the Jews, an unassimilable race. Their harsh features, their sharp dialect, their feelings and manners, follow them everywhere; Genoa, like Jerusalem, never loses her rights in her wandering children.

Tuscany, from immemorial time, even before the Grecian era, ruling over arts and letters, over religion and laws, has been in modern times once more the cradle of civilization. Protected by a noble chain of mountains, and by the poverty of a barren soil, Tuscany could not entice the northern plunderers by the charms of the Lombard and Campanian plains. Roused to liberty by the efforts of the Lombard league, the Tuscan cities received their independence as a gift from their sisters; but, as soon as they were possessed of it, few countries ever exhibited more violence in abusing it; none ever offered a more memorable example of desperate struggle before giving it up. To the longer enjoyment of that stormy liberty, to the generous patriotism to which it gave rise, Florence, Pisa, and Siena are indebted for the intellectual supremacy, which made their land the birthplace of genius. But, as soon as they sank from that state of excitement, they fell into the hands of artful princes, by whom they were gently lulled and enervated, unaware that a silken chain is still a chain. The Tuscans are in our days the most delicate and refined, but likewise the lightest and weakest, of the Italian people. They are gay, polite, pedantic, and thoughtless; they are the French of Italy.

Rome, sitting in an unhealthy desert, a dissolute convent of prelates and cardinals, within tottering walls, together with all the Roman provinces on the southern side of the Apennines, the lands of the Sabines and Umbri, is possessed by that Levitical spirit, by which talent of all kinds is exclusively directed to the altar and its intrigues. The very countenance and accents of the highest classes in Rome, are stained by the varnish of Jesuitism. But what is not priest in Rome, the populace of the eternal city, the Trasteverini, exhibit in their features, costume, and manners, and not unfrequently in their sudden sallies of generous passions, the antique Roman grandeur and firmness, such as may suit one day the freemen of the capital of the redeemed country.

The southern part of the peninsula, and the neighbouring island, were early occupied by Dorian colonists, who gave that region an indelible Grecian character. Magna Græcia

had its games, gymnasiums, poetry, and philosophy, rivalling those of the mother country. The Romans conquered, but did not destroy. The Romans never changed what was good in the hope of doing better. At the fall of Rome, the Greek colonies remained in the hands of the Greeks, and continued so until the Norman conquest; and the Normans were too few, and their reign too short, to have a material influence over the mass of the people. Hence the Neapolitan character is essentially Greek; their levity and fickleness, their taste for jests and sophisms, for spectacles and controversies, their national dances and popular amusements, all is Greek among them. But the Provençal, Spanish, and Austrian dominion, by turns afflicted that lively population, and have plunged it into a state of degradation far below any other nation in Europe.

The inhabitants of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica are, in great part, sons of the Saracens. The Normans subdued, but did not destroy or banish the Moors. On the contrary, they were still to be seen enjoying their free rights, and observing their religion, even under Frederic the Second, one hundred years after the peace of Constance. The fierce and melancholy Moorish spirit, the noble and chivalrous, but revengeful and passionate temper, of which the Spanish blood partakes, remained in distinct traces in the Sicilian and Corsican, and may still be recognised in their dark olive complexion and bilious temper.

The different origin of the Italian races, and their physical and moral discordance of temperament, are not, as it has been so often objected, an insurmountable obstacle to future unity, any more than the same difficulty now prevents Welch, Scotch, and English, heterogeneous races, from living under the same government, notwithstanding their long-indulged antipathies. The Italians have long since recovered from their blind municipal jealousies; they have all been educated in the same severe school of common disasters, and the descendants of the German, Grecian, and Moorish races, have joined their hands as brothers, when meeting in the land of exile. At all events, are not Milan and Pavia, Pisa and Florence, Naples and Palermo, the most inveterate rivals, obeying the same rulers? It would be to libel human nature, to suppose that the good understanding, which despotism maintains among them, would be broken at the dawning of liberty.

If enthusiasm of public spirit, or sanctity of private virtues,

could be sufficient to secure to a nation its independent existence, Italy would have passed glorious and free to the remotest generations. The constant state of warfare, in which the newly-enfranchised cities found themselves engaged from their earliest origin, was not peculiar to them; it was the element in which all that age of steel equally breathed. But, in Italy, the field of battle was a gymnastic arena, from which the republics seemed to derive new vigor and energy. The prosperity of their commerce and industry seemed redoubled by their endless conflicts. Their municipal rivalries were for a long time the source of the most generous emulation, nor was ever independence more fertile in prodigies of valor, in generous sacrifices, in daring achieveinents. But the Italian republics ran their race alone. Liberty rose in Italy prematurely, or rather that country was doomed to run all the risks and chances of a first experiment. The neighbouring nations seemed to sink into barbarism in proportion as the Lombards rose higher in their aspirations. To acquire their liberty, the Italians only needed to rely on the justice of their cause, and the firmness of their will. But to preserve it, they wanted that wisdom of government, which the unsettled state of their institutions, and the pervading ignorance of the age, could not afford.

The greatest part of the Lombard statutes remained still the same as they had been imposed by the northern conqueror upon his new subjects; but a long contact, a natural spirit of improvement, common interests and vicissitudes, sympathies and family ties, and above all the irresistible influence of climate, had imperceptibly brought about an interchange of friendly transactions, by which, when the components were melted into a common mass, it was found that the conquerors had adopted new sentiments and habits in proportion as they had dictated new orders and laws to the conquered; so that they had both equally contributed to the new social edifice, and that edifice, according to the modern rules of architecture, was a composite of all orders.

Together with their martial spirit, their active and laborious habits, their love of home, and their domestic virtues, the German nations gave to Italy, as well as to all Europe, that form of government of which we have in our times witnessed the final catastrophe, the feudal system. From the top of the Alps, the northern chief pointed out to his war

riors the fair land that Fate had awarded to their valor. The land of promise was no sooner subdued and divided among them, than it was necessary to put it in a state of defence. Italy was a mistress who could be secured to her suitors only by the same means by which she had been won, military prowess. Hence the conquering host settled on the land, as it were, in battle array. Every soldier was at his post, dependent upon his vavasors, under the continued discipline of the camp.

It appears, that the Lombards exercised a milder rule over their Latin subjects, than either the Franks in Gaul, or the Vandals in Spain and Africa; but the Italian population had already suffered so much under the previous invasions, that the whole nation might be considered as doomed to absolute servitude. Woe to the conquered! They built their master's castle, they tempered his helmet and sword, and forged their own chains. Subjected by his strength, they soon became his strength. They followed him to the camp, they garrisoned his walls; they were his laborers at home, and his soldiers abroad. They bore on their backs the scars of the blows inflicted by him; on their breasts, of the wounds received for him. Such a state of violence, however, could not last. The Latin population had long since learned submission and patience. Respected and dreaded, the generous conquerors soon became weary of an unprofitable tyranny. There is no man willing to strike where he meets with no resistance. The idea of allegiance to their chiefs, so strong among the warriors of the north, was easily communicated to the Latins, to whom no better choice was left. The evils of feudalism gave way in the same measure as the characteristic differences of the two races disappeared; in the same measure as, involved in common vicissitudes, they needed each other's coöperation. Many feudal lords were ambitious of the title of fathers of their people, many found their own interest in affecting such paternal dispositions. Men of true courage are seldom cruel, and with their armour they laid aside their ferocious spirit. The solitary life of their castles obliged them to cherish all objects around. Nothing is more apt to inspire love than the desire of being loved. The Christian religion, meanwhile, made a virtue of that love, and called the blessings of heaven on the warrior whose sword spared the prostrate foe, and who dried the tears his sword

had caused to be shed. He who exerted himself for the happiness of his own vassals, felt indignant against his neighbour who acted otherwise. They began to take upon themselves the cause of the oppressed. They interposed with authority and arms. They bred up their children with nobler sentiments. Religion and gallantry soon made humanity an indispensable appendage of true valor. Thus chivalry, or rather the chivalrous spirit, was the consequence of the feudal system, and was an antidote against its evils.

The different formalities observed in the ceremony of conferring knighthood, the sacred and military orders, the armorial bearings, and other outward signs and emblems of chivalry, are not to be confounded with that spirit which made sacred in the eyes of the brave the cause of the weak, the authority of religion, the honor of women; that generous spirit, which in the total absence of social order, in the total impotence of protecting laws, supplied the want of order and law; for that spirit existed long before any herald had reduced it to a system, and it survived long after the extinction of the system, exerting upon modern civilization an influence, of which the indelible marks remain among us, associated with all that is noblest and greatest in our manners and feelings. The spirit of chivalry, in fact, far from being buried in Italy under the ruins of feudalism, was extended and excited by the establishment of democratic institutions, and invaded the young Lombard and Tuscan republics with such a blind enthusiasm, that, neglecting their own true interests, out of mere chivalrous, quixotic bravery, they espoused, whether right or wrong, all the quarrels of their neighbours, to remain after all unarmed and lifeless in the hands of strangers.

To these two northern political and moral institutions, united in their origin and opposite in their ends, Rome contrasted, or rather added, her two social elements, Democracy and Aristocracy. In the times of the barbaric invasions, the Italians did not lose the remembrance of their democratic forms, of which the Romans had shared the advantages with their subjects of Italy. As soon as the raising of their walls afforded the free towns a degree of security, their ancient municipal institutions were eagerly reestablished. The long-cherished names of consuls, senate, and tribunes, rather imperfectly understood, were renewed throughout the country; although all such magistrates, until the peace of Constance,