of Rosalia. We pass over the description of his feelings on this occasion as well as the prefatory portion of the ceremony.

"The vow was now pronounced, and during that part of the service consisting of question and response, sung by the nuns of St. Clare, the veil was to be laid on Aurelia. Already they had taken the myrtles and roses from her head and were in the act of cutting off her long and luxuriant locks, when an extraordinary tumult arose in the church. I remarked how the people who stood in the aisles were thrust and driven about. Many of them too were violently knocked down, and the disturbance made its way nearer and nearer till it arrived at the centre of the church, before which time I could not distinguish the cause.

"With the most furious looks and gestures, striking with his clenched fists at all who stood in his way, and still pressing forward, there now appeared a half-naked man with the rags of a capuchin dress hung about his body! At the first glance I recognised my diabolical double; but already at the moment, when anticipating some horrible event, I was in the act of leaving the gallery to throw myself in his way, the horrible wretch had leaped over the railing of the altar. The terrified nuns shrieked and dispersed, but the abbess undauntedly held Aurelia firmly clasped in her arms. 'Ha, ha, ha!' screamed the madman, 'would'st thou rob me of my princess ?-Ha, ha, ha!—The princess is my bride, my bride!'

"With these words he tore the fainting Aurelia from the abbess, and with incredible quickness, pulled out a stiletto, elevated it high over her head and then plunged it into her heart, so that the blood sprung in torrents from the wound. 'Hurrah!-hurrah!' cried the maniac, 'now have I won my bride-have won the princess!' with these words he rushed through the private grating behind the altar and disappeared."

Aurelia dies, and is considered a martyr. Medardus retires to his convent, and the narrative in the first person is concluded. An addition is however made by Father Speridion, librarian of the Capuchin convent at Konigswald, stating that one night, on approaching the cell of Medardus, he heard a broken and disagreeable voice pronounce the words Brüd-er-lein! Brüd-erlein!-Come with me-Come with me.-The bride is hereThe bride is here!' That he was about to enter, together with the prior, when the door opened, and a very tall man, with a long, white beard, and attired in a violet-coloured mantle, stepped forth and said, "The hour of fulfilment is not far distant, and then vanished in the darkness of the corridor; and that on the 5th of September, 17-Medardus expired in the arms of the Prior.

Thus terminates this strange tale, undoubtedly revolting in parts, but as undoubtedly exhibiting from time to time as much fanciful beauty and absorbing interest as any that the author's

prolific country has produced since The Faust. The translation is by Mr. Gillies, already known for some excellent versions of popular German tragedies.

Venice, under the Yoke of France and Austria. By a Lady of Rank. 2 vols. 8vo. London. Whittaker. 1824.

THE slavery of Italy gives a great deal of employment to the liberty of the press. It is a soil not more fought for in war than written about in peace. Armed conflict is followed by literary contention, book after book pursue each other in close succession to explain every thing relative to the past fortunes and present condition of the classic land of arms and song, and the latest one takes us over every inch of ground as if nothing had been yet explained. The state of Italy involves a narrative which seems to partake very much of the nature of Corporal Trim's story of the king of Bohemia and his seven castles, which had fifty beginnings, but never came to an end. Yet the territory of the Scipios and the Medici is as barren of character and incident as it was formerly prolific in genius and adventure, and Venice with her ocean palaces is but a splendid wreck of proud and opulent dominion, that moulders daily towards the final state of decay. Throughout all the Italian provinces the human mind seems to be stationary in a very singular degree. Art and science languish, public spirit is extinguished, enterprise is chained up, and processions, carnivals, theatres and taxation make up the leading features of society in the land. All these things have been so often written, painted and lithographed, that we fondly imagined we could have nothing more to hear of the existing state of the country, until something as important as a new revolution at Naples, a miracle at Rome, or an eruption of Vesuvius, afforded some novel excitement to exhausted curiosity. Vain imagination! There has been a vast deal of well compiled dolour lavished upon this celebrated peninsula. We will acknowledge that it has not very deeply stirred our sympathies. Italy is no doubt an Austrian helot at this hour; but one whose crimes present every where the most revolting evidence of the lamentable efficacy of ignorance and despotism in degrading the human character and enfeebling the intellect. To this the Austrian yoke is "light as air." A people who can submit to the most debasing of all tyrannies-that of monkish imposture, and can

grovel contentedly in the dust under the brutishness of superstition, scarcely merit the fellow-feeling, and certainly do not deserve the assistance of an enlightened people. The power which treads out every spark of glory and intelligence throughout the Italian states governs not so much by its own strength as by the weakness and vices of those who crouch to its dominion. Nations that, with a population of a hundred times the amount of the invading or oppressing army, cannot redeem themselves from moral and social humiliation, are not fit for independence. There is no material of virtue in them upon which the fabric of political greatness and rational freedom can be raised; those who would offer to such people assistance to deliver them from a bondage which the stature of their mind has not outgrown, may possess philanthropy, but they want wisdom. In their utmost success they could obtain only the luckless distinction of the renowned knight of La Mancha, who had scarcely broken the fetters of the galley-slaves, when they realized their new rights by pelting their deliverer. If the French before and the Austrians since have discovered that the Italian disposition is so admirably adapted for vassalage that no oppression could rouse it into manhood, they did no more than turn the base qualities which they found in the country to the purposes of their own policy, just as the sutlers of both their armies turned to account the asses which came in their way, by loading them with panniers, in the very allowable impression that these grave and long eared animals would not resist the encroachment, and turn into lions against their drivers. It is even scarcely to be doubted that were the Italians by any accident to be delivered from the control of foreign armies, the ignorance and vice which brought them into this miserable extremity, would ensure their subjection still to local tyrannies, and to the darkest ascendancy of superstition. Before they can value regulated freedom, or estimate the use of manly civil institutions, they must emancipate themselves from a heavier burthen than that of the German despot. The devastations of Attila were not so deplorable as those of fanaticism. The barbarian violence that humbled the pride of Italy had not such malignant action upon the destinies of her inhabitants as the ambitious frauds of her priesthood. Her people dwell in the garden of Europe, a land flowing with milk and honey, covered with the olive and the vine, she is filled with the works of genius and the recollections of glory, yet as in the time of our fathers "man is the only growth that dwindles there." The faculties, created to sustain the great duties of public and private life, are content to trail the earth, and the

heart is steeped in effeminacy and defilement. Under the most oppressive form of authority such a people could not be more wretched than their degrading habits have made them, and under the most liberal control they would not cease to be slaves. All honest testimony leads to this unhappy conclusion; and the detail of the fall of Venice, in these volumes is a curious illustration of this rottenness at the core of all national vigour and virtue.

Though the work includes Naples, Florence, Rome, Padua, Milan, Parma, Genoa, Piedmont, &c. yet Venice forms the principal object of description, and certainly there is a great deal of local and miscellaneous information afforded to the reader, which bears evident marks of more than a casual observation of the people. The following is the author's description of the Venetian ladies.

"The societies at Venice, whether at private houses or at the public casinos, are generally enlivened with the smiling eyes, and gentle and fascinating looks of the fair sex, and are conducted with an elegance and an ease superior to most other female societies; and without any of that discordant rivalship of prerogatives, too often to be met with elsewhere. The casinos are conducted much in the same manner as the subscription houses in London; where the members are at liberty to do as they please; with this especial difference, that the ladies only are subscribers, the gentlemen being honorary members. Strangers of respectability, of both sexes, are readily admitted, and meet with a polite and affable reception. The company are entertained with a concert, and treated with refreshments. Cards are introduced at the wish of any of the party; and other amusements, except those of hazard. These casinos are furnished in the most costly and elegant style, and are brilliantly lighted up with the beautiful wax candles for which Venice is so justly celebrated.

"The regularity, the order, and the magnificence which prevail at these princely casinos, at once discover the ladies of Venice to be a superior race of beings to their neighbours of the Terra Firma. In their conversation they are lively and unaffected without levity, and communicative and affable without coquetry.

"The uncommon share of freedom which these ladies enjoy, induces foreigners, who have but a superficial knowledge of them, to form an opinion of them very different from that which they really deserve. My observations, of course, apply solely to good society. The mixed classes of every country have their chiaro scuro. The Venetian ladies are extremely engaging in their manners; and as to their dress, it may be called becoming rather than fashionable, and sets off their fine figures to the greatest advantage. It is not unusual for them to be married to men whom they have never before seen, except through the grate of the convent in which they have been educated, and which they

only quit to enter into the gay world, through the temple of Hymenwhere Cupid rarely presides, beyond the honey-moon! And, to this very liberty, which they enjoy the moment they are married, is it to be ascribed, that they are usually not so capricious as the Italians of the south, who are more rigorously subjected to antiquated external formalities.

"If the experience of twenty years, obtained by a residence amongst, and a constant intercourse with, the highest orders of society, can justify me in hazarding an opinion, I may venture to pronounce the ladies of Venice worthy of our best esteem. There is a wide difference between an easy, unrestrained carriage, and that looseness of conduct, which is but too apt to be confounded with it." Vol. I. p. 47.

The following account is given of the patrician paupers, called "Bernabotti."

"The much talked-of Venetian Bernabotti, who take their name from having once lived, from motives of frugality, in a remote quarter of the city, called San Barnaba, are the descendants of some of the first inhabitants of the Adriatic islands. All of them are ancient patricians, who, from misfortunes and a train of unforeseen events, have been reduced to the lowest pitch of indigence. To prevent, however, their being driven to the dire necessity of begging in the public streets, or of being employed in menial occupations, which might reflect disgrace on the descendants of the founders of its liberty and independence, the Republic kindly thought fit to make ample provision, in their various religious and lay institutions, for their reception and decent support. The males, whose inclinations might not dispose them to follow a religious avocation, the moment they attained the age of fiveand-twenty, were appointed to the Quaranta. But, the claim to this provision for the Bernabotti, like that for the knights of Malta, depended on purity of blood. If that blood chanced to be contaminated by an unfortunate crossing of breed, the odds ran hard against their being entitled thereto. As their very subsistence, therefore, was made to depend upon legitimacy, they rarely disgraced their birth by a plebeian marriage; since, the provision was only bestowed on those, whose nativity and matrimonial unions were inscribed in the Golden Book, or register of nobility." Vol. I. p. 65.

Among the ingenious methods which some statesmen have no compunction in resorting to for the purpose of raising a revenue out of the very misfortunes of a people, the contrivance described in the ensuing passage seems to deserve the pre-eminence.

"Numerous are the decrees, of the above gracious description, which have been issued by the Austrian Government, to quiet the unwary Venetians, by the expectation of redress for their grievances,