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THE

171

FOREIGN QUARTERLY REVIEW.

No. LXVII.

FOR OCTOBER, 1844.

ART. I.-Nunziatura in Irlanda di Monsig- successor, Cardinal Panzirolo; with some nor Gio. Batista Rinuccini, Arcivescovo di less confidential letters to Cardinal Mazarine, Fermo, negli anni 1645 a 1649, publicata Queen Henrietta Maria of England, and per la prima volta su' MSS. originali della other persons of rank and importance. To Rinucciniana, con documenti illustrativi, these the editor has added the original inper cura di G. AIAZZI, Bibliotecario della structions given to the nuncio, the bull from Medesima. Firenze, 1844. (Mission of which he derived his authority, and some Monsignor Gio. Batista Rinuccini, Arch- very curious extracts from the occasional bishop of Fermo, as Nuncio to Ireland, directions forwarded to him from Rome. from 1645 to 1649, published for the first time from the original Manuscripts in the Rinuccinian Library, with Illustrative Documents. By G. AtAzzi). Florence. 1844.

His own contributions are confined to a short preface, and a somewhat meagre and unsatisfactory biography of Rinuccini. It does not appear whether all the extant despatches have been published. The nuncio refers to many additional letters and documents not THE publication before us, though inter- included in the collection; but it is probable esting and important in a high degree, that several of his despatches were interceptcan scarcely be said to contain any directed by the parliamentary cruisers, or otherand positive addition to the amount of our wise lost. Those which remain form a narhistorical knowledge. The memoir, or rative of his mission, which is nearly conhistorical account of his mission, presented tinuous, and evidently more authentic than by the nuncio to the pope after his return the memoir, naturally coloured as it was by to Rome, which occupies a small part of the a wish to justify himself, and by the influpresent volume, has, we believe, already ence of events, which, when the letters were been published; and several of the letters written, could not have been foreseen. In have been quoted by Carte and Birch, and Clarendon's History of the Rebellion of through them, or directly, by many other 1641,' in the History of the War,' by historians. The bulk of M. Aiazzi's publi- Richard Bellings, secretary to the Confedcation consists of the original despatches sent erated Catholics, and in Rinuccini's Deby Rinuccini to Cardinal Panfilio, nephew spatches,' the cases of all the principal parand minister to Innocent X., and to Panfilio's

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ties to the complicated negotiations and conflicts of the time, who shared in hostility to the English Parliament, will be found to be fully stated.

The longer Latin work commonly quoted as the 'Nuncio's Memoirs' is, as M. Aiazzi informs us, not the composition of Rinuccini himself. It apThe unmixed eulogy with which the edipears to have been compiled several years after his death with the assistance of the documents which tor speaks of the conduct and character of he had left. M. Aiazzi says that the handwriting Rinuccini, is principally remarkable as a is not that of an Italian, and he is inclined to attri-proof of the little change which two cenbute the work to some learned Irishman—a suppo- turies have produced in the spirit of Italian sition calculated in some degree to diminish its value. Catholicism. To the north of the Alps these

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