winter's storm nor the summer's heat can affect it. The experiment has been already sufficiently tested in the colossal conservatories of the Duke of Devonshire to justify our implicit confidence in that statement; and should it prove that this mighty monument of glass is as capable of resisting external influences as a Temple of Stone or Brass, we may fairly exult over it as the most marvellous of all the productions of the vast and varied Exhibition to which it is dedicated. Cast in pieces of equal dimensions throughout, it has been erected in a few weeks, and can be taken down in a still shorter space of time, to be set up again, if it should be so decided, elsewhere. The facility of its construction is a matter that commands almost as much astonishment and admiration as the elements of which it is composed. The old scriptural warning against building our houses on sand is here curiously inverted by a house that is literally built of sand; and when the wonder shall have grown old and familiar to us, there is no saying to what purposes, as yet undreamed of, this adaptive material may not be applied with equal success, and a still wider range of domestic utility. The interest naturally attaching to the subject of glass at the present moment, has induced us to place these details of its history and manufacture before the public. But, circumscribed by the obligations to which all periodicals must submit, we have confined ourselves to a general and hasty survey of the more salient features of the inquiry. There remains to be explored a mass of matter, to which we may possibly return on some future occasion. THE SICILIAN VESPER S.* WE have hitherto been taught that the massacre of the French throughout Sicily was the result of a wide-spread conspiracy, of which John of Procida was the leader and originator, and Peter, King of Arragon, a most willing participator; and that the tolling of the vesper bell in the Church of Santo Spirito at Palermo was the appointed and the generally understood signal for the commencement of that fierce and merciless onslaught on the proud and unsuspecting Frenchmen. Concerning the matter, however, we can no longer believe as we have done; the improbabilities of the old story were on many points very glaring, but the Papal bulls and the numerous other documents which are now brought to light completely expose the groundlessness of the old version of the massacre, and prove it to have arisen from the Palermitans' sudden and irrepressible indignation at some new insult offered them on one of their religious festivals by their Gallic conquerors and oppressors. It was that one further wrong that could not be borne: the added trial to a forbearance that could bear with no more; the one other arrogant deed that could not be endured. Long had the oppressor's violence throughout the land produced great natural discontent and ill-will, with a burning and ill-concealed desire at times to throw off the galling yoke; but the oppressor's arm was strong, and over every Sicilian head a French sword waved, and occa* History of the War of the Sicilian Vespers, by Michele Amari; edited by the Earl of Ellesmere. 3 vols., Bentley, 1850. sionally that sword would fall to prove that its edge was keen, and its owner in earnest-to make its keenness felt whenever occasion called for it. In an unlucky hour the French were more than usually insolent, in a place, and on an occasion when the Palermitans were the less disposed to tolerate it, and the cry of" down with the French" was instantly followed with the massacre of all the French first in Palermo, and then throughout the whole of Sicily. Twenty years of dire war followed upon this act of natural vengeance: a war eminently distinguished for its romantic incidents-its daring exploits, and its extraordinary vicissitudes. In one year Sicily would be all triumphant, with scarcely an enemy on its soil; in the next year Charles of Anjou would be trampling it in wrath under his iron heel, and making its fair fields desolate, and its once busy towns but vast charnel-houses. In vain did the successive Popes give up the tithes of kingdoms for yearly armaments to subdue the Sicilians. In vain did the Kings of France and the Guelfs in Italy send at enormous cost successive tens of thousands of mercenaries to perish on the shores of Sicily-in vain did the Popes thunder forth their bulls of excommunication, and employ their vast wealth and resources to terrify and to bribe the chief actors in the Sicilian war of independence; in spite of all artifices and fraud and violence the Sicilians still held their own, and secured to themselves the king and the government of their own choice; affording a memorable instance of what even a feeble nation, single handed, can do, against the mightiest of earth's potentates confederated together for its destruction. Sicily triumphed when France, and Italy, and Spain, were banded together against her, for she fought for liberty, and gained in the end what she had so long fought for. Nothing can be more masterly than Michele Amari's treatment of this spirit-stirring subject. The details are so graphically described that we see before the mind's eye the scenery, and the rush forward of the ambuscade, the combats of the chief warriors on the field, and the grappling together of the ships in their fierce and frequent naval engagements. But the still greater merit probably of the work consists in the deep research and most careful investigation of all the writers, early and late, who speak of the Sicilian Vespers; all are thoroughly scrutinized, and their statements closely examined into. The late struggles of the Sicilians for independence, give to this work a peculiar interest-for the writer was one of those who laboured hard to change the condition of Sicily from a province to an independent state-but his countrymen had not the same longings for liberty that he had, and did not therefore achieve it, and could not therefore, it might be said, have deserved it. The history of the war of the Sicilian Vespers will, however, be found on the pages of the world's history-ages after the late feeble strivings of the illused Sicilians shall have been in great measure forgotten. INDEX TO THE TWENTY-EIGHTH VOLUME. A. Abraham Elder's Prince of Zooloo, 501. Alton Locke; Tailor and Poet, 560. Amari's History of the Sicilian Vespers, Amusements of the People, by Alfred B. Bacchante Suegliata (The) of Bertolini, 41. Bags (The) of Destiny, a Fable, by Eta, Banks and Bankers, 84. Banks's (G. Linnæus) Roadside Inn, Bell's (Robert) Ladder of Gold, an Eng- Bisset's (A.) Memoirs and Papers of Sir Bury's (Baroness Blaze de) Battle of No- C. Campbell (John), the Homicide, by W. Campbell's (A. V.) Forty Years' Recol- lections of a London Actor, 156. Chateaubriand's Sketch of Thiers, 98; VOL. XXVIII. Forty Years' Recollections of a London Actor, by A. V. Campbell, 156. G. Gardner's Travels in the Interior of Getting acquainted with the Medicines, 211. Glance (A) at a Recent Novel, 342. 659. Gossip (A) about Merry Christmas, by H. Head's (Sir Francis, Bart.) Defenceless Howitt's (W.) Year-Book of the Country, Hungarian War, Personal Narratives of, 194. Hunter's Life (The), 316. I. J. Inconveniences of a" Suspicion of Debt," by W. H. Maxwell, 42. Inedited Letters of Celebrated Persons- Mrs. Piozzi, 73, 163, 307, 438, 535, Pointed Architecture, 460. J. C. J. W.'s Bacchante Suegliata of Jones's (W.) Louis Philippe and his Civil K. Klapka's War of Independence in Hun- L. Lablache and Her Majesty's Theatre, 337. Land of my Fathers, 511. Accomac, 293; Salmon Fishing, 408; Lawson's (J. W.) History of Banking, 84. Lebanon (An Adventure in), by Lieut. A Tight Race Considerin', 86; Getting Louis Philippe and his Civil List, by M. Madrilenia; or, Tales and Truths of March's, (Lieut. G. H.), Trip from Bay- onne across the French Frontier to Margoliouth's (Rev. Moses) Pilgrimage Maxwell's (W. H.) Inconveniences of a Miser's Secret (The); or, The Days of Montalivet's Louis Philippe and his Civil List. Translated by W. Jones, 544, 601. Moschzisker's (F. A.) Guide to German N. Norah Dalrymple; a Woman's Story, 566. Newland (Abraham), Some Account of, Novara (Battle of), by the Baroness Nuns at Paris, Massacre of, 480. 0. Oath (The), by Mrs. Buxton Whalley, 581. 94. Our Pen and Ink Gallery, by Alfred Our Pilgrim Land, by Eta, 306, P. Pardoe's Queens of Spain, 162. Parks (The) of Merrie England. A True Tale, with a Moral by a Landlord, 379. Piozzi (Mrs.) Inedited Letters of, 73, Present Naval and Military Power of Prince of Zooloo (The), by Abraham Proper Food of Man, 428. Public Day at Bishopthorpe (A), by Pulsky's Memoirs of a Hungarian Lady, Thiers (Sketch of), by Chateaubriand, 98. Tight (A) Race Considerin', Life of a Trout Fishing, by Charles Lanman, 515. Two Funerals (The), by W. H. Maxwell, 149. Tyndale's Adventures-Anecdotes of the U. V. Ut caleat Phoebus, by W. H., 492. W. Walpole's (Lieut. the Hon. Fred.) Adven- Wanderings of a Pilgrim in Search of the Ward's (Mrs.) Sailor Girl, 384. Wolff's (H. D.) Madrilenia; or, Truths Y. Yad Namuh; a Chapter of Oriental Life, Young England's Onslaught on Young 7. Zoological Notes and Anecdotes-No. I. |