. . . THE LAWYER'S PLAY. A LEGEND OF MACCLESFIELD. BY ROBERTSON THE SPELL-BOUND CAVERN. A LEGEND OF PERSIA. BY THE HONOURABLE THE RAJAH OF SARAWAK AND LEBUAN. BY THOMAS Roscoe, Esq. . 373 A POET-NATURE. BY JOHN OXENFORD, Esq. . VIENNESE LEGENDS. BY JOHN OXENFORD, Esq. THE MAIDEN'S DREAM. BY J. E. CARPENTER, Esq. JAMES BROOKE, RAJAH OF SARAWAK THE DRAMA IN PARIS. BY CHARLES HERVEY, Esq. LITERATURE (FOR OCTOBER) :-WESTERN AFRICA.-ONE DAY IN THE . (FOR NOVEMBER) :-JANE EYRE, AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. EDITED BY CURRER BELL.—THE BACHELOR OF THE ALBANY. BY THE AUTHOR OF THE “FALCON FAMILY.”—A WARNING TO WIVES ; OR, THE PLATONIC LOVER : A NOVEL.-MISCELLANEOUS NOTICES 374 to 378 (FOR DECEMBER):- :-TOWN AND COUNTRY. A NOVEL BY MRS. TROLLOPE.-THE CONVICT. A TALE. BY G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ.- ROWLAND BRADSHAW. BY THE AUTHOR OF “ RABY RATTLER.”—THE COUNCIL OF FOUR. EDITED BY ARTHUR WALLBRIDGE.-HOURS OF DAY AND SPIRITS OF NIGHT.-THE SLAVE CAPTAIN. BY JOHN DIGNAN-THE MUSICAL BIJOU. EDITED BY F. H. BURNEY-MISCELLANEOUS NOTICES 491 to 500 THE WILL OF AN IMPLACABLE WOMAN; AND How REVERSED. A. SKETCH FROM REAL LIFE. BY THE AUTHOR OF THE OLD MAN AND SPRING. BY J. E. CARPENTER, Esq. 32 THE PRIEST OF Isis. BY THE AUTHOR OF AZETH, THE EGYP- PORTRAIT OF THE TRUE ENGLISH Host. By Thomas Roscoe; LIFE AND REMINISCENCES OF THOMAS CAMPBELL BY CYRUS A SCENE FROM THE GARDENER's Dog (EL PERRO DEL HORTE- LANO), OF LOPE DE VEGA. BY JOHN OXENFORD SECRET HISTORY OF THE COURT, MINISTRY, AND TIMES OF GEORGE IV. BY AN OLD DIPLOMATIST THE OUT-STATION; OR, JAUNTS IN THE JUNGLE. BY J. Wil- THE KING OF PRUSSIA'S NEW YEAR'S GIFT. BY THE AUTHOR A GRAYBEARD's GOSSIP ABOUT HIS LITERARY ACQUAINTANCE. THE GRAVE BỈ THE HURON. ' By The Rev. JAMES GILBORNE ADRIEN Roux ; :OR, THE ADVENTURES OF À COURIER. BY Dud- SCHNITZLER's Russia.--THE INSURRECTION OF . ever sent him, either for the New MONTHLY or AINSWORTH'S MAGAZINES will be returned. All articles are sent at the risk of the writers, who should invariably keep copies. THE SEPTEMBER NUMBER OF AINSWORTH'S MAGAZIN E. EDITED BY W. HARRISON AINSWORTH, ESQ. Contents. I. JAMES THE SECOND; OR, THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. AN HISTORICAL ROMANCE. EDITED BY W. HARRISON AINSWORTH, ESQ. ILLUSTRATED BY R. W. BUSS. Meeting at Stonehenge. — Chap. XI. The Ride to the Outposts.- Chap. XII. Est-il Possible?--Chap. XIII. The Retreat. KINGSTON, ESQ. Chap. II. Diogo's Bait to the Men in the Boats.—Chap. III. Pepe's En- the Black Flag. TROTHAL, A BRETON LEGEND. BY W. HUGHES, ESQ. CHAPTER THE TWENTY-NINTH is like a Sea Biscuit, dry and short, but both very necessary and very good until better can be had. Life, and gives some Account therein of the Progresses and Deaths of Mr. Slab, the House-Painter, and Miss Rebecca Bliss, his Housekeeper. a partial Discovery, which materially affects a certain high Lady. Nature are related, that Mr. Hollis becomes completely bewildered. Reader.-His Interview with Mr. Thoroton, and subsequent Researches. HISTORICAL ROMANCE. BY ALEXANDRE DUMAS. Proud Chevalier."— VIII. Silhouette of Gascons.-IX. M. de Loignac. CHAPMAN AND HALL, 186, STRAND. NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. MANZONI. BY L. MARIOTTI. Has God withdrawn his eye from poor Italy? Behold! the ocean recedes from her ports, the galleys and argosies of her trading republics are rotting a-strand. Incessant land-slips sweep adown her mountain sides, choke up the course of her streams, swamp the fields of the plain. The hideous malaria hovers triumphantly aloft, breathing desolation on her shores, blasting the pride of her cities. The bleak aquilon treads close on the footsteps of her northern invaders, rushes headlong across the bare Alpine defiles, riots uncurbed over the defenceless campaign. Anon, a torrid heat weighs on the stagnant air, dooming the land to a three months' drought, unrelieved by a breath or shower. Oh, the famed climate of the Eden of Europe ! Siberia and Sahara seem to join hands at Milan. The work of a man has done its utmost to lay the bald, shadowless earth open to all atmospheric inclemencies. Shivering in unsheltered huts, sweltering in noisome dust, a squalid population pine there in want and ignorance. None but the priest thrives, none walks erect but the Austrian. An improvident, obsolete tillage, a paltry peddling and chaffering employ a small fraction. The great mass are idle mendicants ; the nobles and lords of the land, themselves the greatest of beggars. With this, eight courts and capitals, hot-beds of idleness and corruption. Spanish Bourbons and Austrian archdukes; imbecility, cowardice, wantonness enthroned ; with this a pope and Jesuits ; every third day a holiday, every twenty-third inhabitant à priest. Will God have no mercy on desolate Italy? Behold! New roads are thrown open in the East. The path to India lies once more through the midland sea. Italy looks on supine, helpless. She follows in the rear of northern advancement; substitutes gas for her fragrant oils ; barters her Carrara marble for dingy Newcastle coal ; she prates about railways and free trade; alternates her processions with scientific meetings. She apes the dullest of her neighbours, and dreams of her sovereignty of nations. Unfit for manly struggle, destitute of all self-reliance, she leaves her redemption to chance. Vain of her idle reminiscences, childish in her vague aspirations, ever inconsistent in her longing for action and progress; distracted between the past and present, she raises a hurrah I for Cobden, and puts her trust in the pope ! Yet does the spark of life linger still at her heart. Trampled, divided, reft of her birth-right of freedom, she still puts forth her claims to her Sept.-VOL. LXXXI. NO. CCCXXI. В. birth-right of intellect. One bond of union remains. The language that See, R sia and America intent upon the invasion of continents. Spain raving with faction and misrule, patching and tinkering her constitution, crushing to-day the idol of yesterday. France, fencing her new-born cowardice with Chinese walls and lines of liberticide citadels. England and Germany cavilling about Puseyism and Rongeism, making their fathers' faith a bed of thorns and a cause of offence. To Italy alone a poet is born. With the sound of gyves and manacles the bard's strain mingles: the sacred strain, redeeming, regenerating. A poet! why, Every year and month sends forth a new one. The generation that sat down on the blood-stained fields of Napoleon could boast of scores of warblers, many of them swans and phoenixes, birds of the rarest plumage. Against that solitary Manzoni, England, France, and Germany, nay, Sweden and Denmark, can muster their hundreds. But alas ; of such birds there can be no flock. Their very mul. titude sinks the boat that wafts them to immortality, and more so the bulk of their works. The age discovers they are not the true ones. Men mistrust the genius that is ever equal to their daily task; the author who stoops to mere book-manufactory. The door-keeper to the Temple of Fame is bewildered by the long appendage to the name of a candidate for admission, even as the honest Spanish inn-keeper shut his door in the hidalgo's face, frightened at the long string of his titles, and protesting that he has no accommodation for so numerous a caravan. A poet's worth is only to be valued by his influence over his fellow beings. Let the heartless age sneer at it as it lists, the poet's work is a mission. He is a seer, a God’s messenger, or otherwise his footsteps will soon vanish from earth's surface. It would, perhaps, hardly be just to place Manzoni by the side of such vast intellects as Scott or Goethe. Yet have we not with our own ears, heard the former contemptuously dismissed as an over moral twaddler,' and the latter classed among the authors that are more praised than loved, more read than understood ?” The Italians are more unanimous and consistent in their reverence for sovereign minds. Manzoni's reputation suffers no abatement; and that because his heart and soul have spoken, and because he knew how to hold his tongue, when heart and soul were exhausted. It is consoling to see it. An author who does not sit down to his table, saying, “ What shall I write next? who will furnish a subject? how shall I stretch my canvass to a three volumes' novel, or else how shall I compound with Colburn? or how shall I fill my twelve monthly numbers?” but rather one whose subject haunts him day and night; possesses him like a demon; weighs him down like a woman in labour, brings him to his writing-desk even as to a child-bed; and leaves him, after delivery, weary, overpowered, in a dread of the renewal of his travail. The mercantile spirit of the age has not yet, thank Heaven ! reached Italy. That country has only one living author, and his works do not 66 |