among the features of romance which nature has scattered over the external aspect of the country. And still deeper are the principles which she has implanted in the hearts of its inhabitants. How then has it come to pass, that they have accomplished so little, where every thing would seem to promise the highest success?

The character, which the literature of every nation assumes, from first moment of its formation, depends upon a variety cidental causes. Its strongest traits, those which it preserves through every period of its revolutions, will necessarily be derived from the peculiarities of national character; and the same causes, which contribute to the formation of the one, will act constantly and effectually upon the other. It is thus that climate and natural scenery acquire their influence, giving a distinctive tone to its poetry, and forming as it were the shade and coloring of its pictures. It is thus, also, that the political situation of every country, or, more properly speaking, its political character, takes a part in that of its literature, and is manifested with more or less fulness in all its literary productions. Language too comes in for its share in this general formation, and while it borrows many of its peculiarities from those of the minds that employ it, communicates to them, in turn, a portion of its own original spirit; like the stream, which, in part, derives its beauty or its grandeur from that of the landscape through which it flows, and at the same time shares with that landscape its own distinctive features, softening its beauty, or adding new majesty to its grandeur.

The influence of these causes may be considered as general, and can easily be traced in the early history of every literature. Others, scarcely less important, were peculiar to the revival of letters in Italy. But none have so immediate a bearing upon our subject, as the direction which the three great men, by whom this revival was accomplished, gave to the studies of their contemporaries, and through them to those of the following century.

First among them was Dante, who came at once to guide and be guided by the passions which were in action around him. In him the romantic gallantry of the Troubadours was refined into the pure and devoted love that led to the deification of his Beatrice. The subtile metaphysics of the schoolmen were elevated to the profound and sublime, though often obscure and extravagant, theology of the "Paradiso"; while the

virulence of party had no small share in the judgments which suggested the terrific descriptions of the "Inferno." Dante, in short, or rather the form which his genius assumed, was in a great measure the consequence of the character of his age, and of the general causes to which we have already alluded. But the inspiration, which he had derived from these, he in turn communicated to others. The "Divina Commedia" became the model of all those, who aimed at the higher flights of poetry; and, as is ever the case, the streams which were thus drawn forth, and taught to flow, by art, ran slow and silently by the side of those which had sprung from deep natural sources.

Similar in kind, though not in degree, was the influence of Petrarca. Never had romantic passion been sung so sweetly; never had gallantry and love been so blended; never had philosophy and nature been so lavish of their treasures, the one to describe passion, the other to illustrate and adorn it. A soft, bewitching charm floated around the "Canzoniere"; and as the contemporaries and successors of Petrarca listened to the melody, each, like the Passions at the cave of Music, seized the lyre and sought

It was not by verse that Boccaccio formed his school. But a prose whose full, harmonious flow approached the varied melody of Latin eloquence; a language which seemed to adapt. itself to every subject, while, in truth, it raised the lowest subjects to its own standard, veiling the coarseness of vulgar details, and giving an irresistible attraction to the most harrowing descriptions, by the charm of words and idioms, grave or gay, thrillingly powerful, or gracefully expressive, and everywhere so appropriate, that five centuries of constant study have produced nothing more perfect; this was the art by which the father of Italian prose won so large a train of disciples into the path which he had opened. The school of Boccaccio, though not so large as that of Petrarca, was larger and more durable than that of Dante. The Tales, or "Novellette," which he carried to the highest point of perfection, still form an integral part of Italian literature; and there are few of its great prose writers who have not drawn from this fountain as from the purest source of eloquence.

Such was the direction first given to Italian literature. The three great men, by whom this impulse was communicated, laid at the same time the foundation of another school, whose

effects may be traced throughout every period from the days of Dante to our own times. We mean the classic school. The veneration, which they felt and invariably manifested for the ancient classics, fell little short of religious devotion. But the study of these pure models of taste and eloquence was pursued with a spirit, worthy both of the disciple and of the master. It was not a mere poetic fiction, which represented Virgil as the guide of Dante. Every step, which the Italian of the Middle Ages took in the three realms of the catholic creed, was directed by the spirit of his master. Who that studies the "Divina Commedia, " even in those passages, where the poet, entangled in the web of his theology, strives to explain what cannot be explained, and almost succeeds, by the force of language, in giving form and reality to the subtile distinctions of his school of metaphysics, can deny that it was from the study of Virgil alone that he learned to give to words that magic and long-forgotten power? And although in reading the Latin works of Petrarca, we may often find it difficult to believe that Cicero and Virgil were the avowed models of his style, yet the grace, the harmony, and the polished correctness of his Italian verses, clearly show how much his taste had been elevated and refined by his familiarity with the Latin classics.

But with their followers this study was degraded into a servile imitation of manner, and a dry analysis of forms. They had no knowledge of that imitation, which refines the taste, without fettering the action of the mind, which shows where and how the forms of one work may be adapted to another, and transfuses, as it were, the spirit of ancient beauty into productions which bear all the characteristics of their own age. But although the scholars of this class accomplished but little in real literature, their labors were far from being destitute of utility. The sixteenth century showed, that, however dry the pursuits of the fifteenth, they had prepared the way for a great and direct advance. The men, who so successfully resumed the work, commenced by the three great writers of the fourteenth century, were like them endowed with that original genius, which, while it avails itself of all that has been accomplished by others, creates more than it borrows, and gives even to the ideas and inventions of other men an air of originality and a coloring of its own. They were deeply imbued with the classic spirit, which prevailed in all the studies of the age; but they partook of it as their masters had done.

Style, elegance of description, elevation of philosophy, polish of language, all were classic; but the subjects and tone of their works were modern and original. The metrical romances, which Ariosto carried to that pitch of perfection, which has justly made it doubtful to whom the laurel of Italian epic belongs, were more numerous than the imitations of Dante, or of Boccaccio, or in short of any class except the lyric poems of Petrarca. Thus divided between the schools of Visions, of Lyric Poetry, of Prose Tales, and of Metrical Romances, the genius of Italy found sufficient variety in forms of its own invention, to employ all its powers. When, finally, the example of Tasso had shown how well the ancient epic could be adapted to the spirit of modern poetry, and when the revival of comedy and tragedy had begun to excite the emulation of all classes of writers, nothing but a very peculiar combination of circumstances could have led to the invention of a new branch of literature.

Such a combination was far from taking place. Italy had long ceased to be a nation. The great interests, the strong feelings, the ardent aspirations after freedom, which had preceded the first revival of letters, had disappeared; or, where they still continued to exist, but added new force to that truth, already too evident, that individual virtues, when foreign to the age, serve but to call down contempt and misery upon those, who were formed to be under other circumstances the benefactors of mankind. The nation, which had hitherto been the guide of Europe, then became, in part, the humble follower of her own disciples. Translations, imitations, and servile copies, succeeded to original creations in almost every department; and the corruption, extending to the language, seemed to threaten her literature with total destruction. Yet this very period gave rise to some of her choicest works in history and in science; and some of the brightest names in the scientific history of Europe are to be found among the Italians of this degraded epoch. The musical drama also, as every reader of Metastasio knows, from a merely idle recreation, became a branch of permanent literature, no less fascinating from the charms of its verse, than instructive by its truth to nature. Tragedy, comedy, and satire in its more extended and artificial form, though each can boast but a single name, were carried to a very high point of perfection.

There has been no time, therefore, in which Italy has not

been distinguished by a certain degree of intellectual activity, and has not made some progress in creative literature. But, at the same time, there has been a constant tendency toward the formation of particular schools, and, except in the case of those great men, who, however they may be situated, strike out a path for themselves, a strong disposition to follow in the beaten track of some well-known guide. The true source of this must be sought rather in the political condition of the country, than in the natural character of the Italians. But it is in this tendency, that we must seek for one of the causes of the constant neglect of the fuller historical novel, which although contemporary with the "Divina Commedia," first appeared in so rough or rather uninviting a form, as to hold out no attractions for men capable of relishing the superior beauties of the different writers, whose names we have had occasion to repeat so often.

This applies only to those writers of the second class, by whom in every country this department is almost exclusively filled. The reasons, which have kept back the higher order of men from this attractive field, lie still deeper in the character and history of the people.

The first of these we shall merely allude to, without venturing to enlarge upon it. It is found, we are at a loss whether to say, in the peculiar cast, or in the absolute want of society. Here, as in some other cases, the general fact is apparent, but can only be illustrated by those who have made profound and extensive observations, with the advantages which no foreigner has, to our knowledge, ever obtained, of a free admission. into Italian circles.

The second, and one which seems to us to have contributed more than any which we have hitherto mentioned, to retard, and perhaps render impossible, the success of the novelist in Italy, is the peculiarly romantic character of Italian history. Of the romantic cast of its scenery and of its people we have already spoken. The peculiar relations in which Italy has stood with regard to the rest of Europe, and to the different states of her own territory, during the most important periods of her history, have brought these materials into play, in a manner which has left nothing to be done by the warmest imagination. In the place of one people, united under the same government and impelled by the same motives, we find the whole population divided into rival states. Where the craggy