journals, was redoubled; and the priests were forbidden to make any laudatory allusions to the Pope, either in their preaching or instructions. Arrests grew more numerous and indiscriminate; spies swarmed in every direction.

Notwithstanding all these precautions, in December the requisitions of the people found a voice, and petitions from the Lombard cities and Venice were addressed to the Emperor, for a restoration of those rights guaranteed by the treaty of Vienna, and a removal of those restrictions which the spirit of the age, and a desire for intercourse with other nations, now rendered insupportable. These demands were treated as insolent and rebellious, their promoters imprisoned, and the last hope of justice and redress for ever extinguished. Amid anxiety, sullen despondency, and expectation, kindling desires, unwavering opposition, deadly hatred, domineering insolence,-closed Lombardy's gloomy annals for 1847.

At Naples, the hostility to the liberal movement was no less decided than in those countries directly subject to Austrian influence; but more remote from the material support of the imperial arms, the government found greater difficulty in checking all expression of public opinion. In defiance of the severity of the police and the prohibition upon newspapers, all that passed in Central and Upper Italy was well known and eagerly commented on, the first results being apparent in Sicily, which began to revive her claims for the Constitution of 1812, trusting that England, apparently so zealous for the enfranchisement of Italy, would not fail to back her just representations. In August, a partial insurrection broke out at Messina, with a corresponding movement in Calabria, on the opposite side of the Straits, which, speedily quelled by the royal forces, tended, by the subsequent cruelties inflicted on the vanquished, to bring additional odium upon the satellites of the government. Barbarities against which human nature revolts, are commonly laid to the charge of the Neapolitan soldiery, who, pursuing the fugitives among the villages and mountains, scrupled not, wherever they perceived a symptom of disaffection, or detected the possession of any weapon, to imprison, torture, and murder the miserable peasantry, displaying a ferocity which found its palliation in the example of their superior officers, charged with the presidency of the tribunals before which the captives were arraigned.

In Naples, many persons of rank and influence were arrested; suspense and apprehension pervaded all classes; the most contradictory rumours were afloat; a crisis was felt to be at hand. In the ministry there were known to be divisions, some advocating compliance with the popular demands; but the majority, seeking to flatter the wishes of the king, and fearful of risking their appointments, supported him in his resistance. The royal

household, it was said, was no less divided in its counsels. The queen, an Austrian, encouraged her husband in his opposition; his mother, on the contrary, softened by age and suffering, besought him to yield; the Jesuit Cocle, his confessor, was no less urgent in his recommendations to stand firm.

Nor were the conflicting influences of diplomacy less busily at work. The English minister was labouring, with either real or affected earnestness, to counteract the representations of Austria, Russia, and Prussia. France held a dubious attitude, the ships of the Prince de Joinville remaining at anchor in the bay, without any explicit declaration of the views of Louis Philippe, though believed to favour the absolutists.

The most experienced politicians in Italy quailed before the storm they saw rapidly gathering; and the supporters of moderation left no means untried to avert the terrible outbreak. Deprecating any recourse to arms, their emissaries were dispersed over the kingdom, exhorting to the same temperance and patience as the other states of Italy had displayed, while taking similar methods, by public meetings and manifestations, to convince the king of the unanimity of their desires. Even the Sicilians yielded to this reasoning, and Palermo, as well as Naples, witnessed demonstrations, in the concluding weeks of the year, in which acclamations in honour of the king were cheerfully mingled with shouts for the beloved Pius IX., the Constitution, and the Independence of Italy.

Infatuated in its obstinacy, the government attributed this dignified forbearance, this perseverance in repressing all sedition and disloyalty, to weakness or discouragement. These popular appeals were as sternly dealt with as more questionable methods. of obtaining redress, and gend'armes and soldiery had full employment.

From Piedmont came the last endeavour to bend that stubborn will, in the noble petition addressed to the king by Count Balbo, in his own name, and that of Azeglio, Cavour, Silvio Pellico, and other leading men of the same party; beseeching him to follow the example of Pius IX., Leopold II., and Charles Albert, and not to be the cause that the revival of Italy, so wonderfully and peaceably commenced, should ever transgress the limits of moderation.

By way of answer to this document, the official journal published a lengthy enumeration of all the existing liberties and privileges secured to the Neapolitan subjects by their admirable legislature, demonstrating that, in many respects, these were superior to the recent reforms conceded by the liberal states,a proceeding which seemed purposely intended to augment the irritation of the people, by reminding them upon whom it depended that such really excellent institutions were rendered less

than nugatory. In Sicily especially the mockery of these assertions inflamed anew the popular resentment.

Their cup was now full. Weary of supplication, mistrusting the sovereign from whom they sued as a boon what his father had sworn should be inalienably theirs-while the Neapolitans still clamoured for redress at the foot of the throne-the Sicilians determined on a final venture at the point of the sword, in assertion of their violated rights and constitution. The die was cast, and on the 12th of January of the new year, the standard of revolt was unfurled in Palermo; while about the same period, at the northern extremity of Italy, Milan saw her streets first reddened with the blood of her citizens, and men knew that the days of temporizing were at an end.

of

But we are anticipating. With 1847 closes the first period, the golden age of the Italian revolution. Upon the threshold of its successor we must pause,―our object in this summary the first portion of Ranalli's Histories having simply been, to convey to the mind of the reader not previously versed in Italian politics, a connected idea of the posture of affairs preceding that memorable period when the French republic shook Europe to its centre, flooded Italy with Socialist and Mazzinian doctrines, precipitated event upon event, played Austria's game to her heart's content, and finally riveted, more firmly than ever, the chains which, in the name of Liberty and Equality, it had proclaimed as its high mission to unloose.

ART II-Some Account of Itinerating Libraries and their Founder. Edinburgh: 1856. Pp. 115.

WE have read this little volume with rare interest, and feelings of personal affection towards the memory it gracefully enshrines. With something of a peculiar Carlylese mannerism about it-something more of the dash and broad generalizations of a work of artistic sentiment than of clearly pencilled exhaustive biography-it has, notwithstanding, a finish and harmony that one does not often meet with in the rapid pen-work of the present day; and making allowance for the peculiar impress of the author's mind, dealing under the prejudices of just and sincere affection, with an uneventful, simple, intelligible life, and seeking to impart to his delineation of it the warmth and imaginative colouring of his own temperament, we have felt it to present, upon the whole, a faithful as well as graceful and loving portraiture of a worthy man,-of no position or prestige, indeed, but a good, wise, humble-minded, right-hearted man, of real

earnestness and unwearied activity in all the truly important businesses of life; one who, in a comparatively limited and every-day sphere of action, doing "whatsoever his hand found to do" in a quiet, unobtrusive way, and with such aid and humble appliances as he could command, did more good in his day and generation-according to our estimate of things-than some of the boldest and most buoyant workers for social amelioration amongst us. We would that men of like spirit and type with him whose portrait lies before us, were more frequently to be met with !-men of calm, unpretending lives, of no brilhant abilities or far-seeing speculative views, it may be, but simple, modest, and ever-earnest withal,-"single-eyed men," aiming at no personal advantages, making no pretence to social leadership or intellectual precedency, dreaming not that they are destined to accomplish any great work, as unconscious as undesirous of the world's applause, but with straight-forward conscientiousness, and the energetic putting forth of such faculty as is in them, making it the positive idea and definite end of their lives to do whatsoever they can find or make an opportunity of doing for God's glory and man's welfare here and hereafter. Such men not only raise the moral standard of private life, but are, after all, if not the highest moving-powers of society, the true 'salt of the earth' in the organism of social life, in their unbought, unpurchasable, but ever quietly working agencies and imitable and diffusive example. We have known more than one instance in which the steady energies and thorough self-devotion of one such man has kept alive the spirit of practical good-doing in a section of the community, that, but for his example and unflagging moral activities in the discharge of clearly seen duty, would have remained undeveloped, or only exerted itself spasmodically and inefficiently. A few such clear, simple, well-defined men, acting together in a common cause, with integrity of Christian purpose and plain commonsense, are, for all matters of solid importance, worth a whole host of loud and busy talkers, who, however prompt they may sometimes show themselves to be in seizing upon an idea, will, after all, prove themselves but "a vain, speech-mouthing, speech-reporting guild," or any number of restless, imaginative projectors of far-reaching outlook but ever feeble performance, or of amiable and accomplished but listless men, whose moral activities are never found spontaneously shooting beyond the strictest limits of conventionalism. In retracing the life here sketched, and its local and personal environments, we have often found ourselves carried back, in tender retrospect, amidst

"the thoughts of early time,

And feelings nursed in life's first day,—"

even till our eyes have dimmed, and our heart has "leapt to

our mouth." But without allowing our avowed sympathies and personal associations to interfere with our calm appreciation of the man, we feel ourselves, on the general grounds now stated, to be discharging a not less just than pleasing duty in noticing this memoir-a copy of which has incidentally reached us—not indeed to tell all that we feel and know relating to our departed friend, but to give such measure of publicity as our pages afford to a portraiture so amiably and effectively sketched, for the gratification of private affection, by the hand of a thoughtful and every-way capable artist,-a hand, alas! that had scarcely bestowed the last touches upon its fond and pious task, ere it was itself wrapt in the coldness of death.

SAMUEL BROWN-it speaks much for the simplicity and moral excellence of the man's character, that this simple, Quaker-like designation, was given to him by all ranks of the community in which his useful life was begun, and spent, and closed-was born at Haddington, the pleasant little county-town of East Lothian, on the 30th of April 1779. The youngest son and child of that wonderful and truly apostolic man, John Brown, 'the commentator,'-as he is usually designated throughout Scotland, where his 'Self-Interpreting Bible' is to be found in almost every household, he was, we cannot doubt, "a child of many prayers;" but the precious influence of a parental home of peculiar sanctity, while deeply influencing his early conceptive faculties, must have had less direct share in his mental and moral culture, and in shaping his personal and religious history, than in the case of any of his excellent brothers, all of whom were honoured, like himself, to do much service in the Lord's

vineyard in after-life. When little more than seven years of age, he lost his venerable father; and, soon after that event, his mother, a somewhat remarkable and every-way excellent woman, removed from Haddington to Edinburgh, in order to facilitate the education of the more advanced members of her family, leaving her little Samuel behind her, but in the charge of a pious Eli, in the person of her own brother, John Croumbie, a man of peculiar habits, retired, and world-shunning almost to austerity, but as the few who knew him intimately and in detail were ever prompt to testify-of inflexible uprightness and most sensitive conscience. The humble, patient, disinterested, self-denying spirit of pure religion was, indeed, almost as signally illustrated in the life and good deeds of this pious shopkeeper as in that of his eminent brother-in-law, the overwrought yet unwearied author, theological tutor, and pastor, or that of his own adopted son, the subject of our present sketch. On this worthy individual we may be allowed to bestow a passing notice.