Review of The English in Italy
author: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
source date: October 1826

Mary Shelley Art. IV.—1. The English in Italy . 3 vols. London. 1826. 2. Continental Adventures. A Novel . 3 vols. London. 1826. 3. Diary of an Ennuyée. London. 1826. [This review article appeared in The Westminster Review , vol. 6 (October 1826), pp. 325-41. The English in Italy was authored by Constantine Henry Phipps, Marquess of Normanby. Charlotte A. Eaton ( authored Continental Adventures. A Novel . Diary of an Ennuyée is by Anna Jameson. This review article is attributed to Mary Shelley in The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals 1824-1900 , ed. Wa;ter E. Houghton, University of Toronto Press, 1966. Krystal J. Iseminger and Mary A. Waters prepared the current edition of this article for The Criticism Archive.]

WHEN peace came, after many long years of war, when our island prison was opened to us, and our watery exit from it was declared practicable, it was the paramount wish of every English heart, ever addicted to vagabondizing, to hasten to the continent, and to imitate our forefathers in their almost forgotten custom, of spending the greater part of their lives and fortunes in their carriages on the post-roads of the continent. With the brief and luckless exception of the peace of Amiens,[^1] the continent had not been open for the space of more than one-and- twenty years; a new generation had sprung up, and the whole of this, who had money and time at command, poured, in one vast stream, across the Pas de Calais into France: in their numbers, and their eagerness to proceed forward, they might be compared to the Norwegian rats, who always go right on, and when they come to an opposing stream, still pursue their route, till a bridge is formed of the bodies of the drowned, over which the living pass in safety. The simile holds good in more ways than one: the first emigrants, it is true, were not wholly killed, but the miseries they endured, of dirty packets and wretched inns, were the substratum from which has arisen the elegant steam-packet, and the improved state of the continental hotels. But in those early days of migration, in the summer of 1814, every inconvenience was hailed as a new chapter in the romance of our travels; the worst annoyance of all, the Custom-house, was amusing as a novelty; we saw with extasy the strange costume of the French women, read with delight our own descriptions in the passport, looked with curiosity on every plât, fancying that the fried-leaves of artichokes were frogs; we saw shepherds in opera-hats, and post-boys in jack-boots; and (pour comble de merveille [To crown the wonder.]) heard little boys and girls talk French: it was acting a novel, being an incarnate romance. But these days are now vanished: frequent landings at Calais have deprived it of its captivating novelty. Many of our children, under the guidance of foreign nursery-maids, lisp French as well as any little wood-shod urchin among the natives. We have learned to curse the douane, [Customs checkpoint.] and denounce passports as tyrannical and insufferable impediments to our free progress.

[^1: March 1802-May 1803. "Luckless" because short lived, this period offered a brief reprise from "long years of war" with France from 1793 until the capture and temporary exile of Napoleon in 1814. Napoleon escaped from exile in February 1815 and was only finally defeated in June of the same year.]

When France palled on our travelled appetites, which always crave for something new, Italy came into vogue. As preparatives for our pilgrimage to that county, whose charm is undying, we devoured the fabulous descriptions of Eustace, and well-poised sentences of Forsyth, and a traveller from Italy inspired us almost with devotional respect. We do not think that we are guilty of any exaggeration when we affirm, that even now that the English are almost cloyed with foreign travel, a journey to Italy is still regarded with enthusiastic transport, and when visited, that country is quitted with greater regret than any other, and the peculiarity of its situation accounts for this. We all wish to burst our watery bound, and to wander in search of a more genial climate than that enjoyed (according to the vulgarism, he enjoys a very bad state of health) by our native land. Neither France, Germany, nor Switzerland, content the swallow English. La belle France is now acknowledged to be the most unpictuesque, dull, miserable-looking country in the world. The name of Germany is sufficient in itself to inspire a kind of metaphysical gloom, enlightened only by meteoric flashes from the Hartz or the Elbe. Passing the Jura, surrounded by the mighty Alps, we ramble delightedly over Switzerland, till the snow and ice, ushered in by the chilling Biz, cause us to escape from the approach of a winter more severe than our own. We fly to Italy; we eat the lotus; we cannot tear ourselves away. It is the land of romance, and therefore pleases the young; of classic lore, and thus possesses charms for the learned. Its petty states and tiny courts, with all the numerous titles enjoyed by their frequenters, gild it for the worldly. The man of peace and domesticity finds in its fertile soil, and the happiness of its peasantry, an ameliorated likeness of beloved but starving England. The society is facile; the towns illustrious by the reliques they contain of the arts of ancient times, or the middle ages; while its rural districts attach us, through the prosperity they exhibit, their plenteous harvests, the picturesque arrangement of their farms, the active life every where apparent, the novelty of their modes of culture, the grace which a sunny sky sheds over labours which in this county are toilsome and unproductive.

This preference accorded to Italy by the greater part of the emigrant English has given rise to a new race or sect among our countrymen, who have lately been dubbed Anglo-Italians. The Anglo-Italian has many peculiar marks which distinguish him from the mere traveler, or true John Bull. First, he understands Italian, and this rescues himself from a thousand ludicrous mishaps which occur to those who fancy that a little Anglo-French will suffice to convey intelligence of their wants and wishes to the natives of Italy; the record of his travels is no longer confined, according to lord Normanby's vivid description, to how he had been "starved here, upset there, and robbed every where" [ The English in Italy , vol. ii. p. 229] [Shelley's reference.]. Your Anglo-Italian ceases to visit the churches and palaces, guide-book in hand; anxious, not to see, but to say that he has seen. Without attempting to adopt the customs of the natives, he attaches himself to some of the most refined among them, and appreciates their native talent and simple manners; he has lost the critical mania in a real taste for the beautiful, acquired by a frequent sight of the best models of ancient and modern art.

Upon the whole, the Anglo-Italians may be pronounced a well-informed, clever, and active race; they pity greatly those of their un-Italianized countrymen, who are endowed with Spurzheim's bump, denominated stayathomeativeness; and in compassion of their narrow experience have erected a literature calculated to disseminate among them a portion of that taste and knowledge acquired in the Peninsula. Lord Byron may be considered the father of the Anglo-Italian literature, and Beppo [Byron's 1818 comic poem set in Venice.] as being the first product of that school; lord Normanby brings up the rear. The plan of his work, entitled, "The English in Italy" is excellent. It is difficult, after a long residence in a foreign country, to collect one's variety of experience into one focus. The detached anecdotes and observations on manners, made at various periods and places, are grouped in the mind, while it is impossible to select any form of journal, letter, or narrative, which will combine the mass in an intelligible form, and cause the reader to seize, as the author did, the conclusions to be drawn from such multifarious materials. Besides, though mere travellers are culpably negligent on this score, the resident Anglo-Italian is withheld by honour, from the exposition of facts and names. Lord Normanby has hit upon a medium both novel and entertaining. He has given a series of tales, in which the English and Italians alike figure; the contrast between the two nations adds to the interest of these sketches, while the colouring of fiction is thrown over truths, which it would be difficult to convey in any other manner. It is impossible to read "The English in Italy" without being struck at every page with the verity of the delineations of character and manners, and without admiring the skill with which the noble author has seized and expressed the slight shadowings, and evanescent lights, peculiar to the complicated form of Italian society, which must have escaped a ruder pen. We frequently, it is true, dissent from his lordship's opinions and conclusions, but we always assent to the truth of his facts.

The first (and it is the best) of his longer stories is entitled L'Amoroso. It is the tale of a high-bred English girl, who, enchanted with the beauty of Naples, the softness of its climate, the vivacious and easy tone of society, and the ardour of her Italian lover, sacrifices her first half love (first loves are, for the most part, we fear, half loves), and gives her hand to a Neapolitan count. The gradual development of her Italian husband's feelings, her awakening to the truth of her situation, and the growth of her despair, is admirably managed; yet in all this there is something besides the comparative merits of English and Italian domestic customs. We can none of us attempt, with impunity, to engraft ourselves on foreign stocks: the habits of our childhood cling to us, and we seek in vain for symapthy from those who have travelled life quite on a different road from that which we have followed. We are far from advocating the Italian conjugal system, which puts the axe to domestic happiness, and deeply embitters the childhood of the offspring of the divided parents; nevertheless, we must observe, that the misery suffered by the English girl in Italy would on other accounts, but in no minor degree, become the lot of an Italian married to an Englishman. Let us imagine the daughter of a Neapolitan noble, dragged from her beautiful country and sunny clime, deprived of her box at the opera, her ride on the Corso, her cortège of devoted servants, her circle of complaisant friends, her dolce far niente; [Pleasant idleness.] to the toils and dulness of an English home—to the cares of housekeeping—a charge not imposed on Italian females—her snug, but monotonous, fire-side, her sentry-box of a house; to our cloudy sky; to the labour of giving dinners and entertaining evening parties; to those numerous etiquettes easy to the natives, unattainable by foreigners; to the sotto voce [Soft voice or undertone.] tone (if the metaphor be admissible) which characterizes our social intercourse, to the necessity of for ever wearing that thick and ample veil of propriety which we throw over every act and word: introduce the ardent, simple-hearted, undisguising Italian to this world, so opposite to her own, and she would experience the same heart-sickening disappointment that visited the heart of the heroine of the Amoroso. To us, and particularly to our females, these laws of constraint are the music, the accompaniment by which they regulate their steps until they cannot walk without it; and the veil before spoken of is as necessary to their sense of decency as their very habiliments. It is natural, therefore, that the English girl of the tale should be transfixed with grief at the request from her husband to conform with Italian customs; and it is also inevitable that the first step she takes in compliance with this request must sin against Italian etiquette, and, though liberty is offered her, that she should find that even the excess of freedom does not permit her the exact liberty she wants.

The "Politico" contains a rapid but masterly sketch of the Piedmontese revolution. The author, it is true, judging only from the apparent effects, blames this sudden burst of impatience on the part of Italians any longer to bear their galling chains. He says, that they had better have waited a few years, as if the capacity of waiting did not engender a callousness to the evils of tyranny, incompatible with a generous love of liberty. The revolution ended unfortunately, it is true; but, most certainly, if the attempt had not been made, the Italians would have lost their characteristic of being slaves "ognor frementi," [Forever enraged; Shelley uses the phrase in Frankenstein about the Milanese who longed to free Lombardy from Austrian domination.] and have sunk into as degraded an existence as that of the Fanariotes of Constantinople.[^2] From the smothered fire of this crushed revolt a brighter flame will hereafter rise: it was a glimmer, a flash, a reflection, sent back from the blaze just then kindled by the Spaniards: both are quenched now, but not for ever.

[^2: The Phanariotes were a highly skilled Greek population in this Ottoman city who attained significant wealth and influence. Proponents of Greek liberation portrayed them as assimilationist, lacking in nationalistic commitment.]

If the Italians could have viewed the Spanish struggle, and still submitted uncontending to the Austrian, they could never more have lifted their heads as a nation, nor possessed any claim to our commiseration. One of the chief causes, indeed, of the failure of the revolt of 1820-21 was political despair. This despair originated in the disarmed state of the natives, and the terror engendered by the Austrian bayonets. In every Italian state, except Tuscany, this fear was joined to a never-dying hatred of their oppressive rulers; which made them on the alert to seize every opportunity to rebel against their tyrants. While the flame of revolt spread from the Alps to Brundusium, Tuscany alone was tranquil. They talked of liberty, but their enthusiasm began and ended in talk. The grand duke appreciated so well the quiescence of his loving subjects, that when the Austrian minister presented him with a list of sixty-seven Carbonari worthy of incarceration, Ferdinand refused to look at it. He did not believe, he said, that these men were Carbonari, but he was sure if he imprisoned them they would become so. Who, indeed, were to form the patriotic band? Not the peasants: the idea of political liberty never entered their heads. They work hard, and their genial climate lightens their labour of all the misery which renders the peasant's life so irksome in this country; yet still, from the utter want of money and traffic, their hardest labour only enables them to labour on. In the cities neither the rich nor the poor are willing to risk their wealth or their safety. There is another class of persons, the men of letters and students at the universities. The first are peacefully inclined, the second unprincipled: they are ready for riot, but they are little fitted for any commotion which has for its aim a noble and enlightened purpose. Yet we do not think the emancipation of Italy far off. In one circumstance, Italy is far better situated than Spain—in case of a revolution. Religion is here no enemy of political liberty. Napoleon gave a blow to Italian superstition, from which it will never recover. By destroying the wealth of the priests, he has destroyed their influence. The higher classes are liberal in their opinions, and the little bigotry that subsists among the lower orders is wholly untinged by the spirit of persecution. The great and immoveable foundation-stone, the boundary mark of Italian liberty, which still subsists, though no superstructure is thereto added, is their natural talent. In spite of college restrictions, in spite of almost universal ignorance, their native genius flourishes; their untaught courtesy, their love for the fine arts, the poetry with which their sunny sky endows them, prevent their being brutified; and this Italy possesses in her own bosom the germs of regeneration, which, in spite of their late overthrow, will in the end give birth to their emancipation.

But to return to "The English in Italy" The "Sbarbuto" approaches nearest to a failure of any of the sketches; the hero is a kind of ideal of lord Byron. The "dear Corsair expression," [From Thomas Moore, The Fudge Family in Paris, "Letter V. From Miss Biddy Fudge to Miss Dorothy——," where the protagonist describes the mode of expression as "half savage, half soft."] now going out of fashion, is introduced, and the mixed character of bandit and dandy is carried to its height. Truth of description and liveliness of narrative, two chief characteristics of this author, render even this strange anomaly interesting. The conclusion of the tale is singularly abrupt, but it may be observed that all lord Normanby's catastrophes are faulty; that of "Matilda" has been justly censured.[^3] The author wished to pourtray the evils resulting from certain modes of action, and yet the tragic conclusion of the tale is entirely independent of the chain of unhappy events which were to appear of necessity to arise from the heroine's departure from the moral laws of her country. The conclusion of the "Sbarbuto" is still worse, and our imagination received a most disagreeable baulk, when, on turning the last page of this tale, we found that was indeed the last.

[^3: Shelley perhaps refers to the article in the London Magazine , new series, vol. 4, January 1826, pp. 47-8, where the reviewer not only condemns the tale but castigates the six other literary journals that had given it positive notice for their collusion with Henry Colburn, a publisher notorious for puffing, and a business associate of Normanby's publishers, Saunders and Otway.]

The sketches called the "Zingari," which detail a variety of adventures which have befallen the gipsy English in Italy, are perhaps the best part of the book. There is nothing outré, nothing of caricature in any of these portraits. We recognize many well-known faces, and at each successive narration remember a pendant that has come within our own experience. Utter ignorance of the Italian language is the source of many of the ludicrous situations in which the English get involved. French does not, as has been said, carry the traveller through Italy; those who depend on it, will find their support fail them at the first Italian town they enter. Besides, the Italians speak French with peculiar awkwardness; they are unable to accentuate its unutterable consonants and slip-shod vowels. When an Italian has welcomed a foreigner with gravity, and even with sulkiness, answering their introduction with a few mispnounced French phrases, if replied to in their own language, their case of manner returns, and they become as graceful and facile in conversation as before they were repulsive.[^4] The tales of the "Zingari," may serve as so many lessons to all future travelers as to what they may seek and what they may shun in Italy. We may learn the perils of Vetturino travelling [Travelling by four-wheeled carriage.] from "The Economist," assured that the details are by no means caricatured; and we may reap still more serious profit from the sketches entitled, "Change of Air," and "Boyhood Abroad." And yet, as is frequently the case, further experience overthrows the minor one, and the discomforts and dangers which are the lot of an invalid traveler in Italy will change to comforts and safety, if he becomes a resident there. If, indeed, the invalid travel, like lord Normanby's hero, from one town to another, from one bad inn and cold lodging to another a match for the last, he may certainly return from such pursuit of health worse than he went. But let him fix on some city for a constant residence: Pisa we recommend as most equable in climate; let him get his English comforts about him, as he may with ease and cheapness from the free port of Leghorn, not twelve miles distant, and he will then find the advantage of a southern residence. The streets of Pisa are quiet, and the whole town wears a sober, scholastic aspect. The north side of the Lung Arno, looking towards the south, is warm at mid-winter, and always presents a delightful promenade. The rides round the town are beautiful; you have your choice of the pine forest of the Cascina, or the road along the plain that skirts the neighbouring hills, which, covered with olives, chestnuts, and last, toward their summit, with pines, are, though not high, remarkably picturesque. The whole road from Vico Pisano to Lucca, some twenty or thirty miles, presenting successive pictures of fertility in the plain, and of the view of ravine or precipice in the mountains, is within four miles of one or other of the gates of Pisa. The neighbourhood to the sea is an advantage not to be omitted. Let an invalid to this, and he will speedily acquire the health and spirits, the promise of which drew him from his home.[^5]

[^4: Innumerable are the anecdotes that might be related of the ridiculous mistakes of the un-Italianized English in Italy. A gentleman at Rome said to us one day, "These Italians have no idea of morality or virtue; the fine arts are the only things they think worth praising. I was speaking to signora D—— of a young lady whom I described as, Di gran genio, bella, amabile, e pol virtuosissima [Of great genius, beautiful, charming, and very virtuous], on which the algnora asked with vivacity, Davvero si conosce forse nella musica?" [Are you knowledgeable in music?] We were near the same gentleman at a conversazione, he was looking over some pieces of music, when an Italian lady, apropos of his occupation, asked, "E virtuoso lei?" [And is she accomplished?]— "Lo spero," [I should hope so!] replied the astonished Englishman, and then turned to us to remark on the oddity of catechizing a gentleman concerning his virtue; forgetful that even with us virtù [virtuosity; expertise in the arts] is not virtue. Foreigners may murder English, but an Englishman's assassination of French and Italian is even more entire and remorseless. We heard one of our countrymen in Paris, in felicitous Anglo-French, ask the driver of a fiacre, "Pouvez-vous aller à rue Saint Honoré dans vingt cinq minuits?" [Can you get to rue Saint Honoré in twenty five midnight?] [Shelley's note].]

[^5: We were about to add that in the Professor Vaccà he would find an able substitute for any English medical aid; but alas! this estimable man is now dead, and we can do no more than consecrate this note to his memory. His talents were of the highest order, and as a practical surgeon he stood in the first rank of his profession. His private virtues secured for him universal esteem; he was gentle, yet full of enthusiasm; a select specimen of Italian virtue and genius. [Shelley's note].]

We are surprised that lord Normanby has not introduced more of the country life of Italy, which bears a peculiar stamp, and which is pregnant with interest and beauty. Generally speaking, our countrymen see only the surface of the country, and are unaware of the minutiæ of the peasant's life, and their mode of agriculture. They are connoisseurs in paintings, and frequenters of drawing-rooms; but the inferior classes of their fellow beings possess no interest for them; and yet it is in the country of Italy that you see most of the true Italian character, and most enjoy the exhaustless delights of that sunny clime. The very aspect of the country to a cursory observer will prove this assertion. The use of oxen in their agricultural labours is seemingly a small, and yet, in truth, a great improvement to the picturesque of the rural scene. The oxen of Italy surpass, in beauty of form, in the sleekness of their dove-coloured skin, and the soft expression of their large eyes, all other animals of their species. In every part of Italy we encounter, during our walks, in lanes bordered by elms and sallows, to which the vines are trained and festooned, frequent wains drawn by these animals, yoked by the neck; and the dark-eyed driver, with his sun-burnt limbs, in no manner detracts from the beauty of the picture. It is curious in Italy to observe the great advantage the peasants possess as to personal appearance, over the town's-people. The inhabitants of the cities, whether rich or poor are for the most part low in stature, sallow-complexioned, bent shouldered; but if while you are induced, by the appearance of the citizens, to lament the degeneracy of Italian beauty, you wander in the country, or enter the market-place, to which, on certain days, the country people resort, you are immediately convinced that you now behold the models of the Italian painters. You are struck by groups resembling those fine fellows represented in the paintings of the Adoration of the Shepherds. Their very occupation adds to their pictorial appearance. They are employed among the vines, or following the oxen-drawn plough, whose rough mechanism is such as Virgil describes; frequently in summer they work merely in a shirt, and the white colour of the linen contrasts well with limbs whose veins seem to flow with dark wine. The women, less hard-worked than the French paysannes, [Rustics or peasants.] perform the lighter labours of the farm, and, notwithstanding the shade of their large straw-hats, soon acquire a deep but healthy hue; in an evening they are seen returning from fetching water at the spring, bearing their pitchers of an antique shape on their heads, stepping freely under the burthen. Of course we do not pretend to say that all, or even that the greater part of them, are handsome; but they have, for the most part, pleasing expressions of countenance, and the beauty you do encounter is of a high character; their brows are finely moulded, their eyes soft and large; the cheeks sink gently towards the chin, and their lips remind you of those chiselled by Greek sculptors. Such we have seen in the evening emerging from the trellised pergole, [Arbor or trellis.] or vine-walks, singing in perfect tune, and with clear, though loud voices, the simple but beautiful melodies peculiar to the Italian peasantry.

It is true that, in thus eulogizing the country of Italy, our remarks must be understood as being principally confined to Tuscany. In Lombardy the abundance of pasture-land is inimical to the happiness of the peasantry; nor are we sufficiently acquainted with the rural districts of the Roman and Neapolitan states, to speak with precision concerning their inhabitants. In Tuscany the farms are usually small, and held at long leases; the rent is often paid in kind, and the landlord receives as his share one half of the produce. The expenses are also shared between the landholder and the cultivator, the former providing the heavy stock, cattle, ploughs, out-houses, wine-presses, &c.; the peasantry the lighter utensils, and repairs of hedges, sluices, &c. The smallness of the farms renders the farmer almost always the labourer; a hired workman is rare among them; and the cottager, we should almost call him, with a farm of twelve acres, whose family is sufficiently large to cultivate the land, and whose share of corn and wine suffices to maintain that family without extra purchase, considers himself rich; for, then, the superfluous money he obtains by the sale of vegetables, fruit, and the better kind of wine, clothes his family, and keeps his farm and house in repair. Their lives would be deemed, and justly deemed, hard in England, for our unbenign climate would render painful the continual out-door work, which is light to them.

The Tuscan name for their small farms is podere, [Farmsteads.] and in appearance they resemble what we imagine to have been the first attempts at agriculture, every thing being cultivated in patches. A podere generally contains six or eight acres; they are hedged in; in the neighborhood of Leghorn the hedges are of myrtle, which, like all evergreens, are fragrant even when out of bloom; and when in flower, their spicy odour gives a taste of Indian climes. Little hay is raised, for the Indian corn is much used in its stead; so after the spring-labour of pruning the vines, the wheat is the first harvest. The wheat-fields are planted with rows of trees, to which the vines cling; and the shade, far from being detrimental, is considered a shelter for the crops. When the wheat is gathered in, and threshed on the threshing-floor, constructed in the open air, with all the care that Virgil advises, the land is again sown with Indian corn. This is a beautiful harvest. The men cut it down, and the women and children sit round the threshing-floor, taking the grain from the pod, loosening it from the stalk, and spreading it in the sun, till its paler orange hue deepens to a fiery glow. The vintage follows—an universal feast. The men pluck the fruit from the trees, which is received and deposited in the vats by the women and children. The plucking of the olives brings up the rear of their raccolte. [Harvests.] But it is not the mere sowing, and the harvests that demand labour; the long droughts force them to construct sluices through every part of the podere, and the water-wheel is for ever at work to irrigate the land; nature the while is busy and noisy. During the day the loud cicale, with ceaseless chirp, fill the air with sound, and in the evening the fire-flies come out from the myrtle hedges, and form a thousand changing and flashing constellations on the green corn-fields, which is their favourite resort. Meanwhile the contadini [Peasants or rustics.] cheer themselves with songs, either singly, in harmony, or in response. One of the favourite games among the Tuscan peasants (we have forgotten the name of it), especially during the time of the vintage, is singularly poetic. A man on one tree, will challenge another perched afar off, calling out the name of a flower; the challenged responds with an extempore couplet, sometimes founded on the metaphoric meaning attached, of the flower's name, sometimes given at random, and then returns the challenge by naming another flower, which is replied to in the same manner. We have unluckily preserved but two of these impromptus, and they are both on the same flower:—

Fior di cent' erbe!
Non bimbi voglion bene a loro mamma,
Quanto io alla speransa mia.
Fior di cent' erbe!
Se un sospiro avesse la parola,
Quanto bell' ambasciator sarebbe.[^6]

[^6: Flower from 100 seeds!
Children do not love their mother,
As much as I love my hope.
Flower from 100 seeds!
If a sigh would have a voice,
How wonderful a messenger it would be.]

It is this exhaustless fertility that makes Italy a paradise, and affords never-ending variety of object to the residents. With us nature is parsimonious, if not frugal; her very magnificence is that of a well-regulated mansion, where, though great show is made, there is no waste. In Italy she superabounds, overflows, and, like a prodigal, casts immense treasures to the winds. This abundance is not displayed alone in inanimate nature; but among the Italians themselves there exist rich stores of talent, useless it is true, in the general sense of the term, which are displayed to the delight of their countrymen and astonishment of travellers. We cannot give a better idea of what we mean than by instancing their improvisatori,[^7] who pour out, as a cataract does water, poetic imagery and language; but except that the genial moisture somewhat fertilizes the near bordering banks, it reaches the ocean of oblivion, leaving no trace behind. Sgricci may be given as an example. He is well read, and profoundly versed in the works of the Greek metaphysicians and historians, as well as their poets. The mode of his improvisation is wonderful, and different from the usual style of these exhibitions. When he comes on the stage, his personal appearance, animated countenance, and regular features, lost in his daily costume, strike you with admiration. It is the custom for those who choose, to leave at the door of the theatre a slip of paper, on which is written a subject for a tragic drama. We were present at three of these performances. The subject of the first was "Ifegenia in Tauride;" the plan of the tragedy was closely copied from Euripides; but the words and poetry were his own, and we were continually startled by images of dazzling beauty, and a flow of language which never degenerated into mere words, but, on the contrary, was instinct with energy and pathos.

[^7: Italy had a long tradition of improvisational poets, but they drew particular interest from early nineteenth-century visitors to the country. Famous improvisatore traveled widely in Europe, performed before large audiences, attained recognition from the wealthy and nobility, and were depicted in the fiction and poetry of writers across the continent. Mary Shelley was one who regarded their performances as inspired, while some others of her contemporaries expressed more sceptical assessments. Sgricci, mentioned below, is probably the most celebrated improvisatore of the time.]

Inez de Castro was a tragedy he gave at Lucca, the subject being imposed on him by the arch-duchess, who was in the theatre. When towards the end, he caused the audience to understand that the prince, Don Pedro, husband of Inez, drawing a curtain, suddenly displays to his father the bodies of his murdered wife and children, the same thrill was felt, nay, far greater than if the real mock bodies (the implied bull must be excused) had been brought forward. His words were so living, that you saw them, not decked out with stage trickery, but in the true livery of death, livid, stiff, and cold. The last tragedy we heard was the Death of Hector.[^8] In it you were trans- ported within the walls of Troy, and heard mad Cassandra denouncing its fall. Speaking afterwards to the poet, he said that he did not remember much about any other part; but he had a vivid recollection that when he poured forth the ravings of the prophetess, he no longer saw the theatre; Troy was around him; Troy burning; Priam stabbed at his altar, and the women dragged lamenting away in chains. From all this magical creation of talent, what resulted? The poet himself forgets all his former imaginations, and is hurried on to create fresh imagery, while the effects of his former inspirations are borne away with the breath that uttered them, never again to be recalled—

Nec revocare situs, aut jungere carmina curst. ["neither to recover the verses nor return them to order," Virgil, Aeneid , Book III, line 451.]

[^8: The same subject was subsequently given him at Turin, and a short-hand writer took it down, and it was published. The plot resembled the one we heard, otherwise it struck us as inferior in poetry, and was certainly a very different production. The plot is not the least admirable part of these impromptu dramas. When a novel subject is given, it is of course arranged during the heat of inspiration and delivery; it never lags; the interest is continually increasing, and the scenes grow naturally from each other. They are shorter than our five-act plays, being, on the Greek plan, interspersed with choruses. [Shelley's note].]

For the rest, he acquires the enthusiastic praises of some few of the more refined of his countrymen—for Sgricci's poetry is of too classic and elevated a nature to please the multitude—and the animated recollection of those few English who understand sufficient Italian to appreciate his genius.

Italy is an exhaustless theme to those who, having been long residents there, are familiar with its novel and beauteous aspect. But our limits warn us not to pursue our digression, and oblige us to turn our attention to those other works whose titles head our article. We shall not dilate much upon them; for the scope of our present writing is to treat of Italy, and as these volumes do not bear the same perfect Italian stamp as those of lord Normanby, they may be passed more cursorily over.

"Continental Adventures" are the production of the very clever authoress of "Rome in the Nineteenth Century. " This latter publication is an inestimable guide to all who visit the Eternal City, and even to those at home, more than any other work on the same subject, gives a faithful account of the wonders of that metropolis of the world. "Continental Adventures" is on another and a worse plan. It mixes real scenes with fictitious ones, not in the style of the "English in Italy," where the manners of the natives form the ground-work of the tales, but in the mode of a common novel—a novel of the day: a lady and her lover, the baulks to love, the rival, and the denouement, all English: and the "Continental Adventures" are merely, that while the hero and heroine are progressing towards the fulfillment of their hopes, they ramble about Switzerland, and the lady, in particular, endures so many perils, that we really think that no female in real life could have undergone them without becoming prematurely grey. She commences by breaking her collar-bone and two of her fingers; is twice in imminent danger of perishing in snow-drifts; narrowly escapes tumbling down a precipice; is nearly shot by a robber in one of the Alpine Ravines; and last, is carried away by Italian banditti, at whose hands death was the least evil she expected, and from whom she saves herself by the administration of a piece of opium, which she had fortunately put into her pocket the day before. The story of the novel is commonplace enough, and the gordian knot, tied just at the end, then to be cut, is confused, and even displeasing. The discovery of relationship in a forbidden degree between lovers is always disagreeable; and the mode by which these lovers are found to be related, disfiguring the sacred associations always blended with a mother's name, is even revolting. The authoress is evidently nearly related to Scotland, though we believe she is not Scotch. She has a taste for humour, and her comedy is generally very entertaining, though she too often falls into a comedian's worst fault, of wire-drawing a comic scene, till it becomes tedious; and once or twice she is guilty of giving them for their foundation subjects hardly admissible on the score of propriety. The book is, however, written with great spirit, and is very entertaining. Some of the scenes of real life are sketched with fidelity and true humour. The Côche-d'Eau on the Rhone is one of these, and the Reverend Saunders M'Muckleman is throughout a genuine comic character. Her descriptions of scenery are, however, the best part of the book; they are varied and faithful. We select one, as a specimen of the style in which they are executed:—

The glaciers of the Aar, which we visited from the Grimsel, present a scene which I am convinced the world cannot equal; which none who have beheld it can ever forget, and none who have not seen it can ever conceive. I will not mock you with a futile attempt at description. You cannot picture the scene; but you can form some idea of the awe-struck astonishment which filled our minds, when, after surmounting all the difficulties of the way, we found ourselves standing amidst a world of ice, extending around, beneath, above us; far beyond where the straining sight, in every direction, vainly sought to follow the interminable frozen leagues of glaciers, propped up in towering pyramids or shapeless heaps, or opening into yawning gulphs and unfathomable fissures. The tremendous barren rocks and mountains of the impenetrable Alps, amidst which the terrific Finsteraarhorn reared his granitic pyramid of fourteen thousand feet, appeared alone amidst this world of desolation. Eternal and boundless wastes of ice, naked and inaccessible mountains of rock, which had stood unchanged and untrodden from creation, were the only objects which met our view. Hitherto, with all we had seen of desolation and horror, there was some contrast, some relief. The glaciers of Chamouni are bordered by glowing harvests; the glaciers of Grindelwald are bounded by its romantic vale; the glaciers of the Schiedeck shine forth amidst its majestic woods. Even among the savage rocks and torrents of the Grimsel, though animated life is seen no more, the drooping birch and feathery larch protrude their storm-beaten branches from the crevices of the precipices; and the lonely pine-tree is seen on high, where no hand can ever reach it. But here there is no trace of vegetation, no blade of grass, no bush, no tree; no spreading weed or creeping lichen invades the cold still desolation of the icy desert. It is the death of nature. We seemed placed in a creation in which there is no principle of life; translated to another orb, where existence is extinct, and where death, unresisted, holds his terrific reign. The only sound which meets the ear is that of the loud detonation of the ice, as it bursts open into new abysses, with the crash of thunder, and reverberates from the wild rocks like the voice of the mountain storms.—Vol. ii. p. 134,

These volumes contain the best description and guide to Switzerland that we have ever seen, but Italy makes only a small portion of them. We have some animated scenes on the romantic lake of Como, and visit, with the personages of the novel, the galleries and palaces of Florence; but a guide-book and a romance form an incongruous mixture, and we certainly wish that they should be separated in future.

"The Diary of an Ennuyée,"is a very well written and interesting imposture. Well written and interesting it is true, but still an imposture, and that not of a kind which is admissible. The very laws of cavaliere serventeism in Italy are not more delicate, subtle, and yet strict, than those of fiction, and they are transgressed in the volume before us. A fiction must contain no glaring improbability, and yet it must never divest itself of a certain idealism, which forms its chief beauty. Once in Italy we saw a drama, which was any thing but dramatic, and we were reminded of it by the pages of the book before us. The hero was an English Milord who had a diseased arm; no medical attendant was able to afford him any relief; one doctor, one alone could cure this otherwise mortal disorder; but this doctor refused to exert his skill until his friend Jenkisson, who was imprisoned in the Tower under suspicion of treasonable practices, should be liberated by the sick Milord, who was also a secretary of state; but Milord was too patriotic to sacrifice public good to his private advantage. Miledi, in the mean time, ran from her husband to the doctor, adjuring the one and supplicating the other, while Milord, with his bound-up arm, groaning when on the stage, and shrieking while behind it, formed a most distressing foreground to the picture. You actually felt for the poor man; and a greater verity of scenic illusion (such as it was) was produced by that bandaged arm, and the moaning and crippled action of the patient than Kean or Pasta usually effect in their portentous identifications with ideal woe. That our readers may not be left in a painful suspense, we proceed to inform them, that when Milord was at his last gasp, and the doctor stood unmoved in the midst of his kneeling and supplicating relatives, Jenkisson himself, whose innocence had been discovered, appeared; a general reconciliation took place; and the doctor was proceeding to work a cure, when the curtain fell.

We do not wish to cast an air of ridicule over the volume before us, which we read, really believing in it as we read, with great interest; but having discovered that the sensitive, heart- broken, dying, dead diarist is a fictitious personage, we are angry at the trick of art that excited our real sympathy; and we were led to a conviction that the circumstances that demand our deepest interest as a reality, are, when feigned, not of an high order of idealism, and consequently the fraud being discovered, the fictitious part of the book falls below the usual rate of novel interest.

But to leave this criticism, or hypercriticism, let us advert to the real merits of the work. It is written with great spirit and great enthusiasm: the descriptions are vivid, the anecdotes entertaining, and the whole style displays intelligence and feeling. The few traits recorded of Italian manners are felicitously seized, and the English party is well sketched, from the quiet, retiring, suffering, ideal authoress, to the blundering and vivacious L——, who may stand as a specimen of a whole tribe of English rovers in Italy. We turn over the pages to find an extract, which our limits will not permit us to make long. We hesitated between the account of the eruption of Vesuvius, the description of the improvisatore Sestini, [Like Tomasso Sgricci, Bernardo Sestini made a sensation as an improvvisatore.] the Capanna and Gesu Bambino, always exhibited in the convents during Christmas, [Nativity scene.] the Diarist's Adventure with the Governor of Lerici—between these and the following one, which we have fixed upon as one of the most interesting anecdotes in the book:—

Last night we had a numerous party, and Signor P—— and his daughter came to sing. She is a private singer of great talent, and came attended by her lover, or her fiancé, who, according to the Italian custom, attends his mistress every where during the few weeks which precede their marriage. He is a young artist, a favourite pupil of Camuccini, and of very quiet, unobstrusive manners. La P. has the misfortune to be plain; her features are irregular, her complexion of a sickly paleness, and though her eyes are large and dark, they appeared totally devoid of luster and expression. Her plainness, the bad taste of her dress, her awkward figure, and her timid and embarrassed deportment, all furnished matter of amusement and observation to some young people (English of course), whose propensities for quizzing exceeded their good breeding and good nature. Though La P. does not under- stand a word of either French or English, I thought she could not mistake the significant looks and whispers of which she was the object, and I was in pain for her and for her modest lover. I drew my chair to the piano, and tried to divert her attention, by keeping her in conversation, but could get no farther than a few questions, which were answered in monosyllables. At length she sang, and sang divinely; I found the pale automaton had a soul as well as a voice. After giving us with faultless execution, as well as great expression, some of Rossini's finest songs, she sang the beautiful and difficult cavatina in Otello, "Assia al piè d'un salice," with the most enchanting style and pathos, and then stood as unmoved as a statue, while the company applauded loud and long. A moment afterwards, as she stooped to take up a music-book, her lover, who had edged himself by degrees from the door to the piano, bent his head too, and murmured, in a low voice, but with the most passionate accent, "O brava, brava, cara!" She replied only by a look, but it was such a look! I never saw a human countenance so entirely, so instantaneously changed in character; the vacant eyes kindled and beamed with tenderness: the pale cheek glowed, and a bright smile playing round her mouth, just parted her lips sufficiently to discover a set of teeth like pearls. I could have called her at that moment beautiful; but the change was as transient as sudden; it passed like a gleam of light over her face, and vanished; and by the time the book was placed on the desk, she looked as plain, as stupid, and statue-like as ever. I was the only person who witnessed this little bye-scene, and it gave me pleasant thoughts and interest for the rest of the evening.—p. 207.

We hope to heaven all this is true, and not false as the Ennuyée herself. One thing alone at all atones for her deception. We longed, while reading her work, to thank the fair authoress for reviving many a half-forgotten Italian scene, and for shedding a beautiful light over many a favourite spot; we regretted that our gratitude was due to the dead; but since the writer lives, we no longer have this painful debt heavy at our hearts, and we pay it with the praise she entirely merits.

We shall hail with pleasure any new production from the pen of any one of the writers of these works; and we were not a little gratified at the announcement of Lord Normanby's "Historiettes." We hope that in these he has a little abated an offensive display of superiority of rank. It is unworthy of the enlightened heir of a peerage thus to prize himself above nine-tenths of his readers on account of his adventitious advantages, and very absurd to shew it. We remember, in former times, that this nobleman had a warm love for talent, though its possessor was unendowed either with rank or fashion; we hope the generous feeling is not dead. His lordship has too much real talent not to feel and appreciate the nobility of nature as well as that of birth, and some indication of such a feeling would give a grace to his productions, in which, at present, they are deficient.