ITALIAN NOVELS.

Speronella, o l'Origine della Lega Lombarda, Storia del Secolo duodecimo. (Speronella, or the Origin of the Lombard League, a story of the twelfth century.) By Carlo Leoni, of Padua. 12mo. Milan. 1837.

Lodovico il Moro, o Condizioni, Usi, Costumi, Singolarità e memorabili Avvenimenti di Milano, sulla fine del secolo 15. Romanzo Storico. (Lodovico the Moor, or the Condition, Usages, Manners, Peculiarities, and Memorable Events of Milan, at the close of the 15th century. An historic Novel.) By Giovanni Campiglio, Author of a History of Italy. 12mo. Milan, 1837.

Margherita Pusterla, Racconto. (A Tale.) By Cesare Cantu. 3 vols. 12mo. Milan, 1838.

The reader, who is led by these titles to expect works powerfully seizing upon the feelings and the imagination, like Manzoni's Promessi Sposi, or even like those of his followers, Rosini and Varese, will be grievously disappointed. The historic novel has been in Italy strangely altered, or, shall we say, a new school, if not two new schools, has there arisen, differing from the original Scotch school, in a mode little to have been anticipated in the produce of a southern clime that boasts its more impassioned temperament, ripened by a more genial_sun. In the first of these schools, the graphic description of scenery and antiquarian research, forming the back-ground or decoration of the proper historic novel, has become its very essence, and the strongly exciting story has dwindled into a mere accessory, little more than a thread upon which to string the dresses, buildings, laws and customs of the middle ages; and most especially the vices and follies of the higher orders. In the second school of these pseudo works of imagination, that creative faculty is called upon for no exertion beyond the inventing dialogues that may embody in words the thoughts and feelings of historical personages under the most important circumstances of their lives.

Between these two kinds of professed historic novels, it is not always easy to draw the line; and whilst in the three works before us we have one decided specimen of each class, it is not without hesitation that we rank the third as of the first school. Of each we shall give such an abstract as may enable the reader to judge of the school. All three novelise, if we may coin a word at our need, Lombard history; and we shall speak of them chronologically according to their subjects.

Speronella novelises the insurrection of Padua against the Holy Roman Empire, in which originated the Lombard League, that formidable ally of the Popes against the mighty Swabian Emperors. The story opens with a conversation among the mer

cenary guard of Pagano, Vicario Imperiale, or Imperial Governor of Padua. Then follows another between the esquire of the noble Jacopo Carrara, and the attendants of the Delesmano family, the daughter of which, Speronella, is betrothed to Carrara. Then the lover's consultation with an astrologer, touching some mistrust of Pagano: then a grand ball, given by the Vicario, in the course of which Carrara is designedly provoked into a quarrel; and Speronella, fainting, is carried off by the agents of Pagano to a strong castle of his, where, wholly defenceless, she falls a loathing victim to his brutality. Carrara, through an amour of his esquire with a damsel of the castle, gains admittance to her dungeon, learns the outrage she has suffered, and hurries away, to raise an insurrection to avenge her wrongs; leaving her, to the reader's unspeakable astonishment, in the power of her ruthless destroyer. After two historical chapters of the hostilities between Lombard cities and Frederic Barbarossa, the revolt ensues; the castle is taken, Pagano killed, his victim liberated, and the republic proclaimed. But, lest the reader's sympathy should have been too painfully moved for the wretched Speronella, he is told in an epilogue that, according to history, she sufficiently recovered from her anguish for the loss of Carrara, who fell in the first affray, and, for her own dishonour, to marry two or three husbands. in succession. This is the story that we hesitated to class.

We proceed to Margherita Pusterla, our positive specimen of the first described new school. The story, though simple enough, will require somewhat more detail than the last; and of this work we purpose to give some extracts; partly as possessing more merit and more pretension than the other two, and partly as being the production of Cesare Cantu, a writer highly esteemed in Italy, although chiefly we believe as a reviewer.

Margherita, herself a Visconte, has in early youth been beloved by, and loved in return, a noble youth, Buonvicino. A political reverse having so ruined him as to destroy his hopes of obtaining her hand, he had resolved to conquer a love never yet declared, and had negotiated her marriage with his friend, Franciscolo Pusterla. Margherita obeys her father without an objection, and becomes fond of her husband to a degree that we, romantic northerns, find it somewhat difficult to reconcile with her love for Buonvicino. Pusterla, though passionately loving her, is not worthy of his wife, being ambitious, turbulent, and, moreover, unfaithful. Buonvicino, seeing her constantly, soon finds his love too strong for his virtue, and writes her a passionate avowal of his feelings. Receiving no answer, he goes in fearful agitation to visit her; and we shall extract the scene, as a happy specimen of Cantu's manner in this style.

It was a spacious and lofty parlour, the beams projecting from the ceiling, carved by a master's hand and gilt; the walls hung with leather, embossed in colours and gold; an oriental carpet was spread upon the pavement; the

portals and ample windows were curtained with fine crimson damask, while a tempered light penetrated through the small round glass panes in their arabesque frame-work. Upon the vast hearth, the whole trunk of a tree burned slowly, diffusing a warmth still grateful in this early season. Against the walls stood capacious walnut-tree presses, and elegant ebony chests of drawers, inlaid with ivory, and wrought with silver and mother-of-pearl. Here and there was a small table, or a large high-backed arm-chair, such as convenience or imitation is again bringing into fashion. In one of these, clad with simple elegance, sat Margherita ; and, at a little distance, silent and indifferent as a molten image, a handmaid was at work upon a low stool. Margherita appeared to have recently put down the cushion upon which she had been making lace, a favourite occupation of noble ladies, and taken in hand a small parchment book, richly bound, with finely chiselled gold studs.

Without raising her eyes from this book, she exclaimed "Welcome!" in melodious accents, softly bowing her head, as the page raised the door-curtain, and announced the cavalier whom he admitted. Buonvicino was himself too much agitated to observe in her voice the tremor bespeaking internal disturbance; and, by way of entering into conversation, asked, "What book, Madonna, is so happy as to engage your attention?"

She replied, "It is the dearest gift that my father bestowed upon me as a bride-my dear father! In the years of his tranquil age he daily allotted some hours to writing a page in it; carefully, as you may see, he painted and gilt these capital letters; these frontispiece ornaments are the work of his hand. But the most precious, oh, far the most, is the matter he has here written under the title of Advice to my Daughter. He gave it me with his last kiss, when transferring me from his own house to this. Think if I value it! Should I seem too presuming if, fortune having brought you in happy time, I request you, should you be at leisure, to read it to me?"

Could a desire of Margherita's not be his; especially this, which relieved a painfully awkward situation? He drew a seat, and placed himself at a little distance from her. Margherita resumed her lace-making; the handmaiden sewed on; and Buonvicino, eagerly taking the book, began to read at the page which the lady pointed out as that where he had interrupted her.

We spare our readers the moral exhortations of the worthy deceased father against unlawful love, his picture of the miseries that must attend it, even if undetected, and his philippic against the selfishness of the seducer. Turn we to their effect.

Large drops of sweat rolled from the patlid brow of Buonvicino while be read: his heart sank within him; he felt as if fainting; his voice had faltered more and more; and at the words, " And does he who thus injures, love thee?" it wholly failed him. He let the book fall from his hand, remaining with his eyes bent upon the ground, and for some minutes incapable of speaking. Margherita diligently twisted her threads, moved her bobbins, and transplanted pins, studying to appear calm; but an observer might, from the disorder of her work, have inferred her internal agitation. Even the preoccupied Buonvicino perceived a few tears, which, in spite of her efforts to repress them, fell upon her lace. What were the merit of virtue, did its victories cost nothing?

After an interval of silence, Buonvicino rose, and exerting himself to steady his voice, exclaimed: "Margherita, this lesson shall not be lost; whilst my life endures, I shall be grateful to you for it."

Scarcely was Buonvicino gone, scarcely had the door closed behind him, when she gave free vent to the anguish hitherto painfully repressed. She ran to the cradle where lay her sleeping Vincentio, kissed him again and again, and bathed the sweet baby's face in a torrent of tears, a last tribute to

the recollections of her girlhood, to those first affections, cherished because innocent. Against the dangers of the heart, where can a mother seek a better safeguard than beside her offspring? The child opened those infantine eyes, which seem to reflect heaven in all its limpid serenity, looked up, recognized his mother, and clasped his soft arms round her neck, crying, " Mamma! dear mamma!" How precious the word at that moment to Margherita, spotless, saintly! She enjoyed its full luxury, and therein found the calm, the smiling tranquillity, of a heart that, immediately after the tempest, exults in having escaped unscathed.

Upon this gentle rebuke, Buonvicino becomes a monk, and as such we find him the constant friend of Pusterla, at the opening of the tale; all this being somewhat awkwardly told as having happened three or four years before. Luchino Visconte, despot of Milan, sends Pusterla, whose ambition conquers his jealousy, on an embassy to Verona; and, in his absence, endeavours to seduce Margherita. She repulses him without even suffering him to pollute her ears with his guilty suit; but Pusterla's foundling esquire, the devotedly attached and impetuous Alpinolo, flies with the tidings to Verona. Pusterla hastens back secretly to Milan, summons his friend, and a conspiracy is planned against Luchino, which the imprudent zeal of Alpinolo betrays to the court spy, Ramengo da Casale. The Pusterla palace is invested during its master's libertine absence; Margherita is seized, Alpinolo rescues her son, and carries it to her husband, whom Buonvicino enables to escape. Margherita is closely imprisoned; and when Luchino thinks her spirit sufficiently broken by solitary confinement, he renews his criminal addresses, and she, exulting in the safety of her husband and child, successfully repulses him-a moral triumph, which, in such utter physical helplessness, we must own, surprises as much as it gratifies us, and at least shows Luchino to be less of a brute than the Pagano of the former tale. He is brute enough, however, to treat the virtuous Margherita with tenfold severity, whilst he employs Ramengo to ensnare Pusterla. Ramengo hates Pusterla, for having twenty years before made love to his wife; in consequence of which he had put her, along with her new-born babe, believing it Pusterla's, into a boat without oars, and sent them adrift down the river. He had endeavoured to take vengeance in kind, one St. John's eve-another antecedent adventure-and been disdainfully repulsed by Margherita, who had, unluckily, not thought the insult worth imparting to her husband. During his search for Pusterla, Ramengo discovers the innocence of his deceased wife, and that Alpinolo is his lost child. But his hatred to Pusterla is hereby only increased, as having been the cause of his innocent wife's death. Ramengo succeeds in ensnaring his enemy, whom, with his child, he delivers into Luchino's hands. And now, when their lives are at stake, the reader anticipates a far more severe trial for Margherita; trembling, perhaps, for the result. But the author, whether he shrank from either thus torturing and dishonouring his heroine,

or from exposing her to the imputation of hardness of heart, whether he would not deviate from historic truth, or whether simply this dreadful use of the capture of a husband and child did not occur to him, turns Ramengo's success to no other account than to cut off three heads instead of one. Neither does he work out to advantage the punishment of Ramengo, in his long lost son's abhorrence of him; which appears indeed, but is rather intimated than dramatically exhibited. This failure to make the most of his situations is one of Cantu's chief defects as a novelist, for he is not without vigorous talent. His power of painting tender emotions are here shown; and he is equally successful in giving the fluctuating humours of a mob, though apparently unconscious that he, a liberal, is thus showing their unfitness for selfgovernment, and the pathos or horrors of the death scene. We shall give specimens of both. The following extracts are from the description of the popular tumult provoked by the arrest of Pusterla's confederates, and of Margherita.

"How!-What!-New imprisonments !-New exiles!"-exclaimed several discordant voices. "The Cavaliere Pinalla arrested? The very flower of brave men! Why I served five years under his banner; he was my professed patron."

"Ay, and his brother Martino? Think of that! Why he was but two paces distant from me last Sunday at mass, at San Lorenzo's."

"And me, then? He is my neighbour, and never met me without saying, Your servant, Pizzabrasa."

"Beltramolo d'Amico, too, he was dragged away-dost mind?"

"Oh! as for him, it serves him right-a vile Ghibelline as he is. Have n't I, myself, heard him say that the Pope did wrong to excommunicate the Emperor and the Signor Mateo! Bad luck to him! If it was not for the Pope, who cows these great dogs, what would become of us and of the people?" Ay, the people!-Berolo da Castelletto would let himself be cut to pieces for the people and St. Ambrose; and he, too, sits with his nose behind a grating. How it provokes me! A customer the less at my shambles." "But the worst is, that good Signora Margherita."

"An eye of the sun!"

"An angel in human shape!"

"Never did she say to a beggar, go in peace, or come to-morrow." "During all this dearth none have suffered hunger at the Ticino gate." Every day did she send wine to my sick grandam."

And with such -like encomiums they went on, working themselves up into fury, till they were interrupted by fierce and discordant, but determined, shouts of "Oh, the dog!-Oh, the fiend!-Thus he picks away our brave lords one by one!-What the deuce of a city will this become !-There'll be none left but us beggars!-Then who'll deal at our shops?-Who'll take us as servants?-Who'll give us drink-money?- Pretty living 'twill be then!"

"If we are wise," rejoined Antellotto Braccioforte, a smoke-blackened smith, with a voice wont to master the noise of his anvils-" if we are wise, we shall not wait till it comes to that; we shall physic things handsomely aud betimes."

"Physic?-To be sure!-Physic it handsomely.-Antellotto says well!" exclaimed many together; "it will not be the first time. We ousted the Torriani; we dragged Beno de'Gozzadini through the streets-Oh, to be sure!