Conscript Fathers, the men of the fasces and the curule chair, are now a single noble, an attorney, and three petty justices. The distributors of kingdoms, and the chastisers of kings, are now a court for fixing the week ly price of butcher's meat, and the recovery of small debts. Such disa name! epala yil basis te

ra The Italian, as long as he has macaroni, troubles himself but little about the deeds of Cardinal Vicarse Acloak that will keep out the rain, and a cigar that will smoke away the day, advance him still farther in the road to happiness. But give him a new punchinello for the streets, and a new maestro for the stage, and let dungeons frown, friends disappear, executionerst flog, and Vicars and Vicegerents ride over the necks of mankind, the Italian enjoys the supreme of felicity. Revolutions in Italy There may be a few disbanded French bravos, longing for plunder and full pay again; or a few broken commissaries, thinking of the glorious times of robbery; but the people have as little sympathy with them, as they have with Julius Cesar and the Tenth Legion. There will be no more revolution in Italy than in the bottoms of their own coffee-cups. 10 The priests are the masters there, and even if the Pope should be untemporalized, which he will not, by Austria, nor by Europe, until the final change of all European, institutions is at hand, the priests will twist the chain round the hands, the feet, and the throat of the Italiand wordt des

The Cardinal Vicar, the third great officer of state, possesses very high and very active functions.bdn hisi court, constituted of himself, an au ditor, a prelate entitled the Vicege-t rent, and a prelate entitled the civil Luogotenente, he exercises an autho rity in civil and ecclesiastical cases within ten miles of Rome. Under other modifications he exercises at similar jurisdiction in criminal cases But he possesses one function, personally and exclusively, which aloner gives a very formidable power. As Cardinal Vicar, or Vicar-General to the Pope, he is censor of the public morals. By this single authority, he commands the liberty of every mand and woman in the state. Espionagelis, of course, one of the shortsightedarts of all the continental governments.r But Roman espionage is perpetuali and universal, and, with the restless ness and meanness that belongs to the unemployed life of monkery, it makes mischief out of every things The Cardinal Vicar has the power of a arrest and conveyance to the dunza geon, in all instances of his own caso price, or the caprice of others. The husband who wishes to get rid of his wife, the wife who plots against herm husband-and in the miserable system of Italian matrimony, and the habitual profligacy of both sexes, those bitter intrigues and fierce separations are frequent has only to influence the Cardinal, or perhaps the Cardinal's valet, or the valet's it of Italy, consisting of twelve prelates,

valet, or a clerk in his office; and the accused is privately seized, pri vately consigned to a prison, and d privately kept there for years, or for

life.

lived tane yedt doen

In England, a single act of this kind would overthrow a Ministry, and the existence of such an office would set the kingdom in a flame. But foreigners are satisfied, with. shrugging their shoulders, thanking the Virgin that it is not their own ill luck, and wiping out all traces the transaction by going to the ope

of

Of all states, the Roman is the most plagued with law. Every function ary, from the Pope to the lowest prelate, is vested with judicial rights of some kind or other; and nothing but actual experience can conceive the harassings, the expense, and the perpetual misery. of this teasing eternity of legislation. Independently of the Segnatura di Giustizia, a tribunal of law, strictly so called, and the Segnatura di Grazia, which decides by equity, is the Rota, a sort of representative tribunal of the provinces

of Rome, the Milanese, Tuscany, &c., and the Apostolic Chamber, consisting of fourteen members, beaded by the Cardinal Camerlengo, or Great Chamberlain, and the Roman Treasurer; the whole equivalent to our Commissioners of the Treasury, but still, like all the rest, exercising judicial functionscodes

Under a system of government in which the will of one man is the law, 3-for

the Pope's personal decision is considered superior to all written authorities, and is without appeal;

dicious situations, where the south wind might be excluded, and by cultivating the soil, there is full evidence that the infection might be totally extinguished. But the Italians are not that people. They would rather smoke the worst tobacco in the world, sip the worst chocolate, breathe the worst air, and live under the worst government; than take spade plough in hand, shake off their indolence and rags together, and send the priests and the pedants to legislate for the Esquimaux,10

or

where law, in even its most judicial form, refuses all oral testimony, all cross-examination, and all confront ing the accuser with the accused; where the chief tribunals receive all anonymous accusations; where the salaries of some of the assessors are not above five pounds Englisha-year; and, to complete the picture, where a lawsuit for half of five pounds may be driven from court to court for half-a-dozen years, our only won der should be, not that one half of the Romans are on the very verge of beggary, but that all Rome is not one aggregate of beggary, one mob of mendicancy, one huge workhouse. And this it unquestionably would be, but for the influx of foreigners, and especially of the English, who got there to igaze, s be robbed and be laughed at for being robbed. In fact, modern Rome has always lived upon strangers, upon Popish strangers before the Reformation, and upon the Protestant English since. By a miracle worth all the miracles of their breviary, the Romans, on the strength of their heretic gains, are beginning to glaze their windows, whitewash their pestilential cham bers, sweep their streets, and occa sionally wash their own hands and faces. But if a war should check the current of the English, the whole city will tumble into bankruptcy; Romes will be one grand Seccatura, and the habitual Italian physiognomy wi will be restored, squalid and unblenched ass every But it is in the provinces that the misery is most palpable. The States lying on the Adriatic, Umbria, the Marca, and the Legations, by their great natural fertility, counteract the indolence and the poverty of their people. But their system of farmed ing farms of thousands of sacres, constant fallows, and interminable copses for the food of the cattle in In these remarks on the Italian winter, and firing leave the cultivaus character, it is spoken of only as tors in comparative helplessness. Poi borme down by the vices of its gois on the Mediterranean side, the Masis vernmentss If men livelin a dun

remma, that the system is completely felt. The whole is little better than a desert, though the soil is singularly fertile; but it is infected by vapour's which render it unhealthylon althy This obstacle, however, might be soon overcome by a vigorous people, for the marshes are easily capable of be ing drained, and by planting in ju

Politics are much talked of in Italy; for they are, like the Athenians in the days of their degeneracy, prodigious lovers of news, and settlers of the affairs of all mankind. But even their lovers of liberty do not understand what they are talking about. They sigh for Jacobinism, and have no more conception of a liberty which could gain its point without plunder, and live without unsettling the whole frame of society, than they haver of an eruption of Vesuvius without fire, or a Pope without a nephew. The elections of the Pope are now mere matters of form. France has lost all her weight, or rather has contemptuously abandoned it; Portugal and Spain are still powerful in the conclave; but Austria is the great absorbent, she can make any Pope she pleases. She, however, is wisely satisfied with having the substance of power, without the shew. But day by briday day she is binding the Popedom more to her interests, she is becoming more and more the habitual refuge of the Popes; and it altogether depends on Prince Metternich whether the next election will or will not see the last Italian privilege that of making an Italian Pope nullified, and place an Archduke on the Papal throne to

geon, they must have the habits of a dungeon. If the Italian is eternally surrounded by spies, he must be either a spy or a victim. If his government will give him nothing to do, or will not suffer him to do any thing for himself, he must be either a thief or an idler, he must either beg or carry a barrel-organ. By nature he has great gifts, perhaps the most marked and admirable of any man of Europe. His country is the soil of genius; he is singularly acute, vivid, and sensitive, with the most glowing susceptibility of the lovely,

the noble, and the grand in the arts; a poet by nature-a musician by instinct a victim and a slave only by the vileness of his governments, and the blindness of his religion.

FAMILY POETRY. NO. III.

THE PLAY D

1"

Quæque ipse miserrima vidi, VIRG.

CATHERINE of Cleves was a lady of rank,
She had lands, and fine houses, and cash in the bank;

She had jewels and rings,

And a thousand smart things,...

Was lovely and young,

With a rather sharp tongue,

And she wedded a duke of high degree,

With the star of the order of St Esprit;

But the Duke de Guise

Was by many degrees

41

scowl with his eye,

:

Her senior, and not very easy to please;
He'd a sneer on his lip, and
And a frown on his brow-and he look'd like a Guy-

a

So she took to intriguing

With Monsieur St Megrin,

A young man of fashion, and figure, and worth,

But with no great pretensions to fortune or birth;

11

He would sing, fence, and dance

With any man in France,

And took his rappee with genteel nonchalance;
He smiled, and he flatter'd, and flirted with ease,
And was very superior to Monseigneur de Guise.

Now Monsieur St Megrin was curious to know

If the lady approved of his passion, or no;

So, without more ado,

A cunning-man near, he

Could conjure, tell fortunes, and calculate tides,

Perform tricks on the cards, and heaven knows what besides,

Bring back a stray'd cow, silver ladle, or spoon,

And was thought to be thick with the man-in-the-moon.

The sage took his stand

With his wand in his hand,

Drew a circle, then gave the dread word of command,

Saying solemnly-" Presto! Hey, quick - Cock-a-lorum !"
When the Duchess immediately popp'd up before 'em.

Just then a conjunction of Venus and Mars,
Or something peculiar above in the stars,
Attracted the notice of Signor Ruggieri,
Who bolted, and left him alone with his deary.
Monsieur St Megrin went down on his knees,
And the Duchess shed tears large as marrowfat peas,

Made the lady cry, "Get up, you fool!-there's De Guise!"

'Twas his grace sure enough;

So Monsieur, looking bluff,

Strutted by, with his hat on, and fingering his ruff:

While, unseen by either, away flew the dame

Through the opposite keyhole, the same way she came;

But alack! and alas!

A mishap came to pass,

In her hurry she somehow or other let fall

A new silk bandana she'd worn as a shawl;

She had used it for drying

Her bright eyes while crying,

And blowing her nose as her beau talk'd of " dying!"

Now the Duke, who had seen it so lately adorn her,
And knew the great C with the Crown in the corner,
The instant he spied it smoked something amiss,

And said, with some energy, " D-n it! what's this?"

He went home in a fume,

And bounced into her room,

Crying, " So, ma'am, I find I've some cause to feel jealous. Look here! here's a proof you run after the fellows!

Now take up that pen-if it's bad, choose a better

And write as I dictate this moment a letter

To Monsieur-you know who!"

The lady look'd blue;

But replied, with much firmness, " Curse me if I do!"

Then De Guise grasp'd her wrist

With his great mutton fist,

And pinch'd it, and gave it so painful a twist,

That his hard iron gauntlet the flesh went an inch in :

She didn't mind death, but she could not bear pinching;

So she sat down and wrote

This polite little note;

"Dear Mister St Megrin,

The Chiefs of the League in

Our house come to dine

This evening at nine;

I shall soon after ten,

Slip away from the men,

And you'll find me up stairs in the drawing-room then.

Come up the back way, or those impudent thieves,

The servants will see you;

Yours,

Catherine of Cleves."

She directed, and sealed it, all pale as a ghost,
And De Guise put it into the twopenny post.

St Megrin had almost jump'd out of his skin

For joy, that day when the post came in:

3

He read the note through,

Then began it anew,

And thought it almost too good news to be true.

He clapp'd on his hat,

And a hood over that,

With a cloak to disguise him and make him look fat;

So great his impatience, from half after four

He was waiting till ten at De Guise's back-door.

When he heard the great clock of St Genevieve chime,

He ran up the back-staircase six steps at a time,

But had scarce made his bow

He hardly knew how,
When, alas and alack!

There was no getting back,

For the drawing-room door was bang'd to with a whack.

In vain he applied

To the handle, and tried,

Somebody or other had lock'd it outside!

And the Duchess in agony sobb'd, "My poor chap,

We are cotch like a couple of rats in a trap!"

Now the Duchess's Page,

About twelve years of age,

For so little a boy was uncommonly sage;

And, just in the nick, to their joy and amazement,

Popp'd the gas-lighter's ladder close under the casement;

But all would not do

Though St Megrin got through

The window, below stood De Guise and his crew,

And though never man was more brave than St Megrin,

Yet fighting a score is extremely fatiguing;

He thrust carte and tierce

Remarkably fierce,

But not Beelzebub's self could their cuirasses pierce,

While his doublet and hose,

Being holiday clothes,

Were soon cut through and through from his knees to his nose ;

Still an old crooked sixpence the Conjurer gave him,

From "pistol and sword" was sufficient to save him,

But, when beat on his knees,

That confounded De Guise

Came behind with the fogle that caused all this breeze,

Whipp'd it tight round his neck, and, when backwards he'd jerk'd him,

The rest of the rascals jump'd on him and Burk'd him.

The poor little Page too himself got no quarter, but

Was served the same way,

And was found, the next day,

With his heels in the air and his head in the water-butt.

• Catherine of Cleves

Roar'd "Murder!" and "Thieves!!"

From the window above

While they murder'd her love,

Till finding the rogues had accomplish'd his slaughter,

She drank Prussic acid without any water,

And died like a Duke-and-a-Duchess's daughter!

MORAL.

Take warning, ye fair, from this play of the Bard's,
And don't go where fortunes are told on the cards!
But steer clear of conjurers!-never put query
To "wise Mrs Williams," or folks like Ruggieri:
When alone in your room shut your door to, and lock it;
Above all, KEEP YOUR HANDKERCHIEF SAFE IN YOUR POCKET !
Lest you too should stumble, and Lord Leveson Gower, he
Be call'd on,-sad poet!-to tell your sad story!