arrayed in all they possessed most costly and magnificent. Old man as I am, when I think of those times I feel young again-come adesso tutto è cambiato abbiamo perduto fino alla nostra indipendenza-adesso siamo schiavi Fiorentini. Castruccio little imagined, that after all his glorious successes over them, Lucca would live to wear her chains-ma, pazienza. But I must conclude: Castruccio was received with due honours by the magistrates and nobles of the city, as well as the archbishop and all the clergy. The daughters of the noblest houses of Lucca strewed flowers before him, and saluted him father of his country. When the crowd heard that word, thousands of voices repeated it; the very heavens rang with acclamations, and the name of Castruccio, father of his country!' reverberated to the surrounding mountains. As he advanced into the city towards this very piazza where we are now standing, the bells all rang forth in such a Babel of rejoicing, it seemed as if the campanili must fall down; the windows and the terrazzi were filled with beautiful women, who scattered flowers and garlands as he passed, and the whole city was mad with joy. Castruccio, overcome by such overwhelming marks of affection, expressed by signs and gestures how deeply he was affected. In his countenance were depicted the emotions of his soul; and the mighty warrior, who, if he had lived, might have worn the imperial diadem, now looked almost sorrowful amidst the universal joy. I will not describe his appearance. Never was manly beauty more perfect than in his chiselled features, severe in youthful beauty; ebbene, having reached this piazza and allowed the enthusiasm of the citizens a brief time to sfogare, he forthwith proceeded to the cathedral; at the porch he was placed in a chair of carved ivory, and carried in triumph up the nave to the chapel of the Volto Santo. Here, prostrating himself before that miraculous image, he offered up a considerable portion of the booty he had gained, while hymns and songs of joy burst forth from the choirs led by the priests, who gladly sought to add their voices also to the universal expression of joy.

"Such, mie care amice, was the scene that passed within this city in the fourteenth century. If we had more time, I should also like to tell you of another glorious triumph when our Castruccio was solemnly crowned Duke and Prince by the hands of the Emperor Louis, the Bavarian, and rode round the city and walls in a procession scarcely less splendid than the one I have described; but I see you look impatient, and we will leave that, therefore, for some other time."

“Indeed,” said I, " impatient I cannot look, for I am delighted; but the time is getting on, and if we are to see the horse-racing, we must, I fear, be moving."

"Bagatella," said the cavaliere, who looked quite rosy and animated after his oration, "how I wish you would come and live at Lucca, you would make me young again—mia signora, sempre amabile, sempre buona, sarò il suo servo.

I smiled at the warmth of the good old man, and pressed his hand, which expression of regard he returned by most gallantly raising mine to his lips. "I suppose," said I, we shall meet B. at the Circus ?"

Ah, per Bacco! the Adonis-yes, he will be there; no one but I would put up with his presumption, and I school him a little now and then, because I am his friend, and I like him. But he is a pazzarello who

knows nothing of the world, and who sometimes annoys me.

How glad I am he has not been with us now, or he would have dragged you off somewhere, as he never can be quiet for a moment, and I should not have been able to tell you about our glorious Castruccio."

So we proceeded to the Circus without further delay.

SONNETS.

BY H. NICHOLSON LEVINGE.

I.

A DIMLY misted sky, and in the west-
After the sun with far reflected blaze
Of transient but divinely lustrous rays
Had sunk superbly to his daily rest—
There gleamed upon a fleecy cloudlet grey,
Well rounded from the all-pervading haze,
A glimpse of glory such as not alway
To mortal glance that western are displays;
A glowing orange tint, with faintest flush-
Commingling softly-of translucent red;

Whilst from betwixt the sky and cloud a gush
Of the sunk orb's refracted beams was shed
With slowly lessening lustre-till at last
Night o'er the picture disenchantment cast!

II.

Under a lofty battlemented tower

Uprising from an undulating sweep

Of verdant mead and woodland rich and deep-
A relic of the old baronial power!—

A gaily vestured throng did revel keep,

In a June eve's ambrosial twilight hour;

And in their midst was one on whom my gaze
With a resistless fascination hung-

An airy form inclined beneath the sprays
Of a young silvered birch-the while she sung
Of love and chivalry's most tender lays.
Ah me! gold-tressed, blue-orbéd maid, the spell
Which o'er my captive mem'ry thou hast flung
Would it were mine in glowing verse to tell!

NEW LIGHTS IN HISTORY.*

MR. FROUDE'S volumes embrace a most important and interesting period of English history, for in those already published he treats of the grave momentous occurrences between the accession of the House of Tudor and the time when Henry VIII. assumed the title of Supreme Head on Earth of the English Church. The work is remarkable, no less than the period it embraces, for it seems designed to justify many of those atrocities of his ensanguined reign which have excited the horror and detestation of posterity; and to persuade us that the Nero of the Tudor race has been unjustly calumniated, that he was not so bad as historians have represented him, and that some of the worst acts of his selfish, capricious, and cruel tyranny were dictated by patriotism and a sense of duty. The book professes to found this justification upon unpublished documents found amongst the Public Records, and thus to throw their authority over the representations of the historian.

Some people, whose views are darkened by the haze of Exeter Hall, and who seem to think the Reformation and the Protestant cause identified with the character of Henry VIII., and strengthened by its vindication, received Mr. Froude's book so exultingly, that we took it up with the expectation of finding that some documents hitherto unknown had been discovered among the Public Records, by which a new light was thrown upon Henry's character and the acts of his reign. Mr. Froude mentions in his preface the discovery by Sir Francis Palgrave, among the Public Records preserved in the Rolls' House, of a large number of documents relating to the opening years of the English Reformation, which had not been published, many of which are highly illustrative and curious, and contain matters hitherto unknown, and are intended to be published by Mr. Froude, who meantime only refers to them as "MSS. in the Rolls' House." Mr. Froude elsewhere propounds, that to the statutes of Henry's reign and to these original state papers, we must look, if we would form a just estimate of his character and policy; and he lays down as a principle that "facts which are stated in an act of parliament may be uniformly trusted." (!) Now, although Mr. Froude is not by any means the first historic inquirer who has recognised the authenticity and importance of the Public Records as materials for history, he seems entitled to the distinction of originality in being the first writer who has been so perverse as to draw from them any conclusions in favour of Henry VIII., or who has ventured to question the verdict of posterity on that sacrilegious and bloodthirsty tyrant. That many of the manuscripts referred to in Mr. Froude's work contain matters not hitherto published, matters highly curious, and illustrative of the cruel, dark, rough years to which they relate, is unquestionable, and their discovery and selection is another benefit conferred upon the public by the judicious vigilance of the learned deputy keeper.

* History of England, from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. By James Anthony Froude, M.A. London: J. W. Parker and Son. 1856. Two Vols.

But confining our present remarks to that part of Mr. Froude's work in which he narrates the history of the suppression of monasteries, we can only say that, as far as we have observed, Mr. Froude does not adduce any newly-discovered documents, nor bring forward any new evidence with regard to the monastic delinquencies which were made the pretext for that memorable act of sacrilege and spoliation. His "authorities," as he calls them, for the darker scandals affecting the monasteries, are the letters of those veracious and impartial functionaries the visitors appointed by Thomas Cromwell-at once accusers, witnesses, and judges -a selection from which was published from the MS. volume of Cromwell papers in the Cotton Library, by the Camden Society in its book of "Letters relating to the Suppression of the Monasteries," but "some of the statements of the visitors," Mr. Froude candidly says, "I cannot easily believe." For his other authorities, this new elucidator of history takes the mild and impartial Burnet, to whose Collectanea he frequently refers, as if the libels raked together by that sour calumniator were of any authority as a matter of evidence; and Mr. Froude also follows the gentle Fox, besides Strype, and Latimer's Sermons, and the recitals in the statute book of the reign, in which humiliating record, we must take leave to say, we can only discover how ready parliament was to do the will of the king, and blow hot and cold at his bidding.

The journals of the session of the fatal parliament of 1532 are lost; the "Black Book," or Return of the Visitation Commissioners, is lost; not one original information or sworn deposition is cited; but Mr. Froude wishes us to believe that in the Cromwell letters in the Cotton Library and the Rolls' House, and in some Tudor statutes, we may read true accusations against the monks, and a justification for rooting out the whole monastic system; and he tells us that if we are anxious to understand the English Reformation, we should place implicit confidence in the statute book.

It is, of course, only as an historical question that in this busy onward age people revert to the suppression of the monasteries, and discuss the justice of Henry's exterminating acts; and to review the troubles and oppressions of that dark and cruel time, is, indeed, of no more use, save for the elucidation of historical truth, than the inquest of the Lydford jury, who were said to

hang and draw,

And sit in judgment after.

In whatever way the question may be viewed, the holders of abbey lands will not be required to relinquish them to their former owners, and the interests of the living need not now prevent them from doing justice to the dead. Yet the question relating to the suppression of the monasteries is one which is seldom discussed without prejudice, and upon which the case has been too commonly taken pro confesso against the monks, and without anything like trustworthy evidence. We have less reliable information as to the state of the English monasteries in the opening years of the Reformation, than we have as to the grounds on which those renowned military monks, the Templars, were suppressed in the reign of Edward II.; and though the stately edifices they raised, and the literary monuments of industry they accumulated, in the palmy days of monastic

institutions, might well plead for the piety and industry of the monks of old, Englishmen have generally no more sympathy for them than for the rule under which their unobtrusive lives were passed.

In his chapter on "the Social State of England in the Sixteenth Century," Mr. Froude eloquently says :

The paths trodden by the footsteps of ages were broken up; old things were passing away, and the faith and the life of ten centuries were dissolving like a dream. Chivalry was dying; the abbey and the castle were soon together to crumble into ruins and all the forms, desires, beliefs, convictions of the old world were passing away never to return. Only among the aisles of the cathedrals, only as we gaze upon their silent figures on their tombs, does some faint conception float before us of what these men were and their church bells that sounded in the mediæval age, now fall upon the ear like the echoes of a vanished world."

The old monastic life is, indeed, hidden from us. To many people, the name of monk-once reverenced by prince and prelate, soldier and saint-seenis only synonymous with all that is sensual, slothful, and superstitious; and the turf and ruins that cover the cemeteries in which the monks of England were laid for their final rest, are to many of us only as "the grass that waves over the ruins of Babylon." But in these days of historic inquiry we should endeavour to see what the monasteries were; and this has been very well described recently by a reviewer in a decidedly Protestant contemporary, who says:

"The abbeys which towered in the midst of the English towns were images of the civil supremacy which the Church of the middle ages had asserted for itself; but they were images also of an inner, spiritual sublimity, which had won the homage of grateful and admiring nations. The heavenly graces had once descended upon the monastic orders, making them ministers of mercy, patterns of celestial life, witnesses of the power of the Spirit to renew and sanctify the heart. And then it was that art, and wealth, and genius poured out their treasures to raise fitting tabernacles for the dwelling of so divine a soul. Alike in the village and the city, amongst the unadorned walls and lowly roofs which closed in the dwellings of the laity, the majestic houses of the Father of mankind and of his especial servants rose up in sovereign beauty. And ever at the sacred gates sat Mercy, pouring out relief, from a never-failing store, to the poor and the suffering; ever within the sacred aisles the voices of holy men were rising in intercession for the sins of mankind; and such blessed influences were thought to exhale round those mysterious precincts, that even the poor outcasts of society. . . gathered round the walls as the sick man sought the shadow of the apostle, and lay there sheltered from the avenging hand. The abbeys of the middle ages withstood the waves of war, and, like the ark amidst the flood, floated inviolate and reverenced"-while over secular institutions the fierce swift tide of change swept by, and dynasties decayed.

But Mr. Froude says we ought to go to the statute book for trustworthy testimony; take, then, the declaration which a parliament of the mighty Edward made five centuries and a half ago on behalf of the religious houses, then impoverished by the extortions of the alien priories

June-VOL. CX. NO. CCCCXXXVIII.

R