have been adopted, as for the infinitely more important purpose of laying before the English public what we have good reasons for knowing to be the Tuscan statesman's views and principles upon the subject in question. We allude to that most important of all questions, the position to be taken up by the civil government towards the Church. During that anxious period of Ricasoli's supreme power, the clergy-the dignified clergy especially-were undeniably conspiring against the new government. Their unconcealed disaffection and ill-concealed intrigues were more or less producing an ill effect on the minds of a portion of the people. Our knowledge of the Tuscan people would lead us to believe that the priestly influence for mischief in this direct manner was very small indeed. More inconvenience, perhaps, was to be apprehended from their exasperating the popular mind to a dangerous degree against themselves. Under these circumstances, Ricasoli, and the Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs, Salvagnoli, his most worthy second in this matter, not only consistently refused to avail themselves of any of the opportunities which these prelates and: canons were ostentatiously offering to gratify them with a martyrdom, which, if accorded them in the mildest possible form, they would have well known how to turn to large account; but they went a step further in the same direction, and strove to induce these recalcitrant ecclesiastics to lend the new: order of things their countenance by taking part in the various services and solemn functions which, according to the fashion of the country, were needed to celebrate and solemnise the acts and occurrences of the transition of the nation to its new régime. Thinking men, who are very apt to omit from their thoughts a sufficient measure of allowance for the unthink ing majority, were displeased at this. They would have had the Government set out at once on the path which it unques tionably will have to follow in this matter. They would have gladly seized the opportunity of making that complete breach between Church and State which all Italian thinkers I agree will have to be made. We do not care to examine ? whether the goodness of the opportunity which offered itself for doing this might or might not have outweighed the objection to such a line of conduct arising from the inopportuner ness of presenting further startling novelties to the public! mind, at a moment when it might well be supposed to be reeling a little with the mass of new ideas it was called upon to assimilate. We will only remark that the decision of such ari point must depend on a delicate feeling of the public pulse, and an appreciation of its indications so exact and so extensive, that it is not easy for any one not possessing for the attain-it ment of this the means which a government has at its disposal for such a purpose, to criticise the decision of a government on such a point. But what we are anxious to express is our conviction, we may say our knowledge, of the great Tuscan statesman's views and opinions on this all-important question itself. If lay tyranny has held the bodies of the people in its grip, sacerdotal tyranny has so debased their souls as to render such holding possible. It has been the atheist conspiracy of priest and king, the godless compact by which each tyrant agreed to help the other, that has alone rendered possible such degradation as the people of Italy have for so many centuries been condemned to. Ricasoli knows this to be the truth. No real uprising of the nation can be hoped unless this corrupting connection be wholly severed. The first condition of the possibility of the spiritual regeneration of the people is the perfect freedom of conscience and the utter severance of their religion, be it what it may, from all connection with the duties of a subject to his civil ruler. The only security for the honesty, truthfulness, and impartiality of the government lies in its utterly eschewing any special attachment for any special form of creed. And this also Ricasoli believes and professes. It is a matter of almost incalculable importance to all Christendom that one who must have so large a part in shaping the social forms of the great nation now rising out of chaos should have attained convictions which, if duly carried to their practical results, will go further than any other possible national characteristic or policy to place Italy once again in the position of the leader of European civilisation. At length, despite all difficulties, the task which Ricasoli had set himself was accomplished. Tuscany was part of the kingdom of Upper Italy. The country had persistently and unanimously asserted its choice of sovereign, and the sovereign of its choice had at length accepted the fealty offered him. And this, together with the similar occurrences in the smaller Duchies and Romagna, was, as Signor Dall' Ongaro well observes, by far the most important fact which had been accomplished in Italy. One Emperor had given Lombardy to another, who had made a present of it to his friend. But this furnishes a precedent of little value for the future conduct of the world's affairs. "But the fusion of Central Italy" (we quote Signor Dall' Ongaro, p. 62), "despite the open protests of its former sovereigns, and the ill-concealed difficulties thrown in the way by European potentates, is an historical fact of the highest importance; and those who accomplished it, and sealed it in the name of the people, have for that act alone secured for their names the grateful memory of posterity." It is not diffi cult to believe, therefore, that Ricasoli was anxious then to have rested from labour which few men could have endured, to have harvested a glory which few could hope to compete with, and to have left the remainder of the work to fresh labourers. But where were any such to be found competent to take up the task? It was no longer, it is true, an equally arduous one. The dictator would have to subside into a minister. Where he used to command, it would be his province to obey. It was a hard trial of patriotism to be asked, after having commanded the ship during the storm, to take the still laborious post of first lieutenant during the comparatively calm voyage. It was hard, and Ricasoli would fain have escaped the uninviting duty. But Count Cavour, the King, and the Prince de Carignan, alike pleaded that there was none to do all that remained to be done for the amalgamation of Tuscany with the monarchy-none who had the requisite knowledge of the country, and the needful prestige and influence, if Ricasoli should desert them. And Ricasoli was not the man to resist these appeals. He felt that in truth his country needed him, and he consented to take again the labouring oar, though it was no longer the post of honour. It is by no means improbable that the former Dictator may be called upon to take that post once again, though not, as before, to assume the supreme command of the vessel. There is, on the other hand, we fear, little hope to be held out to him that Italy can, for some time to come, permit him to enjoy the repose which it must be admitted he has so well earned. The celebrated Ricasoli vineyards must produce their famous wines for sundry vintages yet unsuperintended by the presence of their proprietor. Italy cannot afford to cut blocks with razors, or use statesmen for the improvement of her rural economy. Nay, the time may very soon come when, not only for Tuscany, but for the united kingdom of Italy itself, this statesman's services may be indispensable. Those who know the exigencies of Italy best at the present moment,-who know the critical position of affairs between Garibaldi and Cavour, and the need of a statesman with all Cavour's firmness and experience who may be better able to act with Garibaldi, believe that the only man for the situation is Ricasoli. Never was there a grander field opened to the genius and ambition of a statesman than that offered by the birth-time of the new nation of Italy. Never was there more urgent need of an organising and ordering mind of first class power, of unshakable firmness, of unimpeachable loyalty and sincerity, and of largest philosophic grasp of intellect. Such a man, for the infinite good fortune of Italy and of mankind, we believe that the country possesses in Baron Ricasoli. ART. IX.-NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. Mosses from an Old Manse. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. 2 vols. Wiley and Putnam, 1846. The Snow-Image, and other Tales. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Bohn, 1851. Twice-told Tales. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. A new edition. Routledge, 1852. A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Bohn, 1852. The Scarlet Letter. A Romance. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Routledge, 1851. The House of the Seven Gables. A Romance. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. New edition. Routledge, 1860. The Blithedale Romance. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. 2 vols. Chap- Romance of Monte Beni. By Nathaniel Life of Franklin Pierce. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1852. MR. HAWTHORNE speaks more than once in his various thoughtful and artistic tales of the "moonlight of romance," and the phrase has a special applicability to the fictions which it is his delight to weave. It is one of his favourite theories that there must be a vague, remote, and shadowy element in the subjectmatter of any narrative with which his own imagination can successfully deal. Sometimes he apologises for this idealistic limitation to his artistic aims. "It was a folly," he says in his preface to the Scarlet Letter, "with the materiality of this daily life pressing so intrusively upon me, to attempt to fling myself back into another age, or to insist on creating the semblance of a world out of airy matter, when, at every moment, the impalpable beauty of my soap-bubble was broken by the rude contact of some actual circumstance. The wiser effort would have been to diffuse thought and imagination through the opaque substance of to-day, and thus to make it a bright transparency; to spiritualise the burden that began to weigh so heavily; to seek resolutely the true and indestructible value that lay hidden in the petty and wearisome incidents and ordinary characters with which I was now conversant. The fault was mine. The page life that was spread out before me was so dull and commonplace of only because I had not fathomed its deeper import. A better book than I shall ever write was there; leaf after leaf presenting itself to me, just as it was written out by the reality of the flitting hour, and vanishing as fast as written, only because my brain wanted the insight and my hand the cunning to transcribe it. At some future day, it may be, I shall remember a few scattered fragments and broken paragraphs and write them down, and find the letters turn to gold upon the page." But the dissatisfaction with his own idealism which he here expresses has at least not sufficed to divert his efforts into the channel indicated. In the Blithedale Romance he tells us that he chose the external scenery of the Socialist community at Brook Farm "merely to establish a theatre, a little removed from the highway of ordinary travel, where the creatures of his brain may play their phantasmagorical antics without exposing them to too close a comparison with the actual events of real lives. In the old countries with which fiction has long been conversant, a certain conventional privilege seems to be awarded to the romancer; his work is not put exactly side by side with nature; and he is allowed a license with regard to every-day probability, in view of the improved effects which he is bound to produce thereby. Among ourselves, on the contrary, there is as yet no such Faëry Land so like the real world that, in a suitable remoteness, one cannot well tell the difference, but with an atmosphere of strange enchantment, beheld through which, the inhabitants have a propriety of their own. This atmosphere is what the American romancer wants. In its absence, the beings of imagination are compelled to show themselves in the same category as actually living mortals, a necessity that generally renders the paint and pasteboard of their composition but too painfully discernible." And once more, in the preface to his latest work, Transformation, he reiterates as his excuse for laying the scene in Italy, that "no author without a trial can conceive of the difficulty of writing a romance about a country where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor any thing but a commonplace prosperity in broad and simple daylight, as is happily the case with my dear native land. It will be very long, I trust, before romance-writers may find congenial and easily-handled themes either in the annals of our stalwart republic, or in any characteristic and probable event of our individual lives. Romance and poetry, ivy, lichens, and wall-flowers, need ruin to make them grow." These passages throw much light on the secret affinities of Mr Hawthorne's genius. But it would be a mistake to conclude from them, as he himself would apparently have us, that he is a mere romantic idealist, in the sense in which these words are commonly used,—that he is one |