form them into a staff and bureaux for recruiting. The next day, March 22, the official journal again commenced with an article of the most edifying piety; it was more and more steeped in devotion. This time it is the Bishop of Counstances who vouches for the religious sentiments of the First Consul. In the middle of a solemn mass, demanded by the soldiers to thank God for the discovery of the conspiracy, the bishop proposed for their imitation the enthusiastic faith of the new Constantine: "Soldiers," he said, "never forget that God whom the conqueror of Marengo adores, that God before whom we have seen him in the cathedral of Milan bow his head, crowned by victory," etc. After this edifying introduction, and at the end of the news of the day, in the most obscure corner of the official paper, we find a document which seems placed there like some insignificant historical notice, without preface or reflections, or anything to attract the eye; it is the sentence of the Military Commission on one Louis-Antoine Henri de Bourbon, Duc d'Enghien. And as a climax to this perfidy and premeditated arrangement, the sentence itself is a forgery. The original decree, which Réal took to Malmaison, had appeared too brutal in its eloquent brevity, and had been lengthened by the addition of some judicial forms.

ITALIAN LITERATURE.

BY MADAME DE STAËL.

(From "Corinne.")

[ANNE Louise Germaine NeckER, by marriage Baroness de Staël-Holstein, daughter of Louis XVI.'s famous finance minister and Suzanne Curchod (Gibbon's former betrothed), was born April 22, 1766. A precocious and sensitive child, the stimulus of the brilliant circle gathered about her parents developed her intellect but impaired her health, and she was sent into the country. At twenty her marriage with the Swedish ambassador, De Staël, was arranged. During the Revolution she remained in Paris trying to prevent the slaughter of innocent people, and pleading for the queen; driven out by the Reign of Terror, she returned in 1795, became prominent in politics, opposed Napoleon, and was ordered out of Paris by him in 1801. After she published "Corinne " he expelled her from France; in 1812 he suppressed the entire edition of her new "Germany," again expelled her, virtually imprisoned her at Coppet, in Switzerland, where she had taken refuge, and harassed her with the meanest persecutions. She escaped, and lived in Berlin, Moscow, and England till 1815. She

died July 14, 1817. Her other chief works are "Influence of the Passions," “Delphine," and "Considerations on the French Revolution."

"IN THE first place," said Corinne, "foreigners usually know none but our first-rate poets: Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, Guarini, Tasso, and Metastasio; but we have many others, such as Chiabrera, Guidi, Filicaja, and Parini, without reckoning Sannazer Politian, who wrote in Latin. All their verses are harmoniously colored; all more or less knew how to introduce the wonders of nature and art into their verbal pictures. Doubtless they want the melancholy grandeur of your bards, and their knowledge of the human heart; but does not this kind of superiority become the philosopher better than the poet? The brilliant melody of our language is rather adapted to describe external objects than abstract meditation; it is more competent to depict fury than sadness; for reflection calls for metaphysical expressions, while revenge excites the fancy, and banishes the thought of grief. Cesarotti has translated Ossian in the most elegant manner; but in reading him we feel that his words are in themselves too joyous for the gloomy ideas they would recall; we yield to the charm of our soft phrases, as to the murmur of waves or the tints of flowers. What more would you exact of poetry? If you ask the nightingale the meaning of his song, he can explain but by recommencing it; we can only appreciate its music by giving way to the impression it makes on us. Our measured lines with rapid terminations, composed of two brief syllables, glide along as their name (Sdruccioli) denotes, sometimes imitating the light steps of a dance, sometimes, with graver tone, realizing the tumult of a tempest or the clash of arms. Our poetry is a wonder of imagination; you ought not in it to seek for every species of pleasure."

"I admit," returned Nevil, "that you account as well as possible for the beauties and defects of your national poetry; but when these faults, without these graces, are found in prose, how can you defend it? what is but vague in the one becomes unmeaning in the other. The crowd of common ideas that your poets embellish by melody and by figures is served up cold in your prose with the most fatiguing pertinacity. The greatest portion of your present prose writers use a language so declamatory, so diffuse, so abounding in superlatives, that one would think they all dealt out the same accepted phrases

by word of command, or by a kind of convention. Their style is a tissue, a piece of mosaic. They possess in its highest degree the art of inflating an idea, or frothing up a sentiment ; one is tempted to ask them a similar question to that put by the negress to the Frenchwoman in the days of hoop petticoats: Pray, madame, is all that yourself?' Now how much is real beneath this pomp of words, which one true expression might dissipate like an idle dream!"

"You forget," interrupted Corinne, "first Machiavelli and Boccaccio, then Gravina, Filangieri, and even in our own days, Cesarotti, Verri, Bettinelli, and many others who knew both how to write and how to think. I agree with you that for the last century or two, unhappy circumstances having deprived Italy of her independence, all zeal for truth has been so lost that it is often impossible to speak it in any way. The result is a habit of resting content with words and never daring to approach a thought. Authors, too sure that they can effect no change in the state of things, write but to show their wit -the surest way of soon concluding with no wit at all; for it is only by directing our efforts to a nobly useful aim that we can augment our stock of ideas. When writers can do nothing for the welfare of their country; when indeed their means constitute their end; from leading to no better they double in a thousand windings without advancing one step. The Italians are afraid of new ideas, rather because they are indolent than from literary servility. By nature they have much originality, but they give themselves no time to reflect. Their eloquence, so vivid in conversation, chills as they work ; beside this, the Southerns feel hampered by prose and can only express themselves fully in verse. It is not thus with French literature," added Corinne to d'Erfeuil; "your prose writers are often more poetical than your versifiers.'

"That is a truth established by classic authorities," replied the count. "Bossuet, Labruyère, Montesquieu, and Buffon can never be surpassed, especially the first two, who belonged to the age of Louis XIV.; they are perfect models for all to imitate who can a hint as important to foreigners as to ourselves."

"I can hardly think," returned Corinne, "that it were desirable for distinct countries to lose their peculiarities; and I dare to tell you, count, that in your own land the national orthodoxy which opposes all felicitous innovations must render

your literature very barren. Genius is essentially creative; it bears the character of the individual who possesses it. Nature, who permits no two leaves to be exactly alike, has given a still greater diversity to human minds. Imitation, then, is a double murder, for it deprives both copy and original of their primitive existence."

"Would you wish us," asked d'Erfeuil, "to admit such Gothic barbarisms as Young's Night Thoughts,' or the Spanish and Italian Concetti? What would become of our tasteful and elegant style after such a mixture?”

The Prince Castel Forte now remarked: "I think that we all are in want of each other's aid. The literature of every country offers a new sphere of ideas to those familiar with it. Charles V. said: The man who understands four languages is worth four men.' What that great genius applied to politics is as true in the state of letters. Most foreigners understand French; their views, therefore, are more extended than those of Frenchmen, who know no language but their own. Why do they not oftener learn other tongues? They would preserve what distinguishes themselves and might acquire some things in which they still are wanting.

"You will confess at least," replied the count, "that there is one department in which we have nothing to learn from any one. Our theater is decidedly the first in Europe. I cannot suppose that the English themselves would think of placing their Shakespeare above us."

"Pardon me, they do think of it," answered Mr. Edgarmond; and, having said this, resumed his previous silence.

"Oh!" exclaimed the count, with civil contempt, "let every man think as he pleases; but I persist in believing that, without presumption, we may call ourselves the highest of all dramatic artists. As for the Italians, if I may speak frankly, they are in doubt whether there is such an art in the world. Music is everything with them; the piece nothing; if a second act possesses a better scena than the first, they begin with that; nay, they will play portions of different operas on the same night and between them an act from some prose comedy, containing nothing but moral sentences, such as our ancestors turned over to the use of other countries, as worn too threadbare for their own. Your famed musicians do what they will with your poets. One won't sing à certain air, unless the word Felicità be introduced; the tenor demands his Tomba; a third