our ambition better than our supineness. But there is good in both. We do more, they enjoy more.

Making allowance for the inevitable inaccuracy which attends all attempts at generalisation about men or races, we believe this character of the southern Italian to be a very true one, though applying rather to the Neapolitan than to the Roman. In the Roman proper there is a vein of our Northern seriousness. Whether it be due to some infusion of Norman blood, or to that dim recollection of Rome's ancient greatness which still tinges the dreams of every true-born member of the "populus Romanus," we cannot tell, but the fact is so. This view of the Italian character is often cited by the advocates of the Papal and Neapolitan governments, to prove that on the whole the people were happy under them; happier, at any rate, than the inhabitants of better-governed countries. Now, our answer to this plea is, that in the first place, even admitting its truth, we do not allow its force. Material sensuous enjoyment is not the highest stage of human existence. Even at the risk of some loss of pleasure, it is better that men should work and struggle than that they should pass their lives in careless ease and laziness. No doubt, as civilisation and political life and moral culture spread through the Peninsula, the Italians will lose-nay, are already losing-something of their animal joyousness of nature. The loss, to our minds, is more than compensated by the gain in moral elevation and dignity. But, even if this theory be disputed, it is impossible to assert truly, that either the Bourbons or the Vatican made their subjects happy. Neither of these régimes at all resembled that of the "Roi d'Yvetot." On the contrary, they persecuted their people with oppressions, which the intensity of their enjoyment of ease and comfort made them feel all the more bitterly. The inhabitants of Rome are subject to every kind of petty annoyance and vexation on the part of their rulers. Their daily life is interfered with; their privacy is invaded; their amusements are curtailed; their property is taxed; and their persons are molested at the pleasure of a priestly aristocracy. If the Romans have preserved any thing of their gaiety of heart, it is in spite of, not by virtue of, their government. "The moment," Mr. Story remarks, "the Italians are contented, they sing; and there is no clearer proof of their discontent under the oppressions of Rome than the comparative silence of the streets in these latter days of despotism and Antonelli, Goyon, and Company."

No small credit is due, we think, to the author of the Roba di Roma for the boldness with which he speaks out his mind. A resident in Rome, and with all his interests and pursuits connected with that pleasant city, he has run, we should think,

of

some risk of finding that his company is no longer acceptable to the government of the Vatican. English and American residents abroad under the government of a small power, have an immense temptation to keep on good terms with the authorities. It is pleasant to be on friendly relations with the great people in the country where you live, and to be able to apply to them for the small favours a foreigner requires, with the certainty of not being refused, as long as you ask any thing in reason; and, above all, it is gratifying to distinguish yourself from the ruck of your fellow-countrymen, and to be able to assume the tone and language of "one who knows the country," to which assumption great effect is given by any appearance intimacy with the ruling powers. To these seductions AngloSaxon residents in Rome are peculiarly exposed. Those who speak well of the powers that be, are certain of receiving civilities, if they desire them, from the dignitaries of the Church. It is true that no coquetting with Cardinals or Monsignori will procure entrance for a stranger into high Roman society, as the Roman nobles entertain an especial aversion to the whole convert class, political as well as theological. But then, on the other hand, except under very rare circumstances, a foreigner never does make his way into such Roman society as there is; and therefore he must perforce content himself with the company of the clerical aristocracy, if he wishes to see any thing of the social world in Rome. The abbés, and padres, and cavalieri who swarm about the salons of the fashionable AngloRoman set, will, we doubt not, look coldly on Mr. Story after the publication of this book of his. Happily, not being a subject of the paternal government, he need fear no heavier penalty than ostracism from the good graces of the Papalini. It may perhaps seem inconsistent with the received impression as to the intolerance of the Papal Government, that a gentleman should be allowed to reside quietly in Rome who writes of its rulers as Mr. Story does. This inconsistency, however, is intelligible enough to any one who understands the real way in which foreign governments regard English criticism. If the author of Roba di Roma had been a Roman, he would be in exile or in prison for uttering one-hundredth part of the sentiments contained in this book; if he were a Frenchman, he would be banished from the Eternal City, and the whole energies of the censorship would be directed to prohibiting the entrance of his writings into Rome. But being an American writing in English, the Vatican will probably leave him alone, with no other penalty than the refusal to sell his book at Piale's or Monaldini's. The reasons of this tolerance are threefold. In the first place, all foreign governments have a well-founded apprehension of interfering with either an Englishman or an

American. Our Anglo-Saxon race resents injuries to an individual with a corporate energy, which no other race displays under like provocation; in the second place, the custom of the English and their American cousins is too valuable to Rome for the government rashly to take any step which might drive the "forestieri" to other winter residences; lastly, it matters very little to any body except ourselves what we say or write. We are very fond of boasting of the omnipotence of English opinion on the Continent. Now the truth is, that the moral example of England has immense weight throughout Europe; but our literature and language has very small influence on any Latin race. English is little known in Rome, or indeed in any part of Italy; and the tone of the English mind is in many respects unintelligible to the Italian. A brochure of About's has more influence throughout southern Europe than a work like Mr. Kinglake's. English newspapers and reviews might fulminate for and against the despotisms of Rome and Naples without producing any tangible result, if other causes did not conspire to aid them. The liberty with which our writers are allowed to utter their opinions in Rome arises, not from any feeling of tolerance, but from a conviction that we shall do no great harm, after all.

Mr. Story describes his book as filled with roba, and containing, as he hopes, very little robaccia, which Mr. Millhouse defines to be "trash, trumpery, and stuff." That this hope is justified we need hardly say. We have to thank the Roba di Roma for recalling to us many pleasant days in that grand old city, which we know so well. Those to whom Rome is familiar will, we think, feel something of shame, that during their stay there they should have learnt so much less than the author of this book. The old story of "Eyes and No-eyes" will be recalled to them, we fear, somewhat forcibly. Those to whom Rome is a name only can read Mr. Story's work with the pleasing conviction, that when they have read it they will know more about the Papal city than nine Anglo-Romans out of ten. They will understand, too, something of the mysterious attraction which Rome possesses for the Northern stranger; they will sympathise with Goethe's lines:

"O wie fühl' ich in Rom mich so froh! gedenk ich der Zeiten
Da mich ein graulicher Tag hinten im Norden umfing,
Trübe der Himmel und schwer auf meine Scheitel sich senkte,
Farb- und gestaltlos die Welt um den Ermatteten lag,
Und ich über mein Ich, des unbefriedigten Geistes,
Düstre Wege zu spähn, still in Betrachtung versank,
Nun unleuchtet der Glanz des hellen Aether's die Stirne,
Phöbus rufet, der Gott, Formen und Farben hervor,
Sternhell glänzet die Nacht, sie klingt von weichen Gesängen,
Und mir leuchtet der Mond heller als nordischer Tag."

ART. VIII.-LADY MORGAN.

Lady Morgan's Memoirs; Autobiography, Diaries, and Correspondence. Allen and Co. 1862.

AN anxiety as frivolous as that which troubled the last moments of the expiring Narcissa was the natural characteristic of one who, like Lady Morgan, had long been accustomed to the excitements of publicity, and had been fondled and flattered into an inordinate love of praise. "One would not, sure, look ugly when one's dead," is the sentiment in which, probably, all the favourites of Fortune more or less participate; and Lady Morgan, longing for posthumous celebrity, but provident rather for her intellectual than her physical attractions, attested her sensitiveness on the subject by a skilful arrangement of her "Remains," and by intrusting herself to the care of a "literary executor," upon whom she could depend for being "laid out" to the best possible advantage. If the repose of the departed depends upon the fidelity with which their wishes are fulfilled, Lady Morgan's ghost may be considered as set to rest for ever. Mr. Hepworth Dixon and the lady who shared his labours have succeeded in producing a biography, sufficiently piquant and picturesque to bring its subject once more vividly before the public eye, and to arouse critical animosities strangely disproportionate to the importance of the questions involved, or of the person against whom they were directed. Half a century ago the Quarterly Review, in no chivalrous temper, sounded the shrill blast of onslaught, and headed the attack upon the authoress of France, as the very type of all that was worthless in a writer and infamous in a woman. There is something half-ludicrous, half-melancholy in the perusal, at this distance of time, of the elaborate invective which Mr. Gifford, or some other iracund gentleman, thought it worth his while to direct against a moderately successful novelist. Authors who are disposed to murmur at the critical severity of our age, and to imagine that their lot has been cast in especially unsparing times, would do well to consult the magazines which our fathers wrote and read, and to compare "the deep damnation" of the "Revilers" of those days with the languid politeness or good-natured reticence of our own less intrepid generation. An indignant aspirant to literary fame, who appears to have suffered in the Athenaeum's honest embrace, has lately been at the pains of collecting all the most vigorous expressions of contempt and dislike which could be culled from the pages of that periodical. The list is confessedly an imposing one; but there is nothing in the whole, we will

undertake to say, so virulent as the abuse which the Quarterly Review poured out successively upon each of Lady Morgan's works. Nothing is too great or too absolutely insignificant for the writer's spitefulness to criticise: all is grist that comes to his mill, and the mill grinds every thing alike into the strongest gunpowder. That Lady Morgan is an atheist, that her French is inaccurate, that her history is careless, that she drives bargains with her publisher, that she loves fine ladies and grand entertainments; that her father was an actor, and that she herself has been behind the scenes; that she quotes wicked French books, which she can, fortunately for herself, only half understand; that, in fact, she is vulgar, wicked, pretentious, ignorant, tuft- hunting, obscene, and, worst of all, Jacobinical, such are the agreeable accusations which her assailant, in a paroxysm of hatred, pours, in ornamental confusion, upon her; and in the face of which her stories had to make their way to the really satisfactory success which they ultimately achieved. In our day a gentle echo of this obsolete abuse had sounded from more than one illustrious quarter; and a writer in Fraser's Magazine, provoked apparently by the self-satisfied and complacent tone of the Memoirs, has devoted a great deal of superfluous diligence to the task of proving that a poor little old woman, whose vanity, pettiness, and ignorance could not have escaped the most careless observer, was neither so wise, so young, nor so attractive, as she wished mankind to believe. All this appears to us merely "Hate's labour lost," and there is a certain want of humour in imagining that such transparent and self-evident propositions either run any risk of refutation, or need to be confirmed by additional testimony. Lady Morgan was undoubtedly a great deal of what her enemies assert: her French, Latin, and Italian are curiously incorrect and needlessly obtrusive. Her passion for great people, her greediness for popularity, her relish of the very coarsest flattery, her triumphant satisfaction in "getting on,"-all are beyond the possibility of contradiction, because she artlessly depicts them for us herself, and never for a moment asks us to take her for any thing but what she is, a shrewd, eager, rather clever woman, upon whom fortune imposed the vulgar necessity of making her bread, and whose high spirits, resolute ambition, and imperviousness to petty slights, enabled her to succeed astonishingly well in a society whose pale she over-stepped, whose prejudices she shocked, and whose jealousy she ran every risk of exciting.

The fact is, that all but the most complete characters must, unless they are to annoy and disappoint us, be taken from the proper point of view, and estimated at the worth which, by