nobles against the depositaries of power,-to all those projects of innovation, which always ended by a stroke of state policy; we must add a cause not less fitted to spread contempt for ancient doctrines, this was the excess of corruption. ficer, and the performance of which was secured by the protection of the laws. (5) "The parlours of the convents of noble ladies, and the houses of the courtesans, though the police carefully kept up a number of spies about them, "That freedom of manners, which had been long were the only assemblies for society in Venice; and boasted of as the principal charm of Venetian so-in these two places, so different from each other, ciety, had degenerated into scandalous licentious- there was equal freedom. Music, collations, galness: the tie of marriage was less sacred in that Ca-lantry, were not more forbidden in the parlours tholic country, than among those nations where the than at the casinos. There were a number of calaws and religion admit of its being dissolved. Be-sinos for the purpose of public assemblies, where cause they could not break the contract, they feigned gaming was the principal pursuit of the company. that it had not existed; and the ground of nullity, It was a strange sight to see persons of either sex immodestly alleged by the married pair, was ad-masked, or grave personages in their magisterial mitted with equal facility by priests and magistrates, robes, round a table, invoking chance, and giving alike corrupt. These divorces, veiled under an-way at one instant to the agonies of despair, at the other name, became so frequent, that the most im-next to the illusions of hope, and that without utportant act of civil society was discovered to be tering a single word. amenable to a tribunal of exceptions; and to restrain the open scandal of such proceedings became the office of the police. In 1782, the Council of Ten decreed, that every woman who should sue for a dissolution of her marriage should be compelled to await the decision of the judges in some convent, to be named by the court. (1) Soon afterwards, the same council summoned all causes of that nature before itself. (2) This infringement on ecclesiastical jurisdiction having occasioned some remonstrance from Rome, the Council retained only the right of rejecting the petition of the married persons, and consented to refer such causes to the Holy Office as it should not previously have rejected. (3) "The rich had private casinos, but they lived incognito in them; and the wives whom they abandoned found compensation in the liberty they enjoyed. The corruption of morals had deprived them of their empire. We have just reviewed the whole history of Venice, and we have not once seen them exercise the slightest influence."-DARU: Hist. de la Répub. de Venice, vol. v. p. 95. NOTE [D.] ACCOUNT OF THE ANCIENT VENETIAN NOBILITY, "She shall stoop to be A province for an empire, petty town Act V. Scene 3. "The nobles of Venice, though all equal in the classes; the first distinguished as that of the sangue blò or sangue colombin, i. e. blue blood or pigeon's blood; the second, as the division of the morèl de mezo, or the middle piece; and the poorest of all as Bernaboti, or Barnabites, from their inhabiting small and cheap houses in the parish of St. Barnabas. "There was a moment in which, doubtless, the destruction of private fortunes, the ruin of youth, the domestic discord occasioned by these abuses, determined the government to depart from its established maxims concerning the freedom of manners allowed the subject. All the courtesans were ba-eye of the law, were fancifully divided into three nished from Venice; but their absence was not enough to reclaim and bring back good morals to a whole people brought up in the most scandalous licentiousness. Depravity reached the very bosoms of private families, and even into the cloister; and they found themselves obliged to recall, and even to indemnify (4) women who sometimes gained possession of important secrets, and who might be usefully employed in the ruin of men whose fortunes might have rendered them dangerous. Since that time, licentiousness has gone on increasing; and we have seen mothers, not only selling the innocence of their daughters, but selling it by a contract, authenticated by the signature of a public of "It will be easily conceived that the poor nobility must have been numerous in a state which considered all the legitimate sons of a patrician as noble; where commerce no longer offered a resource, and the only profession left was that of the law. This class, therefore, subsisting upon the employments of the republic, civil or military, at home and abroad, (1) Correspondence of M. Schlick, French chargé d'affaires. merile meretrici: a fund and some houses, called Case rampane, Despatch of 24th August, 1782. (2) Ibid. Despatch, 31st August. (3) Ibid. Despatch of 3d September, 1785. were assigned to them; hence the opprobrious appellation of Carampane. (5) Mayer, Description of Venice, vol. ii.; and M. Archenholz, (4) The decree for their recall designates them as nostre bene- Picture of Italy, vol. i. ch. 2. was necessarily ruined by the revolution. But the cause of the almost general havoc which involved the Venetian aristocracy is not so immediately visible; the less so, as the laws of the fede-commesso, which corresponds with our entail, were sufficiently rigorous in old Venice. day out of the ruins of the aristocracy. Poor as this pittance was, even in this country where necessaries bear a price out of all proportion to luxuries, numbers did accept it, under the idea that it would be increased under happier circumstances; but the French, it will be easily believed, did not augment "I shall try, according to the information I have it, and (what could scarcely be believed but by received, to explain how this was accomplished. those versed in the proceedings of the cabinet of The first and foremost cause was the excessive in- Vienna) the Austrian government clipped this midolence and profusion of the last generations of the serable mite, and clogged it with conditions which nobility, who appear to have resembled the ances-neither the revolutionary municipality nor the French were illiberal enough to impose tor of Sir Roger de Coverley; who, he tells us, would sign a deed for a mortgage covering one half his estate with his glove on' with this difference, however, that the Venetian patrician could only mortgage his estate during his own natural life; a circumstance which, it appears at first sight, should have been the protection of the ancient houses of Venice. The protection was, however, in most instances of no avail. "The municipality gave their compensation, and, the whole of the terra ferma being in possession of the enemy, perhaps they could give no more— the municipality gave it as unrestricted as the pensions it was to replace: the French made no alteration in the system; but the Austrians have not only limited it to persons not having two hundred ducats a-year (twenty-five pounds sterling), but have insisted upon its being spent in their own dominions. Of the rigour with which this condition is exacted, take the following example:-A lady, ignorant of the regulations which had been introduced, was absent two years in the south of France; she rcturned, and claimed the arrears of her pension, without having specified where she had been. The "In almost all countries the laws of honour often contravene the laws of the land, often mischievously; but they sometimes come in aid of sound morality. Such was their effect here. The law of the fede-commesso allowed a son to charge himself with the debts of a father, without prejudice to his successors; but it being considered as a point of honour to take up this burden, the son's son suc-arrears were paid, after the usual difficulties; but ceeded to it, and the debts of one generation were perpetuated through diverse succeeding ones. "Things were in this state when the old govern"I have said, after the usual difficulties: I will ment was overthrown, and the law of fede-commesso abolished here, as well as all over the coun- now illustrate these. (1) Another lady claimed setries revolutionised by France. The consequence ven months' arrears of pension, due during a rewas, the immediate seizure of property so encum-sidence in Lombardy and the Venetian state. Now, bered. This was inevitable; and the creditor of the family of Corner, or any other Venetian house, seized upon his own. her absence having been ascertained, she was ordered to disgorge her prey, under the threat of being excluded from all further provision. this was a claim verifiable by a single instrument, her passport, which ascertained the day of her ar-rival in every town, by the signature of accredited "Thus one of the indirect consequences of the officers of the Austrian police. Notwithstanding; revolution was the destruction of an immense nun- this, she was seven months more before she could ber of Venetian families of the sangue blo and obtain her demand. These were spent in the premorel de mezo. It was, however, more immedi-sentation of petitions, always by order, always on stamped paper, and in the almost daily beat of half the official stairs of Venice, either in person or in proxy. ately destructive to those denominated the Barnabites, who were at once cut off from all the lucrative offices of the state. Nor was this all: the “But I willingly turn away my eyes from a picdaughters of the indigent nobility had all of them pensions which they brought in dowry to their hus-ture, every detail of which is painful, and, having bands; but place and pension, though bestowed described the fortunes of the Venetian nobility, for life, were annihilated, and, in the place of these, shall give some account of their honours. The paa miserable stipend of two Venetian livres a-day tricians, as I said before, all equal in the eye of the (not quite ten-pence English) was bestowed on law, had no titles as such, excepting that of your those who condescended to accept of it, by the Excellency; though some bore them, as Counts, etc. mushroom municipality which flourished for its of terra ferma, before being enrolled in the nobi (1) This is by no means a single case: A Venetian Judge, displaced, but pensioned by the Austrians, neglected to receive his allowance according to the example of the others. At length he applied for his arrears, which were denied him. "What!" said he, "will you not give me what others have received?" "No!" was the, answer, "and those others will be forced to refund."-Note that these peusions had been paid in virtue of a solemn and printed decree. 28 lity of Venice; and some had titles assigned them as compensations for, or rather as memorials of, fallen greatness. Thus the Querini, formerly lords of Crema, had the distinction continued to them, after Crema was absorbed in the Venetian state. "These families, however, usually let their titles sleep, considering the quality of an untitled Venetian patrician as superior to any other distinction. Nor does this seem to have been an odd refinement, for the old republic sold titles for a pittance to whoever could pay for them, though such a person might not even have had the education of a gentleman.(1) It was natural, therefore, that a lord of Crema should fear being confounded with this countly canaglia, and sink his having any thing in common with such a crew. (1) The qualification to be a Count was about what is supposed to qualify for knighthood in England, and the fee paid for the title, if 1 am rightly informed, L.20 or L.40. "The great political revolution that has taken place, destroying the splendour of the libro d'oro, has induced some to produce their terra ferma titles; but the majority content themselves with the style of Cavaliere, (2) which does not necessarily denote actual knighthood; and is often used almost as liberally in Italy, as the denomination of Squire now is in England. A striking proof, indeed, of good sense and dignity was given by the great body of the Venetian nobility, on being invited by Austria to claim nobility and title from her, on the verification of their rights; the great body of them merely desiring a recognition of their rank, without availing themselves of the offer held out to them. A few indeed, have pursued a different line of conduct, and received patents of princes," etc.-ROSE: Letters from the North of Italy. (2) No order of knighthood was peculiar to Venice, and her citizens were precluded by law from becoming members of foreign orders. The Vision of Judgment. BY QUEVEDO REDIVIVUS. (1) SUGGESTED BY THE COMPOSITION SO ENTITLED BY THE AUTHOR OF "WAT TYLER." (1) Mr. Southey the Laureate, in 1821, published a piece, in Eng-lisher, or was to be procured at any respectable bookseller's. lish hexameters, entitled A Vision of Judgment: and which Lord Byron, in criticising it, laughs at as "the Apotheosis of George the Third." In the preface to this poem, after some observations on the peculiar style of its versification, Mr. Southey introduced the following remarks: This was particularly the case with regard to our poetry. It is now no longer so: and woe to those by whom the offence cometh! The greater the talents of the offender, the greater is his guilt, and the more enduring will be his shame. Whether it be that the laws are in themselves unable to abate an evil of this magnitude, or whether it be that they are remissiy administered, and with such injustice that the celebrity of an offender serves as a privilege whereby he obtains impunity, individuals are bound to consider that such pernicious works would neither be published nor written, if they were discouraged as they might, and ought to be, by public feeling: every person, therefore, who purchases such books, or admits them into his house, promotes the mischief, and thereby, as far as in him lies, becomes an aider and abettor of the crime. "I am well aware that the public are peculiarly intolerant of such innovations; not less so than the populace are of any foreign fashion, whether of foppery or convenience. Would that this literary intolerance were under the influence of a saner judgment, and regarded the morals more than the manner of a composition; the spirit rather than the form! Would that it were directed against those monstrous combinations of horrors and mockery, lewdness and impiety, with which English poetry has, in our days, first been polluted! For more than half a century English literature had been distinguished by its moral purity, the effect, "The publication of a lascivious book is one of the worst of and, in its turn, the cause of an improvement in national manners. fences which can be committed against the well-being of society. ! A father might, without apprehension of evil, have put into the It is a sin, to the consequences of which no limits can be assigned, hands of his children any book which issued from the press, if it and those consequences no after repentance in the writer can did not bear, either in its title-page or frontispiece, manifest signs counteract. Whatever remorse of conscience he may feel when that it was intended as furniture for the brothel. There was no his hour comes (and come it must!) will be of no avail. The danger in any work which bore the name of a respectable pub-poignancy of a death-bed repentance cannot cancel one copy of author of Wat Tyler, are something so stupendous as to form the sublime of himself-containing the quintessence of his own attributes. the thousands which are sent abroad; and as long as it continues to be read, so long is he the pander of posterity, and so long is he heaping up guilt upon his soul in perpetual accumulation. "These remarks are not more severe than the offence deserves, even when applied to those immoral writers who have not been conscious of any evil intention in their writings, who would acknowledge a little levity, a little warmth of colouring, and so forth, in that sort of language with which men gloss over their favourite vices, and deceive themselves. What then should be said of those for whom the thoughtlessness and inebriety of wanton youth can no longer be pleaded, but who have written in sober manhood and with deliberate purpose?-Men of diseased' hearts and depraved imaginations, who, forming a system of opinions to suit their own unhappy course of conduct, have rebelled against the holiest ordinances of human society, and hating that revealed religion which, with all their efforts and bravadoes, they are unable entirely to disbelieve, labour to make others as miserable as themselves, by infecting them with a moral virus that cats into the soul! The school which they have set up may properly be called the Satanic school; for though their productions breathe the spirit of Belial in their lascivious parts, and the spirit of Moloch in those loathsome images of atrocities and horrors which they delight to represent, they are more especially characterised by a Satanic spirit of príde and audacious impiety, | which still betrays the wretched feeling of hopelessness wherewith it is allied. So much for his poem-a word on his preface. In this preface it has pleased the magnanimous Laureate to draw the picture of a supposed "Satanic the whole class by the existing despotism. In the next place, the French Revolution was not occasioned by any writings whatsoever, but must have occurred had no such writers ever existed. It is the fashion to attribute every thing to the French Revolution, and the French Revolution to every thing but its real cause. That cause is obvious-the government exacted too much, and the people could neither give nor bear more. Without this, the Encyclopedists might have written their fingers off without the occurrence of a single alteration. And the English revolution-(the first, I mean)-what was it occasioned by? The Puritans were surely as pious and moral as Wesley or his biographer. Acts-acts on the part of government, and not writings against them, have caused the past convulsions, and are tending to the future. "I look upon such as inevitable, though no revolutionist; I wish to see the English constitution restored, and not destroyed. Born an aristocrat, and naturally one by temper, with the greater part of my present property in the fands, what have I to gain by a revolution? Perhaps I have more to lose in every way than Mr. Southey, with all his places and presents for panegyrics and abuse into the bargain. But that a revolution is inevitable, I repeat. The government may exult over the repression of petty tumults; these are but the receding waves repulsed and broken for a moment on the shore, while the great tide is still rolling on and gaining ground with every breaker. Mr. Southey accuses us of attacking the religion of the country; and is he abetting it by writing lives of Wesley? One mode of worship is merely destroyed by another. There never was, nor ever will be, a country without a religion. We shall be told of France again: but it was only Paris and a frantic party, which for a moment “This evil is political as well as moral, for indeed moral and political evils are inseparably connected. Truly has it been affirmed by one of our ablest and clearest reasoners, that the destruction of governments may be proved and deduced from the general corruption of the subjects' manners, as a direct and na-upheld their dogmatic nonsense of theo-philanthropy. The church tural cause thereof, by a demonstration as certain as any in the mathematics. There is no maxim more frequently enforced by Machiavelli, than that where the manners of a people are generally corrupted, there the government cannot long subsist, a truth which all history exemplifies; and there is no means whereby that corruption can be so surely and rapidly diffused, as by poisoning the waters of literature. "Let rulers of the state look to this in time! But, to use the words of South, If our physicians think the best way of curing a disease is to pamper it,-the Lord in mercy prepare the kingdom to suffer, what He by miracle only can prevent!' "No apology is offered for these remarks. The subject led to them; and the occasion of introducing them was willingly taken, because it is the duty of every one, whose opinion may have any influence to expose the drift and aim of those writers who are labouring to subvert the foundations of human virtue and of human happiness." Lord Byron rejoined as follows: "Mr. Southey, in his pious preface to a poem whose blasphemy is as harmless as the sedition of Wat Tyler, because it is equal y absurd with that sincere production, calls upon the legislature to look to it,' as the toleration of such writings led to the French Revolution: not such writings as Wat Tyler, but as those of the Satanic school.' This is not true, and Mr. Southey knows it to be not true. Every French writer of any freedom was persecuted; Voltaire and Rousseau were exiles, Marmontel and Diderot were sent to the Bastille, and a perpetual war was waged with [Summi poetæ in omni poetarum sæculo viri fuerunt probi; in nostris id vidimus et videmus; neque alius est error a veritate longius quàm magna ingenia magnis necessario corrumpi vitiis. Secundo plerique posthabent primum, hi malignitate, illi ignorantia: et quum aliquem inveniunt styli morumque vitiis notatum, nec infeetum tamen nec in libris edendis parcum, eum stipant, prædicant, occupant, amplectantur. Si mores aliquantulum vellet corrigere, si stylum curare paululum, si fervido ingenio temperare, si moræ tantillum interponere, tum ingens nescio quid et vere epicum, quadraginta annos natus, procuderat. Ignorant verò febriculis Don indicari vires, impatientiam ab imbecillitate non differre; ignorant a levi homine et inconstante multa fortasse seribi posse of England, if overthrown, will be swept away by the sectarians and not by the sceptics. People are too wise, too well informed, too certain of their own immense importance in the realms of space, ever to submit to the impiety of doubt. There may be a few such diffident speculators, like water in the pale sunbeam of human reason, but they are very few; and their opinions, without enthusiasm or appeal to the passions, can never gain proselytes-unless, indeed, they are persecuted—that, to be sure. will increase any thing. "Mr. Southey, with a cowardly ferocity, exults over the anticipated 'death-bed repentance' of the objects of his dislike: and indulges himself in a pleasant Vision of Judgment, in prose as well as verse, full of impious impudence. What Mr. Southey's sensations or ours may be in the awful moment of leaving this state of existence, neither he nor we can pretend to decide. In common, I presume, with most men of any reflection, I have not waited for a 'death-bed' to repent of many of my actions, notwithstanding the 'diabolical pride' which this pitiful renegado in his rancour would impute to these who scorn him. Whether upon the whole the good or evil of my deeds may preponderate is not for me to ascertain; but as my means and opportunities have been greater, I shall limit my present defence to an assertion (easily proved, if necessary), that I, 'in my degree,' have done more real good in any one given year, since I was twenty, than Mr. Southey in the whole course of his shifting and turncoat exstence.+ There are several actions to which I can look back with an honest pride, not to be damped by the calumnies of a This essay, plusquam mediocria, nihil compositum, arduum, æternum." Sava❤ gius Landor, De cultu atque Usu Latini Sermonis, which is full of fine critical remarks and striking thoughts felicitously expressed, reached me from Pisa, while the proof of the present sheet was before me. Of its author (the author of Gebir and Count Julian) I will only say in this place, that, to have obtained his approbation as a poet, and possessed his friendship as a man, will be remembered among the honours of my life, when the petty eumities of this generation will be forgotten, and its ephemeral reputations shall have passed away."-Mr. Southey's Note.] +"Here Lord Byron very modestly informs us, that he has done more good in any one year of his life, than Mr. Southey has done in 444 school," the which he doth recommend to the notice of the legislature; thereby adding to his other laurels the ambition of those of an informer. If hireling. There are others to which I recur with sorrow and repentance; but the only act of my life of which Mr. Southey can have any real knowledge, as it was one which brought me in contact with a near connection of his own, did no dishonour to that connection nor to me. there exists any where, excepting in his imagination, such a school, is he not sufficiently armed against it by his own intense vanity? The truth is, that Virgins of Cologne-not of Lord Byron. I sought for no staler subject than St. Ursula "Once, and only once, in connection with Switzerland, I have alluded to his Lordship; and as the passage was curtailed in the press, I take this opportunity of restoring it. In the Quarterly Review, speaking incidentally of the Jungfrau, I said, 'It was the scene where Lord Byron's Manfred met the Devil and bullied him though the Devil must have won his cause before any tribunal in this world, or the next, if he had not pleaded more feebly for himself than his advocate, in a cause of canonization, ever pleaded for him.' "I am not ignorant of Mr. Southey's calumnies on a different occasion, knowing them to be such, which he scattered abroad on bis return from Switzerland against me and others: they have done him no good in this world; and if his creed be the right one, they will do him less in the next. What his death-bed' may be, it is not my province to predicate; let him settle it with his "With regard to 'the others', wl:om his Lordship accuses me Maker, as I must do with mine. There is something at onee ludicrous and blasphemous in this arrogant scribbler of all work of calumniating, I suppose he alludes to a party of his friends, sitting down to deal dammation and destruction upon his fellow-whose names I found written in the album at Mount-Anvert, with creatures, with Wat Tyler, the Apotheosis of George the Third, and the Elegy on Martin the Regicide, all shuffled together in his writing-desk. One of his consolations appears to be a Latin note from a work of a Mr. Landor, the author of Gebir, whose friendship for Robert Southey will, it seems, 'be an honour to him when the ephemeral disputes and ephemeral reputations of the day are forgotten.'. I for one neither envy him the friendship,' nor the glory in reversion which is to accrue from it, like Mr. Thelusson's fortune, in the third and fourth generation. This friendship will probably be as memorable as his own epics, which (as I quoted to him ten or twelve years ago in English Bards) Porson said would be remembered when Homer and Virgil are forgotten, and not till then.' For the present, I leave him." an avowal of Atheism annexed, in Greek, and an indignant comment, in the same language, underneath it. ** Those names, with that avowal and the comment, I transcribed in my note-book, and spoke of the circumstance on my return. If I had published it, the gentleman in question would not have thought himself slandered, by having that recorded of him, which he has so often recorded of himself. "The many opprobrious appellations which Lord Byron has bestowed upon me, I leave as I find them, with the praises which he has bestowed upon himself. How easily is a noble spirit discern'd From harsh and sulphurous matter that flies out In contumelies, makes a noise, and stinks!'-B. Jonson. But I am accustomed to such things; and, so far from irritating me are the enemies who use such weapons, that, when I hear of their attacks, it is some satisfaction to think they have thus employed the malignity which must have been employed somewhere, Mr. Southey was not disposed to let this pass unanswered. tance: "I come at once to his Lordship's charge against me, blowing away the abuse with which it is frothed, and evaporating a strong acid in which it is suspended. The residuum then appears to be that Mr. Southey, on his return from Switzerland (in 1817), scattered abroad calumnies, knowing them to be such, against Lord Byron and others. To this I reply with a direct and positive denial. "If I had been told in that country that Lord Byron had turned Turk, or Monk of La Trappe,—that he had furnished a harem, or endowed an hospital, I might have thought the account, whichever it had been, possible, and repeated it accordingly; passing it, as it had been taken, in the small change of conversation, for no more than it was worth. In this manner I might have spoken of him, as of Baron Geramb,* the Green Man,++ the Indian Jugglers, or any other figurante of the time being. There was no reason for any particular delicacy on my part in speaking of his Lordship; and, indeed, I should have thought any thing which might be reported of him would have injured his character as little as the story which so greatly annoyed Lord Keeper Guildford, that he had ridden a rhinoceros. He may ride a rhinoceros, and though every body would stare, no one would wonder. But making no inquiry concerning him when I was abroad, because I felt no curiosity, I heard nothing, and had nothing to repeat. When I spoke of wonders to my friends and acquaintance on my return, it was of the flying-tree at Alpnacht, and the Eleven Thousand the whole of the years he has lived upon the earth. We are much could possibly molest or injure less. The viper, however veno- "Lord Byron's present exacerbation is evidently produced by an infliction of this kind-not by hearsay reports of my conversation, four years ago, transmitted him from England. The cause may be found in certain remarks upon the Satanic school of poetry, contained in my preface to the Vision of Judgment Well would it be for Lord Byron if he could look back upon any of his writings, with as much satisfaction as I shall always do upon what is there said of that flagitious school. Many persons, and parents especially, have expressed their gratitude to me for having applied the branding-iron where it was so richly deserved. The Edinburgh Reviewer, indeed, with that bonourable feeling by which his criticisms are so peculiarly distinguished, suppressing the remarks themselves, has imputed them wholly to envy on my part. I give him, in this instance, full credit for sineerity: I believe he was equally incapable of comprehending a worthier motive, or of inventing a worse; and, as I have never conde Baron Geramb,-a German Jew, who, for some time, excited much public attention in London, by the extravagance of his dress. Being very troublesome and inenacing in demanding remuneration from Government, for a proposal he had made of engaging a body of Croat troops in the service of England, he was, in 1812, sent out of the country under the Alien Act.-E. ++ The Green Man was a popular atterpiece, so called from the hero, who wore every thing green, hat, gloves, etc. etc.-E. ** Mr. P. B. Shelley signed his name, with the addition of abses, in this album.-E. |