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confirmation is necessary for all ecclesiastics and bishops. Now, in the king's absence, General Conti should grant them, but having no taste for the business, he has made it over to a colonel of artillery. The whole country is very populous, and all seem to be well off; for besides being magnificently clad on holidays, not a peasant is found so poor that he has not silver spoons and a silver cup. They know how to make their wooden, straw-thatched houses so strong and well, and this too without using a single iron nail, that they last long, and are impenetrable to wind and rain.

"The uncommonly handsome churches have, for the most part, five naves, and excellent steeples and bells. Many of the towns lie on the sea coast, are well built, paved, furnished with squares and fountains, and strongly fortified. Some highways are reserved to the king and him who pays a certain sum of money.

"The nobility are of such a size that I believe St. Christopher must have been a Dane. The people are generally handsome, fair, of good capacity, and addicted to science. There is an ecclesiastic who understands how, of water, to make wine, of which I myself have drunk. He will come to Rome, turn Catholic, and pay his respects to your Emi

nence.

"There are in Denmark, superstitious enchanters, or conjurors, who dress themselves in the most unaccountable guise, as the annexed drawings will show. Most of these have, however, fled with the king.

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"The inhabitants are Lutherans, and speak a language that is not quite German, but mixed. When they speak, it sounds as if they were weeping. In the islands lying in the ocean a language is spoken that nobody understands. (Probably a dialect retaining more of the original old Norse, such as is, we believe, still spoken on the Faroe islands.) For want of wood they burn dung, and a certain earth taken from the morasses, which they cut in the shape of bricks, and call turta. (This of course means turf, but we know not the word. The Danish name for turf is toerv.) Their food is cooked in a large kettle, into which they toss all different sorts of things, as flesh, fish, eggs, and the like. In the same way they prepare cheese, which, even when rotten, breeds no maggots.

"Men and women wear fur next the skin, and only over that put on shirts and clothes. The wooden shoes are most workmanly made; womens' clothes reach only to the knee.

"The horses are wilder than in other countries, and live almost always in the open air.

"In peace-time, people travel post in carriages, (query, carts,) which, for the sake of greater lightness, have no iron about them. On coming to a morass they are quickly taken to pieces, and afterwards put together again.

"In Zealand there is a river with a bridge over it, and on one side is seen a cavern. Everybody may pass freely, but so soon as any one sets foot upon the bridge, who is plotting against the king, or aspiring to sovereignty, a monstrous noise is heard in the cavern as though an

army were drawing near, and the bridge breaks down. This has been seen and heard; it has happened, and still happens. (The good secretary should have explained, whether the bridge has to be rebuilt at the public expense after every such exploit or explosion of loyalty, or reinstates itself, as we think a bridge of such discriminating powers ought to do.)

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"All the inhabitants of this country commit one irremissible sin, namely, they eat calves, and other young animals. The soldiers, who have no consciences, were so pleased with this custom, that it was necessary to prohibit the slaughter of calves.

"When bride and bridegroom marry, both run to a goal, where a bundle of straw has been set up. Whichsoever arrives first obtains the command at home, the man becomes the wife, the woman the husband. The straw is made into a cushion, upon which the young couple kneel at church.

"When any body dies, they do not weep and lament, but laugh, eat, drink, and dance about the corpse, and lay valuables and other things in the grave, in proportion to their rank and fortune."

Enough, and perhaps more than enough, of the Italian military secretary's Danish wonders. We turn to the Florentine Ubaldini's soberer, though some eighty years earlier, description of England. It is dated Ă. D. 1551, and, after giving an account of the excessive state and ceremoniousness of Edward the Sixth's court, which he however observes was much relaxed since Henry the Eighth's time, Ubaldini thus proceeds:—

"The English generally spend their incomes. They eat often, and sit as many as two, three, four hours at table, not so much to eat all the time, as agreeably to entertain the ladies, without whom no banquet is given. They are disinclined to exertion, and sow so little, that the produce scarcely suffices to support life; wherefore they eat little bread, but so much the more flesh, which they have of every kind, and perfectly good. Cakes, made with milk, and cheese are everywhere prepared, for innumerable herds feed, day and night, in the most fruitful pastures. There are no wolves, but exceeding plenty of deer, swine, and other game. There is a great deal of hunting and hospitality.

"The women do not yield in beauty, agreeableness, dress, and good morals to the Siennese, or the most esteemed in Italy. The lords keep uncommonly numerous households.

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"The people are, upon the whole, rather tall, but the nobility, in good part, small, which comes of their frequently marrying rich maidens under age. Men and women have a white skin; to preserve, or improve this natural colour, the latter are bled two or three times a year, instead of painting like Italian ladies.

"The men are naturally obstinate, so that if one is obliged to contradict them, he must not at once butt against them (urtarli), but gradually allege his reasons, which they then, through their good parts, readily comprehend. Many to whom this English nature was unknown have dealt very disadvantageously with so suspicious a nation.

"The meaner inhabitants of the towns, and part of the country people, are ill disposed towards strangers and believe that no realm upon earth is good for anything, except their own; but they are set right as to such foolish notions by those who have more understanding and experience. Meanwhile it is, on this account, not advisable for a foreigner to travel about the country; because it is usual to begin by inquiring whether Englishmen are well or ill received in his native land. (We might hence argue that foreigners did not meet with ill usage, save when it was in some sort justified as a measure of retaliation.) But if he have a royal passport, he is not only well received everywhere, but forwarded with the horses allotted to court business, or in case of need he may demand them from the owners.

"Very different in this respect is the nature of the great. For there is not a lord in the land who would not gladly have foreign servants and nobles about him, paying them good salaries. The king himself has many Italians and Spaniards, of divers professions, in his service. These are on good terms with the courtiers, who gladly learn Italian and French, (for this last purpose Frenchmen might have been more useful than Spaniards,) and eagerly pursue knowledge. He who is wealthy lets sons and daughters study, and learn Latin, Greek, and Hebrew; for since that storm of heresy burst upon the country, it is held useful to read the Holy Scriptures in the original tongues. Poorer persons, who cannot educate their children so learnedly, yet will not appear ignorant, or quite strange to the refinement of the world; therefore are they seen on Sundays and holidays, well, ay, better dressed than fits their condition. (An odd, but even to the present day not unusual mode of concealing ignorance.) Men and women mostly wear fine black cloth, with silken well-wrought ribbons and trimmings, and so, following the profuse turn of the nobility, do they honour city and court.

"Noble ladies are easily distinguished from inferior women, inasmuch as those wear a hat (ciapperone), after the French fashion, these a cap or head-dress (acconciatura), of fur or of white linen, according to their station and English custom.

"Their wedding customs differ not from those of other countries, but they marry young, and moreover a second or third time; nay, sometimes have married persons engaged themselves provisionally to another husband, or another wife, in case their actual partner should die."

We regret to end, leaving on the reader's mind such an unfavourable impression of his countrymen and women, as these prospective nuptial engagements-the remains, probably, if true, of Henry the Eighth's matrimonial operations-may make; but we find nothing worth adding about England, and have not room for more extracts on other subjects: we must, therefore, here take leave, we trust, not for long, of Friedrich von Raumer.

We must not, however, in these autograph-loving days, neglect to mention, that the volumes are enriched with seventy-five autographs of historical personages of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

ART. X.-Le mie Prigioni.

Memorie di Silvio Pellico, da

Saluzzo. Torino. 1832. 8vo.

WE will candidly confess that the deep interest we have felt in the perusal of these Memoirs nowise arises from any great sympathy with the actors in Italian revolutions in general. Admitting the oppressive character of the Austrian government of Italy, and the undisguised contempt for national feelings and prejudices with which it is administered; and therefore conceding to the Italians in the fullest manner their right to obtain redress, par voie de fait, when constitutional representations are disregarded, there has been in their late insurrections a union of fool-hardiness in the conception with faint-heartedness in the execution, sufficient to throw discredit on any cause, and to postpone, perhaps indefinitely, the chance of any general and vigorous effort in behalf of Italian freedom. In the fate of the actors in these illadvised explosions it is difficult therefore in general to feel much interest. If they will set their lives on a cast, they must abide the hazard of the die. But exceptions do occasionally occur, and it is the very nature of these which must make every man of calm judgment regard with an unfavourable eye all such premature and hazardous movements; men, of whom their more scheming and worldly associates were not worthy, and who by their firmness and passive fortitude under adversity, captivity and exile, shed a redeeming lustre upon a cause which has little else to recommend it. It is the misfortune, we say, of these rash movements, that, once commenced, they involve in them, against their better judgment, many virtuous and amiable men, who, had they been left to themselves, would never have attempted, with means so inadequate, and minds so unprepared for a serious and lasting struggle, to precipitate their country into the certain miseries which must in the outset accompany every revolution, and with scarcely even a probable chance of ultimate success. The wise and rational attachment they feel for liberty, as being but another word for the happiness of the community, would have taught them how little the interests of liberty, in its true sense, could be promoted by such attempts,--the failure of which would only afford to their stern masters a justification of their iron system of coercion, and an opportunity for increasing its rigour. But when once the cry of liberty has been set up, the very generosity and chivalrous nature of such men prevents them from hanging back; they would not needlessly have challenged a gigantic enemy, but they cannot refuse their support when called on to aid their countrymen in a desperate struggle; and their reward too often is, that while the scheming agitator, who had set the

whole in motion, makes his escape, or his peace, on the first reverse of fortune, the disinterested and intrepid, who have adhered to a hopeless cause through good report and bad, are ultimately the victims on whom the vengeance of their successful antagonist descends.

For men such as these, whose natural disposition is averse from the troubled elements of revolution, who, if left to themselves, would have pursued the quiet path of philanthropy, of science, of literature, but who have been involved by the force of circumstances in the movement which rasher heads or more interested minds have set in motion: for the Gioias, Arrivabenes and Pellicos of suffering Italy, we feel that interest and sympathy which a generous though mistaken self-devotion must always awaken. When Pellico, therefore, lays before us the narrative of his imprisonments, in this simple and beautiful volume, with scarcely a loud complaint, without a single invective, with no political disquisition whatever-and where the mild, benevolent and pure-hearted character of the author shines out in every page, -men of all parties and political opinions must equally yield to the charm which it possesses; and, whether he look on the revolutionary movements of Italy with the eye of a liberal or an absolutist, the reader must equally regret that one, whose nature seems so opposed to conspiracies or political struggles, should have been their victim.

For our own part, we will candidly say, that this little work seems to us more calculated to enlist the sympathies of mankind against Austria, to expose the cold-blooded and relentless character of its Italian administration, and to prepare the way for its downfall, than any revolutionary movements to which it is likely to be exposed, or the political invectives by which it has been assailed. It is not from secret societies and Carbonari that Austria has much to fear. Judging from the issue of the Neapolitan and Piedmontese revolutions, we should say, there was more peril in one of Pellico's pages than twenty of their swords. Neither has she much to apprehend from the rancorous and exaggerated tone of those political works in which the character of her Italian government has usually been attacked; for these have in general been so questionable in their facts, or at least so distorted aud over-coloured by the violence of political and national prejudice, that in the minds of calm observers they frequently produced an impression directly the reverse of what was intended. But here is a work which appeals, not to party feeling, but to the general sympathies of humanity,--which does not deal in vague generalities, or doubtful anecdotes, but sets forth with truth and soberness the workings of that system in an individual case: instead of

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