"But ever and anon of griefs subdued There comes a token like a scorpion's sting, A tone of music-summer's eve-or spring- Striking the electric chain wherewith we are Even after Byron, these lines on a flowering acacia seen on an Italian spring morning may be quoted without peril: "The blossoms hang again upon the tree, me, Against my casement, on that sunny morn, born! And as I lay, panting from the fierce strife mine! And from its tender depths the blue heaven And the white blossoms bowed to thee, my child, Her pas these little confidences been withheld. 66 It may be hinted that a person unused to hardships and inattentions ought not to have taken that route at all; "que diable allaitelle faire dans cette galère?" For her next trip, if she consults us, a britscha and posters for locomotion will be suggested, and the Place Vendôme for location. The French postilions will be found expeditious, the landlords obsequious, and the waiters well bred. As to her present work, without expecting her to be logical, we could desire fewer general conclusions drawn from particulars. It is too bad, because she travelled in out-of-the-way places in an out-of-the-way manner, not as other household Kates, and met with certain company and consequences, to set down la belle France as one wilderness of monkeys; but there, as everywhere, like equality-loathing Coriolanus, her heart is her mouth, and what her breast forges that her tongue must Always in extremes, whether for love or hate-and a good hater she is at all events-not, perhaps, the worse lover for that-the spirit of the moment moves her, be it for good or evil. She changes character as if performing the same night both in the tragedy and farce, and enters into the genius of each with equal ardor, eagerness, and, we believe, sincerity. When despair is the order To imitate, in reviewing her, the style of our of the day, hers is terrific; now she sits among heroine's own transitions-there is a good deal of Rome's ruins wailing like the dethroned, childless the original in her second start in search of felicity. queens in Richard III.; anon she is pelting sugarTo have traversed the dreary "Atlantic six times" plums at the Carnival. To hear her hoyden prepared her tolerably for a December journey over laughter, holding both its sides, neither black cares, French cross-roads, which do not sweeten temper, men, babies, nor Butlers exist either in the old or especially when vehicles and hostelries are to new world, nor private feelings nor public reviewmatch, and no other solace but "a maid comforta-ers, with such rashness and recklessness does she ble but not amusing," and since, we presume, lay about her when her "dander is up." dismissed. One hundred pages are sacrificed to Let us, however, repeat, even as to her prose Thy twins, that crowned the morning of thy How is it with thee-lost-lost-precious one! utter. the platitudes of this Cockney incumbrance-what's web, what we have already said of her sombre Hecuba to us?—or to details of the superabun- lyrical embroideries. We do not apprehend that dance of Gallic dirt and discomfort, and the defi- there is any theatrical trick or affectation in these ciency of cubicular crockery. A warm passion Hamlet transitions from intense light to gloom, nor for cold water does credit to our pilgrim puritan, anything inconsequent and contrary to human nawhose adorers (if we may judge by ourselves) ture, even in sufferers of less tinder-like temperawould have assumed that her ablutions had some-ment. Wrongs too deep to be forgiven, regrets how been properly performed-for, after all, there too bitter to be forgotten, have been so grafted on is much virtue occasionally in a sponge-even had an originally gladsome disposition as to become as the French. Dishonesty and falsehood are so little matters of shame that detection in either of them only excites a shrug and grin on the part of the offender." part and parcel of herself. Once let a mind thus perception of truth and its inviolable sacredness jangled and out of tune surrender itself, seeking relief, to strong impressions, either of joy or sadness, and the even tenor of its course is exchanged for a condition bordering on the hysterical; the flood-gates once open and the waters out, slight need be the check, the disturbing influence, which and not all the glory of the past can atone to me for "Of such experiences one day in Italy is full, suffices to turn them from one channel to another; the present shame of the people, nor all the loveliand as we are never nearer hate than when loving ness of external things make up for the ugliness of most, so melancholy dogs the heels of high excite-human souls without truth or honor: women withment, like an inevitable shadow. At first, no out chastity, and men without integrity, and a whole doubt, the practice throughout these volumes of stopping short in a disquisition about some general subject, or even in a description of some gay festival scene-drawing a line with the pen and so bounding off at once into a strain, now in verse, now in almost as musical prose, of deep personal passion and affliction-at first sight this may, no question, strike one as savoring of hey presto!— change the scene-let the drawing-room disappear and give us the dungeon again! But, on the whole, we are satisfied that Mrs. Fanny's method is about the best she could have taken to make her pages reflect the real agitations backward and forward of her own sensitive and sorely-tried na ture. 66 country without religion, make a poor residence, în my humble judgment, unless one could be turned the faculty of seeing the divine beauty which all into eyes, and all one's perceptions be limited to this baseness mars. "-Vol. ii., p. 50. Leaving the sacred college to battle for their subalterns, some lying, and possibly a shade deeper than white, may exist among the laity of the eternal city under the sway of shaven priests, as is alleged to have been the case under pontifices unsworn either to celibacy or poverty-quid Roma faciam? mentiri nescio. It should, however, be remembered that travellers make the season, and are thrown chiefly among gentry that live on them, and must be brief with birds of passage, who, like On a former occasion we too have "said our woodcocks, if once missed seldom give a second say" on some of this young lady's own unpleas- chance. To say slapdash that the whole country ing peculiarities," administering counsel with re- is without religion-that all the men are liars, and proof, more in kindness than anger, and gently as all the women fie fies-thus killing two sexes with a parent flagellates the child he loves. Gladly do one stone-seems rather summary procedure for a we mark amendment in our interesting pupil, al- pretty warm-hearted poetess. Were it so, society beit the sinack of orange-peel, Covent Garden, and could not exist in Italy, where it does, however, Drury Lane is still perceptible. In some respects contrive to exist-and, if there is any faith in Mr. she is incorrigible. We discover outbursts of the Lear passim-nearly as simple, uncorrupted, and same flippancy and bad taste, of the same habit of consequently happy, as in localities where there is calling things by their right, or rather wrong, less of "divine beauty." As to the peculiarly names the same dawdling over nastiness which priest-ridden Romans and their peculiar lapses she practically abhors, but has a Swift-like delight they on their part consider themselves more sinned in describing. In dealing with ungentlemanlike against than sinning, and contend that sharp praemen and their ill manners, a phraseology which tice is necessary in self-defence. Confessedly they takes tone and tincture from them may, perhaps, are no match for a drab-coated Pennsylvanian, and be permissible on other sides of the ocean; but in we incline to believe that they occasionally are done England, we are happy to say, it still grates on by hard-bargaining Britons in brass buttons. The ears polite, and is incompatible with olfactory age of gold, when the English nation consisted of euphuism and lady-like water-worship. Beautiful three classes only, those who let themselves be Italy needs no such foil, and we grudge digressions cheated 25, 50, and 100 per cent., is fled forever, on toad-stools and tittle-backs. We have constant with St. Peter's pence, from the Seven Hills. cause to complain of tourists of both sexes, who, More illogical, and what is worse in the gentler starting with the foregone conclusion of a book, sex, more ill-natured, are Mrs. Fanny's comments will flesh the edge of their young curiosity at on her own fair compatriots and fellow consolationCalais, will note down what we want not to know seekers. Always prone to ridicule and exagger-will waste time in seeing things not worth see-ation, in their unlucky case her portraits are exing, and then ink in the record. The whole of travagant caricatures, whenever they are not actual the French progress, in short, might as well have libels. She goes out of her way to spy the motes been cut down to half a dozen pages. in soft eyes, and never forgives a sister's shame Even when she has got over both Alp and Ap- Every one she meets with is either sour-tempered, ennine, her charges are sweeping, whether directed ill-bred, ill-dressed, or an awkward amazon. It is against classes or corporations, or tongues and peo-probable in these days of steam, that every one of ples-not to mention principalities and powers. our womankind who, like herself, overleaps the Thus, as we are assured, the Italian priests are worldly knaves, mercenary hypocrites, who purposely instruct the people in ignorance and supertition, while their apt scholars " have as little Simplon, may not be exactly suited to sit (either with or without drapery to Mr. Gibson for one of the Graces travelling incognita. These, however, (we must hope and believe,) are the exceptions, not the rule; assuredly, so far as we have ob- nay, when, according to her own old phrase, the served, nine times out of ten, whenever our conti- " black dog" is on her when she is under that disnental path has been crossed by one of those bright enchantment of life and the vanity of human wishes visions which seem lent from Heaven to earth for which peoples cloisters, wherever cloisters exist, one day, the hourì has proved to be a sample of with those who have expected too much—even she that race, the best in blood, the most beautiful in is forced to feel that there is balm in the Romish face and complexion, the most symmetrical in form, Gilead-even she yearns to sacrifice herself forever the purest in mind and body-in short, a specimen to the altar, to a nunnery-to a nunnery-where, of that precious porcelain whereof are made the dead to the living, she mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters of English gentlemen-a pretty good breed, too, and not particularly abundant across the salt seas, as we need not tell Mrs. Fanny. If she has not renounced her glorious birthright, she commits the no less egregious folly of offering up her own kith and kin, in the vain hopes of conciliating the vanity of foreign inferiority, which her former gibes have irremediably offended. "Invidiam placare paras, virtute relictâ ?” Enough of this. Ready as we are on every occasion to stand up against any assailant, foul or fair, of the best of the only good sex, we have no wish to prolong any censure of Fanny Kemble. Far more pleasing is the task to pay sincere homage to her powers of description, her keen relish and perception of nature, her original and often masculine judgment. Occasional escapades of wilfulness may be forgiven: whenever she puts on the buskins she rises at once-like Henry V. when escaping from Eastcheap-into the rational and poetical; tone and temper are changed, and the vulgar and violent exeunt into the green-room. might mourn for sin, And find for outward Eden lost a paradise within. But to be sure this is hardly the prevailing tonenor perhaps could we expect it. The triple-crowned papacy seen from afar, enthroned like the ghost of the Roman empire, on sites which retain their settled sentiment of power, presents an image that awes, imposes, and attracts. Distance lends en chantment to the view-approach, the mirage disappears-enter the gorgeous temple, 't is a whitened sepulchre. The pomp and pride of the old system is manifest-the spirit and influence is dead; the pageants satiate the lust of the eye without satisfying the heart; churches are the staple, and ceremonies are too obviously things got up merely to be seen. At every page we learn that the jealous Roman priests monopolize spectacle; and while they scarcely tolerate a legitimate, because competing, theatre, are lavish in ecclesiastical pantomime, melodrama, and "tawdry, tinselly trumpery." In her next sentence, however, 66 a whole she quite forgets what she had said about country without religion :" "It is extremely painful to me," says she, "to come from a mere motive of curiosity into a temple dedicated to God; my conscience rebukes and troubles me the whole time, and all other considerations are lost in the recollection that I am in the thousands of souls for hundreds of years. To gaze house of prayer, consecrated by the worship of about, too, with idle, prying eyes, where sit and earth in solemn contemplation or devotion, makes me feel sacrilegiously."-Vol. i., p. 51. The native clergy are less thin-skinned :— Rome proves the end of her travels and travail; and long has the Eternal City been an asylum to the sad. To need consolation is passport sufficient; widely open the gates to all who have calamity in common to this convent of Europe alike retire the uncrowned king and the heart-broken slave. Here this victim of Yankeeism finds, under a sister's roof, new children and a home cheered by an in-door wel-kneel my fellow-Christians with theirs turned to the come warm as the sun without; here, and in the immediate neighborhood, she passes a happy year, and thus masters marvels at leisure-without being tied to the tail of Madama Starkie, Leonum arida nutrix. Her eye, schooled in scenic and dramatic effect, "To-day was a sort of climax to the religious carnival of the whole week, and the number of sights seizes differences at once, whether in creed or character, color or costume. Fresh from the model monies was really quite embarrassing. The eagerto be seen in the shape of strange religious cererepublic, she has little reserve and less respect for ness with which Monsignore urged upon us settled facts, forms, and persons: to her all the the curiosity and beauty of these various holy specworld's a stage, and she speaks out plainly, be the tacles struck me as very strange. I find it difficult to gallantee-show in St. Peter's, and the pope him-imagine that frame of mind which rejoices in the unself first fiddler. In describing the mind and manners of a city where priests rule and the spiritual is materialized and hackneyed, subjects, which in England are reverentially avoided, occupy a prominent place; and none can have lived much in Roman Catholic countries without having painfully remarked the familiarity with which sacred things are discussed, by which an impression of profanity is conveyed. In calmer moments, we are happy to see, she can clearly distinguish between Roman- The curate dresses his sallad with the oil offered ism and Christianity-the chaff from the corn; she to the Madonna's lamp. Accordingly, during the clings with drowner's clutch to religious comfort; holy week, when desecration keeps pace with va sympathizing presence of crowds of strangers at the sacred services of one's religion; and it is always a marvel to me that the Catholic clergy, and even the people themselves, do not object to the careless show which foreigners make of their places of worship and religious ceremonies. To be sure foreigners are a very considerable itein of profit to the Roman people and Catholic places of worship, and so the thing resolves itself into its natural elements.”— Vol. i., p. 253. ried attraction, all the priests, we are told, "like on these occasions, is a syrabol—the visible imperrival showmen or managers," deceive all the for- sonation of the church and its priesthood, its attrieigners who ask for information, always making butes and offices; every action of his is typical, out that whatever is best worth seeing or hearing every article of his dress allegorical. In him-be is to be at their own chapel. Orders are given for he a doll, big or little, precious or not-is the the dress-circles, and the crowd renders the Vatican question and the whole question, arbi et orbi, to "a perfect bear-garden.” The many is but a the eternal city and the world; and to its cost did mob, whether in the drawing-rooms of St. James', Rome discover at no remote period the difference the galleries of Covent Garden, or the marble aisles between the iron crown and the jewelled tiara. of St. Peter's. Although accustomed, as we all In the pope is fixed and embodied the grand cause know, to overflowing houses, she tells us (vol. i., of spiritual domination and dictation versus civil p. 239) that she never witnessed anything more supremacy and private judgment. There can be disgusting than the conduct of her own sex, and no compromise: one of the two must be extermiprincipally Englishwomen-Abigails probably-nated; and ecclesiastics may exist who, while their crushing, their indecent curiosity, their total waging war to the knife against a pope in Rome, forgetfulness of the character of the place, their would tender the olive-branch to his principle— coarse levity and comments, and their flirtations power-if translated to their own dioceses, or even mingled with the devotions of the benighted papists parishes. whose sanctuary they were invading. Eventually Our favorite describes the death of the late pope our censor is "hustled out by these ladies"-as is and the election of his successor. Curses loud a poor priest who retires to pray in some distant and deep pealed the one out; vivas, no less noisy and unfashionable church. Here, as elsewhere, than shallow, welcomed the other in; ere the close the professional never escapes her Kemble eye or of the funeral pomp-which, by the way, reminded lash. The canonical kisses of peace consisted her, from its "pasteboard decorations, of the tomb "of a series of embraces between the priests that of Ninus in the Semiramide-only vastly less marvellously resembled similar performances on impressive," letters were directed to Gregory the stage; the hands resting on each other's XVI., in Hell;" epistles, we trust, duly since shoulders, and the head turned discreetly away, so returned to the dead letter office in Rome, endorsed as to ensure the least possible cordiality and reality by the proper authorities "not known here." in the affectionate demonstration." The robed We confess to a liking for the deceased: we had choristers sang divinely; but “all had an air of long years ago marked and mused over his halfas perfect indifference as the provoking disinter-monastic, half-anile ways-his horror at the heresy estedness of the chorus in a pathetic opera; some novelty, his desire to let well alone, and leave poswere taking snuff with each other, while some terity a something to do. We sympathized with were rapidly and mechanically crossing themselves; his love for snuff-the least disreputable consolathey talked, laughed, pushed, and jostled each tion of celibacy. We respected his hatred for other during the whole chant." The properties thin potations, and adopted his infallible invention are not always better observed than propriety. of Marsala mixed with Orvieto-not a drop of She detects under satin robes the same dirty boots allaying Tiber in 't-a better pontifical half-andand trowser-legs which "in an indifferent theat-half than heretical bishop. Alas! that the poor rical spectacle obtrude below the costume of some old gentleman should have been starved to death Roman senator's red-striped toga." Nay, she by the brother of his barber (vol. ii., p. 63.) Peace winds up her critiques by quarrelling with the pope to his ashes! he was a pope-aye, every inch a himself and in Rome, the wise proverb to the pope-and had the good sense to comprehend the contrary notwithstanding: incompatibility of his finality with progress-to scout the belle alliance of the tiara with the tricolor "When they set him down, and take him up, and cover his legs, and uncover them, and kiss, and bow, and bend, and hand him here and there like a poor precious little old doll, can I refrain from a felling of disgust and displeasure ?"—Vol. i., p. 128. de se. 66 and pronounce against himself no verdict of felo The amiable and accomplished Pius IX., it would seem, in his early inexperience of power and misconception of position-possibly influenced a good deal by having, in younger days, mixed "Upon the whole," she says, "these church with radicals in a revolutionized colony-promised spectacles are very unsatisfactory to me:"-and more than he has been able or even willing to perso they must be to all who come, without a form. At this moment, while we write, his edict prompter or book of the play, to strange represen- hint of "prudent gradation in amelioration" has tations in an unknown tongue: sounds and ges- chilled the popular enthusiasm and stilled its tures, which seem meaningless and mummery to bravos. Auditors of public accounts, barristers-ofthe stranger, appeal at once to the senses and three-years'-standing, are not enough; steam and souls of the natives, who comprehend the forms rail concessions will not now satisfy-nay, by under which substance is shrouded; a Protestant increasing foreign influx, they will stimulate the freshwoman at Rome smiles at what she deems craving for foreign civil and religious liberty. pantomime, just as the neatest Italian Monsignore, Strange gifts from a hand which forges fetters for in a city of the Moslems, eschews their prophet's soul and mind! The position of Pius IX. is painablutions as works of supererogation. The pope, fully difficult: treason foreign and domestic, the Austrian bayonet, the Jesuit's "boccone," the ghost of Clement XIV., menace him if he proceeds-Italian exaltation and exasperation if he stands still. We may expect to hear of many vacillations-plots-reactions—and resumptions. The acclamations which hailed his accession grieved our Corinna's ear, as "demanding impossibilities and foretelling disappointments;" yet she cheers him on to a gulf deeper than that into which the self-devoting Curtius plunged. "It may be that the stone which thou art heaving From off thy people's neck shall fall and crush thee; It may be that the sudden flood shall push thee From off the rock, whence, prophet-like, believing In God's great future, thou dost set it free! Yet heave it, heave it heaven high, nor fear To be o'erwhelmed in the first wild career Of those long-prisoned tides of liberty! "That stone which thou hast lifted from the heart Of a whole nation, shall become to thee A glorious monument, such as no art E'er piled above a mortal memory: Falling beneath it, thou shalt have a tomb That shall make low the loftiest dome in Rome!" -Vol. ii., p. 218. Her melodramatic tendencies were enlisted by the prologue of his pontificate; she was enchanted with "the nocturnal expeditions of his holiness, disguised as an abbate" à la Haroon Alraschid, his manifestations of the power of the keys à la Normanby, his throwing purses to paupers à la Tekeli. There was much small jealous interference with nobodies about nothings in the administration of old Gregorio ;-but surely that might have been got rid of tacitly-at all events, without constant protrusion of the new infallible in propriâ persona. To our sober notions, the time of the head of church and state is ill wasted even on petty pities, which may better be entrusted to subordinate relieving officers-and we greatly fear, on the whole, that at the centre of hierocratic Rome as at that of siderocratic Brandenburgh, a step has been taken which can neither be retracted nor persisted in without serious danger to far more than the initiator. But let us hope if we can. In both cases we respect the main motive; and "Prudens futuri temporis exitum The transition to Art is easy in Rome, where, twin-sister of Religion, she has long divided the allegiance of strangers. Her earliest and best patron has been the Church, who has dearly paid for her whistle. The necessity of replenishing a treasury exhausted from the erection of St. Peter's, roused, by the abuse of spiritual traffic, a Luther to shake its foundations. Leo X., by his idolworship of the classical, drove Christian art from the temple and desecrated its altars with pagan beauty; and insulted Religion avenged herself by the iconoclastic reformation. We submit (now Mr. Seguier is dead) the following sensible observations to the trustees of the National Gallery : "There is nothing of which the impression has become deeper in my mind than the necessity of an absolute education for anything like a due appreciation of that which is most beautiful in art. In those alone possessed of the intuitive perceptions and exceptional organization of genius, the process of appreciation may be rapid; to the majority it must be like all their accomplishments-most gradual. There is something absolutely piteous in watching the procession of thronging sight-seers who visit these wonderful shrines, and knowing how little pleasure, and less profit, they bear away from their cursory and yet laborious pilgrimages. It is the work of years, to one not especially gifted, to learn to discriminate (in all art, but in painting, I should say, especially) bad from good, and good from what is best. Perfect senses, vivid sensibilities, imagination for the ideal, judgment for the real, knowledge of what is technical in the execution, critical competency to apprehend the merits and the claims of that which is purely intellectual, with what is prescriptive in art-reflection to sugthe conception; knowledge to furnish comparisons gest that which is paramount in nature-long habits of observation exercised on various and numerous works-and that which most hardly preserves itself through all this, and yet without which all this makes but a common-place perceiver of faults and beauties-freshness of mind and depth of feeling, from which alone (combined with the rest) can spring the faculties of an appreciator-these, it qualifications for those who would not only see but appears to me, are the absolutely indispensable comprehend art."-Vol. ii., p. 268. Few, we fear, of our countrymen pass the Alps provided with one tithe of our fair countrywoman's indispensables; and however glibly many may talk of their Raphael, Correggio, and stuff, established fine things are generally taken for granted, and raptures regulated per notes of admiration in the a Murray." Smatterers shrink from hints of dissent or disappointment: to praise Pietro Perugino is always safe at Rome. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing; misplaced erudition worse. Woe to the carpenter critics who measure St. Peter's with a foot-rule! Woe to such as geologize the Venus de Medicis, and speculate on the Moses of Michael Angelo just as Murchison does on boulder of the Baltic! The poetry is not more surely thus discharged out of art, than it is from history by the Niebuhr school-all immeasurably colder and harder than their master-peering pedants without romance or music in their souls, who send tourists back to their parishes like vagrant paupers, dry as remainder biscuit. "Gardez-vous," exclaims Voltaire, " des gens durs, qui se disent solides, des esprits sombres, qui prétendent au jugement parcequ'ils sont dépourvus d'imagination, qui veulent proscrire la belle antiquité de la fable." The fine arts, be they properly understood and enjoyed or not, are endemic and epidemic as the malaria; all catch the generous infection. Our citizens abandon gastronomics our country gentlemen bucolics-to dabble in dilettanteism. A German thirst for sight-seeing torments all-Christiani ad leones! resounds again in the Coliseum. Usually the lions are taken by localities, not anal |