Upon such theories, sound and holy in themselves, fatal in their conclusions, the most brilliant faculties of a fertile imagination were brought to bear. As a dramatic poet no less than as a novelist, Manzoni deserves the greatest applause for vividness of description, for ease and gracefulness of style. His ample powers of invention were never allowed a sufficiently ample scope, but were rather employed to little or no purpose. Scenery and personages are delineated to the life; the human heart is sounded to its inmost depths ; each of the cumbrous and longwinded episodes is calculated to entwine itself round our heart ; yet the main stories are utterly void of permanent interest.

There are soliloquies in “Carmagnola,” such as the one by the hero himself, when he deliberates upon the expediency of accepting the general command of the Venetian forces, and turning his arms against his former patron and friend, the Duke of Milan—that of the senator, Marino, on the eve of betraying, or suffering at least his friend, the confiding soldier of fortune, to fall into the snare of his fellow-patriciansthe monologue of Svarto, in the "Adelchi,” laying before us the uncouth but ambitious mind of a common trooper, preparing to fish in troubled waters, and grounding his hope of advancement in the dissensions and downfall of his lords—the abject hesitation of Guntigi, between the dastard promptings of self-preservation, and the compunctious visiting of conscience and duty-finally, the struggle of the noble Adelchi against the suggestions of despair and suicide--all of which is conveyed to our minds, with a truth, a simplicity of expression, amply proving that the poet has studied both nature and Shakspeare to some purpose.

Still more successful was our author in his effusions of deeper pathetic. The closing scene of the sufferings of Ermengarda, the divorced queen of Charlemagne : the agony of Adelchi : Carmagnola's last apostrophe to his war-steed, his brother-in-arms, the open fields, and wide-spreading sun; his contrast of a soldier's death with the cold blooded sacrifice that awaits him-every appeal of Manzoni to the reader's sympathies, is always sure of an immediate response.

The far-famed novel, “I Promessi Sposi,” presented, of course, a greater variety of characters and incidents than the solemnity of tragedy could admit of. Read the uproar of a peaceful hamlet, aroused by the alarm-bell at midnight-a Milanese mob, goaded by hunger to riot and violence—the squalor of a city struck by the dire band of pestilence. A long series of exquisite pictures laid before us, without sufficient connexion, indeed, but with all the finish of an artist who works for love. The episode of the Trnominato's conversion--that of the death of the petty villain Don Rodrigo-are touched with a masterly hand throughout. But that of the Signora di Monza is in itself a romance, and constitutes perhaps, the finest chapter in any novel, ancient or modern, past and to come. It is a story of love and guilt ; all the more appalling from the veil of mystery under which the poet was pleased to shroud it ; which gives us reason to regret that it should not have been chosen as the main subject of the novel; and greater reason to lament that it should have been left unfinished, to be clumsily spun out, patched, and cobbled, by Rosini, in two volumes, which bear the title of the “ Nun of Monza." The conspiracy of a whole household, of a whole community, against a child in its cradle; the mean, unnatural stratagems to bury it alive in the cloisters ; the cold blooded watchfulness of the tyrant-father over every wayward feeling of the doomed girl; his fiendish delight at a first juvenile faux-pas, which gives her, bound body and soul, into his power; and, after her sacrifice, the development in her miserable heart of worldly passions, which had been too long, too outrageously pent up and crushed; her rapid plunge into profligacy, into crime of the darkest die; all is told with such an exquisite attention to the working of the human heart, with so much truth, so much delicacy and temperance, that our feelings of pity, of indignation, of horror and resentment, were never perhaps called forth with greater readiness and intensity.

That affecting story is, nevertheless, only an episode ; and, as such, it will even appear long and tedious to those who attach any importance to the paltry vicissitudes of the two betrothed lovers. The share that the Nun of Monza has in their affairs is indirect and transitory. After so minute and elaborate an introduction, the guilty Nun makes her bow to the reader and retires to her unquiet solitude, never to be heard of afterwards. Manzoni's characters are all equally inactive. Don Ferrante, the heavy pedant, Donna Prassede his methodist wife, the Podestà, a pompous

ckhead, Azzecca-Garbugli, the sycophantic pettyfogger, the Conte Zio, the fool of state, Fra Galdino, a cowled Figaro, Don Abbondio, the selfish coward-Manzoni had a particular delight in the personification of this character—all these comic personages are brought before the reader, recommended to his particular notice, but almost as soon dropped by the author. They do little good and less harm. It is only the pestilence-good, accommodating pestilence—that settles all scores. Men are only puppets, dressed

up, tricked out with great care, each of them perfect in his own way, but most preposterously jumbled together.

Every chapter in the tame and uneventful story is likewise episodical. Don Rodrigo's persecutions, and Fra Cristoforo's suggestions drive the two lovers from their native village. The famine and consequent riots at Milan, involve the single-minded Renzo into some druuken scrape, in consequence of which he is fain to take his refuge into the neighbouring territories of the Venetian republic. The plague and ensuing disorganisation of all social orders, enable him to return.

All inconvenient persons are disposed of, in a summary way, by the contagious disease, and released from their worst terrors by the death of their enemy, freed from rash vows by priestly authority, purged from political interdicts by the interference of powerful friends, the betrothed are at last united. Even then, they show no great eagerness to build their nest in their birthplace; they bid their old home a lasting farewell, and hasten to settle among strangers.

All this, we repeat, appears languid and clumsy. Hardly a beginner but would exercise his inventive

powers with more brilliant result. Partial beauties only make us more painfully alive to the imperfections of the main action. The parts seem even assiduously studied to mar the effect of the whole.

It is indeed possible that this want of unity of action and interest was voluntary and intentional on the part of the author.

His object was, perhaps, less to add one more to the hundred works of fiction that poured in upon Italy from all Northern Europe, than to cure his countrymen of their blind partiality for that style of writing. He seemed willing to prove how

easy it is to give reality all the charms of romantic narrative. He called his novel " A page of Milanese History." Nothing more

66

from the repu

punctual than his adherence to historical fact. Even his most trivial characters are said to have their prototypes in some of the old chronicles of the country. He would not like his predecessor, Scott, depart from truth for the sake of effect : he would not crowd startling events together, regardless of anachronisms or local inaccuracy. He would not shadow forth as a positive fact what is obscurely hinted at as a traditional surmise. He did not think with the author of the “ Last of the Barons,” that one crime more or less cannot add to or take

away tation of an essentially bad character.” 6. Truth" for him, was“ stranger than fiction.” Even as an inventor he is merely a portrait painter. Tame and dull he may be, but never fantastic or exaggerated.

His dialogues are mere common-place. Comic sometimes, for comedy may be compatible with prose, but none of his personages are ever allowed to spout poetic sentiments any more than they are made to speak in rhythmical language. Fra Cristoforo alone is almost sublime in one or two instances, but even this arises rather from the solemnity of circumstance than from loftiness of speech.

But the poetry which we look for in vain from the hero's lips breathes from the poet's own soul. Their thoughts are often noble or gentle, though they can find no words to give them utterance. The poet delights in giving them a helping hand now and then. Witness the “ Farewell of Lucia to her Country,” which we will attempt to transcribe, as it is eminently characteristic of Manzoni's style, of his complete reliance on the most genuine and natural emotions of simple hearts for poetical effect. The

poor Milanese Tosa, obliged to escape from the insolence of a libertine feudatory, Don Rodrigo, is sailing by moonlight on her native lake, casting a last glance at her hamlet, at the home of her childhood. Overcome by emotions, she hides her face as if composing herself to sleep, and

weeps

undisturbed. It is well she holds her tongue ; were she to give free vent to her gloomy meditations, her plain language might shock us even as the prince, in fairy legends, was disenchanted by the coarse expressions of the three fair village sisters. Something niais more than naïve might be the result. But it is the poet that speaks, and Lucy will not feel inclined to quarrel with her eloquent interpreter.

“Farewell, ye mountains, emerging from the waters, reared up to the sky, whose bold outlines are graved in the heart of him who was born among you, no less than the features of his parent ; whose murmuring streams sound like the music of a friend's voice ; and ye, lonely hamlets, scattered between hill and dale, white and pure, glittering in the landscape like flocks pasturing on the hill-side-farewell!

“How sad the steps of those who, born among you, depart from you! Even in the fancy of a man who leaves you of his own choice, allured by prospects of fortune smiling upon him in far-off countries—even in his fancy his golden dreams fade (si disabbelliscono) as you fade in the distant horizon ; and he wonders and repines, and would fain retrace his steps were it not for the glimmering thought of a future day, when ease and wealth will follow him on his return. The further he advances on the plain the more his eye

withdraws

weary and dejected from that monotonous vastness. The air is to him heavy and lifeless. Sad and absent he treads among the busy throng of tumultuous cities. The houses on houses and streets on streets seem to take away his breath; and before

Sept.-VOL. LXXXI. NO. CCCXXI.

the proudest edifices, wonder of foreign visitors, the home-sick mountaineer thinks with restless longing of the white cottage and homestead in his village on which his heart is long since set, and which will be his if he ever gets back a rich man to his mountains.

“ But for one who had never sent beyond those mountains even an idle thought, even a fleeting glance-one who had bound within their limits the dearest schemes of the future—one driven away by oppression, who, torn from the dearest habits, from the fondest expectations, abandons those hills to move among strangers never thought of, never wished for one who cannot, even in imagination, fix on the day of return

Farewell, native home, where peacefully seated, treasuring a hidden thought, the heart learnt to distinguish from the common footsteps one footstep, expected with unaccountable anxiety and mysterious fear; farewell, home-as yet a stranger's, so often furtively glanced at, timidly and not unblushingly glanced at, where the mind loved to build up a tranquil sojourn of wedded felicity ; farewell, village church, whence the soul so often returned pure and serene, singing the hymns of the Lordwhere a sacred rite was prepared, promised—where the secret sigh of the heart was to be solemnly blessed, and love to become a duty and be called holy, farewell. He who bestowed so much joy upon you is everywhere, and He never disturbs the happiness of His children but to prepare for them a greater and more lasting bliss.”

Renzo's “ good-night” to his fatherland is somewhat more coarse and boorish. But then the poor clown speaks for himself.

He has no reporter to set up his blunt thoughts into elegant phrases. Led by chance into the midst of a bread-riot at Milan, prodigal of his own enlightened views on political economy and statesmanship in general, he falls into the wiles of an honest sword-cutler, who turns out to be no other than a bailiff in disguise. Roused from his drunken slumbers by a brace of thief-takers, who arrest him in the king's name, rescued by a mob, and resolved to be “ a bird in the bush rather than in a cage,” he hurries through the beleagured town gate, threads his way to the frontier, with incessant march, day and night, till he stands on the bank of the river that traces the boundary line. A half-fishing, half-smuggling boat wafts him across.

He bounds ashore, looks back with a mixture of rancour and exultation.

“Ah! I am quit of it at last !” Such was his first thought.“ Lie there, accursed country," was the second, his farewell to his native land. But the third ran back to her who was left behind. He then crossed his arms on his breast, breathed hard, glanced downwards towards the water that ran at his feet and thought : “ It has passed under the bridge:" Like his countryfolk he designated under that general name the Bridge of Lecco. “Oh, the vile world! Enough, God's will be done !"

Even Manzoni's monks, with all his reverence for the habit, are oftentimes plain and vulgar. Some traits escaped him, it appears, in which the reverend fathers appear at no great advantage ; and these are the passages, it may be, which cause Manzoni to regret, as we are informed, that he ever put pen to paper. We will only quote a monkish miracle, told in the quaint language of a mendicant friar, such as may be heard almost daily in many a poor hut on the Apennines, nay, in many a log cabin in Catholic Ireland.

" How do you get on with your begging?" said Agnes (Lucy's mother)

to Fra Galdino, the tithe-gatherer, or mendicant, of a neighbouring Capuchin fraternity.

* Indifferently, my good woman, but indifferently. Here is my whole harvest,” said the friar; and so saying, he removed his sack from his shoulder, and tossing it in the air, and catching it in his hand, “ here is all our walnut-harvest,” said he, “and to get together all this fine store, I have been obliged to knock at ten doors.'

“ Ah! bad times are these, Fra Galdino, and when people have to fight for their bread, they are apt to be penny wise.”

“ Penny wise, pound fool," quoth the monk. “ What remedy is there, my good woman, to put an end to bad times ; alms, my good woman, nothing but alms. Do

you

know any thing of that fine miracle of the walnuts, that took place many years since in one of our convents of Romagna?"

“ I do not, indeed ; let us have it." « Oh!

you must know, then, that once upon a time there was in that convent one of our fathers who was a saint, and he was called Padre Macario. On a winter afternoon, as he passed across a field belonging to one of our benefactors, also a worthy man, he saw this benefactor at the foot of a huge walnut tree, and four of his labourers with hatchets in the air, cutting away at the luckless tree to root it up. "Eh! what are you doing to that poor tree ? inquired Father Macario. “Oh, father,' replied the good man, 'for years and years we can get never a walnut out of it, I'll even try if I can make fire-wood with it.' * Leave it alone, leave it alone,' said the father. “I'll tell you, in good sooth, that next year it will bear more walnuts than leaves. The benefactor well knowing who it was had said that word, bade bis men to throw back the sod upon the roots, and calling after the friar, who went his way, 'Father Macario,' he said, “one-half of the harvest will be given to the convent.'

“The report of that prediction spread abroad. Every one kept watch on the walnut tree. In fact, early in spring, lots of blossoms, and then lots upon lots of nice walnuts. The good benefactor had not the consolation to shell them, for he went, before harvest-time, to reap the reward of his charity in a better world. But the miracle was all the more startling, as you shall hear. “ That worthy man had left after him a son of

different description. Now then, at harvest-time, the convent-beggar knocked at the door to receive the inoiety that was due to the convent. But the fellow looked as if taken by surprise at the news, and had even the boldness to say, that he had never heard that Capuchins could make nuts.'

“ Now, can you guess what took place ? One day-now, listen to this -the scape-grace had one day invited some friends of his own stamp (dello stesso pelo, a rich nionkish expression), and as he guzzled and revelled with them, he was telling the story of the walnut tree, and making fun at the monk's expense. Those young rakes were seized with a whim to see that preposterous heap of nuts, and he showed them to the granary. Now is your time to open your ears. He opens the door, steps up to the corner where the great heap of nuts had been laid, and as he says, “look there !' he looks himself, and sees --what, then ? why, only a mouldering heap of walnut leaves. Do you call this an example, eh? And instead of losing by that defrauded donation, the convent gained greatly by it; for after so great a prodigy, the begging for walnuts

a very