The Laurentian library contains some precious manuscripts. Within the last twenty-five years it boasted the famous Virgil, written, it is said, in the reign of Valens, and corrected in the fifth century, by the consul Asterius. This celebrated book had been lost and regained by the Florentines, but disappeared during the revolutionary wars, and is now, probably, lost to Florence for ever. The Pandects of Justinian, a remarkably fine copy, experienced a better fortune--on the approach of the French, they were "sent to Palermo for safety. Government, indeed, had always kept them under its own key, and opened them only by torch light to the great, on an order from the senate. Tradition says that this famous code was discovered in a barrel at Amalfi; and Hume, who believes the story, ascribes to this discovery the revival of the Roman law. But it is far more probable, that the Pisans brought it from Constantinople while their commerce flourished in the Levant, and it is certain that, before they took Amalfi, Irnerius had been teaching the Pandects at Bologna." There are some fine illuminated manuscripts of the classics-Greek and Latin of the date of the eleventh century-fine at least from the brilliancy of the colours, which in that age, were used in an unmixed state-to this, probably, the splendour of the tints is, in a considerable measure, to be ascribed. "Some of those illuminations came from the pencil of Oderisi, whom Dante extols as the honor of the art;' an art which grew afterwards into a luxury baneful to learning. Every copyist became a painter, and, wasting his time in the embellishing of books, rendered books in general rare. Farly in the fifteenth century this art made a most rapid progress, as appears very eminently in some of these manuscripts; and Attaventi, who wrought for the magnificent founder of this library, had brought it nearly to perfection, when printing gave a check to its importance. Hence the works usually shown here as objects of beauty, such as the Pliny, the Homer, the Ptolemy, the Missal of the Florentine Republic, are all of that nge, and contain portraits of the Medici, painted in the initials." The practice of illuminating books is no longer in vogue-indeed the invention of printing speedily put an end to a fashion ridiculous in itself, and which only served to pamper the pride and luxury of a few wealthy egotists, by the possession of books whose costliness necessarily limited them to the most opulent individuals. Manuscript-miniature is now exercised only by a few artists, employed to repair the decayed and decaying volumes of the old libraries. "I found Ciatti, who ranks first in the art, supplying here lost or damaged leaves; copying in fac-simile the writing of every age, and giving vellum the due tinge of antiquity. His enrichments have all the system of modern composition, though inferior to the old illuminations in their general effect. In the former, we admire an harmonious design; in the latter, a rich confusion. Such is an English carpet compared with a Persian." The peculiar talent of the Italians in extemporaneous poetry is well known to most of our readers. Flence has long been celebrated for her Improvvisatori. In the fifteenth century the blind brothers Brandolini acquired no mean reputation for the excellence of their extemporary Latin verse-all Italy lately hung with rapture on the spontaneous effusions of Corilla's wit and fancy-but "Signora Fantastici is now the improvvisatrice of the day. "This lady convenes at her house a crowd of admirers, whenever she chooses to be inspired. The first time I attended her accademia, a young lady, of the same family and name as the great Michael Angelo, began the evening by repeating some verses of her own composition. Presently La Fantastici broke out into song in the words of the motto, and astonished me by her rapidity and command of numbers, which flowed in praise of the fair poetess, and brought her poem back to our applause. Her numbers, with the fluctuation of sentiment; while however, flowed irregularly, still varying her song corresponded, changing from aria to recitativo, from recitativo to a measured recitation. "She went round her circle and called on each person for a theme. Seeing her busy with her fan, I proposed the Fan as a subject; and this little weapon she painted as she promised, col pennel divino di fantasia felice.' 6 Pignotti, and in describing its use she acted In tracing its origin she followed and analyzed to us all the coquetry of the thing. She allowed herself no pause, as the moment she cooled, her estro would escape. "So extensive is her reading, that she can challenge any theme. One morning, after other classical subjects had been sung, a Venetian count gave her the boundless field of Apollonius Rhodius, in which she displayed a minute acquaintance with all the Argonautic fable. Tired at last of demigods, I propose, the sofa for a task, and sketched to her the introduction of Cowper's poem. She set out with this idea, but being once entangled in the net of mythology, she couch, and brought Venus, Cupid and Mars soon transformed his sofa into a Cytherean on the scene; for such embroidery enters into the web of every improvvisatore. 1 found this morning accademia flatter than the first. Perhaps Poetry, being one of the children of pleasure, may, like her sisters, be most welcome in the evening. "I remarked that La Fantastici, when speaking of her art, gave some cold praise to her rival La Bandettini; but she set an old Tuscan peasant above all the tribe, as first in original and poetic thinking. She seemed then to forget her once admired Gianni, the Roman stay-maker. This crooked son of Apollo was the contested gallant of the first beauties in Florence, where he displayed powers yet unequalled in impromptu; defying all the obligazioni or shackles that the severest audience could impose on him. The very idea, however, of imposition is a violence fatal to genius; and the poetical commands thus executed, like laureate odes and other tasks, may show skill, practice, talent; but none of the higher felicities of art." That all this is very delightful and surprising we cordially admit, and think that an evening the delassemens of which included such a display of talent and eloquence, must approach as nearly as possible to that rapturous state of feel ing which we are accustomed to attribute to superior beings:-but, perhaps, our wonder would abate somewhat on a cool examination of the compositions thus thrown forth, in the midst of the united excitements of beauty, music, and clegant conviviality, and where too the suddenness and rapidity of the verse does not permit the exercise of criticism. The poetic facility, besides, of the Italian language, and its richness in rhymes, must be powerful aids to the improvvisatore, who, were he requested to make a rational discourse in prose-where the advantages of his language would cease to assist him -would, in all probability, find himself awkwardly situated. Mr. Forsyth's observations on this subject are judicious and expressed with great elegance. "Such strains pronounced and sung unmediated, such prompt eloquence, such sentiment and imagery flowing in rich diction, in measure, in rhyme, and in music, without interruption, and on subjects unforeseen, all this must evince in La Fantastici a wonderful command of powers; yet, judging from her studied and published com positions, which are dull enough, I should suspect that this impromptu exercise seldom leads to poetical excellence. Serafino d'Ac quila, the first improvvisatore that appeared in the language, was gazed at in the Italian courts as a divine and inspired being, till he published his verses and dispelled the illusion. "An Italian improvvisatore has the benefit of a language rich in echoes. He generally calls in the accompaniment of song, a lute, or a guitar, to set off his verse and conceal any failures. If his theme be difficult, he runs from that into the nearest common-place, or takes refuge in loose lyric measures. Thus he may always be fluent, and sometimes by accident be bright. "I once heard a little drama given extempore with great effect, from the acting talent. of the poet: but dramatic poetry is not so much the subject of Italian impromptu as it was among the Greeks. The Greek language and the Italian appear to me equally favourable to this talent. Equally rich, and harmonious, and pliant, they allow poets to alter the length and the collocation of words, to pile epithets on epithets, and sometimes to range among different dialects. "In attending to the Italian improvvisatori, I began to find out, or perhaps only to fancy, several points in which they resemble their great predecessor Homer. In both may be remarked the same openness of style and simplicity of construction, the same digres sions, rests, repetitions, anomalies. Homer has often recourse to the shifts of the moment, like other improvvisatori. Like them he betrays great inequalities. Sometimes he cuts it short and concludes. Sometimes when his speech is lengthening into detail, when the interest and difficulty thicken, the poet escapes, like his heroes, in a cloud. I once thought of Homer in the streets of Florence, where I once saw a poor cyclic bard most cruelly perplexed in a tale of chivalry. He wished to unravel; but every stanza gave a new twist to his plot. His hearers seem ed impatient for the denoument, but still the confusion increased. At last, seeing no other means of escape, he vented his poetical fury on the skin of his tambourine, and went off with a maledetto.'" There is a chapter upon the Italian theatre, too long for insertion, but whose interesting details we shall endeavour to condense:-As early as the twelfth century Italy had her İstrioni—mere balladsingers, who never aspired to the personation of character. The moralities, or scriptural dialogues, of the next age, approximated somewhat nearer to the form of the regular drama-and in 1449 the history of Abraham announced the approach of the Tragic Muse. Thirty years afterwards appeared the Orfeo of Politian -a composition constructed upon the Greek model-and which was so generally admired and imitated, that the first regular theatre of modern Europe was built at Milan, in 1490, upon the Greek plan. To Politian's Orfeo succeeded the Sofonisba of Carretto, and in 1515 appeared the first attempt of Trissino;-the taste for Greek tragedy was now epidemical and was supported by a host of feeble and forgotten writers, whose stiff, solemn, languid dialogues exhibit the form of the classic drama, without a trace of the vä rious and immortal genius that makes us forget its defects. The translation from Plautus by Hecules, duke of Ferrara, first introduced among the Italians a taste for comedy. Arjasto followed with an original production. Then came a crowd who wrote learned comedies, to be recited-not on a public stage-no-these grave wits never thought of writing for the peoplebut "in courts, academies, and colleges, as exercises for princes and scholars,"of these "erudite" compositions an intoJerable stupidity is the usual characteristic, and where they are not dull, they are obscure.-The "commedie dell' arte," though addressed to the feelings and passions of the populace, and consequently deficient in the higher qualities of the drama, were, nevertheless, vastly more interesting than the writings of the "erudit,"-action was their principal charm -the dialogue was rarely printed-but the plot being sketched, the filling up of the characters was left to the spontaneous talents of the actors, the varieties of vulgar life afforded an exhaustless diversity of subject, and the wit of the performers was supplied from the same sources. The degradation of tragedy gave birth to that seducing nondescript, the Opera the same cause, as applied to comedy, produced the Opera Buffa-and in the charms of music, and the attractions of buffoonery-both national passions-the Italians were contented to forget the absurdity of the one, the vulgarity of the other, and the invasion which both were making up on the legitimate drama. But Goldoni appeared, and comedy reared her drooping head. For a while he yielded to the prevailing fashion, and his early pieces were written for the old masques --but by the introduction of new beauties, wholly foreign to and unadapted to them, be by degrees, created a taste for superior productions, and at length, though not without some murmurs from the adherents of the old school, succeeded in banishing the masked comedy from the stage altogether. This change in the form of the comic drama produced a correspondent revolution in the style of acting, and instead of the former rant and bombastic extravagance, the performers "affect a temperance bordering upon tameness." They are held in slight estimation by the other classes of society-and rank even below the warblers of the Opera ;-their own opinion of their own art (they style it merely recitation) scarcely entitles them to the respect of others-like showmen in the streets" they expose their scenes "painted on a pole and underwrit”—and every performance is concluded with a long and mean supplication of the public favour to the next:-the comic actors are principally Lombards, "And of these the best are enlisted under Goldoni, a relation of the great dramatist. In his company are the two first actors of the day, Zanerini and Andolfati. "Zanerini's walk is the padre nobile,' and surely in pathetic old characters he carries the exquisite and the forceful as far as they can exist together. "Andolfati excels as a caratterista, and has dramatised for himself some passages in the life of Frederick II. whom he imitates, tale quale, in his voice, walk, and manner. But Andolfati's merit rises far above mimicry ; he can thrill the heart as well as shake the sides, and (what is more difficult than either) he can excite through long scenes that secret intellectual smile which, like the humour of Addison, never fatigues." The remarks upon the genius and character of the celebrated Alfieri are in a style of discriminating criticism very unusual with travellers, who generally second paragraph is peculiarly fine-and praise and depreciate in the lump ;-the though the word "SHAKESPEARE" would ing question-"Has England a tragic be a full and imperial answer to his exultpoet equal to Alfieri?"-and though the Justness of the insinuated panegyric is impeached by the allowed tragical superiority of Schiller (a poet whose chief merit is an exaggerated imitation or rather burlesque of the fiercer scenes of the bard of Avon)-we have no hesitation in such as none but a man of genius could saying that the sentences in question are produce. "Alfieri is, next to Dante, the Italian poet most difficult to Italians themselves. His tragedies are too patriotic and austere for the Tuscan stage. Their construction is simple, perhaps too simple, too sparing of action and of agents. Hence his heroes must often soliloquise, he must often describe what a Shakespeare would represent, and this to a nation immoderately fond of picture. Every thought, indeed, is warm, proper, energetic; every word is necessary and precise; yet this very strength and compression, being new to the language and foreign to its genius, have rendered his style inverted, broken, and obscure; full of ellipses and elisions; speckled even to affectation with Dantesque terms; without pliancy, or flow, or variety, or ease. "Yet where lives the tragic poet equal to Alfieri? Has England or France one that deserves the name? Schiller may excel him in those peals of terror which thunder. through his gloomy and tempestnous scenes but he is poorer in thought, and inferior in the mechanism of his dramas. "Alfieri's conduct is more open than his works to censure. Though born in a monarchy, and living under mild princes, this count concentrated in his heart all the pride, brutality, and violence of the purest aristocracies that ever oppressed Genoa or Venice. Whoever was more or less than noble became the object of his hatred or his contempt. The same pen levelled his Tirannide against princes, and his Antigallican against plebeians. The patriotism which he once put on could never sit easy upon such a mind, nor fall naturally into the forms and postures of common life. In forcing it viotently on he rent the unsightly garb, then threw it aside, and let the tyrant go naked. "This hatred of princes led him to dedicate his Agis to our Charles I. I admit the jurisdiction of posterity over the fame of dead kings. But was it manly, was it humane, to call up the shade of an accomplished prince, a prince fully as unfortunate as he was criminal, on purpose to insult him with a mock dedication? and of all Italians, did this become Alfieri, the reputed husband of that very woman, whose sterility has extinguished the race of Charles? "His aristocratical pride, working on a splenetic constitution, breaks out into disgusting eccentricities, meets you at his very door, bars up all his approaches, and leaves himself in the solitude of a sultan. How unbecoming a poet was his conduct to General Miollis, the declared friend of all poets living and dead! How often has he descended from his theatrical stateliness to the low est scurrility! How true is his own description of himself! "Or stimandomi Achille, ed or Tersite." The environs of Florence are indebted for the principal features of their beauty to the agricultural industry of their in habitants. "The environs of Florence owe their beauty to a race of farmers who are far more industrious, intelligent, and liberal, than "Their liberality is conspicuous in the conributions of their rural fraternities, who come in procession to Florence with: splendid fusciacche, and leave their donations in the churches. Hence the clergy keep them well disciplined in faith, and, through the terror of bad crops, they begin to extort the abolished tithes. "On Easter-eve I remarked a crowd of these farmers collected in the cathedral of Florence, to watch the motion of an artificial dove, which, just as the priests began Gloria in Excelsis,' burst away from the choir, glided along the nave on a rope, set fire to a combustible car in the street, and then flew whizzing back to its post. The eyes of every peasant were wishfully rivetted on the sacred puppet, and expressed a deep interest in its flight; for all their hopes of a future harvest depended on its safe return to the altar. Quando va bene la colombina, va bene il Fiorentino' is an adage as ancient as the dignity of the Pazzi, who still provide the car. their neighbours born to the same sun and soil. Leopold toiled to make his peasants all comfortable, and the steward takes care that none shall be rich. They pass the year in a vicissitude of hard labour and jollity; they are seldom out of debt, and never insolvent. Negligent of their own dress, they take a pride in the flaring silks and broad earrings of their wives and daughters. These assist them in the field; for the farms, being too small to support servants, are laboured in the patriarchal style by the brothers, sisers, and children of the farmer. "Few of the proprietors round Florence will grant leases; yet so binding is the force of prescription, so mutual the interest of landlord and tenant, and so close the intertexture of their property, that removals are very rare, and many now occupy the farms which their forefathers tilled during the Florentine republic. "The stock of these farms belongs half to the landlord, and half to the tenant. This partnership extends even to the poultry and pigeons: the only peculium of the farmer is the produce of his hives. Hence the cattle run usually in pairs. One yoke of bullocks is sufficient for a common farm. Their oxen are all dove coloured; even those which are imported from other states change their coat in Tuscany, where they are always fed in the stall, and never go out but to labour. They are guided in the team by reins fixed to rings which are inserted in their nostrils; sometimes two hooks joined like piucers are used, like the postomis of Lucilius, which has teazed so many antiquaries. "Every field in the environs of Florence is ditched round, lined with poplars, and intersected by rows of vines or olive trees. Those rows are so close as to impede the plough; which, though it saves labour, is duce, than the triangular spade, with which considered here as less calculated for prothe tenant is bound by his landlord to dig or rather to shovel one third of his farm. "This rich plain of the Val d'Arno yields usually two harvests a year, the first of wheat, the second of some green crop ; which last is sometimes ploughed up, and left to rot on the field as manure for the next. This course is interrupted every third or fourth year by a crop of Turkey wheat, sometimes of beans or rye, and more rarely of oats. Barley was unknown here, until the breweries lately established at Florence and Pisa called it into cultivation. "As you approach the skirts of this narrow plain, you perceive a change in agriculture. The vine and the olive gradually prevail over corn; and each farm brings a variety of arts into action! In addition to our objects of husbandry, the Tuscan has to learn all the complicate processes which produce wine, oil, and silk, the principal exports of the state. Of corn an average crop brings only five returns in the Florentine territory; in the Senese eight or nine; and the aggregate affords but ten months' subsist< ence to all Tuscany, although the mountaineers live mostly on chesnuts.* "This garden of Tuscany seems to require more manure than it produces. To keep it perpetually in crop, the farmers must resort to the infectious sewers of the city; they send poor men and asses to pick up dung on the roads; and, at certain resting places on the highway, they spread litter for the cattle that pass to stale for their benefit." Mr. Forsyth enjoyed from the roof of the Franciscan convent a view of the Val d'Arno-it is scarcely fair to anticipate the feelings of our readers, but really we cannot refrain from the expression of that rapturous possession which his brief and exquisite description of that delicious scenery took of our mind and senses :--in the few lines he has given to its delineation, we seemed to behold the living luxuriancy of the landscape, and we pity those who can peruse it with other emotions. "It would be ungrateful to leave the environs of Florence without mentioning the pleasure which I once enjoyed at evening from the top of Fesole.'" The weather was then Elysian, the spring in its most beautiful point, and all the world, just released from the privations of Lent, were fresh in their festivity. I sat down on the brow of the hill, and measured with my enraptured eye half the Val d'Arno. Palaces, villas, convents, towns, and farms were seated on the hills, or diffused through the vale, in the very points and combinations where a Claude would have placed them "Monti superbi, la cui fronte Alpina Fa di se contro i venti argine e sponda ! Valli beate, per cui d'onda in onda "L'Arno con passo signor il cammina!" We give his notice of the convent from the top of which he surveyed this enchant ing scenery. "The top of the hill is conical, and its summit usurped by a convent of Franciscans, whose leave you must ask to view the variegated map of country below you. Their corridors command a multiplicity of landscape: every window presented a dif ferent scene, and every minute before sunset changed the whole colouring. Leopold once brought his brother Joseph up to show kim here the garden of his dominions; and this imperial visit is recorded in a Latin in scription as an event in the history of the convent. *** One half of Tuscany is mountains, which produce nothing but timber, one sixth part consists of hills which are covered with vineyards or olive gardens; the remaining third is plain: the whole is distributed into 80,000 fattorie, or stewardships. Each fattoria includes on the average seven farms. This property is divided among 40,000 families or corporations. The Riccardi, the Strozzi, the Ferroni, and the Benedictines, rank first in the number. "The season brought a curious succession of insects into view. On the way to Fiesole my ears were deafened with the hoarse croak of the cigala, which Homer, I cannot conceive why, compares to the softness of the lily. On my return the lower air was illuminated with myriads of lucciole or fire flies; and I entered Florence at shutting of the gates, "Come la mosca cede alla zanzara.” Milton and Ariosto have immortalized the secluded and solemn shades of Vallombrosa:-shall we extract Mr. Forsyth's description of the silent and sacred beauties of that majestic retreat?—our limits forbid us-were we to give all that is interesting in his book, we might extract four-fifths of the volume. Camaldoli, however, is less known than the haunted shades of the Vallombrosa-and the singular institution of the Eremo will, we trust, awaken the sympathy of our fair readers. "We now crossed the beautiful vale of Prato Vecchio, rode round the modest arcades of the town, and arrived at the lower convent of Camaldoli, just at shutting of the gates. The sun was set, and every object sinking into repose, except the stream which roared among the rocks, and the convent bells which were then ringing the Angelus. proach of woman in a deep, narrow, woody "This monastry is secluded from the apdell. Its circuit of dead walls built on the conventual plan, gives it an aspect of confinement and defence; yet this is considered as a privileged retreat, where the rule of the order relaxes its rigour, and no monks can reside but the sick or the superannuated, the dignitary or the steward, the apothecary night, and next morning rode up by steep traor the bead-turner. Here we passed the verses to the Santa Eremo, where Saint Romualdo lived and established. “de' tacenti cenobiti il coro, "The Eremo is a city of hermits, walled round, and divided into streets of low, detached cells. Each cell consists of two or three naked rooms, built exactly on the plan of the Saint's own tenement, which remains just as Romualdo left it 800 years ago, now too sacred and too damp for a mortal tenant. "The unfeeling Saint has here established a rule which anticipates the pains of purgatory. No stranger can behold without emotion a number of noble, interesting young choir for eight hours a day; their faces pale, men, bound to stand erect chaunting at their backs raw, their legs swollen, and their their heads shaven, their beards shaggy, feet bare. With this horrible institute the climate conspires in severity, and selects from society the best constitutions. The |