The landlord, who, according to the terms of his licence, is obliged to perform the duties of a guardian and spy to his boarders, but who in the present instance, won by the kindness and liberality of the students, had winked at the riot that was going on within his walls, rose to admit his un