It is time that every nation should be heard in its own cause. No one ought to form a judgment of matters connected with other countries, unless he has referred to the best native authorities. It is a common error, derived from political exaggeration, to suppose that the Italian mind has been asleep ever since the restoration of 1815. Never perhaps was there a period during which it was so active. The presses of Milan, Pavia, Padua, Venice, Turin, Florence, Rome, Naples, and Palermo, bring forth every year numerous works, of which very few ever cross the Alps, or are known even by name to foreign critics. Almost every town of Lombardy has its presses employed. We might refer to the pages of the Biblioteca Italiana, and to those of the Antologia of Florence, the two best literary journals of Italy, where monthly lists of the new publications are to be found. But these lists do not include by far the whole of the new works. Many books are published in southern Italy, at Naples, and in Sicily, which are hardly ever known, even by name, at Florence or Milan. The want of security for literary property is a great evil. As soon as a work of any attraction is published in one of the Italian states, reprints of it appear in others. This is to writers and booksellers a more severe check than even the censorship; yet in spite of these discouragements, Italy has produced during the last twenty years excellent works of history, biography, classical learning, and illustration of the arts, as well as books of travels, historical novels, essays, descriptive sketches, in short all the materials for an entertaining library, in which Italy was before rather deficient; likewise good works on science, jurisprudence, public economy, besides an immense number of new and correct editions of former writers, and especially of the chronicles of the middle ages, to which we see with pleasure the Italians have turned their attention, for in them are to be found the true elements of modern Italian civilization and nationality. Among the original works, we will mention a few that occur to us now; Micali's Italy before the Roman dominion, Pignotti's excellent History of Tuscany, Botta's important History of Italy during the French invasions and late occupation of the country, and again his recent continuation of Guicciardini, Cicognara's History of Sculpture, Ferrario's History of Chivalry and Romance, Litta's splendid biographical and archæological work on the great Italian families, Inghirami's Etruscan Antiquities. Among the jurists aud political economists, Romagnosi, Gioja, Tamburini, are illustrious names. The plays of Nota and Giraud; the tragedies of Pellico, Manzoni, and Niccolini, are justly admired. Manzoni has given Italy the best, we may say the first, historical novel she ever had, and numerous writers have now followed the same career. Della Cella, Brocchi, Raddi, Breislak, Rosellini, have published their travels undertaken for objects of learning or science. Of poets and philologists, Monti, Foscolo, Pindemonte, are lately dead. Among scientific men, Vaccà, Piazzi, Volta, Scarpa, Oriani, are also departed. But Aldini, Brugnatelli, Configliacchi, Ferrara, Conti, and Mai are living. All the above names, and we have only mentioned those most generally known, afford a sufficient refutation to those who pretend to say, that Italy is "the land of the dead." There exists considerable difficulty in England in procuring new works from the various parts of Italy; there is, however, one Italian bookseller in London, Rolandi, of Berners Street, who keeps up a correspondence with the principal houses of Milan and Florence, and is pretty regularly supplied with most of the new works from the Italian press. 359 ON THE STUDY OF THE ITALIAN (From the Quarterly Journal of Education, No. XII.) We promised in a former Number* to offer some suggestions to students of Italian in this country, with respect to the method of learning that language, and also to give a list of the best graminars, dictionaries, and other works, which may afford assistance. We cannot enter here into an elaborate grammatical dissertation; we shall merely make such remarks, and offer such hints as have occurred to us at various times. The first thing is to acquire a good pronunciation, For this purpose it is requisite that the teacher, if not a native of Tuscany or Rome, should at least be familiar with the pronunciation of educated people in those countries, as we have already explained in our former article; and that he should pronounce, for instance, the letter full and round, like the English oo; that he should be exact in discriminating between the two sounds of the e and of the o, as well as those of the s and the z; and also in pronouncing the syllables ce and ci, which ought to be sounded as the English ch, though somewhat more softly; the sce, sci, which latter have the sound of the English sh in shame, shin ; * No. X. of the Journal of Education, p. 265. the gl, which is pronounced as the French il in bouilli, and the gn, which sounds as in French in the word Espagne. These we consider as the principal tests of Italian pronunciation, and the student himself will soon discover, by referring to a good grammar, such as that of Galignani, edited by Montucci, Lecture I., whether his teacher is deficient in any of these requisites. Let him not, however, carry his suspicion and fastidiousness to extremes, for he will find many well-educated Italians, and such most Italian teachers in this country certainly are, who are acquainted with the proper pronunciation in all the above cases, and who yet in common conversation occasionally deviate from it. If the pupil feels any doubts in some particular instance, he ought to call the attention of the teacher to the point, so as to define at once the proper sound of the word, which when acquired he will not easily forget. Of the aspiration by the Florentines of the ca, co, cu, che, chi, we have already spoken, and we can only add that it ought to be avoided. Montucci remarks that this habit is very ancient, and occurred in the Latin language, as appears by the epigram: Chommoda dicebat, si quando commoda vellet Arrius must have said chommoda, exactly as a Flo rentine would; and hinsidias, like a modern vulgar cockney. The pronunciation of Italian is not difficult to acquire by natives of England. It is much easier for them to pronounce Italian than French. We have known persons read Italian pretty correctly after one or two lessons. The greatest difficulty is in the accent, of which there is one, and only one, in every polysy |