ART. IV. 1. My Prisons, Memoirs of Silvio Pellico of Saluzzo. Boston: James Munroe & Co. 1836. 12mo. pp. 367.

2. Additions to "My Prisons, Memoirs of Silvio Pellico," with a Biographical Notice of Pellico. By PIERO MARONCELLI, of Forli. Translated from the Italian, under the Superintendence of the Author. Boston: James Munroe & Co. 12mo. pp. 276.

SOME years ago, we met with an ingenious article by Miss Taylor, entitled, "How it strikes a Stranger!" Should her "stranger," in this populous world of ours, observe how much of the time allotted to man is spent in that most passive of employments, reading, how many hundreds of human beings are apparently yielding their souls, day after day, to the sway of other men's minds, seeking professions which make books the instruments with which they work, or stealing hours from bustling and mechanical tasks, that they may pore over the pages rushing in millions from the ever-teeming press, would not this sagacious stranger naturally inquire, What do they read?" Would he not seek to learn the character of the works most popular among these insatiable consumers of literary food? Would he not fairly draw some inferences respecting their minds and dispositions after ascertaining the quality of the literature most acceptable to their tastes? We think he would. We think too he would judge kindly of human nature on observing the wide-spread popularity of the work before us. It does not enthral the readers with the spell of genius; its pages do not glow with poetry or eloquence; they offer no reflections fresh with originality, for the profound thinker to seize upon with delight; they disclose no secrets in the philosophy of nature; they charm not the lover of romance by variety of incident and intricacy of plot; they cater not to a depraved appetite for scandal. Yet they have riveted all classes of readers, from the philosopher, who reads to find materials for his meditations, down to the veriest sofa-lounger, who reads only to avoid the trouble of thinking.

What is then the secret of their enchantment? Let him who thinks ill of his fellow-creatures, observe what these volumes depict. Is it not oppressed virtue? They appeal to some of the best feelings of our nature; to our sympathy with

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distress, to our sympathy with goodness. They sketch scenes of cruel suffering, both mental and physical; but they sketch too the consolations afforded by sincere piety. They paint the depth of human woe; but they paint that solace in actual operation of which man cannot be deprived, and we feel that they paint from life. There is the impress of truth on every page, and it gives an intensity of interest which the most highlywrought fiction must for ever want. We cannot throw down the book when sympathy becomes too painful, shake off the magician's spell, and exclaim, "After all, these things have never been!" We know that the most fearful details are bare, unadorned facts; and we behold what it was that supported the mind under calamities the most crushing in their nature: calamities beyond all that the most unfortunate of us will probably be called to endure in our probation. That which the moralist in his closet, the preacher in his pulpit, the pious mother at her fire-side, are all laboring to instil into the heart of man, religion, as an active, strengthening principle, is here visibly, gloriously operating under our eyes. It is not in the character of Silvio Pellico alone that we watch its developement; though he speaks of his religious exercises, his spiritual trials, his backslidings, his penitences, and his prayers, with a freedom and communicativeness somewhat repugnant to Christians of more delicate reserve on such topics, yet he is not the only tenant of the dungeon whom we see looking upward to catch the unearthly light of the gospel as it streams into his cell. In an auto-biography, no matter with how much simplicity and modesty it may be written, the hero of the tale must always be one whose impartiality the suspicious may impeach; but among the characters grouped around the principal figure, among the forms that come and go with more or less distinctness, will be some that leave a strong impression on the memory. The side-lights will fall on some striking attitude of a minor personage, and we shall not easily forget it. Who can help paying homage to the long-tried resignation of an Oribono, dying in a foreign prison, by the slow murder of scant food, unwholesome atmosphere, and want of exercise, yet looking through his prison-bars on the foreign grave where his bones were to be laid, with a calmness which nothing but Christianity could inspire? Who can study the beautiful character of a Maroncelli, under bodily torments, needlessly increased by neglect, seeking only to alleviate the distress of his beloved friend, and not perceive that the

example of his divine Master had sunk into the heart of this affectionate being?

Even Pellico, though his devotional exercises are unfolded to us in the first volume, with a frankness somewhat startling, accustoms us ere long to the novelty, and we feel that this is not done in the spirit of religious display. We have read religious journals, so called,-printed and published for the world to study and admire, professing to reveal the inmost sins, sorrows, and compunctions of the soul, its most sacred communion with itself, and,-worse yet, with the Deity,where on every page glared such vanity, spiritual pride, and arrant self-deception, we will not say hypocrisy,- that we turned from the record sick at heart. Such are not the disclosures of the open-hearted, enthusiastic, guileless Pellico. We see that he tells all because concealment was not in his nature, or what is better, to set forth and illustrate the truths of which he speaks in his brief and manly preface. We give the preface entire, for there is nothing better written in the whole book.

"Have I written these Memoirs to gratify my vanity by speaking of myself? I hope not. And as far as one may judge in his own case, it appears to me that I have had better motives, that of contributing to the comfort of the unhappy, by making known the evils I have borne, and the consolations I have found attainable under the greatest misfortunes; that of bearing witness, that in the midst of my long sufferings, I have not found human nature so degraded, so unworthy of indulgence, so deficient in excellent characters, as it is commonly represented; that of inviting hearts to love much, to hate no human being, to feel irreconcilable hatred only towards mean deceit, pusillanimity, perfidy, and all moral degradation; that of repeating a truth well known but often forgotten; that both religion and philosophy require an energetic will and calm judgment; and that without the union of these qualities, there can be neither justice, nor dignity, nor strength of principle."

The passage, "bearing witness, that, in the midst of my long sufferings I have not found human nature so degraded, so unworthy of indulgence, so deficient in excellent characters as it is commonly represented," reminds us of another fact we would recommend to the attention of him who loves to depreciate human nature. Bandied from jailor to jailor, brought into close contact with the myrmidons of a despotic government, with turnkeys and sentries and the whole race of under-strappers to authority, the very beings most prone to abuse the

power which they find little chance to exercise but in tormenting, what testimony does the prisoner bear as to the dispositions manifested towards him? Alike among his countrymen. under the sunny sky of Italy, and in the bleak land of strangers, he finds kindness, pity, sympathy everywhere. The accents of compassion fall even from the lips of the rough Illyrian peasant, as the desolate band of state prisoners passes him on its way to a ten years' purgatory in Spielberg. "Arme Herren!" ("poor gentlemen!") he exclaims, and the carriage-wheels roll on; but that single expression of human sympathy has sunk into the hearts of the wretches cut off from life's tenderest ties. "State prisoners!" The very word is thought to speak of highly-advanced civilization! There is no Spielberg among the unpolished inhabitants of the South Sea Islands; the crisped sons of Africa are too far behind the enlightened empire of Austria to dream of the uses that may be made of Piombi and Pozzi!

The lesson taught on every page of these volumes is one of which a free people do most need to be reminded. To boast of liberty is one thing, to enjoy it with a proper sense and estimate of liberty, is another. To detest tyranny is one thing, to watch against its insidious approaches is another. It may come gliding over the sea, "spumante salo," like the serpents that involved Laocoon in their deadly folds; it may steal from behind the incense-clouded altar; it may wear a tiara, and as it lifts the keys of St. Peter, more significant of sway than the proudest sceptre, millions may wake from their dream of security to learn that a new world has sunk into bondage, when the throne of Rodolph of Hapsburg is tenantless, and the chains of the Inquisition have ceased to clank on the soil of Europe. It is well, therefore, that vivid pictures of despotism, as it exists at the present day in other countries, should be set before us from time to time, to be contemplated in strong contrast with the widely different state of things among ourselves. Despotism is a fearful word, in all ears; but we venture to say few readers will lay down these volumes without a more vivid conception of its terrible results than before.

There is another commonplace truth so beautifully exemplified in the narrative of Pellico, that we cannot pass it over. To cultivate the intellect and the affections is allowed to be a very sure mode of cultivating happiness in all ordinary modes of existence. Ten years in "carcere duro," offer rather an

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extraordinary mode of existence, it is true; unless perchance to him who is so happy as to be born under the paternal" Austrian government; (see Captain Hall's "Skimmings";) but even under circumstances the most wretched that can be imagined, how was the lot of Silvio Pellico and his companions modified by their intellectual acquirements and the lovingness of their dispositions? It is true the very tastes they had acquired at first aggravated their woe. The scholar without books! without pen and ink! The fond son and brother forbidden to hold the slightest intercourse with the beings who best loved him! the mind pining for its accustomed intellectual food! the heart thirsting for social intercourse with kindred hearts! and this too when the frail body was indeed a clog on the soul with its own unsatisfied wants, its pains, its shattered nerves, its wasted flesh, its aching bones! How did the experiment terminate? Behold the inexhaustible resources with which God has endowed that mysterious thing, the spirit that is in man! Behold, ye who find so many apologies for indolent neglect of study! ye who are misanthropes because ye can find no one worthy of your love! Read the account these imprisoned scholars give of their hours allotted to study in the forlorn dungeons of Spielberg; read of their intense mental exercises; peruse the sweet melancholy verses composed by Maroncelli at an hour which to most men would seem strangely chosen to invoke the Muses, while waiting for the amputation of a limb whose disease had been induced by imprisonment. Did not these men find resources in literature when its fountains had been barbarously shut from them? The fertilizing stream had flowed over their minds, and the soil yet bore and blossomed in the season of drought.

Then for the affections; that very susceptibility of enjoyment from social intercourse, that ardor in his attachments which seemed to render Silvio Pellico the man of all others least calculated to endure separation from his fellow creatures, what did they do for him when the hour of trial came? They taught him to derive happiness from such intercourse as he could hold through his grated window with a deaf and dumb boy. It had pleased God to place barriers between one of these sufferers and the rest of creation; the poor child could hear no one, he could speak to no one. Man had striven to shut out the other from all social intercourse. Yet these two beings held communion together; they loved each other, and their solitary VOL. XXI. 3D S. VOL. III. NO. III.

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