If writers had not then begun to adopt the latter language in matters not diplomatic or connected with the Senate House, we should still have continued ignorant of what had been then the lan guage of the common people, in like manner as we are ignorant of what it was previous to the 13th century. One may conclude then, that from the words scattered among the diplomatic documents of the ages prior to the 10th century, may be deduced the existence of a vulgar dialect, which was our common Italian, but extremely unpolished, and abounding with la tinisms vulgarly inflected. For the above reasons, I know not how to accord either with yourself or others, who allege that it was towards the close of the 12th century that the Italian language was produced, and that Lucio Druso was the first to conceive the arduous design of forming a third dialect jointly from the Latin and the vulgar tongue. This third dialect resulted specially from the use of the article, and the change in the terminations of nouns and verbs, which had taken place, as we have already seen, prior to the time of Lucio Druso. Besides, it is not in the power of any single individual to accustom a people in the short space of a few years to the use of a new tongue. He may have been among the first to adopt it in poetry, and other branches of literature; and he may have been the first who thought of ennobling it by uniting the dialect of Sicily with that of Tuscany, but I cannot grant him more; let the praise which has been given him in the oftquoted sonnet suffice. To conclude, it is one thing to say that the Italian language existed before the 10th century, uncultivated it is true, and not subjected to fixed rules; another, that it originated about the end of the 12th, when, in fact, they only began to write it generally, and sought to polish, and in some measure regulate it, until Guido d'Arezzo, Messer Cino, Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch, rendered it perfect. The inscription of Verruca, near Pisa, shews, that in the Pisan territory, and in the city, they spoke the vulgar tongue even from that period; but I do not clearly see that any argument ought to be drawn therefrom, to prove that it was spoken in Pisa earlier than elsewhere, because the monuments of all the other Tush can cities of the times anterior to the 10th century, abound in so many more Italian words, as assuredly to prevail against the very few made use of in that inscription. At farthest, the conclusion may be drawn, that the Pisans were among the first to write it without any intermixture of barbarous Latin, or even that they were the first to write the vulgar tongue, and here would-be confirmed the boast of the supporters of Lucio Druso. Nor do I refuse to yield to them the glory that from among the citizens of Pisa have sprung various of our prime poets, of many of whom mention is made by Allaci, and also by myself, with numerous illustrations, in a letter to Signor Gaetano Poggiali, inserted in the Giornale Encyclopedica of Florence. Thus, my dear Sir, I have repeated to you, with somewhat greater extension, my sentiments upon a subject which has greatly occupied our literary men, whose opinions are not found to accord, because they forsook the true path, believing that the written lan guage of the monuments of the so called barbarous ages, was the common language, and that those other words commingled with it, were so many disconnected materials, which, combined with the remnants of the vulgar Latin, afterwards originated and gave place to the language of the 12th century; whereas, such words belonged to the language in common use, though not admitted in writing," especially diplomatical, unless when introduced through the ignorance of the notaries, who, when they were at a loss for a Latin or Latinized word for their law courts, made use of the vulgar. By inadvertence, too, these common words may have sometimes crept in, whilst, for a matter of form, they continued to write a language worse than the vernacular tongue. by us in Italy. As you know I am no critic, you must excuse the dryness of a mere catalogue, while I mention the names of such works as have been translated within these last few years. Our chief translator of poetry is the Signor Leoni, who is very re gular in harnessing (the English word harrassing would also do) my Lord Byron's Pegasus after the Italian fa shion. Listen “I stood in Venice, on the bridge of sighs, to have conspired imagination.Politi given another tendency spirit.Society here oc more willingly in the consideration va national rights, of commerce, mechani cal inventions, and the progress of manufactures, than in madrigals, sonself, we love politics and philosophy nets, and canzonettes. In poetry it and the productions of the nineteenth century bear about them a character of reasoning power which separates them from the greater part of those of the preceding age. In criticism we are somewhat improved, being more pithy, and less mild than of old; but we do not make use of personal satire, nor apply the reductio ad absurdum tó men whose character and opinions are deserving of reverence, as is so often done in your English Review.—( Rîvista Inglese.*) I think it is one of your own great writers who asserts, that there is so much room in the world for the serious and the gay to Besides the fourth canto of Childe Harold, (published under the name of Italia), the following are also among Leoni's translations: 11 Saggio Sull' Uomo of Pope, La Scuola della Maldicenza of Sheridan, several Tragidie di Shakespeare, Pope's Lettera d'Eloisa ad Abelardo, Gray's Elegia, Una Scel-gether, that we might impose it upon ta di Poesie Inglesi, I Lamenti del Tasso of Byron, some miscellaneous translations from Ossian, Otway, Gold smith, and Thomson, La Storia d'Ing hilterra of Hume, volume 1st, and I Paradiso perduto of Milton, which last translation falls greatly behind the admirable one already executed in blank verse by Papi. ourselves as a law, never to trifle with what is worthy of our veneration, and yet lose nothing by so doing of the freedom of pleasantry. Still the ana thema of Horace against mediocrity in poetry is with us more in vigour than heretofore; and it is now no longer allowed to appear before the public with a volume of mere verses, if they are not presented in the spirit of humility, and with a prayer for grace. dertaking for an Englishman, even supposing him as well versed in the language and literature of Italy as Matthias or Roscoe. In the meantime, I beg leave to call your attention to the following little critical discovery which has been recently made regarding our great "Signor del Altissimo Canto." Count Luigi Bossi has published a translation of Roscoe's Vita di Leon X, and Signor Torri a polyglott edition of I hear that you have lately had exGray's Elegy. Lord Byron's Giaurro ecuted in your country a good transla was translated by Rossi, and Il Cortion of our Dante-a most arduous unsaro (anonymously) at Turin. Lala Rook racconta orientale in prose ed in versi di Thomaso Moore, appeared in 1818 by the hand of Tito Povirio Catti, and Il Saggio dell' Intendimento Umano of Locke in the following year. New editions were also produced of Le Quattro Stagioni of Pope, and by the same author (G. Vincenzo Benini,) an admirable translation of Il Riccio Rapito, (the Rape of the Lock) a great favourite among the Italians, who possess the model from which it was taken, the Secchia Rapita of Tassoni. Finally, there was published by Gherardini of Milan, Darwin's Amori Delle Piante. Of our original works in poetry of the present day I shall say nothing. In Italy the genius of the times seems Those two verses in the Divina Commedia, spoken by Nembrotte and Pluto, so long the despair of commen- b tators, and a stumbling-block în the Raphel mai amechi zabi almi 431 MübĮ We presume the blue and yellow is here meant. AN EVENING SKETCH, The birds have ceased their song, All, save the black cap, that, amid the boughs Chaunts forth his evening hymn. 'Tis twilight now ; The sovran sun behind his western hills Are slumbering through their multitude of boughs; The sea is waveless as a lake engulph'd With bosoming branches, round yon village hangs. Towering in spiral wreaths to the soft sky, As I gaze, behold The evening star illumines the blue south, Dreaming sweet dreams, till earth-born turbulence TO THE PROTESTANT LAYMAN. Lé Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape SIR, If your candour had kept pace with your professions, or if you had willingly displayed towards Catholics" the full extent of that charity which is the essence of Christianity," in your letter to Lord Nugent, which appeared in the last Number of this Magazine, it would perhaps have been unnecessary for me to have thus addressed you; but as you have not merely attacked, but also calumniated and misrepresented, (I shall not say intentionally, for my religion teaches me to judge no man rashly,) the faith which I possess, and as your charity appears to me to be great obscured by the jaundice of religious prejudice, I shall endeavour to remove the latter by answering your principal arguments against restoring Roman Catholies to the full and free enjoyment of their civil rights, and that in a manner and spirit very different from that displayed by you. If, for instance, I shall find it necessary to allude to the persecutions which Catholics have suffered from Protestants of every denomination since the period of the Reformation, I shall not impute it to any principle of Protestantism, but to the misguided zeal of the individuals who have exercised them, and so far from charging the sects to which they respectively belonged with their crimes, as you, sir, and others such as you, constantly do in your writings against the Catholic claims, I will rather as cribe them to an absence of every religious idea. It is very easy to perceive the reason why the opponents of the Catholic claims follow a different course. The times are now happily over when Ca tholics were individually charged with designs hostile to the Government as by law established, and when the terms Catholic or Papist and traitor were synonymous; and you yourself, sir, candidly confess, (O si sic omnia!) that "Roman Catholic gentlemen have the same sense of honour which regulates the conduct of others," and that "there is no fear of their practising so scandalous a fraud," as to take the Anticatholic declarations and oaths required by law, for the purpose of obtaining those privileges from which VOL. XI. OSHA they are excluded. This is a compl ment which no Roman Catholic will, whether a gentlemen or not, accept at the expence of his religion. You, however, very inconsistently maintain the old hackneyed jargon, a thousand times brought forward, and as often refuted, that it is a principle of the Roman Catholic religion not to keep faith with heretics or other persons differing from them in religious opinions; and while you are forced to acknowledge that the doors of Parlia ment are open even to the unprinci pled atheist, to the exclusion of men whose great crime is not of believing too little, but too much, you console yourself with the idea, that if such a man should attain the summit of power "he (the atheist) certainly would never harrow up the feelings of the country he was destined to rule by exhibiting the spectacle of an auto da fe." Have you then, sir, forgot the horrors of the French Revolution? Are you not aware that many thou, sands of persons professing the reli gion you attempt to vilify lost their lives, and that a vast number more abandoned their country to avoid a similar fate because they would not worship the Goddess of Reason? See to what a serious charge your intemperate zeal against the religion of your ancestors has exposed you! But, sir, the reason remains to be explained why the opponents of the Catholic claims have now adopted the extraordinary course of charging the real or supposed crimes of certain Catholics to their religious tenets, in place of laying them at the doors of the criminals themselves. It is simply this, that as the loyalty, honour, and good faith, of the Catholics of these kingdoms, are beyond dispute, and even admitted by their bitterest enemies, the opponents of their claims are obliged to have re course to unfounded sweeping charges against the whole body, to substantiate which they are forced to adduce the acts of certain individuals of that body, acts which they profess to declare that no individuals of that body would now be guilty of! You, sir, are not perhaps aware how destructively such a mode of argumentation would 4 A operate against the cause you espouse; for if it can shewn, which it can, that Protestanf have cominitted atrocities against Catholics as revolting, and perhaps more revolting, than any of those imputed to the Catholics, why, in the name of common sense, should Protestantism be exempted, and Catholicism charged solely with them? or why should the deeds of wicked Catholics be charged to the tenets of their religion, and similar acts of wicked Protestants ascribed not to their tenets, but to the bad spirit of the individuals? But it seems that you found it necessary to do so to justify the vote of the Peers. As there is no rule, however general, but may be liable to exceptions, so I perfectly agree with you, that it must depend on the peculiar nature and practices of each particular religious sect, whether it shall be entitled to full and free toleration; and if you, sir, had, like "an open and generous ene my," joined issue with Catholics in endeavouring to shew, not by misrepresentation and calumny, but from their own admitted principles and practices, that these should, like those of the Druids, except them from this rule, in place of entertaining your readers with the alleged belief of the "orthodox Spaniard," and the nonsense of Swift, I should have been disposed to have admired your candour, whatever opinion I might have formed of your Christianity and logic. But it is the boast and glory of Catholics, that no person ever yet attacked their religion and practices without first misrepresenting them. Before proceeding to examine your charges against Catholics or their religion, (which is the same thing,) I shall take notice of the position you maintain, in opposition to Lord Nugent, that the Roman Catholic is not deprived of his civil rights, "because he prays for the intercession of the Saints between himself and his Maker, because he recognizes the Pope in spiritualities, and because he believes in the real presence of our Lord in the elements of the Sacrament of the last supper." And that the cause of his being deprived of his civil rights" is because he (the Catholic) has an invincible propensity to force these doctrines on the belief of other men." Now, if you really imagine that it was not on account of the doctrines alluded to that Catholics were deprived of their civil rights, I am fully prepared to shew that you are mistaken; but if you mean that these doctrines, which are now admitted to be quite harmless, are no longer held out as grounds for the exclusion of Catholics, you are doubtless correct. Our first reformers, from their zeal and the ferocity of their dispositions, were open and candid in their condemnation of Catholicism, or Popery as they called it; and as soon as they obtained the ascendancy, the doctrines above-mentioned were at once declared by the civil and ecclesiastical powers superstitious and idolatrous, and the believers in them were denounced as beings unfit to live. Hence the sanguinary laws which followed the enkindling of "the pure flame" of the reformation in every country where it succeeded, and hence the severe persecutions suffered by the professors of the ancient religion. I am fortunately spared the trouble of going farther back into our history than the periods of the corporation and test acts to establish what I have advanced, as you will be aware that these are now the only laws in force to prevent Catholics from being eligible to the highest offices in the state. You are probably also aware that these acts prescribe certain oaths or declarations to be taken by all persons entering on office, by which they must swear that the doctrines alluded to, as practised by the Church of Rome, are idolatrous, and yet I will venture to affirm, without hazard of contradiction, that scarcely nine out of ten who swallow these oaths know the meaning put upon these doctrines by the Church of Rome, and still fewer could give any explanation of the most noted, viz. that of transubstantiation! There is such a want of method in your letter as renders it impossible for me to follow it in detail, but for perspicuity's sake, I shall pick out your charges against Catholics, and answer them in the order here set down. These may be reduced to three heads. 1st, That it is a principle of Roman Catholics to keep no faith with heretics, or other persons differing from them in religious opinions. 2d, That it is also a principle with them to persecute every person who differs from |