"But I don't mean to marry her into the bargain, May, you may be very sure," said Tom one day in a sudden fit of decision. "My darling child was born for a parish | tions were of the most voluminous and priestess," said Mrs. Longmore with a sob gushing kind on this occasion. of delight; "and her uncle having left us his fortune, seems to make it so appropriate for her to live and do good in his own beloved parish; and my brother-in-law, the canon, has always said that there was no one better fitted... interesting duties connected..." Mrs Longmore's emo May smiled her answer; it is more convenient when assent is all that is required, and you have not a very confident one to give. ENGLISH malcontents, like those who sing the that of Austria or Russia. The representative "Marseillaise" in Trafalgar-Square, and are franchise may be more extended, property may greatly excited by the establishment of a Repub- be more equally divided, in one State than in lican Government in France, would do well to the other; but the principal difference in the clearly ascertain what are their real grievances. construction of the sovereign power is that in Do they lie in the form of government at pres-one State the chief is determined by election, in ent existing, or in the shortcomings of those the other by inheritance; that in one State the who hold government? If we look to the sani-office lasts for life, in the other only for a limtary condition and to the dwelling-houses of the ited time. Yet Austria, Russia and England poorer classes, to the adulteration of their food, are generally classed together as monarchies, to the tyranny and jobbery of local authorities, and together opposed to the United States as a all arising from the muddle of our domestic leg-republic. Monarchical institutions in a limited islation, we can well understand their dissatis- monarchy are also frequently opposed to repubfaction with their rulers; but if they are excited lican institutions, and the two are considered as against the form of our government, it may be incompatible. If at the Revolution the name of because they are led away by political terms the King of England as well as his power had applied without distinction to Governments dif- been changed, but he had nevertheless exerfering from each other very much indeed. It cised precisely the same influence in the constiis, perhaps, unfortunate, remarked the late tution as the Crown has exercised since that Sir George Lewis, that usage had sanctioned the time, the Government would have been called extension of the term monarchy to all States in republican, instead of monarchical, although which a king is chief- in other words, has the only difference would have been in the name identified monarchy with royalty; for, as the of the first person in the State. The professional mind, even of the most careful, is insensibly in- agitator of course will not take the trouble to fluenced by words, the idea is naturally sug- learn these things; they are worth consideration gested that there is a greater affinity between a nevertheless. commonwealth with a king and a genuine monarchy than between a commonwealth with a king and a commonwealth with a chief elected for a term of years. The difference between a State in which one person has the whole sovereignty and a State in which the legislative sovereignty is shared among a large number, of whom many are chosen by popular election, is immense. The maxims and acts of the two Governments and their influence on the community must be most dissimilar. But when we compare a Royal commonwealth with a commonwealth not Royal (or, in common language, a limited monarchy with a republic) the principal difference is that in one the chief is hereditary and for life, in the other elective, either for life or for a term of years. It is not that the forms of government differ greatly, or the powers of a king, and of a president, doge, or stadtholder; but the manner in which those powers are acquired, and the time for which they endure. For instance, the Government of England resembles that of the United States of America (barring the differences caused by the nature of a federal union) far more nearly than Pall Mall Gazette. THIS is said to be an age in which people are exceedingly averse from taking responsibility. Perhaps this statement is an exaggeration. Probably in all ages people were very much averse from taking responsibility. But still this aversion is likely to be greater in a thoughtful period, when men have found out how much there is to be said for every side of a question. How comes it, then, that the fear of responsibility seems to have so little influence in restraining men from repeating injurious reports of others, for which they have really no ground but hearsay? Perhaps it would not be too much to say, that for one person in ten who would not invent a calumny, or knowingly add to it, there is not one in ten thousand who would hesitate to repeat it, without having the slightest real knowledge of the matter not appreci ating the responsibility they are thereby taking upon themselves. Arthur Helps. 1 From Temple Bar. THE BATTLE OF LEGNANO, a.d. 1176. BY SIR EDWARD CREASY. the question of how far Italy is naturally adapted for being the country of a strong united nation; and also on the question of which of her cities is best adapted for being made the capital of the whole country. Napoleon points out that the great defect in the geographical configuration of Italy consists in her length being too great in proportion to her breadth. This, in his judgment, has been a main cause of the calamities which she has endured, and of the subdivision of that beautiful country into a great number of weak states. He, shows that a remedy for this evil may be found by Italy, if she devotes especial attention to her maritime resources, and makes herself a great naval "THE Phoenix is a fable; but the resurrection of a people may be a reality." So in our own time wrote Guerazzo, one of those fervid Italian patriots, whom it was the fashion to listen to with praises for their eloquence, and with a secret smile at their visionary enthusiasm. Such, indeed, has been the manner, in which the world has regarded aspirations for the independence and the greatness of Italy, from the days of Rienzi and Petrarch down to those of Alfieri, Carlo Botta, and Monti. But now before our own eyes, those aspirations have been accomplished. The vision of power. In his deliberate opinion, notwithfour centuries has become a reality. There is a free and united Italy, complete in her independence and in her integrity; save that her old capital has not yet become her heart's core. But we know that this consummation can be no longer delayed. Even in this present month is ending the monstrous anomaly of Rome isolated in sacerdotal servitude under French patronage, while all else, from the Alps to Tarentum, is self-governed and free. Certainly, before a few months, probably before a few weeks, possibly before a few days have passed away, Rome and Romagna will be Italian and not Papal, so far at least as re-advantageous a manner as the Italian pengards temporal dominion. standing the distinction that may be found between the north and south, Italy is essentially one sole nation. "The unity of manners, of language, of literature, must at some time-which sooner or later will arrive, - reunite finally all her inhabitants under one government." A primary condition for the continued existence of that government will be that it shall become a maritime power, so as to maintain its supremacy over the adjacent islands, and to defend its coasts." He adds in another passage the observation that " No other part of Europe is situated in so insula for becoming a great maritime pow er." He points out the large amount of the sea-board of Italy and her islands, among which he justly classes Corsica and Sardinia, as well as Sicily. He dilates on the excellence of her numerous harbours, among which he specifies Genoa, Spezia, Naples, Palermo, Tarentum, and Venice. Of these, Spezia ‡ should be her great war harbour for commanding the Ligurian seas; Tarentum for commanding Sicily, Greece, the Levant, and the coasts of Syria and Egypt.§ Even while deprived of her true capital, and while the natural centre of her national life has been clogged by anile pontifical despotism and foreign military force, the young kingdom of Italy has assumed and maintained a position of dignity and importance among the states of civilized Europe. If we predict for new Italy, when perfected and matured, a continuance and an increase of prosperity and power, we may do so on the authority not merely of enthusiasts and poets, who are apt "to mistake memories for hopes," On the question of which city ought to but on the reasonings and calculations fur-be made the capital of the expected kingnished by one who detested "Idéologues of every kind; and who was always most austerely practical when estimating the elements of political and military strength. This was the Emperor Napoleon,- Napoleon I., as he has been termed during the last twenty years, Napoleon, the Napoleon, as his name will be emphasized for In the Memoirs dictated ages to come. by him at St. Helena, the narrative of his campaigns in Italy is prefaced by clear and full descriptions of the geography of the scenes of action: and, while giving those descriptions, the ex-Emperor entered into *See, in Commentaires de Napoleon Premier, Tome 1., p. 126 (Imperial edition of 1868) the sixth section of the Description d'Italie." ↑ "L'Italie est une seule nation. L'unite de mœurs, de langage, de litterature, doit, dans un avenir plus ou moins eloigne, reunir entin ses habltans sous un seul gouvernement. Pour exister, la premiere condition de cette monarchie sera d'etre puissance maritime, afin de maintenir la suprematie Commentaires, Tome i., p. 127. sur ses isles et de defendre ses cotes." -Napoleon's "La Spezia est le plus beau port de l'univers; rade est meme superieure a celle de Toulon: sa defense par terre et par mer est facile."- Ibid, p. sa 180. "Tarente est merveilleusement situee pour do miner la Sicile, la Grece, le Levant, et les cotes d'Egypte, et de Syrie."- Ibid, p. 181. dom of united Italy, Napoleon considers | Vasco de Gama took away; and the Italthe rival claims of Venice and of Rome, ians, if they are wise, will have most and decides in favour of the ancient Im- reason of all European nations, to hail perial city. He gives it as his opinion that with gratitude the results of the genius "Rome is incontestably the capital which and perseverance of the great Francothe Italians will one day choose."* That Egyptian engineer. one day" will probably have arrived before the words, which I copy, meet the reader's eye. The advantages, which Italy possesses for becoming a great maritime power, have been greatly increased since the time when Napoleon wrote his Commentaries. The opening of the Suez Canal will soon cause the greater part of the commerce between the Far East and Europe to resume its ancient course up the Red Sea and across Egypt to the ports of the Mediterranean. The Italian Peninsula, which stretches down from the mass of the continent of Europe across the centre of the Mediterranean, has the best possible geographical position for becoming the chief depôt of that commerce. Oriental trade was, in fact, the main source of the wealth and the naval renown of Venice, Genoa, and the other maritime Italian States of the Middle Ages, before the voyages, which the Portuguese made round the Cape of Good Hope to India. The old line of traffic across part of Egypt or Asia was necessarily a mixed system, in which land carriage as well as water carriage was employed. That mixed overland system of commerce could not compete with the line of traffic opened by the Portuguese, in which cargoes were taken by the sea and in the same vessels from one terminus of the whole journey to the other. The trade with the south-eastern parts of the world passed accordingly from the hands of Italian mariners and merchants to those of the adventurers of Lisbon, and subsequently to those of the Dutch and the English, who, after the Portuguese, applied themselves to commercial navigation round Africa to India. But now the old direct line is open by water from beginning to end. Merchant ships are already beginning to crowd along the Suez Canal to and from the chief ports, not only of the Indian and Chinese, but also of the Australian territories. A truly golden opportunity is offered to the new Italian kingdom for reviving commercial wealth and naval strength, in a degree tenfold greater than Venice, Genoa, and Pisa ever possessed them in the days of their very palmiest splendour. Lesseps has restored what *Rome est, sans contredit, la capitale, que les Italiens choisiront un jour."-Napoleon's Commentaires, Tomei., p. 129. No sane man expects that the world will ever see again a conquering and ambitiously aggressive Italy, such as she was, when the old Roman legions subdued and crushed all the once independent nations, whose homes were around or near to the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea. What we hope to behold, is an Italy with the civilization, the wealth, the splendour in art and science, the agricultural and commercial prosperity, which some of her States attained four centuries ago; and which, in the judgment of nearly the highest modern authority, have scarcely ever or anywhere been surpassed or even equalled.* We wish the peaceful glories of Medieval Italy to be restored, with the addition of a strong central government, beneath which her combined resources shall be secure against attacks from either Gaul or Germany, and which shall prevent the growth of the civil wars and dissensions which were the bane of the Italian Republics of the Middle Ages. Long as those free States have fallen, deeply as their populations have been down-trodden, it is still to them that the possibility of a great Modern Italy is due. They, during the centuries in which they flourished, exercised an influence on the progress of the human race which is imperishable. This brilliant period of Italian freedom commenced with the successful resistance which the Lombard free cities made to the arms of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, when they defeated him at Legnano in 1176. It closes with the capitulation of Florence to the army of the Emperor Charles V. in 1530.† The recollections of it have been imper "We doubt whether any country of Europe, our own excepted, has even at the present time, reached so high a point of wealth and civilization as some parts of Italy had attained four centuries ago." Macaulay's Essay on Machiavelli.” † Sismondi thus epitomizes the growth, the splendour, and the decline of the Free Italian Na les qui s'ecoulerent depuis le renversement de l'Emtion of the Middle Ages:-"Les dix premiers siecpire d'occident, preparerent, par la melange des peuples barbares avec les peuples degeneres de l'Italie Dans le douzieme siecle cette nation conquit sa libla nation nouvelle qui devoit succeder aux Romains erte; elle en jouit dans le treizieme et le quatorzieme lens, des arts, de la philosophie et du gout; elle la en y joignant tous les triomphes des vertus, des talaissa se corrompre dans le quinzieme, et elle perdit en meme temps son ancienne vigueur. Pres d'un demi-siecle d'une guerre effroyable detruisit alors sa prosperite, aneantit ses moyens de defense, et lui ravit enfin son independance." ishable among the Italians, and have kept | They, in most cases, obtained charters or alive those qualities, which Byron pointed pledges, by which their titular sovereigns out as their national characteristics, when he wrote of them that "the man must be wilfully blind or ignorantly heedless, who is not struck with the extraordinary capacity of this people, or, if such a word is admissible, their capabilities, the rapidity of their conceptions, the fire of their genius, their sense of beauty; and amidst all the disadvantages of repeated revolutions, the desolation of battles, and despair of ages, their still unquenched 'longing after immortality,' the immortality of independ ence."* were bound to take up their abode, not within the city walls, but in palaces provided for them outside the fortifications. The increase of population and of wealth in these civic commonwealths was rapid and continuous. They acquired full dominion over the territories near them; they subdued the feudal baronage; and they compelled the nobles to become members of the civic communities, and to reside for at least a specified part of the year within the walls. While the aristocracy was thus brought down to the midThis last mentioned quality is even a dle-class level, much was done to raise the better guerdon for the revival of their na- mass of the population to a better positional greatness, than the unity of man- tion, than was enjoyed by the lower orders ners, language, and literature, on which in other parts of medieval Europe. SlavNapoleon relied, when he foretold the con- ery and serfdom were practically, though solidation of Italy and her elevation to the not formally, abolished by the Italian rank of an important European power. commonwealths, both within the towns, And it was this same longing for inde- and among the rural populations of the pendence which caused the first formation circumjacent territories. The peasantry of the medieval Lombard and Tuscan generally tilled the land on what is termed commonwealths, and which inspired their the Metayer system, under which the glorious resistance to the frequent at- cultivator and the landowner divide the tempts made by the German Emperors to produce of the soil iu agreed proporreduce them to servitude. The cities of Northern Italy had emerged gradually, during the eleventh century, from the subjection, in which they had been held by Otho the Great, and his two imperial successors of the same name. The holy Roman Empire had fallen, after the death of Otho III., into confusion and comparative weakness. Its chiefs found full occupation in the wars and rebellions, that broke out northward of the Alps, and in their long-continued disputes with the Papacy. The Lombard cities were left generally to themselves; and, though they did not openly and avowedly renounce the sovereignty of the Emperor, they became, in practice, self-governed States. They chose their own magistrates; they raised and officered their own militia; they voted their own taxes; they administered their own revenue; they sent ambassadors to other States; they made treaties; they formed leagues, and waged wars, as they thought fit. One great object with them all was to get released from their liability to receive the Emperor and his troops within their walls when he visited Italy. So long as the Emperor retained, and from time to time exercised, the right of thus taking armed occupation, the citizens felt that they had no secure possession of their liberties. This passage is near the end of the Dedication of the Fourth Canto of" Childe Harold." tions. Within the towns manufactures flourished; and the artizans, by whose skilled labour the wealth of the Statewas principally created, were not only allowed to carry arms, but were carefully trained to the use of them; and they exercised all political rights, as freely and as fully as the greatest merchants and capitalists. Literature and the fine arts were cultivated by many, and were honoured by all. Public works of utility and ornament were undertaken and executed in a lofty and liberal spirit; such as at a later time was shown and nobly expressed by the people of Florence, who, when they determined to replace their old church of Santa Reparata with a new cathedral, ordered that the work should be executed with supreme and free-handed magnificence." The decree states that the utmost grandeur and beauty shall be aimed at, because "The most judicious in this city have pronounced the opinion, in public and in private conferences, that no work of the Commonwealth should be undertaken, unless the design be to make it correspond with a heart, which is of the greatest nature, because composed of the spirit of many citizens united together in one sin gle will."* The dark side of this brilliant picture of Cicognari, Storia della Sculture, 11, 147, cited in the note to Mr. Norton's translation of the Vita Nuova of Dante. Italy in the days of her mediæval repub-right, absolute lord and master of Italy; lics is well-known. Hallam has said, too and as soon as he had established temportruly, that "Their love of freedom was ary tranquillity in Germany, he prepared alloyed by that restless spirit, from which for the effective restoration of the Imperial a democracy is seldom exempt, of tyran- authority in the Peninsula. nizing over weaker neighbours."* The strong cities coerced the smaller, as Athens of old coerced her subject-allies. The smaller sought safety, or more often revenge, by leaguing themselves with one strong city against another. Milan and Pavia were superior to all the other Lom- The Milanese had reduced the people of bard States in wealth and power. These the little commonwealth of Lodi to a state two hated each other as rancorously as of subjection. The Lodésans implored ancient Sparta, in the Peloponnesian War, protection and justice from the Emperor. hated Athens, or as old Rome, in Cato's Frederick sent a letter to the Milanese, time, hated Carthage. Milan was conspic- commanding them to restore the people uous for her democratic zeal, and for her of Lodi to their ancient rights. The haughty repudiation of almost every rem- Milanese received Frederick's order with nant of the old Imperial supremacy. Pa- derision, and the Imperial despatch was via was ready to adopt the policy most publicly torn in their assembly. Fredopposed to that of her rival; and, when the attempt was made in the middle of the twelfth century to enforce the long dormant claims of the German Cæsars over Italy, it was in Pavia that the Imperialists found their stanchest ally against her sister republics. The Lombard cities, by their misconduct towards each other, gave Frederick specious reasons for interfering to check oppression, in addition to what he deemed the duty of vindicating the neglected majesty of the Empire. Frederick, Duke of Suabia, surnamed Barbarossa, was elected by the Diet at Frankfort, in 1152, to be Cæsar Augustus, Head of the Holy Roman Empire of the Germans. During the reign of his feeble predecessor, Conrad III., Germany had suffered grievously by the dissensions and civil wars of her princes; and the electors were determined that their common country should now have the benefit of a strong government. They chose, accordingly, the Duke of Suabia, then in the thirty-first year of his age, and already renowned not only for his personal valour and other accomplishments, but for his vigilant strictness in administering justice, and repressing disorder. These were indeed the characteristics of the Emperor Frederick I. throughout his long reign. He also entertained the loftiest ideas of the Imperial dignity which he had acquired. He was resolved to assert and to exercise in reality the full powers, which Charlemagne and the Othos had wielded to the south as well as to the north of the Alps. He considered (and many of the jurists, who now devoted themselves with zeal and honour to the revived study of the Roman law, upheld his opinion) that the rights of the sovereign head of the Roman Empire could never be lost, or waived by desuetude. He believed himself to be, of • Hallam, 1," Middle Ages," 367. (Ed. 1868.) erick, in 1154, passed the Alps at the head of a powerful army; and he held a diet at Roncaglia, at which the deputies of all the Lombard cities, including Milan, attended and did homage. He was crowned with the iron crown of Lombardy at Pavia, and he then pressed forward upon Rome. Rome was at this time in the hands of a republican government, which was equally hostile to Pope and Emperor. Frederick crushed the Roman democrats, and was solemnly crowned Emperor by Pope Adrian. Disturbances in Germany made him recross the Alps, without pausing, on this occasion, to punish Milan; but he returned in 1158, and laid siege to that city, which had given him further cause of offence since 1154. Milan was starved into capitulation. Frederick now enforced his Imperial sovereignty throughout Lombardy in the most stern and arbitrary manner. The Milanese again took up arms, were again besieged, and were again compelled by famine to surrender. Frederick now levelled the rebellious city with the ground, and ordered its inhabitants to be dispersed among the villages of their territory. Awe-struck at this terrible example of Barbarossa's severity, the other Lombard states, that had formerly sided with Milan, now crouched submissively before the Emperor, while Pavia and the other old foes of Milan rejoiced over their enemy's downfall. But Italian freedom was not yet annihilated. As Shelley has beautifully written, "Its unwearied wings could fan The quenchless ashes of Milan; " or, we may adopt the almost equally poetic words of Hallam, and say that "there still |