again so far retrograde, as to make Florence and Genoa and Milan and Venice what they were in the days of the Medici, and of

"Blind old Dandolo,

The octogenarian chief, Byzantium's conquering foe?"

*

It was not her manufactures, which made Venice so great, during the middle ages. "Based on her hundred isles," she possessed, within herself, no internal sources of wealth. It was, that her merchants, engrossing the trade with India, Persia, Arabia and Egypt, made their city the repository of the wealth of the east. Here, the merchants from France, Britain, Spain and Germany, came to purchase those rich velvets, silks brocaded in gold, Turkey carpets, jewels and spices from India, swords and warlike instruments from Damascus, and the gums and scented woods of Araby, to deck the persons, or adorn the palaces and castles, of the feudal princes and nobles.

It was from that El Dorado, that still exhaustless mine of riches, India, that the greatest portion of those treasures were brought, which, from Venice, were scattered over the rest of Europe. But soon,

"Commerce on other strands her sails unfurls."

Holland secured her independence in the sixteenth century, and immediately assumed a high station, as a commercial power. The use of the compass, and the consequent improvement in the art of navigation, made it easier to convey the treasures of Asia direct to their destination, by sea, than by the long, expensive, and dangerous method of crossing the trackless deserts in caravans. The energy and enterprize of England; her vast commercial relations, facilitated by her numerous possessions, scattered over every portion of the globe, have tended to make London now, what Venice, in her palmiest days, but faintly shadowed forth.

Even in the hour of her pride and power, Venice nursed within her bosom the worm that must have ensured her decay. Wealth brought vice and luxury as her handmaidens, and, in the fifteenth century, Venice was considered as much the grave of morality and virtue, as Paris was

• They consisted only of glass manufactures and jewellery.

in the seventeenth; so that it became a common saying, "Venezia, Venezia, chi non te vede non te pregia,

Ma, chi t'ha troppo veduto, te dispreggia."

Here are the true causes of the fallen greatness of Venice; not her subjection to Austria, which, we sincerely believe, will rather retard, than hasten her decay. To restore her fallen majesty, the merchant vessels of England, France, Holland and America must be swept from the face of the ocean. We can idealize what she was, or should have been, mourn over her "buried majesty," and assist to chaunt her requiem.

Miss Sedgwick has given us another striking proof, how difficult it is for a foreigner, in passing rapidly through a country, to form a correct opinion of what he sees, of the actual state of society, the nature of the government, and the relative prosperity of the people. A traveller carries letters of introduction to two or three persons, who introduce him to a few particular friends,—those, in fact, who think alike on all important questions, thus he hears only one side, and sees only through glasses prepared to dim his vision, by the kindly interference of his host. It would have been better if Miss Sedgwick had had a friend, now and then to have whispered to her, to hear both sides, or if she had been guided by her own unbiassed feelings, and judged from what she saw, not from any ex parte

statements.

In a note, page 31, vol. ii., Miss Sedgwick says:

"The rising of the people of Milan, in the eleventh century, upon the nobles, and the deadly war they made upon them, in their fortified castles, within the walls of the city, till they drove them forth, in order to revenge the insult done to one of their body, whom a noble struck with his cane, in midday, in the open street, is an evidence of the spirit of equal rights hardly surpassed in our democratic age."

This is "an evidence of the spirit of equal rights," which we should be, indeed, sorry to see exercised in our "democratic age." No government can be made answerable for the temper or violent passions of an individual. It might happen, in this country, as well as in Italy, that a rich man should strike a poor one, and our notions of equal rights would be for the poor man, with one blow of his sinewy

arm, to level his aggressor with the earth; not to raise a civil war, and drive a whole body forth, for the crime of one. Nay, had Miss Sedgwick lived at the period to which she alludes, it is more than probable that her sympathy might have been as much awakened for the exiled nobles, thus driven forth by an infuriated mob, as it has been for her exiled noble friends of the present time.

Speaking of the country between Brescia and Verona, Miss Sedgwick says:

"This is the richest part of Lombardy, covered with mulberries and vines, and thronging with, as it appears to us, a healthy population, full fed, from the cradle to the grave. The children are stout and rosy, with masses of bright circling hair. The women are tall, and well developed; and the old people so old that one would think they must, themselves, have forgotten they were ever young,-the last thing they do forget. But they are never rocked in the cradle of reposing age, and never cease from their labors. We see even the very old women, with their gray heads bare, or' covered with a fanciful straw hat, driving asses and leading cows on the highway. Whenever our carriage stops, there are plenty of beggars around us, but they are, for the most part, sick or maimed. Comparing the peasantry of Savoy with that here, this climate would seem to be bed and board to them."

Things, then, are not in a very bad state, after all, in Lombardy; but the truth is, it is not the people who are galled by the supremacy of Austria, but the nobles, and Miss Sedgwick, democratic as she is, and always ready to believe the popular clamor when the nobles are its object, seems to have had her democratic feelings give way in favor of the nobles of Italy, for she says:

"It is possible, the peasant may derive a certain kind of pleasure, from knowing that, politically, he is on a level with his lord. The government is, in one sense, to them, a perfect democracy,-a dead level of nothingness. Our proud and noble friend had the same liability to Austrian conscription, as the meanest peasant on his estate, and his vote (they do vote in municipal affairs), counts no more than his who eats broth and black bread."

Yes, and the peasants know well, that this would not have been the case, had the patriots succeeded; therefore, did they never cordially join them; they prefer that things should rest as they are, and thus they will remain, spite of the efforts of the liberals, from Lady Morgan to Miss

Sedgwick. The patriotic nobles, instead of legislating in their petty states, must employ their talents, as some of them are most praiseworthily and successfully doing, in literary pursuits.

That some of the restrictions, made by the Austrian government, must be galling to proud and sensitive minds, we are ready to admit; and the unsuccessful attempts to throw off the Austrian yoke, have, of course, made these restrictions worse. The vigilance of power is kept alive by dissatisfaction, but would soon relax when vigilance should be found unnecessary. If Miss Sedgwick advocates the principle of the greatest happiness to the greatest number, she must take more enlarged views of the policy of nations. There is little doubt but that, in a few years, northern Italy will form an integral portion of the Austrian dominions, and the sources of annoyance and jealousy, now existing, will gradually die away.

The balance of power, at present established in Europe, requires that northern Italy should remain as it is, nominally independent; the moment that balance shall be destroyed, its union with Austria will be inevitable.

Miss Sedgwick, with all her anti-Austrian feelings, pays an involuntary homage to the government, in the following paragraph:

"The road from Como to Milan is such as you would expect princes to make for their own chariot wheels. The Austrian government, sparing as it is in all other improvements, for the public good, is at immense expense to maintain the roads, in this absolute perfection: After four or five weeks of continued and drenching rain, there is not so much mud as an ordinary summer shower would make on one of our best turnpikes! In many places the road is raised ten and twelve feet above the level of the surrounding ground. There is a footpath on each side, protected by granite blocks, like our mile stones, which occur at intervals of twelve or fifteen feet."*

As a pendant to this one meritorious act of a government, so "sparing in all other acts, for the public good,"

Those who have travelled much in the southern and western States, who have been a few times overturned, had their carriages broken, many miles from any place where it would be possible to have them repaired, and seen their poor horses floundering in prairie mud, may, we trust, be pardoned for wishing that some other governments were equally paternal with the Austrian, in providing for the safety of its migratory population.

tilled, distress and gaunt famine, would every where rear their hideous forms; the cry of starving thousands, would be, "give us bread, even with the Austrian supremacy." How would Confalonieri, and the counts Cusati, answer such a cry?

Miss Sedgwick tells us, that her patriotic friend, "Count C., believes the government of the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom, to be the best in Italy." We believe so too. In her own letters, it stands forth, in bright relief, when contrasted with the Italian governments of Naples and Rome. Though, in both these states, there has been a great change for the better, since my Lady Morgan wrote her Italy, and the march of improvement is still bearing onward.

Through the whole of the letters, Miss Sedgwick makes an unnecessary and obtrusive display of her democratic feelings: in a work of this nature, and, particularly, as written by a lady, we deem it a proof of bad taste; and, it appears singularly so, when, as in the present volumes, such demonstrations are contrasted with an equally ostentatious display of the names of titled or highborn personages. We were, too, extremely sorry to find many pages sullied by vulgarisms. If Madame Sismondi talked of "tittery-tattery," we could have excused the repetition; we would draw a pen through "jimcrackeries," and the word "nice," which, she fancies, she uses in the pure English sense, would, as she has applied it, puzzle every English person, as much as it must every American. And, on the whole, though we admire simplicity, we think it would have been possible to have given a little more of elevation and dignity to her style, without injuring that simplicity.

ART. VI.—1. Brief Exposition of the Constitution of the United States, by James Bayard. Philadelphia, 1838. 2. Speeches in the Senate of the United States, on Mr. Calhoun's Resolutions. 1833.

The nature and origin of our government,—that is, a right understanding of the text and spirit of the Constitution, and of by whom the latter was formed, are subjects of the highest importance to the American patriot. They