JULIA. KAVANAGII'S TWO SICILIES, * THROUGHOUT the greater portion of this

book the workmanship predominates over the materials. Every page exhibits the quick observer, the practised novelist, and the something more than clever litterateur. Every scene is examined ; even a passing effect is noted for the sake of what landscape-painters call composition; although the result may be something better than nature, theun- sightly being left out, or only noticed on the principle of contrast. Scarcely a character approaches the writer but is studied as it about to be used in a fiction ; and used it is, though let us hope only as a transcript of the real. Some are mere passing per- sons ; others are serviceable as supplying types of common man- ners, or furnishing indications of Italian opinions ; one or two bear a part in the narrative, and serve to introduce the reader to the humbler interiors of Italian life ; for access is difficult to the inner life of the Italian gentry. That all this is less photographic than pictorial may be very possible; the imaginative writer ac- customed to combine and beautify the literal, may habitually make the most of things in portraiture or in views from nature. If it be so, however, this advantage attends it. We have the inner spirit as well as the outward forms. The sentiment which the landscape inspires permeates the description. The characters not only come before us as individuals, but as Italians. Still, excellent es the book is in various points of view, some readers may be temptedto exclaim with the Queen in Hamlet " more matter with less art."

The fair writer's field of observation was limited, depriving her

of the narrative and variety of the traveller, and forcing her on a minute study of the scenery and persons before her. The ex- tent of her skeleton or frame-work was a residence at Sorrento with excursions to Paestum and Capri, a flying visit to Palermo with an inspection of the few sights in its immediate neighbour- hood, and two sojourns at Naples—Vesuvius, Pompeii, &c., being of course "done". . More than the knowledge derived from these experiences will be found in the volumes ; because in some of the remarks or disquisitions on the Italians a general acquaintance with Italy is shown, and on many of the spots with associations, the historical story is brought up—a method of composition ex- cusable, where necessary, and suggested by the scene, but some- what hacknied in plan and very facile. External descriptions form a principal feature of A Summer and Winter in the Two Sicilies, the describer's impression of the scene sometimes dominating over the scene itself. The most in- teresting parts relate to the condition of the people in Italy, and the state of opinion and education. On the first point our au- thoress is favourable. There is not the starvation distress in the South, which we hear of in Northern climates. This may be true; but the South itself is the cause of it. Except during a few months of the year, man does not want much cover ; and if he did he would not and could not get what an Englishman would deem a house. The like remark may be made on clothing ; according to our notions the poor Southerns scarcely wear any.

Heat, or necessity, render them so sparing in food that manyeehfaabnitci beer loving Englishmen would think it something like starvation all the year round. In fact, if the number of beggars in Southern Italy did not rather shake Julia Kavanagh's conclusion, a jocular story given by the writer would. The family spoken of was in a respectable position, and almost opulent for their condition in life, that of what we should call small farmers. ‘`A regular breakfast the family never take; they eat something—hrYado, and cheese, figs, apples—anything, in short, in the morning. A dish. .1 vegetables or maccaroni is their dinner ; a water-melon, when in season,i_s their daintiest supper; meat and wine, unless on extraordinary occasion's, they never touch. " How they and the Italians in general live, is, I confess, a mystery

to

• 4 Slimmer and Winter in the Two Sicilies. By Julia Kavanagh, And," of Nathalie," Adele," &e. In two volumes. 'Published by Hurst and Blackett. ..„„) brrithinkinglit.errer,, I have. come iimand to the.opininn ,of an Irish me ,.. as”-- hd,wyo gm cenntry well,: and,who has gravely informed rue , gentlfung j7, Tiliii' cvc,r eaten enough —frqua which sa eepina- judgment, he that tle +ita,IaI . ssapolitatis niust;liotever, he exeepted." Of the alleged Italian laziness there is this defence—the com- petition, o. to the ldVestern nations have long since deprived the people of anything o o. ., Loss of custom is everywhere synonymous with ruin ; and when there ac swill competitors in the field, one at least must perish. Italy was sni and exhausted, like a fruitful soil that has yielded twice in one season.

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'Were eager and ardent—they had never worked, and all their lisev

in their task. The old land grew weak as they grew strong- enerr,Y '''sdivisions changes and helped her decline—she bought where she o lineal

once had sold, and became what she is now. But what has idleness to do When the Italians do not work, it is for a very sad and wi' th-this decay P exceneht reason—that they have nothing to do. Enterprise is dead, that is true enough, and it is dead because capital is scarce and success is doubtful ; and no man and no people, without a fair prospect of profit in the end, will ershink in speculation. Where an Italian has a chance of earning, he works with the hardest will I ever saw. "Thousands of mountaineers come down from the hills every season to till the unhealthy campagna around Rome. Many die, but they will be as numerals next year as they are this. The Sorrentini are indefatigable— from morning till night men and women work, with barely an hour's rest .itnoonday ; and I have seen here, what I never saw out of Italy, women helping men to pave the streets and the masons to build houses. As to not nothing when they have nothing to do, who can blame them for it ? "

Their ignorance is freely admitted. Among the common people it is ignorance of everything, except what they draw from ex- perience; ' - the middle and upper classes have more of what may he termed learning, extending in some cases to languages ; but their real knowledge is very slight ; and some curious instances are given of the ignorance of the educated classes. Ignorance, however, is bliss. In Naples it is extreme folly to be wise : it involves persecution ; even if the cunning man he of the priest- hood, In fact Julia Kavanagh's representation of the Neapolitan clergy is very different from that usually entertained.

"Thisisithe last country where a man should become a priest without haw- iag the duties of the priesthood to fill up his days. Idleness ends in the dis- pleasured the Bishop, and too much knowledge in the suspicion of the police. Woe be to the priest who reads too much, who would educate the people, who is ',impeded of the most moderate liberality. Sooner or later his hour will come. No wonder that between this Charybdis and Scylla, the timid, the inert, should try to steer, that, like Done Abondio, in the Pronressi ...),68i, they should be contented with leading quiet, indolent lives, that can tisfy neither God nor the world. But the number of these is compara- tively limited. Amongst the priests and the monks of this kingdom there is but one groan against the bondage in which Government keeps them, and to the honour of the whole body be it said, the pious, the indifferent, the good, the idle even, all unite in hating a policy that would deprive them of the noblest right of the priesthood—to teach and to know.

"Happy, indeed, is ignorance in this land; happy he who knows not how to read, or who is known not to use the knowledge. He may sleep in peace; he need not fear being wakened up at dead of night to answer the call of a police inspector come to see what are the books he reads, what secret thoughts he has written down in his papers. He will not have to excuse himself for not having opened his door fast enough, and he need not explain that sleep alone caused the delay. He need not sit for hours praying to Heaven and all its saints for patience, whilst, with the insolence of office and the impu- nity of power, the man of the police frowns, and ominously says, ' Signore, what is this? A book with the portrait of a man with a beard? Do you not know that hoards are Republican, and forbidden ? '

"The victim does his best to keep down his hot Italian blood, and, re- lumbering under what Government he lives, he replies quietly, ' Signore, I am not answerable for either beard or portrait. This is a historical ro- 1 mance, and the man has been represented in the costume of the times ;

1 every man then wore a beard.'

[ "Vain excuse, which only further rouses police wrath. The inspector, indeed, does not stand on ceremony, he tears the portrait out of the book, and turns his attention to another volume; where, as misfortune will have it, he ends another portrait, with a beard longer than the first. Dire is his fury, but in the main it ends with another execution ; a second portrait is destroyed. "And now the papers must be examined. The victim is learned, the po- lice inspector is ignorant, the examination of the manuscripts, the expla- nations of all that the inspector cannot understand proves an endless, a sickening task, and thus the whole night was spent, for we speak of real, not imaginary- facts, and it was dawn before the victim, a gentleman, a man ( !canting, and a priest, was left in peace. This took place in Naples. Priests are, indeed, a particular object of suspicion, and treated with very little ceremony. "One of the learned monks, at Monte Cassino, spent six months in a wretched dungeon, and, to this day, does not know why,—happy to have been released, and not to linger out his days in a prison like many good and aside men in this strangely-governed land."

Yet suffering does not make the Neapolitans tolerant of another people's aspirations for liberty, or disposed to grant them free- dom, if they had any power that way. In this feeling, however, they do not stand alone. In 1848 the Germans having obtained as they thought perfect liberty, were anxious before all things

to the Austrian domination in Italy. So the Nea- politans if free themselves would like to use their freedom for one thing to tyrannize over the Sicilians. There is something very woful in the position of Sicily. Cott there,

i

,hnotreshe.Meffiterrancan Seas, it seems destined to be ever the prey of all their

the Aab Carthage, and Rome, in the ancient world, in the modern, r , Spanish, and Norman conquerors, seem conjured against its liber-

ties. And I have known liberal Neapolitans, who behold this result with satistiction, in whose dreams of political freedom the independence of Sicily is not comprised, nay, who rejoice openly in the bitter subjection of this beautiful and un haP y country to their own land and race. Yet they hate i‘lonstlia with a mortal hate, resentfully they tell you of the pressure of her hand, undisguiredly

"'My father ' •d. they confess their abhorrence.

a Neapolitan gentleman to me, ' crosses over to the ether side of the' street when he meets an Austrian.' 4.1 thought this at the time about as good a speeinen of national detesta- tion as one couldge t - hut, to my surprise, the same gentleman said to me manother conversation :— frifhe Sicilians are a most perfidious people !

endly, but they They may seem quite always hate a Neapolitan in their heart.'

"Au-, just as the Neapolitan bates the Gorman, who hates the Russian, who hates-the Tin-k, who hates the Christian, and so on, ad in/ iniiant, all the world over, and all the .world aver,, too, there is the same move wonder iu the mind of Alm oppressor at the preposterous hatred of the oppressed." There is much more information of a similar kind ; and a good deal upon a subject we have not touched upow—domestic and es- pecially married life. The following story we close with means good deal more than it says. By himself a despot is almost powerless for evil, and altogether for good. Ile cannot exist with- out its appropriate means, and they often render him worse than he may naturally be. Where these means nationally exist it is very bad ; but how much worse is it where an unscrupulous self- ishness, and an inexorable will, call out the latent evil whielt exists in all countries, and convert men. into tools tyranny: who would otherwise have remained innoxieus.

" Count — is a Liberal in polities, but moderate. Ile detests. the abuses he sees, but he says :—

" Is it fair to throw the whole blame on the King? '

"The corruption which prevails in every rank is, indeed, a growth of the soil, with which the King has nothing to do. lie is "Inc of the first to sutfer from it. A lady, the daughter of a deceased colonel, was reduced ter ex- treme poverty. She applied to the Queen for relief, and fainted from want in her presence. The Queen was greatly infected, and ordered one of the gentlemen of her household to give this poor girl a sum of one hundred ducats.

" How much do you suppose the lady got ? ' asked Count —, who told

me this story. Ten.' " It is true that the dishonesty of the gentleman was discovered, and that he was shamefully dismissed from the Come.

" But where is the use ? ' he added, with unconscious naivete ; another will do as much.' "