as we approached Italy. The entrance to it on that side has few charms for the eye; or rather, the traveller descends from the beautiful mountains of Germany into the plains of Italy, by a long, sterile, and unlovely track, which gives to foreigners but an unprepossessing idea of our country. The dull aspect of the country contributed to render me more melancholy. To see once more our native sky, to meet with human faces whose features bore not the aspect of the north, to hear on all sides our own idiom, — all these melted my heart, but with an emotion more akin to sorrow than joy. How often in the carriage did I cover my face with my hands, pretend to be asleep, and weep. Long years of burial had not indeed extinguished all the energies of my mind, but alas! they were now so active for sorrow, so dull, so insensible to joy!

.. Pordenone, Conegliano, Ospedaletto, Vicenza, Verona, Mantua, reminded me of so many things! A young man, who had been my friend, and had perished in the Russian campaign, had been a native of the first; Conegliano was the place where the Venetian turnkeys told me poor Zanze (Angela) had been conducted during her illness in Ospedaletto an angelic and unfortunate being had been married, now no more, but whom I had loved and honored once, whose memory I love and honor still. In all these places, in short, recollections more or less dear, crowded upon me, in Mantua particularly. It appeared to me but yesterday since I had come thither with Ludovico in 1815, with Porro in 1820. The same streets, squares, palaces, · but how many social differences! How many of my acquaintances carried off by death, how many in exile! A generation of adults whom I had seen but in infancy! And to be still prevented from flying from house to house, to inquire after one, to impart consolation to another! To complete my distress, Mantua was the point of separation between Maroncelli and myself. We passed a melancholy night. I was agitated like a criminal on the evening before he receives his sentence of condemnation. In the morning I washed my face carefully, and looked in the glass, to see whether it bore traces of weeping. I put on as far as possible a tranquil and smiling air; I repeated a short prayer to God, but in truth my thoughts wandered, and hearing Maroncelli already moving about on his crutches, and talking to the servant, I ran to embrace him. Both seemed to have collected their courage for the separation. We spoke with some emotion, but in a strong voice. The officer of the gendarmerie who was to conduct him. to the frontiers of Romagna was come; he must depart immediately, one embrace, another, he entered the carriage, he disappeared, and I remained as if annihilated.

"I returned to my room and prayed for the poor mutilated being, separated from his friend. I have known many excellent men, but none more affectionately social than Maroncelli, none more alive to all the refinements of gentleness, none more inaccessible to attacks of bad humor, or more constantly mindful that

virtue consists in a continual exercise and interchange of toleration, generosity, and good sense. O thou! my companion through so many years of sorrow, may heaven bless thee wherever thou mayst be destined to breathe, and grant thee friends who may equal me in attachment, and surpass me in worth! *

"We set out the same morning for Brescia, where our other fellow-captive took leave of me. Here he learned, for the first time, that he had lost his mother, and the sight of his tears wrung my heart at parting. Grieved, however, as I was for so many causes, the following occurrence almost extorted a smile from me. On the inn table there lay a play-bill, which I took up and read ; 'Francesca da Rimini, Opera per Musica.—Whose is this opera ? said I to the waiter. Who may have composed the music,' said he, I know not, but, in short, it is that Francesca da Rimini, which every body knows.' 'Every body?' said I, — ' you are mistaken. I who am but just arrived from Germany, what can I know about your Francescas?' The waiter, a young fellow with a rather haughty and truly Brescian expression of countenance, looked at me with disdainful pity. Signor, we are not talking about Francescas. We speak of one Francesca da Rimini, I mean the tragedy of Signor Silvio Pellico. Here they have turned it into an opera, spoiling it a little, but all 's one for that.' 'Ah! Silvio Pellico!' said I, 'I think I have heard of him. Is not that the political agitator who was condemned to death, and afterwards to the carcere duro some nine or ten years ago?' - I ought never to have uttered that jest. He looked round, then at me, grinned so as to show two and thirty handsome teeth, and if he had not heard a noise at the time, I verily believe he would have knocked me down.

"He went on murmuring to himself, Agitator! agitator!' But before I left, he had got hold of my name. He could then neither ask questions nor answer them, nor even walk about, such was his distraction and surprise. He kept gazing at me, rubbing his hands, and exclaiming,' Yes, Sir,' Coming, Sir,' without knowing the least what he was about. Another delay took place

at Novaro. On the morning of the 16th of September the final permission arrived. And from that moment I was liberated from all surveillance. How many years had elapsed since I had enjoyed the privilege of going where I would, unaccompanied by guards. I set out about three in the afternoon. My travelling companions were a lady, a merchant, an engraver, and two young painters, one of them deaf and dumb. They came from Rome, and I was gratified to learn that they were acquainted with the family of

*Maroncelli shortly afterwards went to Florence, where he was not allowed to remain long, the government having ordered him away, in consequence of the expressed wishes of that of Austria. He is now in Paris; and we observe that a French translation of Pellico's Memoirs, with notes by him, is announced for immediate publication.

Maroncelli. We spent the night at Vercelli. The happy morning of the 17th of September dawned. Our journey proceeded: How slow the conveyance seemed! It was evening ere we reached Turin.

"Who can attempt to describe the transport, the consolation my heart received when I again saw and embraced father, mother, and brothers. My dear sister Josephine was not there, for her duties detained her at Chieri, but she hastened as soon as possible to join our happy groupe. Restored to these five objects of my tenderest affection, I was, I am the most enviable of mortals. Then, for all these past sorrows and present happiness, for all the good or ill which fate may have in store for me, blessed be that Providence in whose hands men and events, with or without their will, are but wonderful instruments for the promotion of its allwise and beneficent ends!"

So ends this pure strain of gentle and devotional feeling, leaving at its close an impression on the mind like that produced by soft and melancholy music. We were unwilling to interrupt the course of the narrative by any reflections of our own, and now we have lingered on it so long, that we have left ourselves no room for any, had they been called for. One observation, however, we must make, in the justice of which we think every one will concur, that a book like this could not have appeared at a more acceptable time than the present; that the spirit of religion, humanity, resignation, and Christian charity, which it breathes, and the simple, subdued, and natural tone in which these sentiments are embodied, contrast most favorable with those hideous pictures of crime, those alternately voluptuous or loathsome exhibitions of vice, those physical horrors, that affected contempt for all generous sentiments, that fierce and relentless spirit of pride, hatred, and selfishness, which have of late contaminated. our own literature, and still more conspicuously that of France. These "Prison Thoughts" of Pellico may teach us, that it is not necessary to heap together impossible miseries, in order to touch the feelings; nor on horror's head horrors accumulate," in order to excite the dormant sympathies; nor to make the hero of the tale a ruffian, an atheist, or a misanthrope, in order to invest his character with dignity and originality; nor to hurry the reader through a series of violent and startling contrasts, in order to stimulate the edge of curiosity. They should teach us that it is on the simple, the natural, the gentler elements of feeling, not on the uncommon or the overstrained, that our sympathies must permanently repose; and that though novelty may for a time give a fleeting popularity to compositions inculcating the affectation of indifference, selfishness, and contempt for the ties which bind man to his Maker and his fellow men, those better feelings are

too deeply engraved on the heart to be ever eradicated, or even long held in abeyance. The fate of this book, we are convinced, will prove, that when a writer has the manliness to avow the sincerity of his belief, the depth and stability of his attachment to his fellows, his confidence that, even in this world, full as it is of deceit and suffering, "virtue is no name, and happiness no dream," and does this too amidst every thing calculated to shake his faith, and deaden his feelings, he will find "fit audience," and that not few. And Signor Pellico may be assured that his cheering, elevated, and tranquil pictures of the human heart will survive for the instruction and consolation of others, when the hollow, glaring, and disturbed phantasmagoria of life to which we have alluded is deservedly forgotten.

[From "The Foreign Quarterly Review, No. 21."]

ART. II. 1. Le Duc de Reichstadt.

Par M. de Montbel,

Ancien Ministre du Roy Charles X. Paris. 1832. 8vo. 2. Lettre à M. *** ̧ sur le Duc de Reichstadt. Par un de ses Amis. Traduite de l'Allemand. Par Gerson Hesse. Paris. 1832. 8vo.

By a strange fatality, one of the ministers of the dethroned Charles X. was driven to Vienna for shelter, where he arrived in good time to gather up the remains of the ancien Roi de Rome one of the last ministers of the banished restoration occupies his exile with the latest souvenirs of the abdicated Empire. But a Frenchman is always a Frenchman, and no matter to what party he belongs, or by what party he has suffered, — in foreign countries, la patrie, and la gloire, invariably attaching to it, are always ideas which with him sanctify every thing connected with them. Who could have expected to find an ultra-royalist minister of the Restoration occupying his leisure, or rather his time, for it is all leisure with him, with the recollections of the last of the Imperial dynasty? and yet so it is, that with pious hands and reverent feelings, M. de Montbel has taken upon himself the task of recording, for the benefit of the historical world, all that he could discover of the life and character of the son of the most illegitimate of rulers. Let his politics or policy be what they may, we owe his piety grateful thanks for having undertaken the duty, and are happy to say, that the manner in which it is executed is highly creditable both to his feelings as a man, and

his abilities as an author. It redounds to the praise of M. de Montbel, that he has been so well able to divest himself of the narrow prejudices of party, and at once, as regards the interesting subject of his biography, place himself in a position of perfect impartiality, and in a most favorable point of view, for recording all that must necessarily interest the world and posterity in the history of this extraordinary graft on the ancient stock of Austrian legitimacy.

The Life, as given by M. de Montbel from the best sources, and frequently in the very words of the only persons qualified to speak, will long be a favorite text both for moralists and politicians. The influence of hereditary disposition, the effect of education generally, and the peculiar character of this youth's education, are fruitful sources of reflection and instruction; while his anomalous position, the chances of his future life, and the probable effect it might have had on France and Europe at large, are not less likely to stimulate the disquisitive faculties of historical writers. M. de Montbel's book has also the recommendation of complete novelty. The life of the son of Napoleon, since he fell into Austrian hands when an infant, has been a perfect mystery: the people were scarcely kept in more complete ignorance of the daily life of the man with the Iron Mask: his death was almost the first certain news of his continued existence. Now that there is no motive for farther concealment, we are let into all the details of his short career, down even to the most trivial actions of hourly existence; not without some reservation certainly, produced by a perpetual consciousness of the position of the writer, a dependent of the Court of Vienna, but still with a sufficient abundance of particulars, flowing from the mouths of his friends, tutors, and household, to satisfy us altogether as to the character and disposition of a remarkable and most interesting personage.

Many unworthy suspicions have been entertained of the Court of Austria respecting the treatment of this young man these suspicions will at once vanish before the perusal of this book, while the truth of the intentions of the Emperor, or at least of his minister, will appear with tolerable plainness. It was resolved, first, that the young King of Rome should be made a German Prince; -next, that as every man who has passions and talents must have a pursuit, it was deemed safest, and perhaps most beneficial, that he should be indulged in his enthusiasm for the military profession. The example of Prince Eugene was set before him as the one they would most desire him to follow. Prince Eugene was neither imperial nor alien, and yet one of their most valuable generals, and in no way a dangerous subject, while he gained

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