perhaps as much ridicule as disgrace on their country, and which certainly gave them little reason to envy the rights and privileges of primogeniture.

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Things have now indeed undergone a rapid improvement. It is no longer unblushingly asserted that it is only the fool that marrieth," nor is a husband any longer congratulated with, or thanked for, his devotion to the public weal. The code of cicisbeism has been abolished, if indeed it ever existed; for its institutions, like those of ancient chivalry, seem to recede in the past as we look for them, so as to render it a very difficult task to unravel the truth from the fables with which it has been interwoven. But notwithstanding the partition and equalization of property arising from the abolition of feudal laws, and the French agrarian reforms, which had the splendid result of bringing the whole nation to a happy level of beggary, many are still the Italian youths whom sheer want and dread of starvation deters from wedded life; and celibacy, if it has ceased to be a matter of fashion, is still, to a fearful extent, a measure of necessity.

What is elsewhere only called a dutiful wife, in Italy must be a heroine; and yet the number of these heroines is greater by far than foreign travellers are willing to acknowledge, greater even than the Italians themselves seem inclined to suppose.

Against the allurements of a loose society, an Italian woman has the shield of her religious and moral principles, the constant watchfulness of her husband and all around her, and the hundred-eyed vigilance of public scandal.

Religion in Italy is omnipresent. Whatever may be said or thought of Catholic institutions, it must not be denied that that creed yields a constant, faithful support to a wavering mind. As long as frequented by a true believer, confession may have the effect of giving timely warning against, and putting an end to, dangerous connexions.

Again, the Italian wife, even when inclined to evil, will often be restrained by want of opportunity. Her husband, however perfectly indifferent as to the possession of her heart, is still inexorably jealous of what he calls his honour; around

his lady, at every hour of the day or might, are a crowd of his allies, his mother, his sisters, and other bigoted dowagers and sour-tempered spinsters belonging to his family, and warmly attached to his interests, who, on the first symptoms of coolness and estrangement between the parties, range themselves into a formidable array on his side, and volunteer their services as an active and sleepless domestic police.

Finally, it can only be a hopelessly abandoned woman, and one dead to all feelings of feminine delicacy, that will brave the meddling and gossiping spirit prevailing in those petty Italian communities. In every small town,-and all towns in Italy are small as to notoriety,—there are its coteries of male lingue, idle, and generally worthless beings, whose sole business is to pry into the privacy of families, to weigh and sift their neighbour's conduct, and put the worst construction upon it. The levities of an English commoner's wife, lost as she is among the crowds of this vast metropolis, may amount to the utmost profligacy, ere they attract public attention. Likewise the gentle flirtation of a few months at a German spa, or at a southern watering-place, is not likely to tell against the character of a wandering peeress on her return. But an Italian lady is acting all her life on the same stage and before the same audience. Every word and step are malignantly commented upon by abject creatures, always willing to bring forward any momentary imprudence as an argument in favour of their disbelief in female virtue, and who are never so happy as when they can exult at an angel's fall.

Before such a jury, it is evident that scarcely any woman's fame can escape unsullied, and it is, therefore, no wonder if those foreign observers who grounded their judgment on the venomous report of such compilers of scandalous chronicles, have formed so unfavourable an estimate of the moral standard of woman in Italy, whilst, if they had had chivalry enough in their souls to give stoutly the lie to those vulgar defamers, and challenge them to produce proof of their vague accusations, they would, most probably, have arrived at different results.

This must also account for another moral phenomenon which

has often struck foreign travellers, viz, that women are to be found in Italy, according to all appearance, perfect specimens of uxorial and maternal excellence, and yet designated by public rumour as the heroines of many a tale of gallantry and intrigue.

For so very inconsistent are the charges brought against the morals of the Italians, that they are, at once and in the same breath, declared to be, of all people in the world, the most loose and remiss in suffering themselves to be carried away by their passions, and the most perfect masters in the art of dissembling or disguising them; at once the hottest hearts and the coolest brains, at once headlong and violent, circumspect and cunning!

Would it not sound more like common sense and Christian charity to suppose that handsome is that handsome › does? » Would it not be humane and generous to estimate a woman's character rather from her deeds than from the scandal of the vulgar? Would it not be more like English justice to admit of no guilt till it is satisfactorily proved before a court of law. Do we not proceed with sequal forbearance at home towards our own country women? Why then not on the continent? Why not towards the women of Italy?

It is not thus, we are obliged to confess, that foreign writers are wont to deal with us. In no region of the earth, says our fair authoress, « are so many domestic virtues to be met with as are found to adorn the women of England; nowhere is a woman more readily disposed to show her respect and deference towards her husband, or more active and industrious in ministering to his comforts, or promoting his prosperity. »

This compliment,-evidently written in the style of Tacitus's golden description of the German tribes, and which we might perhaps have more unscrupulously accepted in the good old ages of the distaffs and spinning-wheels, this compli ment the Italians send us in return for the many indignities heaped upon their name by our Morgans, Blessingtons, et hoc genus omne, it being the object of every patriotic writer in that country to raise the moral standard at home by descan

ting even to exaggeration upon the excellent qualities of other nations, whilst we generally seem to have done enough for the improvement of our people when we flatter ourselves that we have satisfactorily proved that we are no worse than our neighbours.

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Let then a woman's heart,» exclaims, Countess Pepoli at the close of a long chapter on « Friendship, Love, and Coquetry,»«let a woman's heart be chaste, and her manners and thoughts be chaste; let her greatest beauty be il Pudore, and her greatest ornament la Verecondia; -we are obliged to quote her original words, regretting that these sweet Latin terms have not been adopted in the English language. «For if modesty and ingenuousness are, in any country, the most becoming requisites of our sex, much more are such qualities desir able in the women of Italy, that by their irreprehensible demeanour they may put an end to the unfavourable opinions entertained among foreigners about their character. For who can read without sorrow and anger those books from oltremonti, where it is unblushingly as serted that the Italian women are loose to all incontinency, that their life is wasted among dissipations and follies, and their minds bent only on coquetry and intrigue. No doubt, there is in all this exaggeration and untruth; but I hope it was reserved for our age to silence slander for ever, and restore our fair name altogether,

Nor must we follow the dictates of virtue only because it is conducive to our personal welfare, because it secures the love and respect of our husband and children and the estimation of all, but also for the sake of our own beloved though unhappy country; which, as long as it produced a race of valiant and generous men, could also boast of giving life to the wisest and noblest of women; wherefore if, choosing our models among the most applauded characters of by-gone ages, we in our turn make ourselves patterns of chastity and purity, we shall leave an example which will long survive us, and exercise its regenerating influence among future generations.»

We say Amen with all our heart, and since our subject has finally led us back to the work of which it was our business to give some account to our readers, we think we may venture to affirm that the countess's precepts are amply calculated to operate a most salutary reform on the morals of a country, which, disposed as we may be in its favour, certainly admits of considerable improvement; and we take the warm

reception and speedy diffusion of her work-which, in spite of the Papal interdict, has gone through the second and third editions-as an omen of the earnest desire of the Italians for a general reform of their manners and rehabilitation of their

name.

"

Certainly a book that may better answer the purpose of a manual for the easy exercise of all religious and moral duties of woman, in her capacities of wife and mother, that may enter with more minuteness into all the petty details of domestic economy, or with more depth and sagacity into all the inmost recesses of a young heart in its earliest development, and yet with less tediousness and prolixity, is not, perhaps, easily to be found in any language. It would not be difficult to perceive, for instance, more profundity of metaphysical thought, more strength of reasoning, more conciseness and pithiness of style in an anonymous recent publication, entitled "Woman's Mission, and more skill in the art of writing, more ease and amenity in Mrs. Ellis's Women of England; » for not women only but writers of every description in Italy seem to be labouring under a perpetual constraint, as if their rich and beautiful language were no longer sufficient and adequate to the conceptions of their thought, and all write in a sort of contorted, affected, mosaic style, as if the choice and collation of every word were the result of a long and painful deliberation. From this affectation, laboriousness, and-if it were not ungallant to use such an expression in reference to a lady's work-pedantry of style, we cannot say that Countess Pepoli is always perfectly free. Luckily, however, language in a work of this description, is an object of secondary consideration, and as a manual of practical education, as a guide for training up "wise and amiable women, » this volume is calculated to do more good than any of our analogous publications.

(THE FOREIGN QUARTERLY REVIEW.)