fidelity and earnestness, his great learning and thoroughness. We do not always assent to his views; we think that he sometimes refines and theorizes too much, that he finds a meaning in his authors of which they were themselves unconscious, attributing to them his own idiosyncrasies of thought; still, we hold his name and writings in great respect, and sincerely thank Professor Torrey for laying open to the American public treasures of so great worth.

ART. VI.—ITALY AND PIUS THE NINTH.*

A. L.

Ir evidence were wanting in support of the philosophical theory, that all political and religious movements are in accordance with a central law and tend to a principle of unity, the swift succession and the order of such movements would both confirm and illustrate the theory. No great interest of humanity can now be confined to a narrow range, or be isolated in space or time. The questions which engage local communities are debated for them far beyond their borders, and have almost the same universality as have questions of science. And how swiftly do the great events which involve political and religious changes succeed each other! The last decade of years has been distinguished by a most remarkable series of revolutions. Leaving mere political concerns unmentioned, though both continents would furnish most signal matters for rehearsal, - each of the last ten years has given birth to as marked a movement in the religious interests of the world as can be dated in any previous year in the long interval back to the birth of Jesus Christ. Using the word religion in its broadest sense, as including all the moral, philanthropic, and ecclesiastical relations of Christendom, what memorable incidents are recorded already in the

*1. Italy: General Views of its History and Literature in Reference to its Present State. By L. MARIOTTI. London. 1841. 2 vols. 12mo. pp. 376, 422. 2. Dublin Review, Vol. XVIII., Article VIII. The Italian Insurrection and Mr. Mazzini.

3. Facts and Figures from Italy. By DON JEREMY Savonarola, etc. Being the Roman Correspondence of the London "Daily News for 1846-7. London: Bentley. 1847. 12mo. pp. 309.

4. Italy, Past and Present. By L. MARIOTTI. London: Chapman. 1848. 2 vols. 12mo. pp. 479, 444.

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religious history of the last half-score of years! We have before us the crowding images with which they fill the picture of passing events, so full that we can scarce study them as they move across the scene. The emancipation of the slaves at Jamaica, Puseyism, the Free Church of Scotland, the German Catholic Church, the opening of China to Christian missionaries, the excitements involved in the admission of the Jesuits or their exclusion which have agitated three European countries, the establishment of Christian schools in Egypt under Mehemet Ali, the accession of Pius IX. to the Papal throne, and the removal of civil disabilities from the Jews in England, these are all religious movements, and they are only the most prominent of those which have occurred in the brief period of time just defined. So hurried is the progress of human affairs, so complicated are the relations of the parts of Christendom, so intense, though momentary, is the interest which each signal change excites, that common judgment would accord with philosophy in affirming that all things are rushing on to some grand conclusion.

One of the great central points of interest for the civilized world at this time is the Papal throne and the States of the Church. That there has been popular exaggeration and extravagance as to the relative importance of "the movement in Italy," has been already made evident to the observing. That some other incidents and events are as big with momentous consequences to the world at large as is any thing that has occurred or that can occur in Italy, is undeniable. Italy and the Roman Pontiff do not now have under their control the peace or the larger interests of Christendom. Only so far as events there harmonize with or impede the workings of a reformatory spirit in the world at large, can they claim. attention or invite discussion. In addressing ourselves, therefore, to the theme which we have chosen, we would not exaggerate its relative interest. We must remind our readers that we write at some disadvantage, as new developments appear from day to day.

We have given the titles of some of the recent publications which have presented the affairs of Italy with the freshest interest to our notice. All the religious sects, and all political parties, have turned their attention, as by common consent, to the theme, and all the journals and reviews have furnished their readers with information upon it. We have been diligent to gather up these scattered and various helps.

The letters from Rome to the London Daily News, which were frequently translated in the French papers, and which have been reprinted in a volume, have a high and racy interest, because they were written at the central point of observation, and make a journal of passing events there. The new work by Mariotti, the title of which stands last among the publications at the head of our article, was received while we were preparing these pages. The author has revised, enlarged, and improved his former work, and it now appears as the first volume of his recent publication, representing Italy in the past. The second volume is entirely new, and is devoted to the present in Italy, with a fresh and vigorous review of the incidents and characters of the last twenty-five years, which have involved the fortunes of that country. The author, by his intimate acquaintance with the history and literature of his native land, and by his long residence in other countries, especially in England and America, is admirably qualified for the task which he has accomplished. He has given us a work of a most eloquent and useful character. His ardent patriotism does not take the form of lugubrious lamentation over his country's wrongs, nor obtrude itself in the disparagement of the institutions of other nations. He is a theoretical Catholic, as are very many of the living scholars and thinkers of Italy, who with him preserve only the idea of a certain unity in religious belief and administrations, while they enjoy the broadest latitudinarianism of thought and opinion. Mariotti says:

"The progressive attacks of Protestantism, and the sudden ravages of philosophy, have undermined the Catholic edifice where it had laid its deepest foundation; and the generous souls who show the greatest anxiety for its preservation inwardly feel, and openly admit, the necessity of a reformation of its revolting abuses; only reformation, the most sanguine Italians flatter themselves, must be unanimous and simultaneous; it must be the work of mutual concession and compromise; the result of general progress and enlightenment; of a well-grounded conviction of the utter unprofitableness of mere dogmatic discussion. Emancipation of opinion must take place without schism or hostility."— Vol. 11. pp. 183, 184.

The brilliant pages of this writer are most instructive and pleasing. With a masterly pen, and evidently engaged upon a work of love, he surveys the long-past glories of Italy in politics, science, literature, and art, and gathers around the

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storied names of her great men the lustre of an enviable fame. Of the calamities and sufferings of Italy for the last twenty years he has had his portion. Her exiles have been his companions. A perusal of his recent publication has confirmed us in the views which we had previously entertained. Especially in his chapter upon the present Pontiff do we find the same qualified expectations as to the hopes of liberalism, which alone seem to us to be justified by any measure which he has as yet devised. We read, too, that some of the exiles recalled to Italy by the clemency of the Pope have again turned their backs upon it in disappointment. Mariotti sees no real deliverance for Italy but in an appeal to arms, which shall at once and for ever exterminate the Austrian rule from her provinces and borders.

As we have intimated, the enthusiasm excited by the first official acts of the present Pontiff of the Roman Church far outran the grounds for it. Disappointment must in the due course of things have followed in some quarters. Now, therefore, may be the opportune time for a fair view of the talian movement, with its bearings and its promise.

The aspect of the case, to those who catch an idea from popular rumor and the hurried news-columns of the public prints, answers to the following representation. A bigoted and aged Pope, who belonged to all former centuries rather than to this, died a natural death and was regularly embalmed. By some unexplained fatuity, the Cardinals, with whom the full power rested, elected as his successor one of their body who had before been distinguished only as benevolent and harmless. To the amazement of the whole world, the new Pope at once became known as a reformer, devoting himself immediately to the redress of grievances, yielding to all the liberal movements of the age, and by a most extraordinary exercise of lenity allowing a full pardon to thousands of exiles and prisoners, whose names had been associated with insurrection and revolt for more than twenty years. sudden and wholly unexpected course of measures was known to have caused a threatening excitement over the whole peninsula of Italy, involving Austria and France directly, England less directly, and the whole of Europe in some degree, while the concussion of the shock reached across the Atlantic. The reform of abuses under any circumstances being well understood to involve danger and turbulence, it was not strange that the process, when applied

His

where all abuses had concentrated for ages, and had formed not only the institutions, but the very roots and soil which sustained them, should cause the most intense excitement on the spot, and a watchful interest at a distance.

The reformatory measures projected and immediately put in force by Pius IX. have been made the subject of frequent mention, and have been greatly overstated. Some trivial acts of lenity and prudence, which would have received their full award, had they been regarded only as an auspicious. introduction of the Pontiff to his temporal subjects, have called forth in Rome demonstrations of joy altogether disproportioned to their amount or value. It may be said, however, that his subjects were better judges than are we of the value of such acts, and doubtless proportioned their gratulations to the benefits. To this it may be replied, that if the people of the Roman States will bear what they have borne till within the last eighteen months, we should expect from them a very grateful acknowledgment of the least favors, and that demonstrations of feeling are in those regions no sure index of the weight of the occasions or subjects which call them forth. At any rate, whatever may have been the value of the local reforms of the Pontiff on the spot, or the degree of gratitude which they deservedly claimed from his subjects, they were not of a nature to justify the extravagant encomiums which, in this country, for instance, have been passed upon them. For, indeed, any amount of temporal reforms and lenient measures would not fill out the expectations which have here been cherished in reference to Pius IX., and of the fulfilment of which he has been supposed to have given promise. The heated enthusiasm which has had really so little to feed it has hasted to ascribe to him a title which he has hardly yet merited, and has wrought itself into imaginations of great spiritual revolutions, even to the length of anticipating large concessions to Protestantism, to be made through a general council, to soften or supersede the decrees of Trent.

How idle such expectations are, this would not be the place for us to attempt to prove, even if we thought they deserved any labored exposure. For ourselves, we have, from the very accession of Pius IX., been wholly skeptical, if not as to the designs and motives, yet as to the actual results, of his reformatory measures, so called. We regard them as at best a regilding of the chains by which the subjects of the