beautiful though it be, and doubly welcome in the present dearth--not of minstrels, but of song-we are bound, in the impartiality of honest criticism, to acknowledge, will add little to the writer's fame, for he has done better things. And yet, if he had written nothing else, it would send his name down to posterity as a poet of the highest order.

ART. VIII-1. Two Letters to the Earl of Aberdeen on the State Prosecutions of the Neapolitan Government. By the Right Hon. W. E. GLADSTONE. 1851.

2. An Expression of Gratitude to the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone. From GIUSEPPE MASSARI, Ex-Deputy.

3. A Letter to the Earl of Aberdeen. By CHARLES MACFARLANE. George Routledge,

1851.

THE events of the last four years-the revolt of Milan, the flight of the Pope from Rome, the decisive battle of Novara, the glorious defence of Naples under Manin, Garibaldi's famous retreat, and at length the surrender of the Eternal City to the General of the French Republic-will ever form a most interesting epoch in the history of modern Italy. The whole comprises a brief, feverish struggle for liberty, which, from various reasons, chiefly the extent of the previous prostration, proved ineffectual; and, after the lapse of so many years, the ancient system returns in fuller force than before. Naples led the way in the revolutionary cycle of events, which there developed and terminated more rapidly than in the north of the Peninsula. As early as January 29th, 1848, the promise of a constitution was solemnly given by King Ferdinand: on the 10th of Feb., this was ratified and the fundamental law declared: on May 15th, the soldiers gained a complete victory over the advocates for Constitutional Government; and the state of things since that date will be presently exhibited in the revelations which Mr. Gladstone's researches have now exposed to the eye of Europe. It is an awful condition of a country when the rise of either adverse political faction is a sure forerunner of fresh atrocities; yet it is between the insane violence of two diametrically antagonist extremes that the fortunes of Italy and of Naples now fluctuate. The words of Mazzini convey the most graphic illustration of its state-" Austria is the blade of the sword of which the Pope is the cross, and this sword hangs over all Italy."

Mr. Gladstone's "Letters" were penned, the first in April,

and the second in the July, of the present year. It may be well to say a few words of the author himself. His object in bringing such enormities before the European public cannot be identified with any political or religious partizanship. He wrote the "Letters," in the first instance, as a private individual, to Lord Aberdeen; and induced the late Foreign Minister, who, in his discharge of that office, had earned the approbation not more of England than of Foreign States, to represent their contents to the Neapolitan Government, in the hope that the weight of his authority might produce an amelioration in the treatment of political offenders. It was only on this expedient failing that Mr. Gladstone published his "Letters;" and thus, from private remonstrance, proceeded to the bar of public opinion. There is here no desire for notoriety, and we cannot in justice doubt his assertion that, "as a man, he felt and knew it to be his duty to testify to what he had credibly heard, or personally seen, of the needless and acute sufferings of men." The internal evidence of accuracy is patent in almost every line: he extenuates rather than overstates; and it is proof of his judgment that he did not place the matter before the consideration of the House of Commons, by which step it would probably have become an affair of politics rather than of humanity. Its title to credence is further attested by Guiseppe Massari, who writes "Every word of your pamphlet is a truth every sentence an axiom;" and its statements have been endorsed by Lord Palmerston, who, to his great credit, has forwarded copies to our ambassadors.

The extent of these tyrannical proceedings is first discussed by our author, which, however, must be matter of more or less uncertainty, as accurate information is withheld and only false criminal statistics obtruded on the public. Mr. Gladstone computes the number confined for alleged political offences at 20,000: others, he says, place it at 15,000 or 30,000. Mr. Macfarlane avers the total to be 2,024. It is well known that between four and five hundred were tried at one time for suspected connection with the insurrection of May 15th; and of the opposition of the late Chamber of Deputies as many as seventy-six are actually under arrest: one was assassinated by a priest named Peluso, since supposed to be in receipt of a pension from Government-others are in exile. At the same time, the entire number of deputies was only one hundred and sixty-four, of whom about one hundred and forty attended the deliberations. Massari affirms that there are among the imprisoned "thousands of the élite of the priesthood, the patriciate, the people, the burghers, and other classes." He mentions in particular "the single kindred of Plutino, which

counts sixty-two of the individuals composing it in prison ;" and he is himself one of those, who, like Mamiani, Monti, and General Pepe have found a domicile in Sardinia from the bloodhounds of arbitrary fury. The testimony of this eminent man, a member of the late Neapolitan Parliament, will enable the reader to determine whether Mr. Gladstone's independent estimate, or Mr. Macfarlane's tabular statement, supplied by the Neapolitan Government, is the more worthy of credit.

The classes against whom the Government is thus tyrannical are the most intelligent and virtuous of the community-those, in fact, on whom the wealth, solidity, and progress of the nation mainly depend. Massari particularises Antonio Scialoja, an eminent political economist; Dragonetti, late Minister of Foreign Affairs; Leopardi, late Ambassador at the Court of Turin-all, like Poerio, of whom we shall speak more specially bye-and-bye, conservatively liberal in their politics, but who are now immured in dungeons. Ignorance, sensual vice, indolence, effeminacy, and these alone, are under no ban at Naples. Tarquin's policy to cut off the highest poppies is improved upon. To exterminate the worth of a kingdom is more effectual than to murder its rank; and a damp, reeking, vault will accomplish the work of destruction more stealthily and silently than the executioner's stroke. At the same time, the sbirro or sgherro, and the official assassin, luxuriate in the royal favour, highly feed and pampered.

The character of the proceedings next passes under review, on which Mr. Gladstone very properly sets the greatest importance; the details of the prisoners' sufferings, although the most shocking to the feelings, being regarded as quite incidental to this, the main point of all. On this head, Mr. Gladstone shows that the accused are illegally arrested, illegally treated before trial, illegally tried, and illegally detained in prison after acquittal, if such an unlooked-for verdict should fall to their lot. He proves that, not only is the constitutional code, recently granted under the most solemn oath of adherence to its provisions, utterly set at nought, but even the old law of Naples is violated: in short, that every guarantee for impartial legal scrutiny is superseded by the most complete and heartless despotism :

"In utter defiance of this law, the Government, of which the Prefect of Police is an important member, through the agent of that department, watches and dogs the people, pays domiciliary visits very commonly at night, ransacks houses, seizing papers and effects, and tearing up floors at pleasure, under pretence of searching for arms, and imprisons men by the score, by the hundred, by the thousand, without any warrant whatever-sometimes without any written authority at all,

or anything beyond the word of a policeman-constantly without any statement whatever of the nature of the offence. Nor is this last fact wonderful. Men are arrested, not because they have committed or are believed to have committed any offence, but because they are persons whom it is thought convenient to confine and to get rid of, and against whom, therefore, some charge must be found or fabricated.

The first process, therefore, commonly is to seize them and imprison them; and to seize and carry off books, papers, or whatever else these degraded hirelings may choose. The correspondence of the prisoner is then examined as soon as may be found convenient, and he is himself examined upon it in secret, without any intimation of the charges, which as yet in fact do not exist; or of the witnesses, who do not exist either. In this examination he is allowed no assistance whatever ; nor has he at this stage any power of communication with a legal adviser! He is not examined only, but as I know insulted at will and in the grossest manner, under pretence of examination, by the officers of the police. And do not suppose this is the fault of individuals. It is essential to the system, of which the essential aim is, to create a charge. What more likely than that, smarting under insult, and knowing with what encouragement and for whose benefit it is offered, the prisoner should for a moment lose his temper, and utter some expression disparaging to the sacred majesty of the Government? If he does, it goes down in the minutes against him if he does not, but keeps his self-command, no harm is done to the great end in view."

"In countries where justice is regarded acts are punished, and it is deemed unjust to punish thoughts; but in this case thoughts are forged in order that they may be punished. I here speak of what I know to have happened, and have imagined or heightened nothing."

Mr. Gladstone next describes a prison which he actually examined. Its wretchedness surpasses all that can be conceived of the state of the English prisons before the reforms introduced through John Howard's instrumentality. Its accumulated filth was such that, in place of the physicians visiting sick prisoners in such malignant vaults, the sick prisoners-men with almost death in their faces-are compelled to toil up stairs to them. Mr. Macfarlane amusingly tells us that this cannot be true of the Vicaria, because it was once a vice-regal palace! We suppose Don Gonsalvo, the great captain, may have tenanted it some four hundred years ago. But the palaces of those times were always supplied with dungeons; and the Bridewell in Blackfriars was once in the same way a palace. With the diet Mr. Gladstone was better satisfied. The bread, he says, though black and coarse to the last degree, is sound; but the liquid nourishment consists of soup inexpressibly nauseous. There is no classification of prisoners: felons, murderers, and political offenders, knaves and ruffians of the lowest class and gen

tlemen, are huddled together, without any officer to maintain order among them. The pattern would seem to be Alsatia in the "Fortunes of Nigel." One low-vaulted sleeping apartment without light, excepting from a grating at one end, serves for the felon part of the community; and the political prisoners are allowed to sleep in another room, communicating with the common apartment, and not divided from it, provided they pay for the privilege.

More eminent victims, however, have a more isolated prison-house. Pironte was confined in a cell at the Vicaria, eight feet square in dimensions, in company with two other men. But, further, all the lovely islands in the vicinity of Naples have their prison fortresses and many a wretch-" Gyara clausus scopulis parvaque Seripho "-who has never heard his real crime, wears out a pitiable existence in some dungeon below the level of the sea! Silvio Pelicos are still numerous on Italian ground, and Bonnivardt is not without a parallel in the nineteenth century. Baron Porcari is now confined in the Maschio of Ischia, to which C. Poerio has been removed from his previous dungeon in the Bagno of Nisida.

Mr. Gladstone then particularizes the case of Carlo Poerio, the late Minister of the King of Naples, and perhaps the most accomplished and statesmanlike of his subjects. Poerio was arrested July 19, 1849, and confined in various dungeons so filthy as to be fit only for brute beasts up to the time of his being tried in the December following. The evening previous to his arrest a letter exhorting him to flight, inasmuch as the Government was in possession of his correspondence with the Marquis Dragonetti, was left at his house. As no such correspondence existed, he perceived the snare and stayed where he was. Six days after his arrest he was examined before the Commissary Maddaloni; and a letter, which it was pretended had been intercepted, from Dragonetti, was put into his hand unopened; but the mistakes of spelling and grammar, besides striking informalities, were too notorious and the forgery was flagrant. The evidence of Romeo and of Margherita was successively quashed. The information of Jervolino, a bribed functionary of the court as report and probability indicate, proved the means of his condemnation. Jervolino affirmed that he was one of the chiefs of the Unità Italiana-a republican sect and had formed a conspiracy to murder the king and others, of whom Navarro, the judge, was one. Notwithstanding, however, that he was thus a party in the case, Navarro still presided as chief judge. Jervolino deposed that Poerio had sent him in charge of a man named Athanasio to another of the pri