ration, and of course the manners of the inhabitants were honest and peaceable. Can it be astonishing that when the natives beheld the depredations of these foreigners on secular and ecclesiastical property, their morals should be debauched, and their simplicity corrupted by such pestilent examples?

In 1216, Pope Honorius III. confirmed what his predecessors and the Kings of England had done respecting the union of Glendaloch.

In Camden's "Annals," at the end of his "Britannia," we find the Tooles almost always in arms against the English, and there is reason to think they kept the see of Glendaloch constantly filled; for Wadding, in his "Franciscan Annals," under the year 1494, informs us that Pope Alexander VI., on the death of Bishop John, advanced Ivo Russi, a Minorite, to the see. And on the decease of

Russi, the next year, John, or Junon, was made bishop of Glendaloch. In 1497, it is mentioned that Friar Dennis White had long been in possession of Glendaloch, but being old and infirm, and touched in conscience, on the 30th of May this year, surrendered his right and claim in the chapter-house of St. Patrick, Dublin, and acknowledged his see had been united to Dublin since the reign of King John. Walter FitzSimons was now archbishop of Dublin, and in such favour with Henry VII. that he was made deputy to Jasper, duke of Bedford, governor of Ireland, Ireland. In this plenitude of power he obliged White to make the foregoing recognition. I do not know how this can be reconciled with what Burke says, that Francis de Corduba was appointed to the see by Pope Alexander.

THE history of the events that transformed a "geographical expression" into a free and important state is well known. The task undertaken by Italians in creating a united Italy has been arduous beyond conception. Political and social reconstruction; the formation of national defences; the introduction of the elements of civilisation, and enlightenment amidst masses brutalised by centuries of misrule and oppression; the extinction of brigandage; the defeat of the machinations of foreign enemies, domestic traitors, and clerical fanatics; the raising of enormous sums to provide for a thousand urgent requirements, these have been some of the problems the guiding powers of the new kingdom have been called upon to solve. That which a nation that possesses the first principles of greatness has accomplished in a decade, we shall endeavour to lay before the reader, premising that the information herein contained has been gathered from various official and other works and documents, as well as from personal observation. We shall briefly glance at Italy at work, and pass in rapid review the number of her inhabitants, their religion, occupations, and social condition, showing as fully as space will allow the progress made by her population morally and materially,

and the general advance of the country on the onward path of civilisation.

Italy had ceased to be the home of art, science, and commerce; Venice and Genoa were no longer the Queens of the sea; no Michael Angelo planned fortifications or sculptured a colossal David; no Leonardo da Vinci rendered canals navigable, or painted an imperishable Madonna. The great master minds, arbiters of all human knowledge, who had rendered their country the most prominent in Europe, were in their silent tombs. That once fortunate people who for centuries had enjoyed the monopoly of nearly all inventions and all discoveries, from the mariner's compass to bombshells and firelocks from the New World to animal magnetism— from the motion of the earth to silk hose,-that people who had given to Europe horse dragoons and musical operas; St. Peter of Rome and the Pitti Gallery had sunk into the grossest ignorance and misery. Parcelled out into small states, separated from the rest of the world, governed by ignorant or superstitious despots, over-run by fanatical priests, Italy had fallen into a lamentable state of degradation. Its rulers purposely shut out light from their subjects;

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and Ferdinand the Second, of Naples, boldly said, "My people have no need of thinking." In 1860, out of twenty-two millions of individuals, seventeen could neither read nor write. Italy was in its last stage of decadence, when the cannon at San Martino gave birth to a new Italy. The young kingdom, risen as if by magic from the fusion of a mass of heterogeneous materials, numbered in 1870 about twenty-six millions of inhabitants, including Rome and the surrounding provinces. The peninsula contains upwards of 100 cities, 3000 boroughs, and 3500 communes. With so many different centres of population, it will be seen that there is no fear of centralisation in United Italy, not even with Rome for the capital. The population, both in the cities and in the country, is steadily and visibly increasing. It may almost be said that Italian blood, having breathed the air of freedom, has acquired greater powers of vitality and reproduction especially in the southern provinces. The island of Sardinia alone remains poor and thinly inhabited. Everywhere else each year the births exceed the deaths in a rising proportion. In England 60 years would be required at the present rate of growth to double the population; in Italy 80 years; in France (before the war) 183 years; in Austria 217 years. United Italy, after England and Belgium, contains the densest and most prolific population in Europe. Notwithstanding pestilences, oppression, foreign wars, civil wars, emigrations, and proscriptions, the new kingdom is richer in inhabitants than Italy ever was before even under the Romans. In the new kingdom there are only ninety-thousand foreigners some of whom are natives of Nice and Savoy, who have retained their posts in the army or under Government. King Victor Emmanuel needs no foreign Zouaves nor Swiss mercenaries to keep his rebellious subjects in order.

Before the annexation of Venice and Rome, most of the strangers dwelling in United Italy were Italians. Those who were not, soon became Italianised. Foreigners, especially Frenchmen settling at Naples, quickly adopt the language and manners of the country. They eat maccaroni, drink sulphuretted waters, take their siesta, affect coral amulets and charms, become fond of music, and never walk. In that land, often conquered, often a victim to prolonged invasion, neither Gaul, German, nor Spaniard ever took root in the soil. They were no more masters of Italy than a ship is master of the sea. As soon as they departed for they could never remain long-all traces of their presence disappeared. Foreigners have occupied Italythey have never really possessed her. Milan, Venice, were Italian under the Austrians. Rome under the French was still essentially Roman. This tenacity of the national spirit foreshadowed in the darkest day the rising of a free and united Italy.

A country possessing the geographical position of Italy, bounded by three seas and a lofty chain of mountains, could not fail to be sooner or later independent. United Italy is inhabited by peoples identical in glories, in traditions, and in language, for the old dialects are everywhere tending to disappear.

A common mode of speech is being universally formed. The natives of all parts of the peninsula have become travellers since the establishment of means of locomotion. They meet, trade, and intermarry together; they serve under the same administration; they are drilled under the same flag; and they learn to express themselves in words intelligible to all. The public schools and the army have tended not a little to the establishment of this general language, to which every district has contributed some idioms. Doubtless each province retains its pecu

liarities of expression, but the most illiterate denizens of the most distant parts of Italy are able to interchange their thoughts with each other without difficulty. To unity of tongue must be added unity of religion, for 35,000 Protestants, and about an equal number of Jews, can have but little weight among twentysix millions of Catholics. The greatest number of Jews dwell in Tuscany, especially Leghorn; the greatest number of Protestants are to be found in the valleys of Piedmont.

There is a considerable wandering population in Italy. Every year the shepherds and goatherds of the Alps and Appenines descend in winter into the plains, to find food and shelter for themselves and their flocks until the spring; and thousands of hawkers, labourers, and workmen travel annually through the peninsula, from Piedmont to Calabria; nor are poor Italians strangers amongst us, the image-man, the organ-grinder, the performer on the bag-pipe, are well known characters of London street life. The organ-man, especially, seems to flourish in our midst, in spite of Mr. Babbage and the police. The Italian is by no means a stay-at-home individual. Next to the Teuton, he is more enterprising than any other native of the Continent. He has established large and flourishing colonies in America, especially in the south; he flocks into all the ports of the Levant; he abounds in France; and in England he has earned a name for industry and sobriety. There are no means of learning how many Italians there are outside the peninsula, but they must be numbered by hundreds of thousands.

One-third of the inhabitants of Italy-say, about 8,600,000-are cultivators of the soil. They are poor, but hardy, frugal, and long-lived. In Central Italy the mezzeria exists still; a kind of partnership is formed between the landowner and the peasant. The former contributes

the land, the latter the labour, and the profits are evenly divided unless in the case of olives, when the peasant receives but a third. In Northern Italy it is by no means uncommon to find families of seven or eight members living, or barely existing, on bread and beans on five acres of land. As we proceed south the holdings become larger. In the Maremme, properties of 100 or 1000 hectares (2 acres each) are very common, and in Ombria they are even more considerable. In the vast plains of the Roman Campagna, there are large tracts of land and uncultivated soil infected by malaria and infested by brigands, where are only found ruins and reptiles. In the Neapolitan provinces crops of various cereals, of madder, of cotton, grow freely, and the peasants and farmers live far more comfortably than in Lombardy and the Romagne, and even accumulate money. Cotton is gradually being planted over considerable tracts of land in the Calabrie, in Puglia, and in the valleys of Sicily and Sardinia, and it is said that some of the qualities produced are equal to the best American.

Sicily, the ancient granary of Italy, is thickly populated, but the inhabitants gregate together in numerous villages near the sea; whilst the middle of the island is almost a desert, destitute of roads, scarcely cultivated, and inundated in winter by torrents that dry up in summer. The landowners, who are nearly always absentees, let large estates to the farmers, who sublet them to the peasant, who in their turn cultivate small portions next to the villages, and allow immense tracts to remain untilled. So it was formerly in Italy; the soil was ever productive-it was labour that was wanting. Nature was bountiful; man was indolent; and provided he had a piece of bread in his hand, some tatters around him, and an expanse of bright, glowing, blue sky for the roof of his couch, he was satisfied.

The government encouraged sloth, for slothfulness did not meddle with politics. The priests rewarded laziness by gratuitously feeding herds of beggars, who were at least sure to be devout Catholics. When Francis II. quitted Naples, he left behind 13,000 beggars, many of whom were strong, healthy men. When a sturdy knave was asked why he did not work, he replied, "I have wife and children if I worked, how could I keep them?"

But United Italy has changed all this. Fresh spirit has been infused into the population, and positively work is beginning to be liked. Lazzaroni have ceased to exist, and beggars can no longer be found. The blind, the maimed, the sick, are maintained at the public expense; employment is procured for the ablebodied; and refractory vagrants are sent to jail. Agricultural societies are being established in every portion of the peninsula, and prizes offered for every improvement in cultivation. Peasants are learning the value of pigs, and those useful animals are extensively exported when converted by various processes into sausages, into mortadelle, salami, coteghini, and zamponi. The pastes and maccaroni of Naples and Genoa; the oils of Puglia, which surpass those of Marseilles and Nice; the cheese of Parma, which yields an annual profit of £150,000; rice, cotton, saffron, flax, hemp, and madder,—are all articles in great demand from abroad, and annually increasing in value. Nor must we forget to name Piedmontese and Lombard silks, one of the most important staple produce of the country, well known throughout Europe; whilst the juice of the grape, the wines of Asti, of Chianti, of Montepulciano, of Capri, are acquiring a reputation but little short of those of Bordeaux and of Burgundy, and are competing with them in the North and South American markets. The trade with England is considerable; and in

1869 the exports from Italy to the British Islands amounted to £4,500,000, whilst the imports into Italy from the same quarter exceeded £10,000,000. Agriculture and commerce must be the foundation of Italian greatness; for Italy is not likely to become a first-rate manufacturing country. Neither the land nor its inhabitants are fitted for that purpose. purpose. Fuel is wanting, and the Italians, sinewy, active, and laborious as they are, are too imaginative and too uncertain in their moods to be able to plod on stolidly from morning to night, day after day, year after year, like portions of that mechanism they would be called upon to superintend and to regulate."

Nevertheless, the Italian works far more than it is imagined. 21,000 Italians are engaged in the sulphur mines, undergoing a harder labour than any of our criminals; whilst no fewer than 1,250,000 Neapolitans gain their livelihood in the manufacture of gloves, violin strings, silk stuffs, maccaroni, and lava and coral jewellery. 300,000 Lombard women earn three sous a day by spinning flax, and a number of female peasants are engaged in the preparation of the articles formerly known and prized by our fair countrywomen as Leghorn hats and bonnets. These hats require considerable skill and patience in their production; and the finer qualities, worn by the wives of opulent farmers of Tuscany, were wont to fetch very high prices, as much as 700f. being frequently paid for one specimen.

Where the Italian workman really excels is when he deals with art. The Mosaics of Pietra Dura, of Florence, the cameos and intaglios of Rome, the filagree work of Genoa, the exquisite gold chains of Venice, the ceramic vases of the Ginori establishment, are all well understood in this country.

During the French Exhibition of 1867, the Parisians gazed with admiration at the ornamental furniture in