carried with it the idea of something formidable, dark, and 'fabulous. The suspicions that were every where entertained of his confederates and tools of assassination, contributed to keep alive a constant memento of him. They were nothing more than suspicions; since who would have openly acknow'ledged such a dependence? but every tyrant might be his associate, every robber one of his assassins; and the very uncertainty of the fact rendered the opinion more general, and the terror more profound. At every appearance of an un'known ruffian, more savage-looking than usual; at every enormous crime, the author of which could not be at first 'pointed out or conjectured, the name of this man was pro"nounced and whispered about.'

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The Italian mob has a character of its own in the same way. Quick, inflammable, and dangerous, ready to aim their poniard where an English countryman would only double his fist; with an appetite easily whetted for blood, and tenderness equally excitable, the lower classes present a peculiar variety of the human mass. They seem literally not to have that horror at blood in their nature, which we English suppose is the necessary property of man. They unclasp their knives in a moment; the sudden insult, or sneer, or inuendo kindles their eye; a fierce look is darted, and they rush with knife in hand upon one another. Their first idea, on such occasions, is to kill. They come to the point at once, and have no flat roundabout beating and bruising work. The character is, after all, capable of a most amiable aspect, where this final catastrophe is happily frustrated. The hero of the story, Renzo, is a regular Italian peasant; full of life, sensibility, good humour, tenderness, with a decided instinct for stabbing when he feels seriously aggrieved. We are really surprised at the vivid glibness with which the action of the knife recurs to his mind, in moments of vexation, and the facility with which a really amiable and devout youth makes his foe a corpse before his mind. He has just heard that it is Don Rodrigo who has prevented his marriage.

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Renzo, meanwhile, walked with an excited step towards 'home, without having determined what he ought to do, but ' with a mad longing to do something strange and terrible. The unjust and oppressive, all those, in fact, who wrong "others, are guilty, not only of the evil they do, but also of the 'perversion of mind they cause in those whom they offend. Renzo was a young man of peaceful disposition, and averse to 'violence; sincere, and one who abhorred deceit; but at this 'moment, his heart panted for murder: his mind was occupied only in devising a plot. He would have wished to hasten to 'Don Rodrigo's house, to seize him by the throat, and.... but

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he remembered that his house was like a fortress, garrisoned 'with bravoes within, and guarded without; that only friends and servants, well known, could enter freely, without being 'searched from head to foot; that an artisan, if unknown, could not put foot within it without an examination; and that he, above all .... he probably would be too well known. He then fancied himself taking his fowling-piece, planting himself behind a hedge, looking out whether his enemy would ever, ever pass by, unaccompanied; and dwelling with ferocious complacency on this thought, he imagined the sound of a step; at this sound he raises his head without noise; recognises the wretch, raises the fowling-piece, takes aim'fires; sees him fall and struggle, bestows a malediction on him, and escapes in safety beyond the borders.-And Lucia? -Scarcely had this word come across these dreadful phantasies, when the better thoughts, with which Renzo was 'familiarized, crowded into his mind. He recalled the dying charge of his parents. The thought of God, of the Blessed Virgin, and of the saints, returned upon him; he remembered "the consolation he had so often experienced from the recol'lection that he was free from crimes; he remembered the horror with which he had so often received the news of a 'murder; and he awoke from this dream of blood with fear, with remorse, and yet with a sort of joy that he had but 'imagined it.'

In a scene with Lucia:

“Ah, rascal! wretch! murderer !" exclaimed Renzo, striding backwards and forwards across the room, and grasping from time to time the hilt of his dagger.

"“Oh, heavens, what a fury!" exclaimed Agnese. The young man suddenly drew himself up before Lucia, who was weeping, looked at her with an anxious and imbittered tenderness, and said, "This is the last deed this assassin 'shall do."

"Ah, no, Renzo, for Heaven's sake!" cried Lucia; "no, no, for Heaven's sake! God is on the side of the poor, and how can we expect him to help us if we do wrong?"

"No, no, for Heaven's sake!" echoed Agnese.'

The riot at Milan, and Renzo's proceedings in it, are vividly given. He plunges into the very thick of the commotion, while, with the most benevolent intentions, he assists in saving the unfortunate Superintendant from the half-famished furious mob. The Milanese mob is just stopped by the appearance of the Chancellor, Antonio Ferrer, in his carriage, who, on the strength of his own popularity and proclamations on the subject of cheap bread, comes to the rescue of his fellow official.

'The crowds moved onward, before, behind, and on each side of the carriage, like the mighty billows around a vessel advancing through the midst of a storm. The noise was more 'shrill, more discordant, more stunning, even than the whistling ' and howling of a storm itself. Ferrer, looking out first at one 'side and then at the other, beckoning and making all sorts of 'gestures to the people, endeavoured to catch something to which he might accommodate his replies; he tried as well as 'he could to hold a little dialogue with this crowd of friends; 'but it was a difficult task, the most difficult, perhaps, that he had yet met with during so many years of his high-chancellorship. From time to time, however, a single word, or occasionally some broken sentence, repeated by a group in his passage, 'made itself heard, as the report of a large squib is heard above the continued crackling and whizzing of a display of fireworks. 'Now endeavouring to give a satisfactory answer to these cries, now loudly ejaculating the words that he knew would be most 'acceptable, or that some instant necessity seemed to require, 'he, too, continued to talk the whole way. "Yes, gentlemen; 'bread, abundance-I will conduct him to prison: he shall be punished-si està culpable. Yes, yes: I will command: bread at a low price. A si es... So it is, I mean to say: the king ' our master would not wish such faithful subjects to suffer from hunger. Ox! ox! guardaos: take care we don't hurt you, gentlemen. Pedro, adelante, con juicio. Plenty, plenty. A little room, for pity's sake. Bread, bread. To prison, to prison. "What?" then demanded he of one who had thrust half his body through the window, to shout in his ear some advice or petition or applause, or whatever it might be. But he, without having 'time to hear the "what?" was forcibly pulled back by one 'who saw him on the point of being run over by the wheels. With such speeches and replies, amongst incessant acclamations, and some few grumbles of opposition, which were distinguishable here and there, but were quickly silenced, Ferrer at last reached the house, principally by the aid of these good 'auxiliaries."

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Ferrer gets the Superintendant into his carriage, and moves off with him through the crowd. As soon as Ferrer had seated himself, he bent down, and advised the vicar to keep himself well 'concealed in the corner, and not show himself for Heaven's sake; 'but there was no necessity for this warning. He, on the con'trary, was obliged to display himself at the window, to attract and engage the attention of the multitude: and through the 'whole course of this drive he was occupied, as before, in making, 'to his changeable audience, the most lengthened and most un'connected harangue that ever was uttered; only interrupting

'it occasionally with some Spanish word or two, which he turned 'to whisper hastily in the ear of his squatting companion. "Yes, gentlemen, bread and justice. To the castle, to prison, under my guard. Thank you, thank you; a thousand thanks. No, 6 no; he shall not escape! Por ablandarlos.* It is too just; we will examine, we will see. I also wish you well, gentlemen. A severe punishment. Esto lo digo por su bien.† A just tariff, a fair limit, and punishment to those who would starve you. · Stand aside, I beg of you.-Yes, yes, I am an honest man, a 'friend of the people. He shall be punished. It is true, he is a rogue, a rascal. Perdone usted! It will go ill with him, it ' will go ill with him. . . . Si està culpable.§ Yes, yes; we will 'make the bakers plough straightforward. Long live the king, ' and the good Milanese, his most faithful subjects! It is bad, very bad. Animo; estamos ya quasi afuera.”|||

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Such are the materials which Manzoni has provided for him to work up. He has, in the peculiar Italian shape, nobles, ruffians, an inflammable peasantry-all the turbulent, dark, and sanguinary elements of character, and all the mixture of generous, passionate, and affectionate ones, which our own novelists have. He has the same field of human wildness and restlessness, audacity, fraud, and lawless energy, to go over, that Scott hasthe same irregular landscape, under a more southern sun. But there is this great difference in the respective ways in which Manzoni and Scott treat this raw material. The one represents the wildness of human nature going on by itself and left to its own direction; the other, that wildness brought under the softening control of a power above it. In Manzoni nature has her mistress: nature feels herself under an informing, guiding, restraining, soothing, sympathising, ruling master-hand The Church overshadows the ground, like the cathedral arch; and the groined gothic roof overhangs, from its solemn height, all the stirs and commotions of the crowd below. He takes us into a church interior, and shows a whole mob assembled in it, mightily unfit for the place most of them, and much wishing to be out of it, knocking their heads against the wall, raging, shouting, and hooting, but obliged to own their imprisonment notwithstanding. The supernatural influence of the scene affects the better part more properly, and their hearts yield as they look down the majestic vista, and hear the music of the choir. In Scott the scene is out of doors, in the open air, under a stormy sky, amid rock or moorland. Scott paints a scene of natural rude magnificence, and brings out the virtues, mixed and darkened, of a turbu

*It is to coax them. § If he be guilty.

I say this for your good. Excuse me, Sir.
Courage! we are almost out of danger.

lent age; the generosity of border robbers, the undying faithfulness of clanship, self-devotion, courage, revenge, false honour, all storming and swelling in Saxon and Norman forest, or on Highland mountain. Nature is left to produce her own mixed characteristics in her children, and we admire, and are horrified, and affected in turns. The dark rich juice overflows from the wild plant, and mingles strong sweet, and bitter. Scott introduces the Church, but he does not give it power. He introduces it as a feature in the landscape, as a painter might introduce a rock or a castle: he displays it in its picturesqueness, not in its solid life. We do not find the Church in his pages coming into actual contact with human hearts, and struggling with the individual will, now rebuffed, now triumphing in her efforts. It is as a picture that he treats her. The grey walls of her monasteries, her proud or her crumbling towers, her costumes, her cavalcades and prelatical pomps, are painted on the medieval canvass, and mingle with the baronial and feudal splendours of the times. Manzoni's Church is not a pictorial, but a practical one: conversant with all the busy details of man's heart, insinuating, protecting, persuading, assisting; effective, systematic, and stirring as any police-system. We detect in Scott's picture of the Church, that species of the interesting which time throws over what it destroys. The author's mind has to look out of the living world into the dead, and sees the Church he describes through an historical medium, by the telescope of the past, and not by the naked contemporary eye. He therefore sees her with that artificial colour on her, which belongs to a picture more than to real life. The ruin sleeps, in pleasing roughness or sweetness, upon the green slope, or broad bankside; and the optics of romance show the distant ecclesiastical group moving in still pictorial life within the poet's frame. In Manzoni, we do not see the Church of romance, but the Church contemporary and living: we see a practical machinery going on. She appears as the ordinary, commonplace, matter-of-fact working power of the day; she is as much a part and parcel of the vulgar present, as our own poor low and manufacturing system; and she depends for her poetry on the loveliness of her essential life, and not on that vague sweetness of fancy, and magic of time, which exhibits on one canvass, and brings under one head, feudal castle and monastery, cathedral aisle, dungeon and barbican, moat and confessional and drawbridge, mitre and Lochaber axe, as the vision of a by-gone world, and therefore pleasing because by-gone.

Father Cristoforo is a character in which this influence of the Church is very vividly represented.

" Father Cristoforo of *

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was a man nearer sixty than fifty years of age. His shaven head, circled with a narrow