gable financier." But perhaps his most striking quality—at least the one that would most win upon Englishmen is his strong practical good sense. This, combined with the skill as a debater acquired during ten years of parliamentary life, makes him a formidable adversary in the Chamber. He knows how at once to strip a subject of false colours and pretensions, and quickly seizes, often with telling irony and humour, upon the weak points of his opponents' speeches. All departments of government_find him equally apt and ready. Finance, foreign affairs, the home department, have been or are directed by him with the same vigour and judgment. But a very few weeks have elapsed since he assumed the reins of the last-named department, which had got very slack in the hands of his well-meaning but incompetent predecessor, and already new life seems to pervade the admin

istration.

The merit, talents, and good intentions of Cavour, are recognised here even by those who differ most from him in politics. The ultra-liberals may think him lukewarm, the absolutists may denounce him as an anarchist, but I never heard of either extreme denying the ability and honesty of the man who, at the head of the moderate party-the most powerful now in Piedmont--is in reality the truest friend the liberties of his country have. He seeks to advance steadily, but without precipitation, that improvement and reform which he would endanger by a less prudent and more hasty course. Sardinia has already obtained a large measure of liberty; there still are changes that need to be made, but it would be perilous to hurry them. Cavour has to consider not only the prejudices of the people-in great part uneducated-and the opposition of a large and strong retrograde party, but also the position of this little country with respect to one powerful and decidedly hostile government, and to another, still more powerful, which, although at present friendly, is jealous of liberty wherever it shows itself. With one crying evil there is great difficulty in dealing, and that is the overgrown wealth and influence

VOL. LXXXIII.-NO. DX.

of the priests. I shall not trouble you with statistics; it may suffice to say that, before 1848, no country was so priest-ridden as this, and that still, although something has been done to reduce it, the power of the church is here enormous- as are also its revenues and the number of its members. In Turin one cannot step from his house into the street without encountering some sleek and stalwart friar, striding along in his coarse brown robe, and long processions of religious orders and of priests are of continual occurrence. The country literally swarms with these drones of society. For some years past there has been a strong agitation in favour of the confiscation of church property, the clergy to receive salaries from the government. The idea has met great opposition, and no minister has as yet been able to venture upon its realisation. Something was done in 1854 to equalise, to a limited extent, the distribution of the church revenues; but it was a very small measure, not a tithe of what was wanted, and yet the violence with which it was combated, and the difficulty with which it was carried, showed that, for the time being, it was scarcely possible to go farther. It is not yet three years since the law known as the Convent Bill was presented to the Sardinian Parliament; and the clamour and struggle to which it gave rise attracted sufficient attention throughout Europe for the circumstances still to be fresh in most people's memory. The native clergy intrigued and conspired, Rome thundered and protested; every possible influence was brought to bear upon the King; and, as it for a moment seemed, not without success. The Cavour cabinet resigned; but it was quickly recalled, and the bill voted by the Chambers received the royal sanction. The contest was so animated, the agitation so great, that some alarm was felt, and probably, in many other countries, disturbances would have occurred; but the Piedmontese are a peaceable and cool-tempered race, and everything passed over quietly.

The feelings of sympathy and satisfaction with which Englishmen, as stanch and consistent lovers of

21

liberty, have witnessed its attainment by this country, naturally dispose them to take the brightest view of the character of the Sardinian people, to dwell with pleasure upon their virtues, and to pass lightly over their faults. The same remark applies to the English estimate of the present King of Sardinia, whose personal gallantry in the field, displayed in the war with Austria, and his leal and consistent conduct towards his subjects, have won him golden opinions and almost unlimited praise. He is unquestionably an honest and well-meaning man, who feels, as I believe, a far greater pride and pleasure in being the constitutional monarch of a free people, than he would do in being as absolute as a Russian czar. Moreover, in his peculiar position, as the only constitutional Italian sovereign, there is scope for ambition. At the present moment the fetters of Austrian Italy seem more firmly riveted than ever; but no one can tell what changes the next twenty years may produce. A European war might lead to the emancipation of Lombardo-Venetia, and in that case who but Victor Emanuel would be called to reign over the kingdom of constitutional Italy? He is but thirty-eight years of age, and it is impossible to say that he may not be reserved to assist in great events, and fulfil a high destiny. His detestation of Austria is well known, and contributes to the popularity he enjoys amongst his subjects a loyal race, long and deeply attached to the house of Savoy. I believe that nothing in the world would give him such pleasure, would render him so completely happy, as to find himself in a position to lead across the Ticino such an army as could contend, with a fair chance of success, against the Austrian legions. With that army at his back, and with the chivalrous and noble-hearted La Marmora, who looks like a Paladin of old, by his side, he would fear no foe, and feel confident of victory. His taste is for action rather than

for council; he prefers the field to the cabinet. His mode of life proves this:

he detests court forms and ceremonies, and passes the greater part of his time in hunting and shooting. Nothing afflicts him more than the arrival here of great personages, to whom he is obliged to give state receptions and grand entertainments. His tastes are not intellectual, and his private life might occasion scandal in England; but a moral sovereign would be out of place in Piedmont; and his subjects smile indulgently at his amours, which are of no very elevated description. He is, in fact, very much what he looks-a frank straightforward man, hating humbug, somewhat of a sensualist, with little talent, but an honest heart. He has been seen in England, and his portrait is familiar to most peoplehis square and rather heavy figure, his broad chest and bull-neck, his enormous mustache, bluff features, and head very much thrown back. He looks best in uniform, and on horseback; on foot his appearance is not very majestic. Whatever his defects, however, his subjects like him well, and certainly would be sorry to change him for another. Honesty of purpose, and a sincere attachment to liberty, and respect for a plighted word, are at least as important qualities in a king, as brilliant talents and a fascinating exterior. And if his own capacity be but limited, the King of Sardinia is doubly fortunate in possessing so able a counsellor as Cavour, and in having the good sense to be guided by his advice.

If I here bring my letter to a close, it is rather for fear of its extending to an unreasonable length, than because there does not still remain much to be said concerning Piedmont, which would be interesting, and probably new, to most English readers. Should you therefore deem this desultory epistle from a rambler worth the printer's trouble, on a future day further tidings from Turin may possibly be addressed to you by your faithful

TURIN, March 1858.

VEDETTE.

MR CARLYLE has popularised a saying of Goethe's, to the effect that the life of the most insignificant man, faithfully written, will prove interesting to the highest man; that the history of the blind wretch who sits by the wayside, rolling his sightless eyeballs in the sunshine, blessing you with great volubility if you drop a penny in his hat, cursing you with equal volubility, and with far more sincerity, if you don't, will, if fairly related, have something in it to stir the high heart of a Queen. So far as we are aware, no one has ventured to impugn this thesis. The golden shield has been hung up, nor yet has it rung to the challenge of a hostile lance. On the same wall we hasten to hang up our pinchbeck one. Our thesis is as follows: the history of the dirtiest and most insignificant town would, if worthily set forth, have some points of human interest. Yea, even the fraction of a town: the story of the Goosedubs, intelligently told, has that in it which might attract the notice of London, or of Edinburgh herself, "throned on crags." What is the popular idea of Glasgow, for instance? Catechise nine-tenths of the inhabitants of these islands on the subject, and you will expiscate something like the following: "Glasgow-stated by the natives to be the second city of the empire-is covered the whole year round with smoke, through which showers are sometimes known to penetrate, sunbeams never. It is celebrated for all kinds of manufactures; is fervent in business six days of the week, spending the seventh in hearing sermon and drinking toddy. Its population consists of a great variety of classes. The 'Operative,' quiet and orderly enough whilst plentifully supplied with provisions, becomes Chartist when hungry, and finds great satisfaction in crowding the City Hall to listen to orators, chiefly natives of the sister isle, declaiming against a 'bloated aristocracy.' The Merchant Prince,' known to all ends of the earth, is subject sometimes to strange

vagaries: at one moment he is glittering away cheerily in the commercial heaven; the next he has disappeared, like the lost Pleiad, swallowed up of night for ever. The history of Glasgow may be summed up in one word-Cotton; its deity is gold; its river, be-sung by poets, a sewer; its environs, dust and ashes; the gamin of its wynds and closes is less tinctured with education than a Bosjesman, and has never seen a green field, nor heard a lark sing, save perhaps in a cage outside a window in the sixth story, where a consumptive seamstress is rehearsing Hood's Song of the Shirt,' the 'swallows with their sunny backs' omitted." We beg to inform the ignorant nine-tenths of these islands, that, so far as Glasgow is concerned, they labour under a grievous misapprehension. It is not in itself an ugly city, and it has many historical associations. Few cities are surrounded with such pretty scenery. Truth must prevail. Glasgow is justified of her children. Dr Strang, in his Clubs of Glasgow, brings the old jolly times of the City before us in their habits as they lived; and Mr M'Donald, in his Rambles round Glasgow and Days at the Coast, has, stick in hand, visited every spot of interest in the neighbourhood for miles, knows every ruin and the legend which hallows it, has lingered at sunset in every village churchyard, and is familiar with the halfobliterated inscriptions ; can tell where some unknown poet has lived and died, and, if you choose, will repeat you a snatch of his stanzas, and has the whole martyrology of the district at his finger-ends. Glasgow has been fortunate in her sons; her reproach has been taken away; and now, like a dusted jewel," she shines well where she stands."

The history of the city, from the period of St Mungo to the commercial crisis and fall of the Western Bank, presents many points of interest, Looking back some thirteen centuries into the grey morning-light of time, we see St Mungo, led by an

angel, establishing himself on the banks of the Molendinar, and erecting a rude chapel or oratory. There, for many summers and winters, he prayed his prayers, sung his aves, and wrought his miracles. The fame of his sanctity spread far and wide, and many pilgrims came to converse with, and be counselled by, the holy man. In process of time-the prayers of the saint proving efficacious, and the Clyde, flowing through the lower grounds at a little distance, being famous for salmon--people began to gather there, and a score or so of wooden huts was the beginning of the present city. In 1197 the Cathedral was consecrated by a certain Bishop Joceline, and from thence, on to the Reformation, its affairs continued in a pretty prosperous condition; its revenue, taking into consideration the poverty of the country and the thinness of the population, was considerable; and its bishops were frequently men of ambition, and of splendid tastes. Its interior was enriched by many precious relics. On days of high festival, the Lord Bishop and his officials, clad in costly vestments, entered by the great western door; and as the procession swept onward to the altar, incense fumed from swinging censers, the voices of the choir arose in rich and solemn chanting, the great organ burst on the ear with its multitudinous thunder, and rude human hearts were bowed to the ground with contrition, or rose on surges of sound to heaven in ecstasy. Glasgow, too, is closely connected with Wallace. The Bell

o' the Brae saw the flash of his terrible sword, as the Southrons fled before him. At the Kirk of Rutherglen, Sir John Monteith and Sir Aymer de Vallance met to plan the capture of the hero; and at Rob Royston the deed of shame was consummated. Monteith, with sixty followers, had surrounded the house in which Wallace lay. Traitors were already within. His weapons were stolen; Kierly his servant was slain. According to Blind Harry, at the touch of a hand Wallace sprang up, a lion at bay. He seized an oaken stool, and at a blow broke one rascal's back, splashed the wall with the blood and brains of a second; when

the whole pack threw themselves upon him, brought him down, and secured him. He was conveyed to Dumbarton, then held by the English, and from thence was delivered into the hands of Edward. The battle of Langside was fought in the vicinity of the city. Moray, lying in Glasgow, intercepted Mary on her march from Hamilton to Dumbarton, and gave battle. Every one knows the issue. The queen fled with a wild rein toward England and a scaffold. Moray returned to Glasgow by the village of Gorbals, his troops, it is said, wiping their bloody swords on the manes of their horses as they rode through, and went thence to meet his assassin in Linlithgow town. During the heat and frenzy of the Reformation, nearly all our ecclesiastical houses went to the ground, or came out of the fierce trial with interiors pillaged, altars desecrated, and the statues of apostles and saints broken or defaced. Glasgow Cathedral was assailed like the rest; already the work of destruction had begun, when the craftsmen of the city came to the rescue. Their exertions on that occasion preserved the noble building for us. They were proud of it then, they are proud of it to-day. During the Persecution, the country to the west of Glasgow was overrun with dragoons, and many a simple Covenanter had but short shrift; seized, tried, condemned, shot, in heaven, within the hour. The rambler is sure to encounter, not only in village churchyards, but by the wayside, or in the hearts of solitary moors, unvisited but by the sunbeam and the curlew's cry, rude martyr-stones, their sculpture and letters covered with lichen, telling the names of the sufferers and the manner of their deaths with difficulty, and intimating that

"This stone shall witness be

"Twixt Presbyterie and Prelacie." The next striking event in the history of the city is the visit of Prince Charles. Enter on the Christmas week of 1745-46 the wild footsore Highland host, on their flight from Derby. How the sleek citizens shrink from the worn hairy faces, and wild eyes in which the lights of plunder

burn! "The Prince, the Prince, which is the Prince?' "That's he, yonder, wi' the lang yellow hair." Onward rides, pale and dejected, the throne-haunted man. He looks up, as he catches a fair face on the street, and you see he heirs the Stuart eye and Stuart smile. He, like his fathers, will provoke the bitterest hatred, and be served with the wildest devotion. Men will gladly throw away their lives for him. The blood of nobles will redden scaffolds for him. Shepherds and herdsmen will dare death to shelter him, and beautiful women will bend over his sleep, wrapt in clansman's plaid, on bed of heather or bracken, to clip but one shred of his yellow hair, and be thereby requited for all that they and theirs have suffered in his behalf. With all his beauty and misfortunes, his appearance in Glasgow created little enthusiasm. He scarcely gained a recruit-only a few ladies' donned white breast-knots and ribbons. He levied a heavy contribution on the inhabitants. A Prince at the head of an army sorely in want of brogues, and who insisted on being provided with shoe-leather without exchange of cash, was hardly calculated to excite the admiration of prudent Glasgow burgesses. He did not remain long. The Green beheld for one day the far-stretching files and splendour of the Highland war; on the next, in unpaid shoe-leather, he marched to his doom. Victory, like a stormy sunbeam, burned for a moment on his arms at Falkirk, and then all was closed in blood and thunder on Culloden Moor.

It is about this period that Dr Strang's book on the Clubs begins. In these old hospitable hard-drinking days, Glasgow seems to have been pre-eminently a city of clubs. Every street had its tavern, and every tavern its club. There were morning clubs, noonday clubs, evening clubs, and all-day clubs, which, like the sacred fire, never went out. The club was a sanctuary wherein nestled friendship and enjoyment. The member left his ordinary life outside the door, and picked it up when he went away. Within its circle all the ills that flesh is heir to were redressed, and the debtor

grew unconscious of the creditor's eye. At the sight of the merry booncompanions, care packed up his bundles and decamped; or, if he dared remain, he was immediately laid hold of, plunged into the punchbowl, and there was an end of him, for that night at least. Unhappily, these clubs are all dead, "gone to their deathbed;" but as their ghosts troop past in Dr Strang's pages, the sense is delicately taken with an odour of rum-punch. Shortly after the Pretender's visit to the city, the Anderston Club-so called from its meetings held at that little village— flourished, cracked its jokes, and drank its punch on Saturday afternoons. Perhaps no club connected with the city, before or since, could boast a membership so distinguished. It contained nearly all the University professors. Dr Moore, Professor of Greek; Professor Ross, who faithfully instilled the humanities into the Glasgow youth; Drs Cullen and Hamilton, medical teachers of eminence; Adam Smith; the brothers Foulis, under whose auspices the first Fine Art Academy was established in Scotland, and from whose printingpress the Greek and Roman classics were issued with a correctness of text and beauty of typography which had then no parallel in the kingdomwere regular and zealous members. But the heart and soul of the Anderston Club seems to have been Dr Simson, Professor of Mathematics. His heart vibrated to the little hostelry of Anderston like the needle to the pole. He left the University when the college clock struck one, and appeared at Anderston punctual to a moment. He could have found the way with his eyes shut. The following story is related of the Professor by Dr Strang. At the club

"The mathematician ever made it a rule to throw algebra and arithmetic to the dogs,' save in so far as to discover the just quadratic equation and simple division of a bowl of punch. One thing alone in the club he brought his mathematics to bear upon, and that was his

glass. This had been constructed on the truest principles of geometry for emptying itself easily, the stalk requiring to form but a very acute angle with the open lips ere its whole contents had dropped