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ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS.

HISTORICAL NOTICE OF THE KINGDOM OF THE TWO SICILIES.

THESE two countries, the seat of tremendous volcanoes, have been agitated in all ages by poli- || tical convulsions still more dangerous than those of nature. The name of Sicily is equivalent to the most ancient field of battle, and the theatre of the most brilliant actions. The calamities of Naples date no farther back than the period of the decline of the Roman empire; the taking of that city in 543 immortalized Totila, who treated its inhabitants with a humanity truly affecting.

After the establishment of the exarchate of Ravenna, the provinces which now compose the kingdom of Naples were successively desolated by the Lombards, the Greeks, the Saracens, the Normans, the Germans, the Hungarians, the French, the Spaniards; and all these wars not only altered the character of the Neapolitan nation, but produced a strange mixture in its manners; the people retained almost all the vices of these different nations, but preserved scarcely any of their virtues. Beneath the most beautiful sky in Europe were committed the most atrocious crimes. The populace of Naples acquired a celebrity unfortunate for their rulers, and became as seditious and as depraved as the populace of Rome. These revolutions have been described by an author in a work entitled, The thirty-five Rebellions of the most faithful people of Naples. || The calculation of this writer is very moderate; twice the number might be reckoned up were we to take the trouble to penetrate into that labyrinth of tragical events which fatigue by their sanguinary uniformity.

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the power of the Venetians. These formidable Normans whose exploits were at that time the subject of conversation and of wonder in every country, narrowly escaped being involved in a general massacre by the treacherous inhabitants of Apulia. Two of their princes only had the misfortune to fall by the weapons of assassins.

The first duke of Apulis that assumed the title of king, in the year 1130, was Roger II who carried on war in Africa and the east. The immense riches which the Normans acquired by most of their expeditions, soon corrupted their manners. The indolence, effeminacy, and cruelty of William the Wicked, son of Roger, produced the most atrocious scenes; unworthy favourites made the people groan beneath the burden of imposis, and Naples witnessed horrors as execrable as those of a Tiberius or a Caligula. During the reigns of William II. and Tancred, the two kingdoms of Naples and Sicily enjoyed repose; the first merited the esteem and attachment of his. subjects, by his benevolence and mildness, and the second by his clemency and the excellent qualities of his heart.

At length this valiant race of adventurers was humbled and overwhelmed by new disasters; the sceptre passed from the feeble hands of young William III. into those of the emperor Henry VI. the exterminator of all the Norman princes, a monster who, by his assassinations, but too justly deserved the surname of the Nero of Sicily. Like a second Cambyses he extended his vengeance even to the deceased princes of the dethroned dynasty; he caused the bodies of William II. and his son, Roger, to be taken out of their tombs, and ordered the crowns which encircled their brows in the abode of death, to be nailed to the heads of two noblemen attached to the blood of their masters.

The only nation which, in some measure, incorporated itself with the Neapolitans, was that of the Normans, who, as early as the year 1016, fought against the infidels, performed the most signal services for the sovereigns of the country, and obtained various grants from them Heaven punished these multiplied atrocities in by way of reward. These auxiliaries, however, the descendants of this monster. Notwithstandbehaved in the Two Sicilies as the Anglo-Saxonsing the virtues of Frederick, the founder of the did in England, they made themselves masters of the whole country. In 1043 they had already founded in Apulia, as well as in Calabria, a great number of principalities, and had driven the Greeks of the Eastern empire from the whole south of Italy. Robert Guiscard, and his son, Bohemond, the two heroes of their age, would have overturned the empire of the East had it not been for the courage of Alexis, seconded by all

school of Salerno, who patronized the sciences and successfully cultivated them himself, the innocent Conradin, who had scarcely arrived at the years of manhood, was doomed to be the expiatory victim. Manfred had deprived him of the crown, but this barbarous guardian fell, near Benevento, by the swords of the forlorn hope of Charles of Anjou, who in less than three months found himself in possession of the Two

Sicilies. Conradin, accompanied by his cousin, Frederick of Austria, asserted, by force of arms, his claim to the patrimony of his forefathers.

Every thing at first gave way to his impetuous courage; but vanquished at last, in consequence of a fatal error, in the very bosom of victory, he fell into the hands of his most implacable enemies. All Europe shuddered with horror at the recital of the catastrophe which put a period to the life of Conradin. He, with his kinsman Frederick, was sacrificed by ambition on a scaffold in Naples; and the brother of the sainted Louis IX. was the first that set the bold and terrible example of subjecting a crowned head to the axe of executioners. Before he received the fatal stroke, Conradin, who tenderly loved his mother, Elizabeth, exclaimed in anguish, "Oh, my mother, into what affliction will my death plunge you !" This tragical death was preceded by acts of refined barbarity. The prayers for the dead were repeated before the princes, and their funeral was celebrated in their presence. Struck || by the lightnings of the Vatican, thus ended the illustrious House of Swabia, one of the most unfortunate that ever swayed the sceptre.

The merciless Charles knew not how to reign as well as to conquer. This imprudent monarch resigned the reins to all the passions of his countrymen, notwithstanding the prudent remonstrances of the Popes, who foresaw a revolution in his dominions, and already perceived the destructive fire lurking beneath the perfidious calm of apparent submission. John de Procida, active, discreet, eloquent, flexible and bold, indignant at being neglected by the conqueror, went to raise up enemies against him in Arragon and at Constantinople, where he received powerful succours in money from the Greek emperor. This new Proteus suddenly rendered himself invisible; disguised in the habit of a cordelier, he every where excited the fury of the people, and roused all Sicily against the French. It was a general revolt, and not a massacre, that this Sicilian gentleman had in view. The most judicious historians admit that the bloody catastrophe, known by the name of the Sicilian Vespers, was the effect of accident.

It was not the bells of Palermo that gave the signal for the massacre on Easter Monday in the year 1282; the real signal was given by a Frenchman, and the cries of modesty brutally outraged by him in the public street, in the person of a young woman who was going to vespers, were the actual toesin that summoned the people together, and inspired them with the murderous rage that cost the lives of twenty-eight thousand Frenchmen. A proof that this massacre was not pre-meditated, is, that it did not take place at the same time all over the island.

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A great number of provencals endeavoured to get away from this land of slaughter, but none of them were able to effect their escape, because the Sicilians, endued with infernal sub lety, found out an extraordinary method of discovering their victims. The pronunciation of the word ciceri was the test by which they were tried, and was the sentence of death on those foreigners who could not repeat it with the same delicacy and the same accent as the natives. The po• pulace of Palermo carried their fury to such a pitch as to rip open those Sicilian women who were pregnant by Frenchmen, and to tear from their bowels the fruit of this unhappy connexion. Humanity shrinks from the task of describing all the horrors of which Sicily was the theatre. is well known that the multitude is capable of the most violent excesses, and that in every age among every nation, it would frequently act these bloody tragedies, were it not restrained by a firm and vigorous government.

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Charles was forming vast projects, among others, that of dethroning the Greek emperor, when the intelligence of this disaster arrived to overwhelm, and to extinguish the last spark of life. His descendants, in spite of their utmost efforts to maintain their ground, were driven from Naples as well as Sicily, and were never able to recover that rich and dangerous succession.

After these sanguinary executions, the crown of Sicily, separated from that of Naples, was placed on the head of Pedro, King of Arragon, who went, not without fear and hesitation, to reign over this theatre of carnage.

Under Charles the Lame, and Robert, the Neapolitans at length enjoyed happiness, and blessed the paternal clemency of the government. All disputes were extinguished, all animosities ceased, and science diffused her mild beams over minds before involved in darkness, fanaticisin, and barbarism. Robert, pious, charitable, humane, pacific, a lover of justice, and named, on account of that quality, the So omon of his age, a patron of the learned and of poets, himself a scholar and a poet, encouraged the study of sound philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, caused Aristotle to be translated into Latin, and collected the most valuable works in his library. He was too passionately fond of women; this was almost the only blot among the eminent virtues manifested by this prince. He was brave in battle, and always great even in the midst of misfortune.

About this period Flavio Gioia, a native of Amalfi, reflected honour on the Neapolitan nation by his invention, or rather improvement, of the mariner's compass, that guide which paved the way to the discovery of a new world.

Thus, in the midst of the thickest darkness,

the human mind began to experience, in the kingdom of Naples, the effects of a salutary fermentation, when, in the reign of Queen Joan, new tragedies, less sanguinary but not less criminal than the preceding, were acted. Andrew, her husband, was strangled by the Neapolitan nobles. This fickle inconsistent princess, suspected, rather than convicted, of a crime which thrilled her with horror, was anxious to find tribunals to absolve her, and even addressed herself to the celebrated Rienzi, a demagogue who acted the part of Brutus at Rome, and who haughtily assumed the title of August tribune of the universe. He was, however, too politic to decide in such a delicate affair. Posterity, severe in its judgments, will perhaps consider Joan as guilty, because she manifested too openly before Andrew's death, her aversion for her unfortunate husband, whose cause was avenged by Lewis the Great, King of Hungary. The enraged monarchy hastened forward at the head of his troops, before whom was borne a banner on which was painted the crue! death of his brother. At the sight of this dismal standard the Neapolitans turned pale, and without making the least resistance, suffered the authors of the crime to be sacrificed in the same gallery of the palace where it had been perpetrated. Joan, who had fled, did not return to her dominions till the Hungarians had withdrawn. Having married, for the fourth time, Itho of Brunswick, the latter was unable to maintain his ground against Charles de Duras, whom the princess afterwards called to the succession. Though his prisoner, she wished in the sequel to exclude him from it; but to prevent her, he caused his benefactress to be stifled. The new king endeavoured to unite the crown of Hungary with that of Naples, but the attempt,cost him his life; two queens whom he had humbled and obliged to lay down their sceptre at his feet, put a period to his life.

Under Ladislaus and Joan II. vice reigned uncontrolled, and after the example of its sovereigns, the whole kingdom exhibited the most scandalous spectacle of effeminacy and debauchery. Ladislaus made himself three times master of Rome; he was always victorious in battle, but except in the military career, he was unable to command his passions. Despotic, oppressive, sanguinary, incontinent, he expired worn out with debauchery in transports of phrenzy. Joan, his sister and successor, was the Messalina of her age. Never satiated with pleasures, this lascivious princess sent back to France her husband, Jacques de Bourbon, that she might indulge in them with greater liberty; and her unworthy gallants, delivered from this restraint, fattened on the tears and the blood of the wretched Neapolitans.

In the year 1414, Alphonso I. ascended the throne, after some opposition from John of || Anjou and René the Good. He again united Sicily to the kingdom of Naples, after a separation of 160 years. During this period anarchy had continually desolated that blood-stained island, and the history of the Sicilians is destitute of interesting facts. Violence and disorder, checked by the magnanimity, the virtues, and address of Alphonso I. who made his people happy, resumed their destructive course after the death of that great sovereign, and kept continually increasing under Ferdinand I, Alphonso II. and Frederic.

Charles VIII. re-asserting the rights of the House of Anjou, subdued and quitted Italy and the kingdom of Naples with the same rapidity, after having passed at Formua close to an army four times as numerous as his own. Naples fell beneath the efforts of Louis XI. and Frederic, the last king of that dynasty in which flowed the blood of Arragon mingled with that of France, retired to forget in the enjoyments of private life the loss of his throne. His dominions were divided, in 1505, between the French and the Spaniards; the latter, by the artifices of Ferdinand king of Arragon, as much as by the valor of Gonsalvo de Cordova, expelled their rivals from the kingdom of Naples, and declared them. selves the sole possessors.

It was then seen what the prudent energy of a good government is capable of effecting in ever age and in every country. The devils inhabiting the paradise of Italy were transformed into angels. The Two Sicilies, convulsed by so many shocks, remained quiet under the domination of the viceroys of the King of Spain; and one of them, the famous Duke d'Ossuna, commanded at one and the same time, the fear, the respect, and the love of the people.

During the reign of Philip IV. in 1665, a spark produced a violent explosion in Naples; discontented with an impost laid by the Duke d'Arcos on vegetables and fruit, a man of the lowest class suddenly raising himself above the crowd, became instinctively the leader of a party and a general. Massaniello directed the hands of fifty thousand men, whom a basket of figs, insolently thrown down by a tax-gatherer, had roused to fury and instigated to arms.

In a moment, assassination was organized in the metropolis. It is scarcely possible to conceive an idea of the ridiculous, puerile, indecent, and sanguinary methods of revenge practised by the unbridled populace. All the nobility, all the tradesmen and citizens trembled before the terrific Massaniello, who was intoxicated with popular favour, and feasted himself on the most flattering illusions; but the populace, in a me.

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was succeeded by a profound calm; days of pros➡
perity dawned in this beautiful country, and the
as polished and as amiable as the other civilized
Neapolitans distinguished themselves for manners
nations of Europe. The arts and sciences flou-
rished among these people, who displayed vene-
rable antiquity to the eyes of astonished Europe

enriched themselves by this commerce so curious
and so new between the living and the dead.

ment of caprice soon overthrew this living idol, put him to death, dragged his body along the streets, and threw it upon a dunghill. The next day shedding tears over their own victim, and re. proaching themselves for their excessive cruelty, they honoured Massaniello with a magnificent funeral, the pomp of which was increased by the forced attendance of great numbers of the clergy.in the cities of Pompeia and Herculaneum, and Weary of their sovereignty, fatigued with revolutions, cured of the fever which had exhausted their strength, the populace returned to their duty, notwithstanding the chivalrous prowess of the Duke de Puise, who had thrown himself into Naples and strove to keep alive the flames of civil discord, in the hope of procuring a crown. He could not even gain over Januario Anneze, the new idol of the populace, who was as haughty and as jealous of his power as his predecessor.

After passing successively under the dominion of Charles II. son of Leopold, and the Emperor Charles VI. the two Sicilies were conquered in 1734, by Don Carlos, who governed them with clemency and wisdom. He resigned the sceptre throne of Spain. Such is a concise sketch of to Ferdinand IV. in 1759, when he ascended the in those two states, and which are here recorded the most important events that have occurred

This revolution, rather ludicrous than terrible, without the omission of a single reign.

A DIALOGUE BETWEEN TWO YOUNG MARRIED LADIES,
HARRIET AND CHARLOTTE.

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The translator says, The following Dialague is one of the Colloquies of Erasmus, and was translated from the original of facetious memory," according to Addison. Latin by Thomas Brown, "Though he keeps his author still in sight, yet he does not pretend to have made a literal translation; and where Erasmus alludes to old adages, or where the jest turns upon a turn in the Latin tongue, which would be entirely lost in an English version, he has made bold to substitute something of his own in the room of it, in order to make it more agreeable to the palate of the English reader, for whose diversion it was designed."-Erasmus died in 1536, and Thomas Brown in 1704; so that the original is three hundred years old, and the imitation above one hundred.-This is much the best of the twenty-nine colloquies which have appeared in English, twenty-two by Sir Roger L'Estrange, and the others by Brown.-We have, in compliance with the delicacy of the modern English press, been obliged to omit two or three pages, and have endeavoured to render it more pleasing to our fair readers by a few necessary alterations —For Eulalia and Xantippe, we have substituted the names of Harriet and Charlotte (from Sir Charles Grandison), a quiet and a turbulent wife.The piece, besides the excellence of its doctrine, is remarkable as exhibiting one young female giving good advice to another young female.

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C. Well! you are a happy woman to have a good husband; for my part, I wish I had married a mushroom, a bean-stalk, the head of an old bass-viol, or any thing, rather than my incorrigible animal.

H. What! is your house untiled already, and is it come to a rupture between you?

Do but and

C. Yes, and is likely to continue so. see what a pitiful dress I am forced to wear, yet he is contented to see me in this plight. I am ashamed to go to church, or to pay visits, when I see my neighbours so such better dressed, although their husbands has not a quarter of the estate mine has.

H. In my opinion an honest woman is set out

to all the advantage she can desire, if she is so happy as to please her husband. The true ornaments of a woman do not consist in gaudy clothes and jewels, but in chastity, meekness, and endowments of the mind. It is only common women who are tricked up on purpose to draw in

customers.

C. In the mean time, this most worthy man of mine, who grudges every shilling that is expended on his wife, takes pains to squander away the fortune I brought him, as the maggot bites; sometimes on his women, at other times in gaming, or at the tavern.

H. Oh, fie! you should never say thus of your husband.

C. But I will justify it. When the creature comes home after midnight with his cargo of Port, and fumes of tobacco, worse than the odour of a pole-cat, he does nothing but snore all the night long, and sometimes leaves more than his wine between the sheets.

H. Peace! I'll hear no more of this; you forget that you degrade yourself when you lessen || your husband.

C. I would rather take up my quarters in a pigstye, with a clean hog, than lie with such a mixture of filth and brutality.

H. And when you find him in such a pickle, don't you scold him to some purpose?

C. Yes, I use him as he deserves. I suppose he is convinced I can use my lungs upon oc

casion.

H. Well, and how does he relish this treatment?

C. At first he bounced and swaggered most heroically, thinking to fright me with his big words.

H. And did it never come to downright blows between ye?

C. Once-and but once, the quarrel arose so high that we were very near a battle. My spark had a crab-tree cudgel in his hand, which he lifted up, swearing and cursing like a foot-soldier at an unbelieving country innkeeper, and threatening to make a severe example of me. To prevent that, I snatched up a stool, and told him I would comb his head with it if he offered to touch me; and if he had not sounded a retreat, he had found to his cost he had no child to deal with.

H. My dear Charlotte, I must tell you, you are to blame in this.

C. Pray, in what respect? For if he does not use me as his wife, I don't know why I should use him as my husband. Let him put his own duty in practice, and I assure you I will not for. get mine.

H. But when things are come to such a dilemma, that either the husband or wife must

knock under, I think it but reasonable that the woman should submit to the man.

C. Why must I look upon him as my husband who uses me so ill?

H. Did he never after this threaten to beat you?

C. No; he grew wiser and repented of his valour, otherwise he had caught a Tartar, I can tell you that.

II. So then you have left off scolding him. C. No; never while I have this tongue in my head.

H. But how does your husband bear it? C. Why sometimes he pretends to be asleep, sometimes he does nothing but laugh, and at other times he talks of his fiddle, (for you must know he pretends to music), and scrapes upon it with all his might and main, and takes as much pains as if he were threshing; and all this to stop my pipe.

H. And did not that vex you?

C. So much, that I could have torn him to pieces from downright madness.

II. Now, my dear Charlotte, will you give me leave to talk a little freely to you?

C. With all my heart, say whatever you please.

H. Nay, you may do as much with me, and this I think is no more than what our long acquaintance will warrant; for you and I have known each other from our cradles.

C. You say truly; and there are none of my play fellows I love better than yourself.

H. Let your husband prove what he will, I'd still have you carry in your mind, that it is not in your power to change him for another: you must bear with him, for better for worse, to the last breath in your body. Try what tricks you please, he will still remain your husband, and you his wife. So that you and your husband have nothing left to do but to suit your tempers and dispositions to one another, and to bear the yoke of matrimony as contentedly as ye can.

C. But do you think it possible for me to alter the nature of this insufferable brute?

H. You must permit me to tell you, that it does not a little depend upon a wife what sort of man her husband will make.

C. And do you and your husband live in perfect amity?

H. Yes, Heaven be praised, all is easy and quiet with us now.

C. Then I find there has formerly been some bickering between ye.

H. Nothing that could be properly called a tempest; only as no condition in life is perfect, a few small clouds began to appear, which might have occasioned very bad weather, if care had not been taken to prevent it by a wise conduct.

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