ART. IV.- Diaries and Despatches of the Venetian Embassy at the Court of King James I., in the years 1617, 1618. Translated by Rawdon Brown. (Unpublished.)

N the month of September, 1617, Sir Dudley Carleton, writing to Mr. Secretary Winwood from the Hague,* mentions the arrival of the Venetian Ambassador on his way towards his Majesty' James I. The personage thus announced, though still in the prime of life, was a veteran diplomatist. He had represented the Republic at Turin and at Paris, and was now despatched by the Signory at the shortest notice to supply the vacancy occasioned by the sudden death of the noble Barbarigo, their late representative at the English Court. His name was Piero Contarini, and he was the head of that branch of his illustrious family which is distinguished by the adjunct 'degli Scrigni.'

The last descendant of this ancient house died in the year 1843, bequeathing to the library of St. Mark his family collection of books and MSS.: among the latter were found contemporary copies of the despatches which Piero Contarini addressed to the Government during his residence in London, and also a series of journals and letters, which were written by the chaplain of the embassy for the amusement of his patron's brothers, and contain all such familiar details as the Ambassador did not think fit to communicate to the Senate, and was too busy or too idle to transmit to his family. Among the many MS. treasures of the Marcian Library this curious miscellany attracted the attention of Mr. Rawdon Brown, to whose researches among the Venetian archives we already owe so valuable a contribution to the materials of English history. He has given a spirited translation of the text, and has illustrated it with notes containing much curious matter extracted from the diplomatic correspondence and other records of the Council of Ten. As this work has not yet been published, it does not come within our jurisdiction, but, having been permitted by the translator to make extracts from it, we hope to render our readers a not unacceptable service by presenting to them a glimpse of London and the Court as it appeared to an impartial spectator in the year 1617-18.

The Ambassador's letters are remarkable for their businesslike simplicity in an age when grace of composition was supposed

* Vide Hardwicke Papers.

+ Four Years at the Court of Henry VIII.' We are glad to find our view of the importance of this work confirmed by Mr. Froude, who makes considerable use of it in the early part of his History of Henry VIII.

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to consist in long involved periods, and even official language was overloaded with an uncouth mixture of ceremonious bombast. The chaplain writes in the most familiar style, and professes to collect, for the sole pleasure of his most illustrious lords,' whatever he thinks likely to interest or amuse them. To his notes on England he gives the quaint title of ANGLIPOTRIDA, as having been concocted in London out of a variety of ingredients collected in divers places and at sundry times.' He specially affects this culinary metaphor, he says, because the farrago he presents has this further resemblance to the labours of the cook, that it is intended to be served up only once; he accordingly requests that his MSS. when once read may be burnt; and then, with the inconsistency of a true author, he proceeds to indicate the very corner of the library where he hopes they may be preserved with the relics of Cardinal Bembo and other great literary friends and clients of the house, in order that in this goodly company they may go down to posterity with the boast

' et nos quoque poma natamus.'

Orazio Busino, for that was the chaplain's mame, was the Rector of Piazzola, a magnificent country house and estate in the Paduan territory, which the ambassador's family had acquired by a marriage with the heiress of the Carraras, once the lords of Padua. It was a villa of royal stateliness, where in the days of the Republic, as is attested by many a quaint old engraving, sovereigns were occasionally received by the Contarini of the day with a magnificence equal to their own, and a refinement of taste which at that time Italy alone could boast. Busino's letters show him to be a man of shrewdness and observation, endowed with a keen sense of the ridiculous, high animal spirits, and unbounded good humour. He is somewhat of a botanist and a culler of simples,' but he does not on all occasions intrude his favourite topic like 'the bore' of a modern novel. He has no objection to court the raillery of his correspondents by pointing out the incongruity between the rough accidents of travel and the decorums of his peaceful and reverend calling. But in thus offering himself as a butt he shows the self-reliance of a skilful master of fence, who is conscious of the power of keeping his assailant, when he pleases, at a respectful distance. To his own chronicler the Lord of Piazzola is certainly a hero; the burlesque mishaps which are made

Piazzōla (the penultimate is long). This estate passed by inheritance into the Correr family, and was by them sold in 1852 to a purchaser who had made his money by his own exertions, and whose name was not to be found in the Libro d'Oro.

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matters of mirth when they befal his attendants or the chaplain (for the writer almost always speaks of himself in the third person), are exalted into misfortunes if chance plays her spiteful tricks on the Ambassador himself. Busino treats it as a capital joke that he has been obliged to set out without boots, or a great coat, or any one requisite for his journey; but if my lord's baggage is not where it ought to be, he resents it as an unmannerly outrage on his dignity; on such occasions his style rises from farce to tragedy, and sometimes even soars into the periphrastic euphuism of the day. It is the 'poor little priest's mare' that wallows in the shallow ford, and obliges her rider to dismount and splash through the water as he can. It is he, too, who on another occasion is carried across the river on men's shoulders wet and shivering, and 'looking like a plucked owl,' while the Lord of Piazzola in some unspecified way is landed, salvâ dignitate, on the opposite bank. It is the attendants who on passing along the 'via mala' are obliged to dismount, and are frightened out of their wits, while His Excellency alone keeps his nerve and his seat. Indeed so frequent are the allusions to this great man's horsemanship, that we cannot altogether stifle a suspicion that, accustomed as he was for the greater part of his life to 'swim in a gondola,' on that one point he had a little need of flattery. In the passage from Flushing to the Nore the Ambassador holds out longer against sea-sickness, and recovers from it sooner, than any one else; but the particularity with which all his symptoms are recorded clearly proceeds from the author's conviction that, as his Excellency can be proved to have succumbed at last, neither his chaplain nor the suite need any longer be ashamed of their weakness.

But Busino is no mean parasite. His admiration of his patron is most sincere; he loves the most serene Republic as none in the days of modern history, save Venetians, have loved their country. In all her golden book there is no name so illustrious, he thinks (and in this he is guilty of but little exaggeration), as Contarini, and of all the Contarinis the Lord of Piazzola is the most distinguished by the gifts of nature and fortune. Busino is an excellent churchman, but he is no ascetic. He has no ambition to be better than the Church holds to be necessary, and he enjoys all the good things she does not forbid. When the heretical Hollanders at the Hague prepare for the party on Saturday night a supper of flesh and fish after their fashion,' he will not hear of the sophistry which gives a dispensation to travellers; he insists on keeping the fast, but he indemnifies himself with the wine, which is excellent. He has stout notions of decorum,

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and rarely tolerates an equivocal jest unless it is made by himself. He is an unbending stickler for orthodoxy; and though favourably disposed to heretics who make themselves useful to the Signory or agreeable to the Ambassador, he speaks of heresy in the abstract with becoming horror and aversion. He takes care His Excellency shall hear mass as often as is required by a due regard to his dignity in this world, and his salvation in the next, and evidently enjoys the comfortable assurance that he and his patron are going to heaven by the sure and easy road which the Romish Church marks out for a man of rank and his chaplain.

The Ambassador left Venice at the shortest notice, but for the first day or two his progress was slow; he slept at his own country-houses, and was accompanied by his mother, his sisterin-law, and other members of his family. In their company he heard the mass' pro peregrinantibus' (for all that travel by land or by water); he then took a dignified and affectionate leave of them, and the journey commences in good earnest.

Sir Dudley Carleton, in the despatch before quoted, thought it worthy of note that the Venetian Ambassador's train was small. Busino enumerates among his attendants 'a courier, a housesteward, the chaplain, the keeper of the wardrobe, the butler, two grooms of the chamber, an assistant groom, besides four footmen, in number twelve, with as many more large coffres and other baggage.' We wonder what either of the dignitaries, English or Venetian, would have thought if with prophetic vision they could have caught a glimpse of a certain veteran diplomatist of our own time, adorned with the highest titles and honours of his profession, as he was wont to jump from steamboat to 'diligence,' and from diligence' to fiacre,' without a single attendant, and with (perhaps without) a single change of linen? In those days, however, a retinue was not a mere matter of parade, and the most stately of Ambassadors must have endured more hardship in his wayfarings than would now fall to the lot of a discarded courier returning to his home by third-class conveyances.

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To avoid the territories of Austria and of Spain the Ambassador took the road by Brescia through the Grisons to Splugen. On the summit of the Alps the diarist is painfully made aware that Italy is exchanged for Germany. Who has not felt how harshly the sudden change of language grates on the ear? Miles, he complains, become leagues (in weariness

* In Venice, among the great families, it was usual that the head of the family should remain single, as there was a decided preference for bachelors in filling up the great offices of state, and that the younger brothers should marry to continue the family.

Vol. 102.-No. 204.

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as well as in name), and 'camere' become 'stuben.' Furthermore the churches are bare, desolate caverns, and true religion gives place to heresy.' After two hours' riding in the dark our travellers reach the village of Splugen through a narrow defile overshadowed by dark ragged pines. The road was only the half-dry bed of a torrent, and the descent was so painful and difficult, that the chaplain compares it to the entrance of the 'infernal regions' (we own we thought that descent had been proverbially easy); and this resemblance, he adds, is further justified by the reputation of the village itself, which is said to be filled with diabolical '—we hope he only means heretical— 'souls.' But he had every excuse for his bitterness. For so fiercely did theological strife rage in these sequestered valleys, that he was advised not to expose his cassock to insult and his person to danger by wearing the dress of his profession, and accordingly he completely enshrouded both in the buff jerkin of a man-at-arms. We do not need this proof, nor yet his favourite designation for himself, il pretino' (an affectionate diminutive which in fact suggests rather lowliness of rank than any positive idea of size), to be convinced that Busino was a small man. His style of thought and narrative as clearly indicates a low stature as the lucubrations of the Spectator,' according to his own notion, betray his short face. Ere long he emerged from his warlike disguise like a silkworm out of its cone, on entering the Catholic cantons at Rapperschwyl, and there he had the satisfaction of hearing mass at the church of certain Capuchin nuns, who had decorated its walls with unusual richness, in the hope, they said, of attracting and converting the neighbouring heretics. Assuredly these good sisters were in advance of their age. In our times their pious speculation might have been very successful; in their own, nothing was more repelling to Protestants than the superfluous ornaments which they contemptuously termed the 'scarlet rags of Popery.'

At Basle the ambassador and his suite betook themselves to the Rhine. Competition, though the cause of most of the traveller's comforts, does not always work well for his repose. Every tourist has a painful recollection of the pillage of his luggage by rival porters on the Caledonian Canal, of the squabbles of captains at a seaport contending for his patronage, of the struggles for his person by a rabble rout of donkey-boys at Portici, and a long et-cetera of similar vexations. But whose experience can furnish anything like the mode adopted for settling such-like disputes in the seventeenth century on the Rhine? When it was announced that a party of travellers required a conveyance, the boat-owners met, and with much mock ceremony and real carous