AMONGST other truths which the experience of ages is gradually developing in the world, there is one which seems at this time especially to commend itself to the minds of men, viz.that the future is for us reflected in the mirror of the past; of course we speak generally in making this assertion; diversity of detail there will always be as of circumstance, but forasmuch as the working of human passions will ever be the same and the power of good and evil influences on them unchanged, so will the same causes continually reproduce the same effects, and in particular, the various forms of government to which almost every people is subjected in rotation will never fail, however varied the subject matter on which they act, to lead in operation to results of a precisely similar nature.

When we look back over the cen turies whose ebb and flow is swayed by one prevailing Power, as the moon rules the tides, do not the nations seem to rise and fall on the face of the earth like billows on the ocean? one after another swelling up in their progression from barbarism to civilisation, from weakness to strength, from slavery often to dominion, and then giving way before some new power, that, strong in its lusty youth, comes to swallow them up, and erect its head triumphant, till in like maner itself recedes into the glory that has been, and leaves room for the next in order. Thus, while to the living generation it will ever seem as though the events in which they are immersed are altogether new and strange, their trials and troubles peculiarly their own, to those of succeeding ages, who look back upon their time as on a landscape, where distance has softened the asperities of outline, and blended the details into one harmonious whole, the course of nations will be found ever presenting the same features of progression and decadence.

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This truth, we say, is forcing itself on the minds of men with a twofold result; it has caused those who would judge of the signs of the times, or, haply, seek to colour them, to find it their wisdom to sift the records of the past, with a minuteness of research into the hidden working below the surface of events, which has been hitherto rarely practised; and further, it has induced men of the greatest ability, in all countries, to devote their talents to the elucidation of some one epoch or event in past history, feeling they cannot read a more profitable lesson to their fellow-creatures, than by tracing out the causes, in former times, of convulsions that seem threatening the world anew. Such a man is Michele Amari, author of the very interesting work now before us; and in this, chiefly, that his talents are of a firstrate order. His productions prior to this attempt had already established his fame in his own country, but in the present volumes (decidedly his chef-d'œuvre as yet) he has chosen a subject, to whose deep interest he has added a great importance, by his research and clearness of perception. The wellknown rising of the Sicilians against their French oppressors in the year 1282, which has been called by the name of the Sicilian Vespers, and whose result was the massacre of thousands of the French, and the entire overthrow of the Anjevin dynasty, has always been supposed, and asserted by historians, to have originated in a deeplaid conspiracy, the growth of years, between John of Procida, Peter of Arragon, the Emperor of Constantinople, and the Pope, aided and abetted also by certain of the Sicilian barons. Now it has been Amari's object in the present work to prove that this view of the case is altogether erroneous, and that so far from this great event being the result of the well-weighed machinations of those who sat in high places,

it was, in fact, the sudden and spon. taneous movement of an oppressed people the simultaneous impulse, communicated as with electric fire from heart to heart amongst them, that they would, at any cost, purge their beautiful island of the usurpers, whose tyranny had become intolerable. Now we conceive that in proving this, as Amari does to our mind most satisfactorily, he confers an important service on this present generation; for, had this remarkable event in the history of Europe been, as men have hitherto supposed, the offspring of a subtle conspiracy, it must have remained to us a mere isolated fact, which, however interesting, could convey no lesson to our times, since it could have been reproduced only by an impossible approximation of precisely the same characters as those of the plotters themselves. But when we find it shining out from the shadows of the past, as the vivid and solemn expression of the result of oppression upon our common nature, it becomes to all a great and salutary warning; to the rulers, of men of like passions as those who, centuries ago, made the peaceful vesper bell the tocsin of a bloody war, it tells, what will be in all ages the measure of human endurance to human tyranny, whether it come in the shape of open persecution, as then, from the fierce hands of Charles of Anjou, or under the form of fairseeming laws that grind them to the dust in the name of expediency; and to the people it will prove, in the interesting details of the results of the Sicilian Vespers, that it is a fearful thing for them to take the executive in their own hands, and release, as it were, from prison a worse tyrant than any fellow-man could ever be to them, even their own unrestrained and resistless passions! resistless to themselves, carrying them from the administration of justice to the exercise of a lawless cruelty, and from the support of a rightful cause to a persecution fiercer than they themselves experienced.

Thus the very groundwork of Amari's work would make it one of great value, if even it appeared to us in a less attractive garb, but it has many other merits which render it indeed worthy to take a place in the highest ranks of literature. We need hardly specify, first, the genius of the

author, which, in the original, has secured it long since an honoured name among the Italian classics, nor the deep research and reasoning which he has brought to bear on his subject. These are as well known as his own celebrated name; but that which to us gives a singular charm to the book is the strong amor patriæ which has inspired it; the warm Sicilian heart of the writer glows in every line; it is as though he were detailing almost the history of his own family, for, though centuries have trampled on their dust, they were his brethren-these men, whose noble spirits were stirred so fiercely, at the cry of a weak girl, fainting under the insults of a dastard Frenchman, that they avenged her in the blood of many thousands; and it is his own fair land, still unchanged in the glory of its deep blue skies and the beauty of its smiling vales, that they purged in that hour from the host of their oppressors.

Again, we might not sufficiently have appreciated this, the latent fire, which gives such energy and vigour to the calm words of the author, but for the valuable preface of the editor. Few and simple as are these pages, they bear the stamp of those fine talents and that peculiar elegance of diction which have ranked his name so high among our English authors; and they are eminently useful in paving our way to the work itself, for the graphic sketch therein given of Amari's life up to the present time, and of the circumstances which developed his character, enable us to walk side by side, as it were with his spirit, through the regions of all that troubled past, seeing with his eyes and feeling with his heart the atrocious details of that oppression which burdened once his native land.

Before proceeding to give a few extracts from this work, in order so to stimulate the appetite of our readers that they shall not be content till they have devoured the whole-touching at the same time on certain matters in which, with all our admiration, we cannot agree with Amari-we must first point another most striking advantage which the work, in its English dress, possesses, and that is the very great elegance and merit of the translation. Many persons are not aware what a combination of talents (by no means of an ordinary nature) it requires to make an even readable translation of a

fine work. It is very easy to render the words with grammatical precision, and to produce a book as like its original as the wooden representation of a living face; but to overcome all those subtleties of human language, which cause that strength, and beauty, and feeling should lie often in the choice of one word out of many bearing the same meaning, or in the peculiar turn of a phrase, a task for which not one in a hundred is fit-such a knowledge of the foreign language as very few English men or women ever possess, is the least of the indispensable requisites; for the mind of the translator must actually be commensurate with that of the author, capable of appreciating the thought from which the work has sprung, before he can hope to re-produce it in another tongue. With so high an idea of what a translation ought to be, we shall be bestowing our best praise on that now before us when we pronounce it perfectly successful. It is one with its original, not only in the flowing ease and elegance of the composition, but in vigour and power, in the spirit, in short, which animates it.

We proceed to extract, so far as our space will permit, the account of the extraordinary outbreak at Palermo, which commenced this fiery war, and gave it the name of the Sicilian Vespers. We regret that our limits force us to mutilate the lengthened details of this remarkable struggle; as also to pass in silence over much that is interesting which precedes it. One peculiarity which struck us greatly is, that Amari's work is actually a commentary on some parts of Dante, as Dante of him, the cross lights literally range from one to the other. Premising that every species of indignity and persecution had long been heaped on the Sicilians by their French tyrants, we proceed to the statement of their first revolt:

:

"On the Tuesday, at the hour of vespers, religion and custom crowded this their cheerful plain, carpeted with the flowers of spring, with citizens wendtheir way towards the churches. Divided into numerous groups, they walked, sat in clusters, spread the tables, or danced upon the grass; and whether it were a defect or a merit of the Sicilian character, threw off, for the moment, the recollection of their sufferings, when the followers of the Justiciary suddenly appeared amongst them, and every bosom thrilled with a shudder of disgust. The strangers came, with their usual inso

lent demeanour, as they said, to maintain tranquillity; and for this purpose they mingled in the groups, joined in the dances, and familiarly accosted the women, pressing the hand of one, taking unwarrantable liberties with others; addressing indecent words and gestures to those more distant; until some temperately admonished them to depart, in God's name, without insulting the women, and others murmured angrily; but the hot-blooded youths raised their voices so fiercely that the soldiers said to one another,These insolent paterins must be armed that they dare thus to answer,' and replied to them with the most offensive insults, insisting, with great insolence, on searching them for arms, and even here and there striking them with sticks or thongs. Every heart already throbbed fiercely on either sidewhen a young woman of singular beauty and of modest and dignified deportment, appeared, with her husband and relations, bending her steps towards the church. Drouet, a Frenchman, impelled either by insolence or license, approached her, as if to examine her for concealed weapons, seized her and searched her bosom. She fell fainting into her husband's arms, who, in a voice almost choked with rage, exclaimed, Death, death to the French!' At the same moment a youth burst from the crowd which had gathered round them, sprang upon Drouet, disarmed and slew him; and probably at the same moment paid the penalty of his own life, leaving his name unknown, and the mystery for ever unsolved, whether it was love for the

injured woman, the impulse of a gene

rous heart, or the more exalted flame of patriotism, that prompted him thus to give the signal of deliverance. Noble examples have a power far beyond that of argument or eloquence to rouse the people; and the abject slaves awoke at length from their long bondage. 'Death, death to the French!' they cried; and the cry, say the historians of the time, re-echoed, like the voice of God, through the whole country, and found an answer in every heart. Above the corpse of Drouet were heaped those of victims slain on either side; the crowd expanded itself, closed in, and swayed hither and thither in wild confusion; the Sicilians, with sticks, stones, and knives, rushed with desperate ferocity upon their fully-armed opponents; they sought for them and hunted them down; fearful tragedies were enacted amid the preparations for festivity, and the overthrown tables were drenched in blood. The people displayed their strength and conquered. The struggle was brief, and great the slaughter of the Sicilians; but of the French there

were two hundred-and two hundred fell.

"Breathless, covered with blood, brandishing the plundered weapons and proclaiming the insult and its vengeance, the insurgents rushed towards the tranquil city. Death to the French!' they shouted, and as many as they found were put to the sword. The example, the words, the contagion of passion, in an instant aroused the whole people. In the heat of the tumult Roger Mastrangelo, a nobleman, was chosen or constituted himself their leader. The multitude continued to increase; dividing into troops, they scoured the streets, burst open doors, searched every nook, every hiding-place, and shouting "Death to the French,' smote them and slew them, while those too distant to strike added to the tumult by their applause. On the outbreak of this sudden uproar the Justiciary had taken refuge in his strong palace, the next moment it was surrounded by an enraged multitude,crying aloud for his death; they demolished the defences and rushed furiously in, but the Justiciary escaped them; favoured by the confusion and the closing darkness, he succeeded, though wounded on the face, in mounting his horse unobserved, with only two attendants, and fled with all speed. Meanwhile the slaughter continued with increased ferocity, even the darkness of night failed to arrest it, and it was resumed on the morrow more furiously than ever; nor did it cease at length because the thirst for vengeance was slaked, but because victims were wanting to appease it. Two thousand French perished in this first outbreak. Even Christian burial was denied them, but pits were afterwards dug to receive their despised remains. And tradition still points out a column surmounted by an iron cross, raised by compassionate piety, in one of those spots, probably long after the perpetration of the deed of vengeance.”Vol. i. p. 180.

The details which follow, of the working out of this remarkable struggle will be found truly interesting, but we must resist the temptation of dwelling upon them, and pass to a most curious episode in the long-protracted war that occurred between the houses of Anjou and Arragon. Peter of Arragon being in right of his wife, Constance, daughter of Manfred, the lawful heir of the kingdom of Sicily, had openly arrived with his army to secure the conquest which the Sicilians had already gained over the forces of Charles of Anjou; and the latter meanwhile refusing to avow his defeat had retreated into Calabria,

and there it was that the rival kings decided on settling the momentous question of the fate of Sicily, involved in their respective claims, by a duel between themselves, which it was arranged should take place at Bordeaux. A certain day was fixed, when the bellicose monarchs were to meet in that town before Edward I. of England, then sovereign of Aquitaine and Gascony, of which Bordeaux was the capital. Each king was to be attended by 100 knights, who of course were likewise severally to meet in single combat. In the interval before the time appointed for the duel, however, Pope Martin, the vigorous ally of Charles of Anjou, exerted himself to prevent its taking place, probably because he readily perceived that, in challenging his rival, the King of Arragon had craftily gained no small advantage to himself, since by this means he placed himself on equal terms with the Anjevin monarch, whose forces in open field would have been greatly superior to his own. If he had any such motive, however, it seems plain that he was met by deeper treachery on the part of Charles. It was the business of this latter to have the lists prepared, and certain arrangements were made which gave rise to suspicions that the French purposed, should the enemy remain masters of the field, to occupy the gate from without, and having thus enclosed them within the defences, to put them to the sword.

The preparations went on despite the Pope's opposition, who having forbidden Edward of England to appear either personally or by proxy, finally desisted from endeavouring to dissuade the resolute combatants themselves. Peter of Arragon set sail in order to arrive at the appointed time. He encountered a grievous storm; and the historian states that he remained three days without food, from distress of mind lest the delay should cause him to appear a defaulter and traitor to his oath. Finally, through the skill of the seamen, he reached Valencia, accompanied by only three knights.

"Here, while still exhausted from the voyage, he learned the suspicions created by the great display of force made by the French, if with no other object, at least to deter him by fear from proceeding to Bordeaux. He reflected that he could not take with him an army sufficiently strong to confront them, but at