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lives, but had long ceased to hope for; having found in the works of physiologists nothing but contradictory facts and baseless theories.

With reference to the subject of manures, there are one or two principles which appear to us to flow naturally from M. Liebig's researches, and which are worthy of all attention from agriculturists. The first is, that since every plant extracts from the soil, and retains in its substance, only such inorganic matters as are essential to its growth, the very best manure for a plant must be the plant itself, in the form of straw, or even in that of ashes. We have seen how the ashes of wheat straw are, and must be, the best manure for wheat; but the principle must apply universally. Potatoes, for example, will be best manured with the ashes of potato-plants, which are sin gularly rich in phosphate of magnesia, the characteristic salt of the potato. Of course in this case, as in all others, any other ashes containing the same salt, or any other source of it, may be employed with equal advantage. We have had the pleasure of seeing the result of the use of pure phosphate of magnesia as a manure for potatoes; and we could not previously have imagined such astonishing crops as we then beheld. Now chemistry can easily produce this salt in sufficient quantities and at a low price, when it shall be wanted. Our strata of magnesian limestone, which alone is generally hurtful to plants, will thus furnish us with the means of adding to our crops of potatoes almost without expense.

invaluable by the Chinese, who are the oldest agricultural people we know. Indeed so much importance is attached to it by these people, that laws of the state forbid that any should be thrown away, and reservoirs are placed in every house, in which such matters are collected with the greatest care. No other kind of manure is

used for their corn-fields.

China is the birthplace of the experimental art: the incessant striving after experiments conducted the Chinese a thousand years since to discoveries which have been the envy and admiration of Europeans for centuries-especially in regard to dyeing and painting, and to the manufacture of porcelain, silk, and colours for painters. These we were long unable to imitate; and yet they were discovered by them without the aid of scientific principles-for in directions for use, but never explanations of prothe books of the Chinese we find recipes and cesses.

Half a century sufficed to Europeans, not only to equal, but to surpass the Chinese in the arts and manufactures; and this was owing merely to the application of correct principles deduced from the study of chemistry. But how to that of China! The latter is the most perinfinitely inferior is the agriculture of Europe feet in the world; and there, where the climate in the most fertile districts differs little from the European, very little value is attached to the (solid) excrements of animals.'

Were the contents of our common sewers properly treated-mixed, for example, with ashes containing phosphates and with a slight excess of diluted acids, and then dried up so as to get rid of the water they contain, without permitting the escape of ammonia-they might readily be obtained free from all offensive odour, and in a form admitting of transportation to any distance. Such a mixAgain, when we reflect on the vast im-ture would surpass all manures hitherto portance of nitrogen as an ingredient of grain, and on the fact that cow and horse dung contain very little of that element, we must see how essential it is not to waste any portion of liquid manure, the proper source of that portion of nitrogen which must be added to what is derived from the atmosphere before we can obtain rich crops of grain. But a still more im portant source of nitrogen is in the contents of our common sewers, which, from a barbarous ignorance, are commonly

thrown into the sea.

When it is considered that with every pound of ammonia which evaporates a loss of 60 lbs. of corn is sustained, and that with every pound of urine a pound of wheat might be produced, the indifference with which these matters are regarded is quite incomprehensible.'

The powerful effects of urine as a manure are well known in Flanders; but it is considered

tried, as it would contain precisely what is required to yield the richest crops of grain. By availing ourselves in such matters of the means offered by chemistry, we feel satisfied that in less than another half century we should leave far behind the empirical agriculture of the Chinese. Some such attempts have been made on the continent; and although, from ignorance on the part of the manufacturer, a great part, nay, in some establishments, the whole of the ammonia is expelled and lost in the process of preparation, yet the manure so prepared, acting by its inorganic constituents alone, has produced amazing effects.

Our readers, we trust, are by this time. convinced that the principles of rational agriculture are within the domain of science, and that from science alone, when called in to aid the zealous agriculturist,

can we hope for real and permanent im- and energetic, often abrupt, but singularly provement. In the present work, M. forcible and impressive.

Liebig has pointed out the path to be pursued, and has amply vindicated the claim. of science to be considered the best guide, by correcting the erroneous views hitherto prevailing of the sources whence plants derive their nourishment, by developing the true causes of fertility in soils, and, finally, by establishing on a firm basis the true doctrine of manures. We do not, any more than the author himself, consider his work in the light of a com. plete treatise on the chemistry of agriculture; we look on it merely as an example of the proper method to be followed in producing such a work, and in this point of view we hold Dr. Liebig to be entitled to the gratitude of mankind.

ART. III.-Cola di Rienzo und seine Zeit, besonders nach ungedruckten Quellen dargestellt, von Dr. Felix Papencordt. Hamburg und Gotha, 1841.

Cola di Rienzo and his Times, chiefly from unpublished Documents.

A LIFE of Nicholas Rienzi, the hero of his tory, biography, tragedy, and romance, from sources hitherto unpublished, might be supposed, after the labours of Muratori and the other Italian antiquarians, an announcement rather tending to awaken suspicion than very ardent expectation. We, however, see no reason to question the authenticity of the documents brought to light by Dr. Papencordt-and most curious they are; as our readers will acknowledge by and by. But before opening them we must say a few words on the Tribune and his age. For Rienzi can be understood only in conjunction with his times.

It is satisfactory to know that, of this very valuable work, the second English edition is already in the press, to be published at a cheaper rate; that two editions have been exhausted in French; that a third German edition has lately appeared, and that it has been reprinted in America. The author received the thanks of the British Association for his work; and Dr. Daubeny, the distinguished professor of agriculture at Oxford, who had The succession of the popes to Avignon undertaken to report on agricultural che- had not merely left an open field for an admistry to the late meeting of the Associa- venturer, like the Tribune, but had called tion at Devonport, candidly acknow- forth and strengthened all those powerful ledged that he had nothing material to sentiments and hopes on which he raised the add to Professor Liebig's report, to which fabric of his power. Rome all at once ceashe referred. Professor Johnston of Dur-ed to be the religious capital of the world. ham has also afforded the best proof of the high opinion he entertains of it, by giving a valuable and interesting course of lectures on the subject, in which he has embodied and strongly urged on the attention of our northern agriculturists the principles established by Professor Liebeg.

The translation before us, although generally accurate, is far from being elegant, and is occasionally obscure. In a few instances there are serious errors, which we believe must be attributed to haste in printing, as the volume was with difficulty got ready in time for the Glasgow meeting of the Association. We have no doubt that the second edition, now in the press, will be free from such blemishes. It is, however, a difficult task to give in a translation the true character of Professor Liebig's German style, ardent

Mr. Johnston's lectures on this subject are still, we believe, in progress; they are printed as they are delivered.

She retained, it is true, the shrines and the relics of the great apostles; and pilgrims still crowded from all parts of Europe to the city hallowed by these sacred memorials-to that which Petrarch calls the Jerusalem of the West. But the tide of homage and of tribute which flowed towards the throne of the successors of St. Peter, and constituted the wealth and the influence of Rome, now took another course. A mere delegate of the pope, usually the Bishop of Orvieto, occupied the chair of the apostle; all the ecclesiastical causes, with the authority which they tended to confirm, and the riches which they poured into the papal treasury-the constant influx of business which could not but be attended with great expenditure-the strangers from all parts of the world, thus brought together from various motives, either secular or religious-all now thronged the expanding streets of Avignon. Rome thus deserted, and degraded from her high ecclesiastical position, was thrown back, as it were, upon her earlier reminiscences. She had lost her new, and was ready to welcome whatever might

recall her old supremacy. All the circum-actual commencement of a new period of stances of the times continued to strengthen the dominion of the Holy Ghost, in which this sentiment, which blended with the wide- monasticism was to prevail with all its strictspread impatience and jealousy of the en- est mortifications, its total self-denial, its abcroachments of the ecclesiastical upon the solute estrangement from all secular concivil power. The Ghibelline spirit, which cerns. This new advent had been announchad been sternly suppressed by the alliance ed in visions and prophecies; had been of the popes, first with the Norman, and af- preached in every quarter, and to every rank; terwards with the Angevin sovereigns of Na- and this religious Ghibellinism in many ples, was still brooding in dangerous secrecy minds was blended with the deepest devotion in every part of Italy. In many it was no to the ecclesiastical supremacy of the Holy attachment to a foreign, a German Emperor; See. The influence of this wide-spread enbut an earnest longing for the re-establish- thusiasm perhaps at the commencement of ment of a supreme imperial power, the resto- his career affected but partially and indirectly ration of a Roman empire. This was inti- the mind or the measures of Rienzi; though mately connected with splendid visions, he subsequently plunged into it, to outward which crossed all the nobler minds of the appearance, with all the ardour of a fanatic times, such as Dante's and Petrarch's, of the votary. independence of Italy. And Rome might appear thus cleared as it were of the great fabric of ecclesiastical rule, in order to leave room for some new foundation of civil authority. The first dawn of the revival of classical tastes and studies which had been so publicly and so proudly welcomed in the coronation of Petrarch-the respect for the ancient monuments of Rome, which that great poet had endeavoured to inculcate, and which wrought so powerfully on the mind of Rienzi-strengthened the same tendencies.

In Rome itself the papal power had constantly encountered a resolute resistance. The days indeed had passed when the fierce and turbulent nobility of the city and of the neighbourhood appointed and deposed, insulted, betrayed, and even murdered the successors of St. Peter. But the popes had more than once, even when supported by the imperial authority, been constrained to capitulate with the liberties of the Roman people. A municipal authority, sometimes a senate more or less numerous, sometimes a At the same time a very strong religious single senator, that senator sometimes a Roreaction was working, especially in the man, sometimes a foreigner, exercised civil minds of the lower orders, against the tempo- authority within the city. To the tyranny ral power of the popes, and of the clergy in of the old nobility had succeeded, indeed, general. The absence of the popes from the tyranny of the new Patriciate-the noItaly, the unpopularity of their desertion of bility who took the place of the wild barons their old seat of empire, allowed free scope or counts of Tusculum and Palestrina—the for this new fanaticism. It was immeasura- Colonnas, the Orsini, the Prefetti del Vico, bly strengthened by the rumours of the vices, the Gaetani, the Savelli, who each had their the abominations, the base venality of the fortified castles and domains in the neighbourpapal court at Avignon-vices and abomina- hood of Rome, and their fortress-palaces tions which, even when Rome was in her (often the ruins of some old temple or anhigh ecclesiastical pride, had obtained her cient building) within the walls. the name of Babylon; and that name was though the oppressions of these nobles ground now transferred (without any of the nobler the face of the people, and their strife deland national feelings which still adhered to uged the streets with blood, yet the burghers Rome) to a foreign French city. The Fran- still claimed and asserted a kind of independciscan order, at least an active and very pow-ence. At one period we find the Capi di erful branch of it (the Fratricelli or Spiritualists, with whom we shall hereafter find Rienzi in intimate connexion), not merely with their bare feet, and macerated forms, with their strict adherence to their vows of poverty, and their monastic retreat to the wildest recesses of the Apennines, afforded a striking, and no doubt widely effective, contrast to the wealth, the pride, and the magnificence of the papal court: but they likewise openly denounced the unapostolic, unevangelic union of temporal with spiritual power; proclaimed the advent, if not the

But

Rioni (the magistrates of the several quarters) in possession of the municipal power.

However plunged in ignorance, however taught to venerate the holy names of saints and martyrs, rather than those of the consuls and the dictators, it was impossible but that dim and obscure traditions of their older liberties and older glories must have lurked in the hearts of the meanest of the Roman people. Though they could not read the language; though they felt no awe at the stupendous monuments; though they built the inscriptions of past glories into the mud walls

of their hovels, or worked upon the sites of the empire, of the spiritual and of the temporal ancient temples, as in a quarry of unhewn head, was again to sway the destinies of the stone-still there was some indescribable world. We shall hereafter see that a reformpride in the name of Roman; there was a ation of this kind, a reformation which should latent fire which was ready to be kindled; touch no point of doctrine, which should and even with them the comparative deser- abstain entirely from any sacrilegious intertion and stillness of the city, from the cessa-ference with the faith, but which should contion of all papal business, and the withdrawal fine the papal power to its legitimate object, of papal pomp, the diminished magnificence spiritual dominion, was constantly and actively of the religious ceremonial, and the cooling present to the mind of Rienzi. That mind we of religious excitement, must have left other can now contemplate in its real designs and minds besides Rienzi's to meditate, however objects, at least in those which he thought fit vaguely, on former days. At this period, it after his first fall, and when evidently he had not abandoned all hope of restoration to power, seems, from a passage in Petrarch's Latin poetry, quoted by Dr. Papencordt, that the to represent as the lofty motives and incentives churches were neglected and falling to dila- of his ambition. pidation; and the remarkable want of ChrisThe original documents produced by Dr. tian churches of the highest and richest ecPapencordt relate to the period of Rienzi's clesiastical character in Rome, he would at-residence in Bohemia after his first downfall tribute with much probability to the absence of the popes from Rome at this particular time, in which, in other parts of Europe, commenced the great period of Christian ar.

chitecture.

and retirement from Italy. The most important of them are letters from Rienzi to Charles IV., Emperor, and King of Bohemia, and to the Archbishop of Prague: they enter into the whole history of his adventurous career, and throw a strong, if not a clear and steady light, At all events this was the moment for a These Rienzi. Earlier or later he would have been upon his extraordinary character. crushed by the united power of the pope and documents were first discovered, and made use of the nobility, which, however jealous or hos- of as far as his own purpose required, by Pelzel tile, would have entered into an irresistible the historian of Bohemia. The original manualliance against an assertor of Roman indepen-scripts cannot be found; but the copy which dence. At no other time probably would Pelzel caused to be made for his own use was purely Roman sentiments of liberty have struck discovered in the library of Count Thun at so forcibly upon the minds of the people. Not Tetschen, and, by the liberality of that accomthat Rienzi at any time contemplated the plished Bohemian nobleman, placed at the independence of Rome upon the religious command of Dr. Papencordt. The copy has authority of the pope; his return to the seat of been rather carelessly made, and some passages St. Peter was earnestly invited and desired: can only be restored by conjecture. Dr. Papenbut it was to resume his ecclesiastical functions cordt has printed the whole in the original alone-while the civil power, in its perfect Latin, amongst his 'Urkunde; with the exindependence, or rather unquestioned supre- ception of one too lengthy paper, of which he macy, should administer the temporal concerns gives an abstract. It is singular that these of Rome-of Italy-or of the world. This documents carry us up even to the cradle of was the vision which had expanded on the mind of Petrarch, and with his admiration, from personal acquaintance with the man, explains his splendid poetic gratulations to the Tribune, when at the height of his power: But the patriotic ambition of the poet would have been content with the independence and supremacy of Italy on any terms. Whether it was an emperor who made Rome the centre of his sovereignty, or a young and vigorous republic, his hopes would have been satisfied; and this probably was the general sentiment of all who wished to see a strong government in Italy, and looked, as the only means of accomplishment of that great end, to the re-establishment and redintegration of a Roman power. The pope was still to hold his high court in Rome, to draw respect, wealth, influence, authority to the twice-hallowed city; and the co-ordinate supremacy of the church and of

Rienzi.

habited only by mechanics and Jews, the In a quarter of the city which was inmarriage of an innkeeper and a washerwoman wrote Gibbon, from the best authorities extant produced the future deliverer of Rome.' Thus in his day. But what says Rienzi of his own parentage?

He asserts himself, and the assertion is made in a letter addressed to Charles IV., to have been a bastard son of his predecessor, the emperor Henry VII. Rienzi might have used the language of Fauconbridge

to his mother:

Now, by this light, were I to get again,
Madam, I would not wish a better father;'

and nothing can be more strangely minute
than the account of the whole transaction, as
given by the Tribune. When Henry VII.
went up to be crowned (May, 1312) at Rome.

the church of St. Peter, in which the corona- | observe, must have heard it sub sigillo confestion ought to have taken place, was in the sionis, but perhaps the Roman priests in those power of the adverse party, the Roman Guelfs days were not very strict in such matters. and the king of Apulia. Strong barricades Out of respect to his mother's memory, Rienzi, and defences separated the two parts of the he says, was always impatient of the scandal, city. Henry was therefore compelled to hold and denied it in public, but he believed it in his coronation in the church of St. John Lateran. his heart; and, the imperial blood stirring in He was extremely anxious, however, before his veins, he began to disdain his plebeian life he left Rome, to pay his devotions at the shrine -to dream of honours and glories far above of St. Peter, and to see the church in which his lowly condition. He sought every kind of the coronation of the emperors usually took instruction-began to read and to study hisplace. He put on the dress of a pilgrim, and tory, and the lives of great and good men, till in this disguise, with a single attendant, he he became impatient to realise in his actions passed into the church of St. Peter. A report the lofty lessons which he read.* spread abroad that the emperor had passed This strange story of his parentage, we have the barriers in secret; the gates and barricades said, Rienzi relates in his address to the empewere instantly closed, and a herald was sent ror. He states further, that at the period of out to put the whole Guelfish faction on their his greatness he endeavoured to suppress it guard, and to offer a large reward for his because any kind of German connexion would capture. As soon as the emperor and his at- have been highly unpopular in Rome; but tendant perceived this, they stole hastily along that the rumour prevailed among persons a street by the bank of the river, and, finding of both sexes and all ages. The emperor all the passages shut, under pretence of going might even find some traces of it in Germany. in to drink, they took refuge in the house or He appeals to a certain Roman noble, Onufrius small inn kept by the elder Rienzi and his de Ilpinis, who had fled from the justice of the wife. There they got possession of a small Tribune to the court of Lewis of Bavaria, and chamber, and lay concealed for ten or fifteen resided there ever since. Onufrius had been days. The emperor's attendant went out to his friend and the friend of his Father, and, procure provisions; in the mean time the land- as he understood, had spoken freely of the lady, who was young and handsome, minister- Tribune's birth.f-His age,' Rienzi himself ed to the emperor (we use Rienzi's words), proceeds, 'to judge from his outward appear'as their handmaids did to the holy David and ance, would tally with the period at which the righteous Abraham.'* The emperor after- Henry VII. was in Rome.' This statement wards escaped to the Aventine, retired from of his age does not precisely correspond with Rome, and died in the August of that year. what he asserts in another place, though there 'But, as there is nothing hidden that does not is not above the difference of a year. Once come to light, when his mother found out the he says, that, as he was haranguing the peohigh rank of her lover, she could not help, like ple in an unpremeditated speech, he broke out a very woman, telling the secret of her preg-in what certainly to our ears would sound a nancy by him to her particular female friend; this particular friend, like a woman, told the secret to another particular friend, and so on, till the rumour got abroad. His mother, too, on her death-bed, confessed the whole, as it was her duty, to her priest.'t Nicholas, after his mother's death, was sent by the innkeeper to Anagni, where he remained until his twentieth year. On his return this marvellous story was related to him by some of his mother's friends, and by the priest who at tended her death bed;-the priest, we may

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most irreverent comparison,-'As Christ, in his thirty-third year, having overthrown the tyrants of hell, and delivered the souls of men, went up crowned into heaven, so God willed that in the same year of my life, I, having conquered the tyrants of the city without a blow and alone given liberty to the people, should be promoted to the laurel crown of the tribune.'‡ Henry VII. was in Rome in May and June, 1312; Rienzi, if his son, would have been born in February or March, 1313. In 1347, the year of his tribunate, he would have been in his thirty-fourth or thirty-fifth year.

Dr. Papencordt objects to the truth of the whole story, the total silence of the imperial historians on this adventure of Henry

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