ART. I.-Le Istorie Italiane di Ferdinando Ranalli dal 1846 al 1853. Florence: 1855. Vol. I.
THIS book has already achieved great popularity in Italy, and may be considered as a very valuable addition to modern historical literature. No Italian author has yet appeared who writes with so much calmness and impartiality on that most difficult of all subjects contemporary national history; neither are wel aware of any who has so faithfully traced the separate conditions and distinctive characteristics of the various states into which the Italian peninsula is subdivided, without losing sight that he is still treating of one people whose eventual union and independence, after his avowal of their errors and follies-no less candidly recounted than their sufferings and misfortunes― he still hopefully anticipates.
Of Signor Ranalli's literary merits we cannot speak so highly. There is something inexpressibly wearying in the long dissertations, and almost innumerable retrospects, in which the volume before us especially abounds; three parts are fully taken up with introductory details of the state of Italy antecedent to the accession of Pius IX. in 1846, accumulated with an earnest regard to truth, but bewildering from their number and tedious from their sameness-for oppression and intolerance cannot vary much in essentials, however widely they may be diffused; so that, like the audience at a prolonged overture, the reader's attention is half worn out before the curtain is drawn up, and the dramatis personce are fairly brought into action.
So essential, however, is a right view of Italy's Past, to the understanding of her Present, that we have been induced to dwell particularly upon this portion of the work, devoting to it