find that thrift and fruga ity are virtues much more prevalent among traders and merchants, in proportion to their means, than among farmers and landholders. The most commercial nations have been most noted for their frugality, in proportion to their means, and the fact of their greater increase in national wealth is, alone, a sufficient proof of it.

But restraining habits of extravagance, by restricting imports, very nearly resembles the sumptuary laws of olden times, which, ineffectual as they were, when the authority of the sovereign could give effect to them, by direct measures, will be more ineffectual under any indirect guise that may now be assumed to introduce them. It is not now sufficient to prescribe a rule, in order to alter people's con-duct; we must instil a reason. The moral habits of a people cannot be dictated by authority, although they may be influenced by experience, and by argument. And our only chance of permanent influence for good is, by setting mat⚫ters on their true basis, so that they may naturally gravitate to a correct position; but, placing them on a wrong foundation is an error that all the propping and supporting by extraneous contrivances will never compensate.

The system of self-dependance in a nation, to the exclusion or diminution of intercourse with other nations, is a Chinese policy, which the present state of enlightenment must condemn, as an object to be followed for its own sake. It is to commerce that the whole civilized world owes its present state of advancement; and a higher interest than that of mere pecuniary views,-the moral interest of the world, demands, that, instead of seeking to wrap themselves up within themselves, different communities should seek for intercourse with each other, by every means within their power. If an extension of the circle of our sympathies, of the sphere of our observation, an acquaintance with, and improvement in the arts and sciences that adorn, embellish and elevate mankind, and opportunities for the ' exertion of our energies, in the widest field of action, be desirable, then are we called upon, by every duty, and every tie to ourselves and to our fellow beings, to throw down all barriers to freedom of intercourse, wherever it is practicable to do so; and never can we defend a policy which has no other recommendation than that of cutting us off, as a community, from all necessity for intercourse with the rest of the world.

1842.] Lives of Literary and Scientific Men of Italy. 527

ART. X.-Lives of Eminent Literary and Scientific Men of Italy: by Mrs. Shelley, Sir D. Brewster, James Montgomery, and others. 2 vols. Philadelphia, Lea &

Blanchard.

Biography, always one of the most interesting branches of literature, is particularly so, when it relates to those extraordinary men, "the day-stars of their day," who have burst through the night of ignorance and prejudice, have outstepped by centuries the learning of their compatriots, and anticipated the march of improvement and science.

Some writer has remarked, that the difference between genius and mediocrity, consisted less in any inferiority of organization, than in the perseverance and sustained energy which leads the man of genius to accomplish his designs, overcoming apathy, enmity, jealousy, and apparently insurmountable difficulties, warring against ills, and triumphing over fate, leaving his name a glory to his country, a star to the world, whilst many, gifted with faculty to conceive and even talent to execute, become discouraged by the first difficulty, never carry through their designs, sink into obscurity, and leave no name behind.

A work appeared a few years since, entitled "on the pursuit of literature under difficulties," admirably calculated to awaken emulation in the breast of youth; for whilst it showed the aspirant for literary distinction

"How hard it is to climb,

The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar,"

it also proves how energy and perseverance have carried men of superior minds up that lofty steep to a place in the temple.

The lives of the literary and scientific men of Italy, give a striking proof, which the experience of all countries confirms, of how seldom are "the favorites of Nature" the favorites of Fortune. It would seem as if heaven designed to show mankind how little it valued wealth and worldly prosperity, by endowing with these gifts those who merit the scorn and contempt of the wise and good, whilst those endowed with genius, virtue and talents, have not unfreVOL. I.-NO. 2.

29

quently been the sport of fortune,-apparently the victims of an adverse destiny.

The deeply interesting volumes we are about to notice, commence with the life of Dante Alighieri, who was born in 1265, and died 1321.

As a man of surpassing genius, bursting like a meteor through the intellectual darkness which succeeded the overthrow of the Roman Empire, Dante appeared the first to lead the way in that brilliant galaxy of great minds, that made Italy a second time the seat of the arts, of poetry and refinement.

Civilization and the arts, which had been driven from the soil of Italy, by the irruptions of successive hordes of barbarians, found, for a time, an asylum in the south of France, along the beautiful valleys of the Garonne and the Durance, and the soft Provençal tongue was tuned to harmony, by the lays of the Troubadours. The Italian, which was destined to succeed the Provençal, as the language of poetry and song, was then struggling into existence, springing from a mixture of the harmonious Provençal and Moorish, grafted on the Latin.

Dante is the first who tuned to numbers this unformed tongue, and is, therefore, not inappropriately considered as the first who gave it a character and form. Colleges at that time existed in many of the large towns in northern Italy, but Latin was the only language studied, and science and polite literature gave way to polemical disquisitions and the philosophy of the schools. Dante studied at Padua, and Bologna, and was well versed in the writings of the classic authors of Rome. He was also an adept in the learning of the day, perseveringly and patiently toiled through the almost interminable labyrinths of school divinity, under the bewildering guidance of Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas. Following the fashion of the times, he visited the universities of other countries, particularly those of Paris and Oxford, holding debates with the learned, and challenging them to dispute on some polemical controversy, according to the syllogistic system of Aristotle.

66

66 During this season of seed-time for the mind," says our author, vol i., p. 21, we are told that, notwithstanding his indefatigable labors in the acquirement and cultivation of knowledge, he appeared so

cheerful, frank and generous in deportment and disposition, that nobody would have imagined him to be such a devotee to literature in the stillness of the closet, or the open field of college exercises. On the contrary, he passed in public for a gallant and high-bred man of the world; following its customs and fashions, so far as might be deemed consistent in a person of honor and independence,-qualities on which he sufficiently prided himself, and paid for it, like Aristides, by banishment."

Thus it appears that Dante was not one of those who, because" they feel the god within them,"--because they devote their minds to intellectual culture, consider themselves privileged to neglect all the graces of manner, all gentlemanly refinement. This, however, was not the weakness or the affectation of those times, when the spirit of chivalry, yet in its zenith, made the higher classes affix a great value to all personal accomplishments. It was reserved for a later period, when chivalry should be but a sound, a dying echo of a thing passed away, for men who affect literature, to neglect the graces, and because they can read a Greek Homer or Sophocles, write an able article for a review, or pen a stanza, to deem themselves privileged to neglect the graces, to assume the sloven, and violate all the conventional forms of good society.

In speaking of what Dante did for the Italian language, our author says,

"He ran through the whole compass of his native vocabulary, he tried every note of the diapason, and all that were most pure, harmonious, or energetic, he sanctioned, by employing them in his song, which gave them a voice in after ages, so that few, comparatively very few, have been entirely rejected by his most fastidious successors. It was well for the poetry of his country, that he wrote his immortal work in its language, for neither Petrarch nor Boccaccio could have gone so far as they did in perfecting it, if they had not had so great a model, not to equal only, but to excel. They, indeed, affected to think little of their vernacular writings, and pretended merely to amuse themselves with such compositions as every body could read. Dante himself began his poem in Latin; and if he had gone forward, the finishing stroke of the last line would have been a coup de grace which it could never have survived." P. 53.

At the time that Dante lived, the contest between the Guelfs and the Ghibellines was at its greatest height. The

Popes not satisfied with papal dominion over the greatest countries of Europe, were anxious to secure temporal dominion over the rich plains of Lombardy, which they pretended were bequeathed to Pope Silvester, by the Emperor Constantine. The partizans of the Popes assumed the name of Guelfs, those of the Emperor, that of Ghibellines. This contest lasted many years, and had all the character of a civil war; state being not only arrayed against state, but people of the same state, the same province, the same city, and even the same family, being frequently arrayed against each other in violent and implacable hostility.

At the time of Dante's birth, the Guelfs, or papal party, had obtained the ascendancy in Florence, and the Poet adhered to this party till his banishment, when the interference of the Pope, with the independence of the city, and the hostility of the citizens against himself and his friends, compelled him to take part with the imperialists,

The Florentines have had to endure the obloquy of all the learned world, for their treatment of their first great poet: but we see, Dante had linked himself with a party which, by its impolicy and tyranny, had become odious to the people, and he suffered, in consequence, from the violence of the popular clamor.

Like many of his brother poets and literati, Dante was not happy in his marriage. His wife was Madonna Gemma, the near kinswoman of Corso Donati, Dante's most formidable and inveterate rival, a leader of the Ghibellines, and one of the most factious of the turbulent nobility of Tuscany. Most of Dante's biographers have spoken of this lady, as violent in her temper, and as making her husband miserable. We, however, think, that they have adduced no sufficient authority for such an accusation. Belonging to a family which espoused opposing interests to those maintained by her husband, her woman's heart must have been often torn by contending feelings. How could she, with calmness, see her husband arrayed in arms against her family, and that cause which she had, from her infancy, been taught to believe was a righteous one. Our author remarks:

"The Poet's known and avowed passion for Beatrice, living and dead, was alone sufficient to afflict a high-minded woman with the rankling consciousness that she had not all her husband's heart. It