there are several copies in existence at Rome and Naples, taken by his pupils. In sculpture there were some important works an Apollo sleeping, executed after an earthen model of Pacetti, by S. Cacciatori, his pupil; the model of the tomb erected to the noble Melzi, at Bellaggio, by his nephew, the work of S. Nesti of Florence, and another cenotaph, dedicated by the inhabitants of Chiari, a large village four leagues from Milan, to the clever lapidarian writer Morcelli, their provost; a distinguished perform ance of S. Monti of Ravenna. This vast and splendid monument, erected by husbandmen to a learned and virtuous priest, is a new proof of the popularity of the arts in Italy; such an idea would never enter the heads of our peasants who most respect their clergyman, and I am not aware that a single individual has here received a like honour from his parishioners. The divers plans of a cathedral before a large square surrounded by piazzas, announced that architecture also was well studied at Milan.

The concourse of people was very considerable at these two exhibitions. In each of the rooms, instead of a custode, a great Hungarian soldier, with his firelock on his shoulder, stood sentinel: this armed Pannonian amid the productions of Italian art was a singular and mournful sight; the listless air of the insulated conqueror, indifferent and statue-like, in the midst of the agitated crowd, seemed a pretty accurate personification of the kind of domination that he enforces." What a vast interval between such a contrast and those exhibitions at the Louvre at once royal and popular-those splendid works ordered by the prince and the state to decorate our cities, palaces, monuments and temples! Patrio

The provost is a kind of superior rector; there are four clergymen at Chiara, who are ecclesiastically subject to the provost.

Perhaps I ought to suppress this passage on the Pannonian of Brera ; for I have since made my peace with bim, and have ascertained that I did not at first do justice to his taste for the fine arts. At the exhibition of 1828, as I was again looking at these soldiers with the same impression, one of them, though under arms, came to speak to me. I thought he was about to execute some part of his orders, but it was not so; he had perceived that I was French, and with what was meant for an easy air, he said to me, pointing at the paintings: "Il est joli la maison comme ça." By the elegance of his langnage, I had no doubt that he had been in France,

tism, family feeling, and the taste of some private persons for the arts had commanded the execution of the works exhibited at Brera, but the sovereign had not ordered even one.

The finest private collection of paintings at Milan, that of general Pino, was still for sale in 1828; it contained a great Titian, Moses defending the daughters of Jethro; the Woman taken in Adultery, by Poussin; St. Joseph and a child, by Guido; and an admirable Christ bearing the Cross, by Sebastian del Piombo.

The gallery of Longhi was of no great extent, but was composed with the taste that might be expected of so clever an artist, who is besides distinguished as a poet and writer. I saw at his house in the same year a very fine drawing of Michael Angelo's Last Judgment, by S. Minardi of Rome, which he had begun to engrave, a work that he left nearly finished, and which, with the fine copy by Sigalon, will make known and preserve, in some degree, that masterpiece, which has suffered so much from the ravages of time and man, and is seen to such disadvantage.3

The collection of S. Palagi is rich in Egyptian antiquities, and contains also divers Etruscan and Greek monuments, which make it a real museum.

CHAPTER XV.

Ecccaria.-Punishment of death.

In the strada di Brera is a handsome hotel which was inhabited by Beccaria, whose medallion and those of eight other celebrated Milanese of both sexes are seen on the front.4 Beccaria, a genius full of paradox in his passionate love of

and I asked him rather cavalierly how many times he had been prisoner there. He replied, twice; and I saw by his air, which was by no means disconcerted, that his comrades had probably experienced the same fate more frequently.

3 Longhi died on the 2nd of January, 1831, at the age of 65 years.

4 Namely: Lecchi, Giulini (the historian of MIlan); Agnese (a celebrated female mathematician); Frisi,Verri, Parini, Domenico Balestrieri (who translated Tasso into Milanese); Fumagalli. A nation, which, under a foreign domination, bas counted such characters, and which in our own times bas Manzoni, bas certainly received no ordinary endow

ment.

virtue and humanity, a philosopher whose opinions were daring and rash, while his life was prudent, virtuous, and peaceable, has recently acquired partizans in the old and new worlds; his principles on the punishment of death have regained favour with the friends of enlightenment. But, notwithstanding the superior merit of some discourses and essays, I think that the instinct of self-preservation which prescribes the destruction of the homicide, the conscience of men, and that simple lex tahonis, anterior to all positive laws, will always be stronger with the people than all arguments; nor do I think that such an innovation can be compared to civil Liberty, religious toleration, the abolition of slavery, and other just and natural Improvements.

CHAPTER XVI.

Monti-Pindemonte.—Manzoni.

When I saw Monti, he was almost crushed beneath his sufferings, but still, despite his infirmities, his physiognomy was noble and his look full of poetry. He spoke in an interesting manner of the Italian language and literature, and of the derivation of the former from the Provençal, he appreciated the laborious researches of M. Raynouard, and alluded to a work on the same subject, to which he had begun to devote himself, aided by Perticari, whose death interrupted the undertaking. He asked me for news of Botta, the first historian of Italy, as himself was the first poet. The affectionate and assiduous attentions that he received from his daughter, the widow of the generous Perticari, and the grace and talents of this young lady, reminded me of one of Milton's daughters under an Italian sky.

I was subsequently acquainted, at Verona and Venice, with Ippolito Pinde

* Respecting these researches. see the twelfth chapter of the Defesa of Dante, by Perticari.

Menti was born on the 19th of February 1757, and find ca the 9th October 1828; Pindemonte, who died on the 17th of November, was born to the same yeur as Mouti: if they differed in talent, the one be ng barab, impassioned, and brilliant; the other

and melancholy, their course was perfectly equal scarcely had a month elapsed after the death of Mouth, when a subscripilon was opened in Italy to raise him a monument in one of the squares of

| monte, another great contemporary poet that Italy lost about the same time. It is impossible to see such monuments disappear without feeling a profound emotion; these superior persons were also excellent men, plain, religious, and sincere.

S. Manzoni, who, though differing on some theoretical points, seems called to succeed them, is recommended by the same qualities of the heart and by principles perhaps still more exalted. This writer has defended, against Rousseau and S. Sismondi, the possibility of combining catholicism and liberty in a country that offered him no example of it, and under a government little inclined to favour such notions; his eloquent treatise Sulla Morale cattolica is a new proof of the might of Italian genius, always on a level with the great principles of civilisation, in spite of the obstacles which embarrass it. Such characters do singular honour to Italy, if, as we think, literary characters are a tolerably just expression of public manners, representing them with not less fidelity than their works.

In the same year 1828 and the same month, died also at Ravenna the celebrated F. Cesari, orator, theologian, grammarian, critic, biographer, burlesque poet, commentator and translator of Horace, Terence, and Cicero. I had visited him at Verona, his country; he was a quick, ardent, restless elderly man, a really complete abbate, very obliging, eccentric in his dress and deportment; a determined Cruscantist, Cesari pretended to make Cicero speak precisely as he would have expressed himself in Italian in the sixteenth century. Notwithstanding his whims, irritability, and deficiency of judgment and taste, his admirers were numerous, and his loss was blended, in the patriotic and literary regrets of the Italians, with that of Monti and Pindemonte.

Milan. Verona was not less grateful towards Pindemonte; his memory is to receive the same bonour there, and his old and worthy friend, the ba roness Silvia Curtoni Verza, is at the head of the subscription.

For instance, he makes him say 'uovo di Pasqua, in un credo, un vespro uciliano, etc., expressions which he defends in the preface introducing his translation of the second volume of Letters. Milan, 1826.

CHAPTER XVII.

La Scala.-Theatre.-Italian female singers.-Bowing to the public. - Decorations. Ballet. — La Scala, society of Milan.-Carnevalone.

In 1826 I did not see La Scala at the season of its splendour. At that time there was no opera; the performance consisted of a kind of tragedy called Dirce, written by the actor who played the principal character; both the piece and the actors were exceedingly bad. and indeed this time I went for nothing but to see the theatre, which seemed to me more spacious and lofty than magnificent. La Scala has accommodation for more than four thousand spectators; it was embellished in 1830, and has, at all events, the chief merit of a theatre of that kind, namely, that of being perfectly resonant, notwithstanding its immensity; this advantage is principally owing to the form of the roof. a clever construction by Piermarini. a pupil of Vanvitelli, and the restorer of good architecture in Lombardy in the last century.

I have since been present, in September 1827, at some brilliant representations of Mose and the Ultimo giorno di Pompei, a chef-d'œuvre of Pacini. This opera had immense success at Milan; people returned from the country, and some even came from distant towns to hear the Ultimo giorno and madame Méric-Lalande, a French singer then very much liked in Italy. I found in the register of an inn the name of a prince, grandson of Louis XIV., and like him an admirer of the opera; he had written that he came to Milan, with his attendants, to hear the grand opera of the Last day of Pompeii. The piece was wonderfully executed by Rubini and Tamburini; madame Méric-Lalande, who is even lauded as a tragedian, appeared to me affected. It is true that affectation seems customary and almost insisted on among the actresses of the Italian theatres; the grimaces, finical gestures, and contorsions of the Italian female singer are shown in every part of her person: the arms, fingers, and feet of these harmonious puppets, especially at the end of the air, start into mo⚫tion simultaneously with the voice, to increase the effect. The perpetual salutations of the actor add still more to this defect of truth. As soon as the actor

receives applause, forgetting his part, in the middle of the most touching scenes, he advances towards the pit, places his hand on his heart, and bows respectfully over and over again; I have seen Tancrede less occupied with saluting his native land than in bowing to the public. The first woman's parts at La Scala were played by French actresses, for madame Comelli, now madame Rubini, was there and sung in Mosè; I have since heard a madame Casimir at Venice. Verger and Duprez, excellent singers, are Frenchmen; the latter, a favourite tener, since engaged at our grand Opera where he has obtained such brilliant success, is a pupil of that excellent and impassioned master of song, Choron, director of the school of religious music, a useful establishment which was wrongfully neglected and suffered to fall in 1830 owing to its epithet of religious. Neither are English actresses rare in Italy; I have seen them take the first parts at Turin and Genoa, and madame Cori Paltoni, an English lady favourably received by the public of La Scala, was prima donna in 1828. Foreign invasion extends even to the stage.

They played in 1828 la Prova d'un' opera seria, an old work, the music and words of which are by Gnecco; it is a very amusing picture, a kind of Comic Romance of the singing troops of Italy, and I was delighted with it. The opera buffa, which in France, beside the scenes of Molière, seems only an unmeaning buffoonery, appeared to me in Italy, on the contrary, gay, natural, and true; it is a plant of the soil that deteriorates when transplanted. The decorations of La Scala are magnificent, and superior for effect, if not for painting, to all that is elsewhere seen. I remember nothing so astonishing as the eruption of Vesuvius in the Last day of Pompeii, by S. Sanquirico. There was, however, in the last act, a trifling circumstance sufficiently ridiculous: on one of the pillars of the forum was a large transparency with these words: Si representa col velario; this scene-shifter's erudition would have been hissed at Paris, and properly too. The passing of the Red Sea in Mose, so feebly given at our grand opera, had not been executed ; but it was not caused by timidity on the part of such clever persons: all the machinery of the theatre was employed in

the preparations for Vesuvius, and the sea, which in nature produces and feeds volcanos, could not be represented because of the volcano of La Scala.

Ballets have an action and interest in Italy which we knew nothing of before the charming Somnambule. They gave at La Scala in 1827 a ballet entitled Zaira, which I expected to find very bad; I imagined it difficult by gestures and capers to render the feeling and passion of such a piece; the ballet, however, was well got up, and presented a fine spectacle; it was there that I first had the pleasure of admiring the aerial gracefulness of Taglioni, since called to reform the stiff and starched motions of our ancient opera, and to replace them by her natural, elegant, pure, and almost poetical dancing. In the year following I saw a long and tedious ballet entitled Agamennone, a kind of dancing parody of the piece by Alfieri and Lemercier, which was represented in the Italian style, between the two acts of Cenerentola and la Prova d'un' opera seria, to give the singers a little repose: thus were all the horrors of the palace of Argos diversified with the mad tricks of Don Magsilico and Maestro Campanone, two hamorous characters marvellously well played by Lablache. Tragic ballets are performed in Italy in great numbers, these serious pantomimes being more easily got up on account of the small number of subjects for the dance, as well as the mimic talent natural to the Italans; Gioja, the Italian Gardel, has composed a ballet on the Death of Casar; I was present in 1828 at Bologna at the representations of his Gabrielle de Vergy, and they promised a ballet entitled Atreo for the ensuing

season.

La Scala is all the society of Milan; and people really know not how to pass the evening if there be no performance, for they have not there, as at Florence, Rome, and Naples, acorps diplomatique to give receptions. Notwithstanding the great fortunes and generally easy circumstances of the inhabitants, no one thinks himself obliged to be at home. The suecessive revolutions that the country has undergone during the last forty years, and the consequent reactions, seemed to have annihilated social life. Those draw

-room insurrections, when liberty takes refuge in the opinion of the fashion

able world, which, in France, the different parties have always opposed to an unpopular government, have no existence in Italy. The opposition, either in exile or powerless, travels or holds its peace; and the small talk of the boxes, perpetually interrupted by the arrival of the last comers or the compulsory departure of the first, owing to the want of room, is hardly calculated to develope conversational talent. The opera may indeed be but a feeble accessory (which is natural enough, though it has excited the surprise and indignation of some travellers, since it has been already heard and will be heard again forty times), but it is occasionally listened to, and serves as another source of diversion. Such conversations, as is easily seen, can only consist of news and gossip, and it would be rather difficult for ideas to find a place in them. The frivolous and trifling habits of these meetings is, however, preferable to the dulness of our écarté; and the multifarious relations that it establishes, as these visits are nearly of every day occurrence, produce a kind of cordial and friendly familiarity not altogether without its attractions. The practice of receiving visits at the theatre, so injurious to the spirit of society, is not to be eradicated in Italy: every lady is a queen in her box, and like Cæsar, she will prefer the first place in that little empire to the second in a drawing-room.

The out-of-door life at Milan is merry. Its brilliant carnival, called Carnevalone, is prolonged to the Saturday after AshWednesday, and during those four days, in spite of the solemn warning of the Church, balls, masquerades, and every species of carnival extravagance are kept up with greater spirit than before.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Comic actors in Italy.-Italian Theatre.— Nota.— Philo-dramatic theatres.-Fantoccini.

There is one observation that has struck me in visiting the various theatres of Italy; which is, that if the lyrical department shows symptoms of decline, the performance of comic pieces seems to have attained a high pitch of perfection. Were the several actors of that country united, who are now dispersed and belong to different companies, they would compose probably the best comic troop in

1

Europe. Demarini was an excellent comedian, Vestri is very natural and lively; Bon, an esteemed dramatic author, is original and piquant; Modena is noble and pathetic; Dominiconi is full of warmth; signoras Marchionni, Luigia Bon, Internari, Pasqualini, Belloni-Colombelli, Polvaro-Carlotta, have sensibility, grace, and delicacy, and I doubt whether there exists a more genteel soubrette than signora Romagnoli. It is true that none of these actresses equal mademoiselle Mars, but the talent of that inimitable actress would be scarcely adapted for Italian comedy and the characters it represents. The Italian manners being all exterior, if one may be allowed the expression, and generally uniform in the higher class, seem hardly suitable for the scenes and action of comedy. There is not sufficient variety and contrast in their vanities to require a lesson; the satire of reason, the first principle of the vis comica, would be too strong and too serious for people so babitually indifferent; and the negligence and indolence of individuals are less comic than the pretensions, disappointments, and annoyances of our social state. The difference of dialects is another obstacle to the improvement of the Italian stage: the pieces which are written in these dialects, are the only merry and popular ones, but they are not intelligible to the whole nation; the others, written in the book style, a kind of dead language not resembling the vernacular tongue, cannot supply those spirited and natural expressions which excite the laugh peculiar to good comedy, sudden and free, long, hearty and communicative. The duke of Modena's company played in 1827 at the Re theatre, a very pretty comedy of Goldoni, I Pettegolezzi delle Donne." with an ensemble that we might wish some royal companies to imitate. In this comedy one of the characters was a ridiculous Frenchman, too common in the pieces of Goldoni; but this Parisian en perruque of the last century was but little like those of our day, who are more in favour in Italy. The antipathy for the French is of the preceding century. Ac

He died in 1830.

The Tatting of the Ladles.

3 The thirteenth and fourteenth editions of Nota's Comedies appeared about the same time at Florence and Milan. M. Baudry gave an elegant and correct edition of them in Paris, in 1829; la Donna ambi

| cording to Addison, it was very strong, particularly among the lower classes; Louis XIV., so admired by Europe, was odious to them: the Genoese had not forgotten the bombardment of their city; the Venetians were dissatisfied with the alliance between the French and the Turks; the Romans with the menaces made to Innocent XI., Naples and Milan by the humiliation inflicted on their sovereigns. The Germans were greatly preferred to the French. All this is totally changed: the people of the present day regret them, and point out in all quarters the works for which they are indebted to them; and the valet de piace, who bows to the lamp of the Madonna at every street corner, strives to be a philosopher with you in every thing else.

Nota, the modern Goldoni of the Italian stage, was, like him, a lawyer; the bar may become a good dramatic school, if declamation and prolixity be carefully avoided; the legal exposition of facts demands the same perspicuity as the drama; the peroration is the dénouement; action and intrigue even are necessary to the two kinds of composition; they combine eloquence, passion, and humour: the pleadings of Beaumarchais are the best of his pieces. The comedies of Nota are sensible, regular, natural, interesting, well conducted, and written with purity, an advantage which he has over Goldoni ; but they are deficient in originality and gaiety, and the characters are somewhat superficially drawn. La Fiera (the Fair), perhaps his best work, has some excellent scenes, a spirited dialogue, true characters, and a moral object. L'Atrabilare is another good comedy of Nota's, but its bero has some similarity with the Misanthrope and the Tyran domestique.

It is singular enough that, at the moment when imitations from the foreign stage are recommended incessantly as the only resource of our exhausted dramatic literature, the foreign theatres only exist on translations and imitations of the pieces produced on our stage, and even of those least to be recommended. Our melodramas, it is said, become sublime in Germany, thanks to the nebulous ziosa, translated in French, and from the French into Russian, has been played at Moscow, on the occasion of the emperor Nicolas's coronation. Some of Nota s pieces are inserted in the translation of the Theatres étrangers.