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surrounded by a crowd of feathered attendants whom it far outshone in splendour of plumage, took its flight to Heliopolis, the city of the sun." The Roman historian does us the favour to inform us that "when its time of death approaches, the phoenix constructs a nest in its native country, which it inundates with a generative principle. From this nest springs a new phoenix, which, on attaining maturity, takes diligent care to perform the funeral rites of its deceased parent, and exhibits extraordinary sagacity in accomplishing its pious task. It carries bundles of myrrh from great distances, to accustom itself to bear burdens, and, when strong enough in the wing, takes its deceased parent on its back, and bears it through the air to the altar of the sun, where, laying the body down, it burns it with spices."

The

Believed by the people, and blazoned by poetry, and recorded by history, religion also lent its sanction to these fables, while painting and sculpture gave them universal currency. The humbler animals, not sufficiently elevated when placed merely on a level with mortals, were advanced to the dignity of internuncios between gods and human beings; they were oracles of the future, and revealed the Divine will. The most momentous affairs, the armies and the colonies of the ancients, were, in all dangerous and foreign expeditions, guided by birds. dripping fugitives who escaped from the deluge of Deucalion, were guided to safety by a pack of wolves, and, in gratitude, their new city was named Wolftown. Egypt was indebted to the same animal for its safety from Ethiopian invasion. The sites of the most renowned cities were indicated to their founders by quadrupeds or birds, as was specially the case in the instance of Rome, Alba, and Constantinople. The lower animals were the real priests of ancient prophecy, and in the very desirable quality of clearness, the language of the brutes always surpasses that of the oracles. Achilles is told by his horse, without a shadow of ambi guity, that he must die before Troy. In the midst of the Forum, a patriotic ox warns the astonished people, bellows his threats, of the dangers which environ the republic. Ants are seen busily engaged in conveying grains of corn, and placing them in the mouth of the infant Midas, thereby intimating

the future opulence of the sleeping boy

"They don't wear out their time in sleeping and play,

But gather up corn in a sunshiny day,

And for winter they lay up their stores: They manage their work in such regular forms, One would think they foresaw all the frosts and the storms,

And so brought their food within doors."

Bees clustered round the cradle of the sleeping Plato, alighted on his lips, and intimated that the wisdom, of which bees are an emblem, should one day issue from his eloquent lips. Serpents climb up and lock the infant Roscius in their folds; and, in the great pitched battles of the Roman armies, eagles are seen hovering in the sky, as heralds of victory.

Mysteries to which men are blind are clearly perspicuous to birds; and this, owing to their elevation over terrestrial things, the great length of their vision, the purity of their aerial element, the innocency of their lives, and their power of ascending into the heavens. The debates in the councils of the gods are audible to birds; indeed augury takes its name from them, augur and augurium being, according to Varro, derived from avium garritus, the chattering of the feathered race.

As polytheism was altogether a religion of ceremony, negligent of morals and void of dogma, it consecrated all these dreams, and thus resigned the management of most magnificient empires to the meanest animals. "At Rome the consuls and emperors have much less influence," says Pliny, "than the sacred chickens. The peckings of domestic fowls are contemplated with awe and solicitude, The proceedings of the magistrates are regulated according to the caprices of these fowl. As the chickens show an appetite or reluctance to feed, the magistrates open or shut their houses. The legions engage the enemy when the chickens are vivacious; they prognosticate victory, and command the commanders of the world.”

But it was not merely the Romansthe deities of Olympus applied for information to birds. Jupiter, the mas ter of the universe, was at one time somewhat puzzled to make out the precise centre of the earth; so he engaged two eagles to fly, the one to the east, the other to the west, and proceed constantly forward till they met. The eagles obeyed, and the oracle of Del

phi being the spot over which they came together, the ancients believed Delphi to be the umbilical point, the 6s of the earth; and in grateful memory of the meeting of the eagles, the Delphians placed two golden images of that bird in the temple of Apollo. Delphi was to Greece what Meath was to Ireland, or the Midhyama of the Hindoos, the Midheim of the Scandinavians, the Cuzco of the Peruvians, and the Palestine of the Hebrews.

To place animals in temples and solemnly consecrate them was not enough for Polytheism. It raised them to Olympus, where it associated them with gods. The eagle, bearing thun. derbolts in its pounces, was alike the instrument of the pleasures and of the vengeance of Jupiter. Standing by his throne, it was ever ready to sweep forward with the message of wrath or the pledges of his affection. Polytheism twisted serpents round the caduceus of Mercury, placed an owl on the helm of Minerva, fed the horses of Olympus with ambrosia, endowed them with immortality, and extolled them as more rapid than the very gods.

It was not enough for Polytheism, which a father of the Church terms "the madness of mankind" to blend brutes indiscrimately with deities; it raised them from the humility of associates to the dignity of gods themselves. Thus Rome instituted the worship of the locust, and celebrated its festival on the eighth of the kalends of December, the object being to prevail on those creatures to forbear destroying the harvests of Italy. Fetishism seemed pushed to its utmost extravagance by the Babylonians and Canaanites, but Egypt really perfected the superstition. The animal kingdom furnished the country of the sphynx with nearly all its religious emblems. Birds, quadrupeds, and reptiles swarmed in its temples, and were deified by its priests. Not satisfied with this, Egyptian imagination furnished the devotees of Egypt with what may be termed "monster-gods." It dignified or degraded Anubis with the head of a dog, and set off Isis with the head of a cow, while Osiris was made to look cunning and ridiculous with the head of a hawk. Jupiter Ammon looks foolish through the head of a ram, and Saturn grins portentously with the long snout of a crocodile. Paganism built

temples to house quadrupeds, and hollowed ponds for the evolutions of finny divinities. At Melita a serpent lay coiled within a tower erected exclusively for its preservation, while trains of priests and servants were seen every day proceeding to lay flowers and honey on the altar of this reptile.

The countless multitudes of Egypt sadden at once into the deepest mourning at that (to them) appalling event the death of a dog, a cat, an ibis, or a jackal. The mourning nation embalms them with pious solicitude, weeps over their inanimate forms, conveys them with solemn pomp into the sepulchres of royalty, and tenderly places them beside the "buried majesty" of Egypt. The insanity of Egypt having deified the brutes, went a step farther. an awful step: men pale and trembling in ligatures were dragged to their shrines and solemnly murdered before the unintelligent eyes of these "monster gods," fully justifying the remark of the Stagyrite, “man is in many instances more stupid and meaner than the beasts." "Oh! how vile must man be," exclaims Pascal, "when he subjects himself to quadru peds, and adores brutes as deities!"

The vileness which Pascal laments, originates in an ignorance which he could not remedy. To human investigation the intellect of brutes presents the most puzzling enigma in the visible creation, and what man cannot understand, he naturally, if not inevitably, reverences. Man, unenlightened by revelation, could not answer the query of the poet

"Who taught the nations of the field and flood
To shun their poison and to choose their food?
Prescient, the tides or tempest to withstand,
Build on the wave or arch beneath the sand?
Who made the spider parallels design,
Sure as Demoirre, without rule or line?
Who bade the stork, Columbus-like, explore
Heavens not his own, and worlds unknown before ?
Who calls the council states the certain day?
Who forms the phalanx and who points the way?"

The question was first clearly stated by Montaigne and Pereira, philosophers who laid the foundation of the

two distinct schools which divide the philosophic world at this moment into hostile camps. One of these schools, which may easily trace its origin to Pereira, refuses intelligence, or even feeling, to lower animals, while feeling, and intelligence, and even soul, are conceded to the brutes by the disciples of Montaigne. The foremost cham

pions of the spirituality of the human soul may be found among those who make the souls of brutes material; while, on the other hand, those philosophers who are most liberal in endowing brutes with spiritual intelligences, are very niggardly and stingy in allowing men any souls at all. Brutes are considered by Pereira as insensible puppets, which some veiled hand jerks this way and that; and though they utter cries of joy or sorrow, without being sensible of either sorrow or joy; and though they eat they are not hungry, though they drink they are not thirsty. According to these philosophers, animals do not act from anything resembling human knowledge, but solely from the disposition of their organs. Descartes admits, what it would be very difficult to deny, that brutes possess life; but while he allows them feeling he refuses them intelligence. He illustrates his argument by comparing brutes to watches, which though made exclusively of insensible machinery, wheels and springs, can, nevertheless, count minutes and measure time more accurately than men. "The Being who made them," says Malebranche, "in order to preserve them, endowed brutes with an organisation which mechanically avoids destruction and danger; but in reality they fear nothing and desire nothing." The automatism of animals was the fashionable philosophy of the Cartesians and Jansenists, and was at one time all the rage in France. During the last century a swarm of books was published on the subject, which instead of elucidating the matter, only rendered it more obscure. The most unfeigned astonishment is expressed by many of these writers at the marvels of instinct, but these are the very writers who are most emphatic in declaring animals mere machines.

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sitates to admit the superiority of our species. He declares that some men, and no doubt himself among the number, are decidedly superior to brutes, while the difference between certain stupid men and certain intelligent quadrupeds is so small, that he doubts if any difference really exists, or admitting its existence, that the advantage is on the human side. He argues for the immortality of the souls of brutes, and

"Thinks, admitted to an equal sky,

His faithful dog shall bear him company."

But brutes must be gifted with conscience, knowledge, and responsibility before they can be admitted to the dignity of another life; and according ly, these attributes are freely given them by the naturalist Bonnet.

Cuvier, Buffon, Locke, and Voltaire, and all the writers who have endeavoured to penetrate the mystery of existence through the medium of metaphysical inquiry, or the study of animal organisation, have devoted meditation and investigation to what some term the intellect, and some the automatism, of the lower animals. Their contradictions are innumerable. But the medium between the preposterous extravagance of refusing sensation to the very organs of the senses, and the no less ridiculous theory which lodges an immortal spirit in a flea, is to be found in what is termed instinct. "But what is instinct?" asks Voltaire. "It is a substantial power,' it is a plastic energy.'" C'est je ne sais quoi, c'est de l'instinct. The na ture of instinct has been often canvassed subsequently to this writer, but the discussion has invariably terminated in some unsatisfactory definition, proving the invincible ignorance of man on this subject, and that—

"Well hast thou said, Athena's wisest son,
All that we know is, little can be known."

It is one of those mysteries the solution of which is concealed in the mind of the Godhead. The unaided intellect of man will never pierce it.

"What is this mighty breath, ye sages say,

That in a powerful language, felt, not heard,
Instructs the fowls of heaven? What but God,
Inspiring God, who, boundless Spirit, all
Adjusts, sustains, and agitates the whole."

VOL. XLVI.-NO. CCLXXIII.

X

ITALIAN LITERATURE DURING THE TERCENTO.

Ir is an observation, as trite as it is true, that the arts and sciences which ennoble and civilise mankind, can take root or flourish in the soil of liberty alone. It is as trite, though certainly not so true, a remark, that the atmosphere of peace is as essential to the growth of the arts and sciences as is the soil of liberty to their existence. History, the great test of truth, while she has ever affirmed the former position, has shown that the latter is a sophism. It is indeed quite true, that the beaux arts may grow with an increase more luxuriant and more rapid beneath the shade and the shelter of repose; but we may learn, too, from the past, that the storm which agitates the atmosphere purifies it also, and that the fitful sunshine, the fresh breeze, the shower, and the flood, stimulate a healthy growth, induce a robust vitality, make the roots strike deeper, the branches spread wider, and fling the seeds far abroad-if, indeed, the plant be fixed in the soil necessary for its sustentation. The want of repose may distract men's minds from a sedulous worship of the Muses, though even then they may have a hardy, though not possibly a luxuriant growth. The want of liberty crushes the intellect-it withdraws all the attractions to learning-it renders the pursuit of knowledge not only dif ficult but full of peril-it paralyses genius, makes thought a pain, and mental exertion laborious, because hopeless. Thus where there is no li berty, there cannot be civilisation. Her brightest illumination in the states and times of antiquity has, with the departure of liberty, given place to the profoundest gloom of barbarism, while the return of liberty has ever been the herald of the returning dawn of arts and sciences.

The truth of the positions which we have just advanced is strikingly exemplified by the revival of literature in Italy during the latter portion of the thirteenth and the fourteenth century. The classical literature of Greece and Italy, long decaying, may be said to have perished with the subjugation of the Roman Empire in the West in the

fifth century. Boethius, in the succeeding age, alone reflected like twilight the sunset of learning. "The swan-like tones of his dying eloquence," to use the language of Hallam, issued from his prison-tower at Pavia; and then came a night of silence long and deep- -a night illumined faintly now and then by some solitary star rising from our own land- a silence broken by the voices of Bede and of Erigena. While the rest of Europe, still pros trate beneath the tyranny of feudal institutions, had scarce emerged from barbarism, the republics of Italy had been, for over two centuries, in the possession of a large share of that li berty which the genius of their free institutions conferred, and which the peace of Constance, in 1183, consummated and secured; and with that liberty came the enjoyment of intellec tual existence, stimulating individual minds to raise themselves to eminence, and to attain those honours and that influence which, in a free state, intellect is ever able to achieve. And yet during this very period, when literature began to revive, and in the regions where her light again dawned, civil wars and internal dissensions raged almost without intermission. Frederick II., the great patron of literature, was involved in unceasing broils during his life, and at his death he left Italy as much convulsed as when he ascended the Imperial throne. The feuds, too, of the Guelphs and the Ghibelines raged throughout the country, and nowhere with more animosity than in the state in which the illustrious Dante arose, to be at once its glory and its disgrace.

While the literature of Spainwhich, preceding that of Italy, had yet been languishing for years-produced nothing superior to the barbarous rhythm and rude style of "the Cid," or the monkish poems of Gonzalez de Berceo and Lorenza Segurawhile the English language was in the process of evolving itself from the Anglo-Saxon, and could exhibit nothing less rude than the compositions of Layamon and the rhyming chronicles of Robert of Gloucester

while France was occupied with scholastic theology and metaphysics, propounded in her colleges and monasteries through the medium of Latin, and leaving the laity in gross barbarism and ignorance- the language of Italy had acquired considerable polish, and was advancing rapidly towards perfection. The courts and schools of Palermo, Naples, and Salerno were— thanks to the encouragement of Frederick and his sons-the rendezvous of poets, orators, and men of genius. Already Pier del Vigne composed with much elegance of thought, purity of style, and harmony of language; and Ricordano Malaspina wrote his History of Florence in a style so pure and perfect, that, as M. Sismondi truly remarks, it may be pronounced a masterpiece at the present day. Foremost amongst the followers of the new and beautiful language which had its birth in Sicily-extricated from the corruption of the Latin, and tinctured with the spirit and taste of the Arabians and Provençals- foremost of these in Italy were Guido Guinicelli, whom Dante has honoured with high eulogy, Fabrizio, and Onesto, natives of Bologna; while Florence produced, ere the close of the century, amongst others, Guittone d'Arezzo, Brunetti Latini, the tutor, and Guido Cavalcanti, the friend of Dante. Thus the light of a new language and a new literature had arisen in Italy before the commencement of the fourteenth cen

tury.

The "Tercento," as it is denominated in Italy, or, as we would call it, the fourteenth century, is regarded by Italians with a justifiable pride. It stands prominently out not only in the history of the literature of their own land, but in that of the world. There is assuredly none to transcend it. The Augustan age of Rome produced its Horace and its Ovid, its Virgil and its Sallust, Tibullus and Propertius; but the genius of Dante towers above them all

poet, historian, philosopher, and statesman. One epoch there is the epoch of England's Elizabeth-which can alone compare with it; the age which produced a wondrous galaxy of genius, the poet of all times and of all lands, the minister et interpres naturæ," the immortal Shakspeare, and the stella minores, which would have blazed as stars of the first magnitude, were he not above the horizon- Ben

Jonson, and Beaumont, and Fletcher, and Spenser. Had John Milton lived a century before his time, he would place the Elizabethan age of England even above the "Tercento" of the Italians.

To estimate fairly the position which the "Tercento" occupies in the annals of literary achievement, we must not only regard the three great writers of that age according to their intrinsic excellence as writers, but we must consider, likewise, what they, and through them, the age in which they flourished achieved for literature independent of what they actually wrote-not only as conferring the highest and last polish upon a language but just before emerged from rudeness and barbarism, but also as giving a tone and impetus to the literature of other countries, by which they, indeed, continued to profit when Italy herself, during an entire century, failed to display any progress; and further still, as the sedulous revivors and cultivators of all that was instructive and elegant in the philosophy and literature of the Latins and the Greeks, when that of the former was buried in monasteries, and that of the latter almost forgotten in western Europe.

Previous to the appearance of "the great master," the Italian poets of the age had contented themselves with such vehicles of thought and feeling as the madrigal, the sonnet, or the canzone afforded, and with such themes for their muse as the fables of ancient mythology, the achievements of chivalry, the incidents of romance, or, more frequently than any others, the charms of their mistresses, and the gallantries of the times. But the capacious and accomplished mind, the profoundly contemplative and imaginative spirit of Dante, sought after higher food to satisfy its cravings. With reviving literature a spirit of scholastic theology had come in, and the mysteries of the unseen world, and the speculations of faith, occupied more than heretofore the minds of Availing himself of this, the master-mind of Dante built up from the materials around him a poem, the sublimest in conception, the most magnificent in imagery, the profoundest in thought, the boldest in plan, the most masterly in execution, the most vigorous, the most lifelike that the world has ever seen. A poem justly esteemed

men.

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