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2400 crowns, who generously rejected the bribe; and declared, that, if the viceroy would keep his word, he would find them obedient subjects. It was now expected that the tumult would cease; but Massaniello, upon his return to the market-place, being joined by several malcontents, among whom were Genuino and one Peronne, who had formerly been a captain of the Sbirri, he was advised by them to order the houses of those concerned in raising the tax to be burned which were accordingly in a few days reduced to ashes, with all their rich furniture. Massaniello being now master of the city, and being joined by great numbers of people of desperate fortunes, he required the viceroy, who had retired to the Castel Nuovo, to abolish all the taxes, and to deliver up the writ of exemption granted by Charles V. This new demand greatly embarrassed the viceroy; but, to appease the people, he drew up a false deed in letters of gold, and sent it to them by their favorite, the duke of Matalone, who had before been in confinement. The fraud, however, being discovered, the duke was pulled from his horse and maltreated by the mob, and at length committed prisoner to Peronne. This accident, to the great joy of the viceroy, enraged the people against the nobility, several of whom they killed, burnt the houses of others, and threatened to extirpate them all. Massaniello, in the mean time, tattered and half naked, commanded his followers, who were now well armed, and reckoned about 100,000 men, with a most absolute sway. He ate and slept little, gave his orders with great precision and judgment, appeared full of moderation, without ambition or interested views. But the duke of Matalone having procured his liberty by bribing Peronne, the viceroy imitated his example, and secretly corrupted Genuino to betray his chief. A conspiracy was accordingly formed against Massaniello by Matalone and Peronne; the duke, who was equally exasperated against the viceroy, proposing, that after his death his brother Joseph should bead the rebels. Massaniello, in the mean time, by means of the cardinal archbishop, was negociating a general peace and accommodation; but, while both parties were assembling in the convent of the Carmelites, the banditti hired by Matalone made an unsuccessful attempt upon Massaniello's life. His followers immediately killed 150 of them. Peronne aud Joseph, being discovered to be concerned in the conspiracy, were likewise put to death, and the duke with great difficulty escaped. Massaniello by this conspiracy was rendered more suspicious He began to abuse his power by putting several persons to death upon slight pretences; and, to force the viceroy to an accommodation, he cut off all communication with the castles, which were not supplied with provision and ammunition. The viceroy, likewise, being afraid lest the French should take advantage of the commotion, earnestly desired to agree to a treaty; which was accordingly concluded on the 5th day of the insurrection, by the mediation of the archbishop. By the treaty it was stipulated, that all duties imposed since the time of Charles V. should be abolished; that the writ of exemp

and severe.

tion granted by that emperor should be delivered to the people; that for the future no new taxes should be imposed; that the vote of the elect of the people should be equal to the votes of the nobility; that an act of oblivion should be granted for all that was past; and that the people should continue in arms under Massaniello till the ratification of the treaty by the king. By this treaty, no fewer than 10,000 persons, who fattened upon the blood of the public, were ruined. The people, when it was solemnly published, manifested an extreme joy, believing they had now recovered all their ancient rights and privileges. Massaniello, at the desire of the viceroy, went to the palace to visit him, accompanied by the archbishop, who was obliged to threaten him with excommunication, before he would consent to lay aside his rags and assume a magnificent dress. He was received by the duke with the greatest demonstrations of respect, while the duchess entertained his wife, and presented her with a robe of cloth of silver, and some jewels. The viceroy, to preserve some shadow of authority, appointed him captain-general; and at his departure made him a present of a golden chain of great value, which with great difficulty he was prevailed upon to accept; but yielded at length to the intreaties of the cardinal. Next day, in consequence of the commission granted him by the viceroy, he began to exercise all the functions of sovereign authority: and having caused a scaffold to be erected in one of the streets, and several gibbets, he judged all crimes, whether civil or military, in the last resort; and ordered the guilty to be immediately put to death, which was the punishment he assigned to all offences. Though he neglected all forms of law, and even frequently judged by physiognomy, yet he is said not to have overlooked any criminal, or punished any innocent person. His grandeur and prosperity was of very short continuance; for, his mind becoming distracted ana delirious for two or three days, he committed many extravagant actions; and, on the 18th of July, he was assassinated with the consent of the viceroy.

The

The tumult did not end with the death of Massaniello; on the contrary, the people now expelled the Spaniards from most of the cities throughout the kingdom; and, this general insurrection being the subject of discourse at Rome, the duke of Guise, who happened then to be at the pope's court, took the opportunity, at the instigation of his holiness, to offer his service to the Neapolitans against the Spaniards. The duke was prompted by his ambition to engage in this enterprise, especially as he himself had some distant pretensions to the crown. Spaniards in the mean time made a vigorous attack on the city; but were repulsed by the people, who now formally renounced their allegiance to them. In a short time however, their city being surprised by the new viceroy, the count of Oniate, and the duke of Guise himsel taken prisoner, the people returned to their allegiance; and thus all the attempts of the French on Naples were frustrated. Since that time the Spaniards continued in peaceable possession of the kingdom till 1707, when it was taken from

tnem by prince Eugene. It was formally ceded to the emperor by the treaty of Rastadt in 1713; but was recovered by the Spaniards in 1734, and in July 1735 Charles, the king of Spain's eldest son by his second queen, was made king of Naples and Sicily. See SICILY, and SPAIN.

Charles III., by the death of his brother Ferdinand VI., on the 10th August 1759, became king of Spain; and was succeeded in the throne of Naples by his third son, Ferdinand IV., the present sovereign. But, in January 1799, he and the royal family were obliged to fly from Naples, and take refuge in Sicily, upon the approach of the French republicans; who, under generals Macdonald and Championet, took the city of Naples on the 24th January, over-running the whole country, and proclaimed the kingdom a republic. In February it was divided into eleven departments, and the government new-modelled on the French plan; but within a few weeks, admiral Nelson appearing upon the coast, the French capitulated, the democratic system was overturned, the old monarchy and government restored, and the king welcomed back to his throne. But the most dreadful cruelties were committed, particularly in Calabria, upon those unfortunate persons who had favored the French during the short-lived revolution.

The kingdom of Naples, was again, however, placed under French dominion by Buonaparte, and conferred on his brother Joseph as king the legitimate king having again fled to Sicily, where he was long supported by a British force under Sir John Stewart. In the spring of 1808 Buonaparte removed his brother Joseph to Spain, and raised Joachim (Murat) Napoleon to the tributary and usurped throne of Naples, where he remained without having been able to annex Sicily to his usurpation, until, by a wellconducted conspiracy, he was in his turn hurled from the throne in 1815. Early in May of that year the capital was surrendered to a British squadron; and, on the 17th of June, Ferdinand IV. re-entered it amid loud and apparently hearty acclamations.

It is but fair to add that the reign of Murat in Naples effected considerable changes for the better. All branches of the public administration were invigorated and improved; society in the upper ranks was reconstructed upon the Parisian scale; French literature was imported; the French code superseded the cumbrous and vicious jurisprudence of ancient Naples; and the nation, notwithstanding its subordination to the Imperial politics, and its participation in Napoleon's wars, was fast emerging from barbarism, and rising to take its place amidst European nations, when the fall of Napoleon again threw it back upon the institutes of the Anjous and the Arragons. The roads and public buildings retain indelible marks of the improvements of the usurpation.'

The last revolutionary movements (of 1820) deserve some notice. It was in the month of July that this revolt, headed by general Pepe, broke out amongst the troops. The cry was for a constitution; and, many of them happening to recollect that Murat had promised them a constitution just before his departure, Murat's pro

mised constitution was immediately proclaimed. Unfortunately this constitution was not to be found in any desk, or hole, or corner. In this exigency another cry was set up for another constitution. To appease these tumultuary demands for constitutions the king promised another in eight days; not a very unreasonable delay for so momentous a measure, but much too long for Neapolitan impatience. In the mean while some persons seem suddenly to have recollected that the Spaniards had given themselves a constitution, and a cry was immediately raised for the constitution of the Cortes. Of this constitution there was not, it seems, a copy in Naples. Nobody knew exactly what it was. Yet to this they conceived so miraculous an attachment, that during the sitting of their parliament, which was expressly summoned to modify and correct it, a large majority of members were indisposed to allow any alteration of it, and came to a decision that no amendment should be adopted but by a majority of two-thirds.

About this time was exhibited in Sicily an episode to the Neapolitan revolution. On the 15th of July, and the two following days, Palermo was the theatre of a violent and sanguinary insurrection. No sooner had the Palermitans heard what had been transacted at Naples, and that a parliament had been convoked there, than they determined to have a parliament and constitution of their own. Of their taste for liberty, as well as of their fitness for it, they gave an immediate specimen, by letting loose from prison nearly 1000 atrocious malefactors. They assailed the houses of the Neapolitan officers, and threw the Neapolitan soldiers into dungeons. It was necessary, therefore, to send a large force from Naples to put down the rebellion; but, when that force approached Palermo, a scene of slaughter and cruelty ensued in that unhappy city which cannot be adequately described. A militia, chiefly composed of criminals liberated from jail, were not to be expected to be very moderate in shedding blood, or plundering property. All who refused to join them were shamefully murdered, then cut into pieces, and their quivering limbs exposed on pikes and bayonets. In the mean while those who led the Neapolitan troops permitted Palermo to surrender on terms of capitulation.

While these things were going on in Sicily, at Naples they continued to amuse themselves with constitutions. They changed the nomenclature of the provinces, and, after the manner of the French school, adopted the names and divisions of antiquity. The Terra di Lavoro was named Campania; the three Abruzzi changed into Pletuteria, Marsia, and Frentania; the island and province of Tremiti into Daunia; Otranto into Salentum; Calabria into Lucania, &c., &c. They adopted also the trial by jury. Of this institution far be it from us to deem irreverently; but wise institutions are not capable of being transplanted at will: and every civil blessing will not flourish in every soil. The almost entire inaptitude of the trial by jury to any other community than that in which it is indigenous, may be a discouraging, but it is almost an undeniable truth.

In the mean time the allied powers took into their deliberation (we shall presently say a few words concerning their competence to entertain the question) the changes which popular force had thus worked in the political system of the country; and the king of the two Sicilies was, as is well known, invited to their congress. The residue of the revolutionary story is soon told. The Austrians crossed the Po on the 28th of January, and marched to Naples. The principal opposition to this march seems to have consisted in an empty vote of the representatives, never to make peace with an enemy whilst he occupied their territory. On the 28th Rieti was in the possession of the Austrians, and the Neapolitan army fell back upon Aquila. The Austrians appeared in sight; general Pepe was almost instantly deserted by his troops, and obliged to escape as well as he could. This dispersion was followed by that of the troops at Mignana, who fired on their officers, and then disbanded. The Austrians entered Naples on the morning of the 29th; and thus ended the revolution of Naples.

Our remarks upon this much agitated subject shall be short. Perhaps the soundest reasoning is that which keeps at an equal distance from the extreme proposition on either side, neither denying altogether the right of external interference in any instance of popular revolution, nor maintaining the right of interfering in all. In political cases there is an enldess gradation of shades and colors. In that before us it is a question of fact. If, as the emperor of Austria asserted in his manifesto, the Neapolitan revolution was brought about by obscure fanatics and rebel soldiers, and unnaturally forced upon the people, instead of being the object of their legitimate choice; and if, as it further asserts, that revolution threatened by its contact the peace and independence of neighbouring states; then the law of vicinage was in full vigor, and it became not only an undeniable right, but a sacred duty, to take measures for repressing the mischief. As an Italian prince by birth, as well as by inheritance, whose dominions had been nearly dismembered by similar commotions acting in the north of Italy in avowed sympathy with that of Naples, and generated by the sect of Carbonari, the prolific parent of modern revolutions, the emperor of Austria could not have hesitated as to the course which prudence, and policy, and justice, alike suggested.

As to the Carbonari, of whom so much is said, and so little known, it would be visionary perhaps to magnify their projects into that grand simultaneous insurrection, of which their appearance in the south of Italy was to be the signal; though this has been maintained by many sagacious and well informed writers. We ourselves are of opinion that these apprehensions were not wholly destitute of foundation; and we are not sufficiently sceptical of the size and extent of the mischief to consider them merely as

Fears of the brave, and follies of the wise. M. de Beauchamp, author of a History of the Revolution of Piedmont, considers the Carbonari as a branch of a gigantic anti-social conspiracy, of which Paris was the centre-the

dregs and fæces of the French Revolution still lurking, both in France and Italy.' He arraigns, we think unanswerably, the policy of the French government immediately after the restoration, which nursed, as it were, the dying embers of revolution, by heaping favors and condescensions on the remnant of the revolutionary faction. Thus cherished and protected, he adds, the grand democratic or Buonapartist sect extended their ramifications, under different names, to the Alps, the Pyrenees, and the Rhine, where the people, averse from a foreign yoke, and nurturing a secret but undefined hope of independence, lent a too willing ear to their delusions. Nor is there an absolute absence of evidence to show that the elements of this great combustion had been actually prepared at Paris, long before it burst forth with so feeble a flame in the southern extremities of Europe. But, though there may not be testimony sufficiently decisive to silence all doubt concerning the alleged extent of the conspiracy, it is certain that through the Neapolitan provinces, at the period of the late revolution, the Carbonari, a sect framed in imitation of the free-masons, and avowedly pursuing some plan of political innovation, comprised a considerable portion of the population. They do not, indeed, appear connected with the French party, of which M. de Beauchamp supposes them to have been a branch; for it is well known that they were equally hostile to the French governments of Joseph Buonaparte, and of Murat. Their existence, however, has for several years been a matter perfectly notorious; and, although they affected great secresy, their proceedings were far from being concealed. But no sooner did the commotion of 1820 burst forth than they threw off the mask, and, intoxicated with the success of their projects, published their transactions, and even posted up their proclamations.

There is much real, and much affected, obscurity as to this sect, and their origin and purposes are in a great measure inexplicable. Yet it is abundantly manifest that these societies, whose principle is change, and whose compact is secrecy, are phenomena which baffle all reasonings derived from former experience, and essentially differ from every confederation which has heretofore exercised the vigilance, or excited the alarm, of governments. According to some writers, if they are not positively a numerical majority of the Neapolitan nation, they include amongst them that portion of it which has the most decisive influence in political action. In the two extremes of society, the higher nobility and the lowest of the populace, there are no Carbonari. It is in the middling classes that their strength resides. Amongst these are the possidenti, or small landed proprietors; who, in an agricultural country like Naples, must have considerable weight in all projects to which they contribute their influence. But, in addition to these, the rapid changes of property, and transitions of government, during the last twenty-five years, had created a comparatively new class; the middle men,' as they are designated in Ireland,-men who, having been agents of the great landed estates, have, by their own in

dustry, and knowledge of rural economy, so profited by the vicissitudes of the times, or the improvidence of their employers, as to have seated themselves in the actual possession of the domains which they once superintended. They bear the general designation of galantuomini, or gentlemen. It is from this class that official situations in the provinces are generally supplied; and these persons, almost to a man, were enlisted amongst the Carbonari. What efficient precaution, then, could the Neapolitan government have taken against a sect which contained a large portion of public functionaries? whole districts and provinces being, in fact, completely in the hands of persons, discharging indeed their duties with exactness, but carrying on, at the same time, their occult and mysterious projects. A majority of Carbonari in the Decurionato, or public assembly of the village, would ensure the election of syndics, of the gabielleri, or excisemen, and a variety of subordinate officers.

But in no class of the community had its principles taken deeper root than amongst the numerous bodies of provincial militia who are called legionari, civici, and militi: a class of men who had by no means an inconsiderable share in producing the revolution. As every individual of these troops must be assessed at least ten ducats to the land-tax, it is plain that, exclusively of the power of armed men, they must have great influence as proprietors of the soil. In Capitanata, one of the most extensive and populous of the Neapolitan provinces, 40,000 of these persons, each with forty cartridges in his pouch, and four ducats in his pocket, were for several months in complete readiness for action. It cannot, therefore, excite much surprise that the late revolution broke out. How its duration should have been so short, and that a more heroic and persevering resistance should not have been made to the Austrians, it is somewhat more difficult to explain.

We turn, with much greater satisfaction to the literary history of Naples. Here she is singularly and most creditably distinguished. Her claims were ably exhibited in the late British Review, to which we are indebted for the following sketch. The south of Italy is rich in historical learning. Its archives have, indeed, suffered considerably from invasions, and particularly from those of the Vandals; but the greater portion, by a rare felicity, has escaped the ravages of time and barbarism. The monasteries of La Trinita della Cava and Monte Cassino contain inestimable treasures of original documents pertaining to the history of the kingdom. Foreigners, and more particularly the inhabitants of northern Italy, are apt to smile with incredulity when they are told of the number of Neapolitan historians. Giannone's name is well known; but the sources from which he derived his materials are little known out of the kingdom. The names of Summonte, Costanzo, Pontano, Collenucio, Carracioli, and Capecelatro, are only a few of them. Besides these, various writers have compiled chronicles, from the provincial archives, which would form a rich collection, independently of the MS. registers of private families. The Libro del Duca di Montelone is of the highest autho

rity. It is a series of historical facts, from the time of Joan II., and exhibits most curious pictures of the manners and transactions of the two following reigns. Moreover, every province, and even the smallest provincial town, boasts of its history.

Of the remote antiquity of this country there are, of course, but scanty documents. The authors who flourished before the schools of Magna Græcia, and who could alone have guided us through the labyrinth, have not left so much as a name behind them. The Greek historians are too intent upon magnifying the importance of their own country, to deserve implicit faith when they treat of the people who were colonised and civilised by Greece. The loss of the early Roman historians is irreparable. Cato the censor had devoted one entire book of history to enquiries concerning the origin and peopling of the old towns of Italy. Corn. Nep. in vit. M. P. Cato. Diodorus the Sicilian, Dionysius, and Dio, who explored all the antiquities of Italy, have come down to us in a state deplorably imperfect; and neither Plutarch, Sallust, nor Livy, has supplied the loss. But it is certain that the Greek republics of Italy rose rapidly to prosperity and power. The Brutians, in the fifth century of Rome, made the Greeks tremble for their own safety. Luxury and corruption, however, kept an equal pace with their prosperity. Cuma, Crotona, Tarentum, Rhegium, fell quickly under the Roman domination. In the time of Polybius, the very name of Magna Græcia was disused.

Zaleu

Great names adorned those republics. cus (whose existence is questioned by Bentley), and Charondas, were the legislators of Locris and of Thurium; but the name of Pythagoras is still greater he was born at Samos; and, having accidentally heard the philosopher Pherecydes discourse upon the immortality of the soul, he abjured the low occupation to which he had been educated, and became himself a philosopher. Having enlarged his mind by travel, and enriched it with all the learning of his time, he settled at Crotona, and established his celebrated sect, which he governed by a peculiar code of ethics. Exemplary abstemiousness, scrupulous ablutions, and daily exercise, were among its primary duties. At the close of every day, each disciple instituted a rigorous self-examination into the mode in which he had employed it. The silence enjoined upon this little community was probably an imitation of the reserve and mystery in which the priests of Egypt, in whose doctrines Pythagoras is supposed to have been initiated, locked up their knowledge. Whether the metempsychosis of this philosopher was borrowed from India, or was symbolical merely of the changes and reproductions which prevail through animal and vegetable life; whether it was a part of his religion to worship fire, as the purest emanation from the Supreme Being; or this also was a mere external symbol of some occult doctrine; are matters which must still remain in darkness. But the philosophy of Pythagoras was an era in the civilisation of man. The school which survived him continued the parent and nurse of that long successsion of philosophers who flon

rished in the south of Italy during the two following ages.

The eleatic sect arose soon after in this part of Italy. From this school emanated that false logic which, under the name of dialectics, confounded right and wrong, the weapon which was afterwards so dexterously wielded by the sophists who overran Athens and the other cities of Greece. From a passage in one of the epistles of Seneca, it should seem that Zeno, who was the leader of this sect, had adopted the hypothesis respecting the non-existence of matter which is so fully developed by Berkeley. Zeno died the death of a patriot; having made an ineffectual effort to recover the liberties of the little republic (Elia or Velia), which were destroyed by the tyrant Nearchus: Leucippus was the successor of Zeno. He invented the celebrated system of atoms, which Democritus and Epicurus adopted after him. Is it not to this philosopher, also, that Descartes is indebted for his vortices, and the great mechanical axiom of the centrifugal qualities of rotatory bodies?

Of this period the poetry has perished; but the ancient historians have preserved a few fragments of it. Plato cites some of the verses of Parmenides; and Athenæus has preserved an entire poem (the Meleager) of Cleomenes of Rhegium. Tarentum produced three poets Apollodorus, Leonidas, and Alexis, of whom Brunck, in his Analecta, has inserted some interesting remains. Alexis of Thurium was a celebrated writer of what is called the middle comedy. According to Suidas, he was the uncle of Menander, and wrote upwards of 200 dramas. Athenæus, Julius Pollux, and Aulus Gellius, have cited them occasionally; and several detached sentences of them are to be found in the valuable collection of Grotius.

In short, the south of Italy, in this remote period, might boast of a constellation of genius in philosophy and poetry. The cities of Magna Græcia had, for the most part, adopted a species of government which, though aristocratic, preserved enough of the popular form to nurture and encourage the competition of talent. But the glory of these little communities was destined to be extinguished in the overwhelming domination of Rome. They lost indeed their liberties; but the Romans preserved to them their municipal forms and native institutions. The twelve divisions into which Italy was distributed by Augustus were afterwards changed by Adrian, by whom the whole peninsula was again partitioned into seventeen provinces. Of these, Campania, Samnium, Apulia, and Lucania, comprise the territory which now constitutes the Neapolitan kingdom; an arrangement fatal to the privileges of the free cities. Campania was governed by consuls, Apulia and Lucania by censors, and Samnium by prefects.

These provinces gave birth to Livius Andronicus, Pacuvius, Nævius, Ennius, and Lucilius; but Rome was the theatre of their fame. The former of these may be considered the founder of the Roman stage. He supplanted the barbarous satires which were called Atellan, or Oscan, by something that approached the regular drama. Nævius, a native of Campania,

seems to have advanced the dramatic art still further. Cicero speaks in commendation of the purity of his style, and Virgil honored him by borrowing more than one of his verses. Macrobius points at the beautiful passage in the first book of the Eneid, where Venus complains to Jupiter of the storm that dispersed her beloved Trojans, as entirely taken from Nævius:O qui res hominumque deûmque Æternis regis imperiis, et fulmine terres Quid mcus Æneas, &c.

If, indeed, Virgil borrowed this noble passage from Nævius, and made use also of entire lines from Ennius, as is also asserted by Macrobius, it is to be lamented that the verses, which that exquisite poet thus polished into brightness, are lost to us. We can discern neither the value of the obligation, nor the amount of the usury with which it was repaid. We have unfortunately too little of Ennius. But what remains of the Amphora makes us sigh, with the old woman in Phædrus, for what it once contained. It is worthy of remark, however, that the old bard has left us his own portrait, drawn by his own hand, in a fragment preserved by Aulus Gellius. Noct. Attic. 1. 12, c. 4, Edit. Vari, 1675. If poets can praise themselves honestly, the passage evinces a rough undissembling spirit, congenial to that antique freedom of manners which permitted men to speak of themselves, as of others, without re

straint.

Ingenio quoi nolla malum sententia suadet,
Ut faceret facinus, levis haud malus, doctu', fidelis
Suavis homo, facundu', suo contentu', beatus,
Sceitu', secunda loquens in tempore, commodu',

verbûm

Paucûm, molta tenens antiqua, sepolta, vetosta, &c.

And here it ought to be remarked that, in the time of Ennius, the Latin language, was less rude and unpolished than the specimens remaining of that author appear to indicate. It should seem that he affected, like our own Spenser, an antiquated diction to improve the interest of his composition, by removing it farther from ordinary life.

Arpinum, at present part of the province of Terra di Lavoro, produced the greatest orator and philosopher of the ancient world, Cicero ; and one of its greatest historians, Sallust.-Velleius Paterculus, and Vitruvius, are also names which dignify southern Italy. The last was born at Formiæ. So carefully was he educated, and so diligently did he study, that he was considered as an epitome of all human learning. Julius Cæsar knew and loved him. He was munificently patronised by Augustus. His treatise on architecture is the only book upon that subject that has descended to us. It is obviously written with great inequality. The didactic parts of it are totally destitute of elegance or polish; but to each book there is a preface, written in a style of purity and elevation worthy of the Augustan age. Horace, notwithstanding his own doubts as to the precise spot of his nativity, belongs also to these provinces: and the unhappy Ovid was born in the Peligni, now the Abruzzo; the Italian translation of whose Metamorphoses, by

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