Leo IX.

that his title was not a just one, sought to The Emperors of Germany claimed the make it so, and to render his throne secure right of Leige Lord over Italy, by virtue of by obtaining an investiture from the Pope, the former conquest of that country, and because also of their possessing the title and In truth the Pope had waged war against the rights of Charlemagne. They were him, had been defeated and taken prisoner; crowned at Rome, and kept up the figment and as the price of his liberty granted him of a Western Roman Empire. The Popes the investiture of his kingdom. How the claimed under an asserted grant from ConPope, who had no title himself to the stolen stantine the Great, who had removed his kingdom, could give what did not belong to seat of Empire from Rome to Constantinohim to the robber chief who had taken it ple. The Popes asserted that he had given from its rightful owners, does not appear. to them his right and title to the sovereignty Hallam, page 129. of Italy. Hence it was, that the Normans purchased from one of the Popes his asserted right to their blood bought kingdom. It is scarcely necessary to say that there is no shadow of foundation for their claim; it was not heard of for several hundred years after the time of Constantine.

Certain it is that the investiture was made and confirmed by subsequent Popes, and the kingdom of Naples is still held by this title -a title born in robbery and baptized in falsehood.

We cannot think that if a comrade of St. Peter had plundered a fellow-fisherman of his However, it was made use of to advance nets and boat, that the Apostle would have the temporal power of the Popes; and we justified the act, and solemnly invested him see with what result; for all Southern and with the possession of the stolen propertv. Central Italy belongs even now to the Pope Still less do we think that the holy Apostle and his subject-ally, the king of Naples. would have set out on an expedition against The situation of the free cities of Italy was the property of his neighbors on his own ac- therefore a peculiar one. They existed free count, as his successors now began to do. amid the conflicting claims of two rival powIn truth, they fished to some purpose, gathers, one within and the other without the ering into their own net all the free cities, peninsula; and at the same time there was and adjoining territories of Central Italy.

It was not until the thirteenth century, that these all submitted to the temporal power of the Pope.

in every city, apart from the feeling of jealousy and of active hatred towards almost every other city, a large and powerful class of nobles who were continually striving either to advance the cause of the Pope or the Emperor, or to destroy at once their own opponents and the freedom of the city, in order that upon the ruins of freedom they might erect their own house of power.

Rome itself had republican institutions, and these were again and again revived, although as often overthrown by the factions of the nobles, and the power of the Head of the Church. The Duchy of Spoleto and the March of Ancona becane subject to the For long years, however, the temporal Pope in the twelfth century; the Romagna power of the Popes had no existence, and with all its cities was ceded by the emperors their claims to dominion were never heard soon after; and by force or flattery, he per- of. The power of the Emperors was in suaded or compelled all the free cities around to yield up their right of sovereignty.

abeyance; and during this period the cities became free and subdued the Nobles, as we have already related.

By treaty, by bequest, by war, by fraud, and by violence, the dominion of the Bishop With the rise, however, of the temporal of Rome as a temporal prince was extended power of the Popes began also (perhaps as over Central Italy, pretty much as that of a consequence of it) a revival of the Empethe Norman prince had been in the South. ror's claims to dominion over the free cities Liberty still lived in Lombardy and Northern of Italy. He was continually striving, by Italy, and this was the chief place of con- force or fraud, to subdue these cities, espetest between Emperor, Pope and Factious cially those in the Northern part of the peNoble. ninsula. And we have shown that when

VOL. XXI.-78

leagued against him their combined forces who governed both the soul and the body. were too strong for all his power. The Pope Indeed, we may consider the Ghibelines as endeavoured in every manner to counteract the opponents and the Guelfs as the advo his efforts, and, as a consequence of these cates of a centralizing power; the one leavstruggles, two parties arose and existed in ing each city in reality free, although nomiall the cities of Italy, whose mutual animos- nally recognizing the Emperor as liege lord; ities destroyed everywhere all that was left the other centering all power in the hands of of freedom, and prepared the cities to fall a native Italian who lived in Rome and was into the hands of tyrants. called the Pope. Can any one doubt that if They were the Guelfs and the Ghibelines. a State in this confederacy had to choose beThe first advocated the temporal authority of tween nominally acknowledging an Europethe Popes over Italy; the other that of the an sovereign, or really submitting to a king Emperor. seated on the North side of the Potomac, or on the banks of the Hudson, that there would be any hesitation felt in making choice of the distant and foreign shadow of power to the present real domestic tyranny?

Such we consider to have been the difference between the Guelfs and the Ghibelines.

Both parties used unfair means to advance their power, and often made an unjustifiable abuse of power when obtained.

Their wars extended over every State, and penetrated into every family; the peace and the freedom of Italy was overthrown; and as a result of the long continued contest, the Ghibelines were driven out, some cities fell into the hands of private tyrants as we have already mentioned, the States of the Church were largely increased, and all Italy would probably have fallen under the dominion of the Bishop of Rome had not a new enemy Still we cannot help thinking that it would appeared on the scene. This was the King have been better for Italy had the Ghibeline of France. Hence followed other wars; triumphed instead of the Guelf, and the until the Emperor, Charles V., king of Spain, party of the Emperor overcome that of the and of the kingdom of Naples and Sicily, Pope. Certainly it could not have produced Emperor of Germany and the Low Coun- a worse state of affairs, or one more disastries, and Conqueror of the Dominions of the trous to the peace and happiness of the ItaPope, drove the French out of Italy, and lians. subdued all Lombardy.

We shall speak at another time of the love

If anything of liberty had remained after of liberty in France and Spain.

all these contests, this arbitrary monarch

would have destroyed it. And, since his day, whatever change may have been made. in Italy, a change from despotism towards liberty has never taken place among the cities or the people of that unfortunate land.

The Ghibelines had within their ranks many of the best minds and most patriotic hearts of Italy. Danté, the master poet of his age and country, was punished because the Guelf party triumphed in Florence.

Many conscientiously opposed the temporal power of the Pope, esteeming it an unjust and unholy union of Church and State, and believing that each could be better governed when their affairs were kept separate and distinct. Others, no doubt, thought it better to have a sovereign acknowledged only in name, and who was the ruler of another land and dwelt in a foreign country, than a monarch who resided in Italy, and

SONG OF THE NAIADS.

BY PAUL H. HAYNE.

Gay is our crystal floor,
Beneath the wave.

With strange gems flaming o'er,
The Geni gave;

Sweet is the purple light

That haunts our happy sight,

And low and sweet the lulling strains that sigh
While the tides pause, and the faint zephyrs die-

Come! come! and seek us here,

In these cools deeps,
Where all is calm and fair,

And sorrow sleeps.

Thy burning brow shall rest,
Couched on a tender breast,

And, charmed to bliss, thy soul shall catch the
gleams

Of mystic glories in ambrosial dreams.

Come! for the earth is drear.

The tempests rave,

And the fast-failing year

Is nigh its grave.

Thy summer, too, is past,
Wouldst thou have peace at last?

O! here she dwells serenely in still caves,
And waits to clasp thee underneath the waves.
Home Journal.

SYDNEY SMITH.*

FROM THE LONDON TIMES.

enjoined has been performed by his daughter, Lady Holland. In association with her Mrs. Austin has undertaken to edit a volume of his letters, and the present work is the combined result of their well-intentioned efforts.

Will the fame of Sydney Smith be as wide and enduring as it was promptly and pleasantly acquired? Will it be evergreen and classic? We incline to think that it will. Criticism is, of course, to some extent At all events, one who filled so large a space disarmed by the act of reverence for a fain the eyes of his contemporaries was enti- ther's reputation. But it must not affect, tled to his biography. If he has not, in therefore, to call things by wrong names. A any exalted sense, bequeathed us an opus disconnected narrative, with singular omismagnum, the author of so many volumes of sions, the interpellations of friendly critics, reviews, pamphlets, and sermons, full of scraps of diary, letters, stray fragments and condensed wit, and wisdom, and excellent memorandums, and centos of jokes, arpurpose the cherished associate of choice ranged like onions on a string, do not conspirits the most popular of Edinburgh crit- stitute the requisite literary record of such ics-the most practical of its reformers- a life. A memoir they may be, but they are the liveliest of jesters with a serious intent-not a biography. They are even a poor meof whom Macaulay writes the consolatory moir, when we wanted a good biography. assurance to his widow that he was "a great Such as they are a compilation, not a conreasoner and the greatest master of ridicule struction-a heap of materials almost in that has appeared among us since Swift" the order in which they were obtained from to whom belongs the higher praise of a less their several contributors-they may serve ambitious eulogist, that, being such a wit, as suggestions for a future life, or for any more beloved than feared"-to kaleidoscopic view of that life which we or whom, as sage, humourist, polemic, pulpi- other reviewers may take in the interim. teer, men of various degrees of eminence Such a summary arrangement of them we have borne an unvaried testimony, which will briefly attempt. Sydney Smith was the sensible public has creditably accepted born at Woodford, in Essex, in 1771. Of and endorsed,—of such a man it was proper his ancestors he has said, possibly with some that a life should be written, and that all remote foundation for the joke, that " they memorials worth preservation should be got never had any arms, and invariably sealed together and published. their letters with their thumbs." His father

"he was

Of his broth

But it was the penalty of a life prolonged was well reputed, but was also an oddity, beyond the ordinary span that those who with a taste for repeated migrations and for could best have accomplished this duty were costly experiments in bricks and mortar. also removed from the scene, or otherwise His mother, from whom, like many other disqualified for its performance. Macaulay celebrities, he derived his strength, was of was pre-occupied, Moore was not available, Huguenot blood, the vigorous qualities of Lord Jeffrey was himself descending into which Garricks, Grotes, Lefroys, Romillys, the dark shadow. The canon-moralist had and, we believe we may add, Mr. Layard, phrased his last sentence to a diminished have variously exemplified circle of friends, and had shared his last ers, Robert, known at Eton as "Bobus," joke with few of his early familiars. So was the eldest and the best cultured. But many had dropped from his side by the way they were all intellectual athletes, and the that practically there was none left to ren- peculiar vein of Sydney was not starved or der him the service which Lockhart performed for Scott, or Twiss for Lord Eldon. In this emergency filial affection interposed, and the task which his wife affectionately

* A Memoir of the Rev. Sydney Smith. By his daughter, Lady Holland. With a Selection from his Letters. Edited by Mrs. Austin. 2 vols. Longman, 1855.

impoverished by the then scanty, even in a physical sense, regimen of Winchester. The rest of the boys there declined to compete with him for its prizes; he became captain of the school, and in due course Scholar and Fellow of New College, Oxford. In the interval between school and college his French

was de-Saxonized by six months en pension nus Carduus, and pointed out their prickly at Mont Villiers, in Normandy, where, it is peculiarities. In vain I have reminded him stated, for protection in the crisis of the that I have seen hackney coaches drawn by French Revolution, he was inscribed as "Le four horses in the winter on account of the Citoyen Smit, Membre Affilié au Club des Ja- snow; that I had rescued a man blown flat cobins de Mont Villiers." On leaving college against my door by the violence of the he was inclined for the bar; he had a narrow winds, and black in the face; that even the escape of being sent as a supercargo to experienced Scotch fowls did not venture to China, but his father's express desire ulti- cross the streets, but sidled along, tail aloft, mately consigned him to the church, and he without venturing to encounter the gale. obtained his first view of the ladder of ec- Jeffrey sticks to his myrtle illusions, and treats clesiastical preferment from perhaps its low- my attacks with as much contempt as if I ermost rung-the perch of a poor curate in had been a wild visionary, who had never the midst of Salisbury plain. He has him- breathed his caller air, nor lived and suffered self depicted the life of "the poor working under the rigour of his climate, nor spent man of God, the first and purest pauper of five years in discussing metaphysics and the hamlet," yet still the Christian pastor medicine in that garret of the earth—that and kind gentleman. We may be sure that knuckle-end of England-that land of Calhe realized this life in the most honourable vin, oatcakes, and sulphur."

of its aspects.

In this forlorn locality the utmost that social attractiveness could compass was obtained in the captivation of a neighbouring squire. This gentleman engaged him as tutor to his son, with whom he was on his way

to Weimar when the war with which Ger

as

many was disturbed drove him home again,
and in stress of politics he put into Edin-
burgh," where he remained five years,
he himself described it afterwards, "amid
odious smells, barbarous sounds, bad suppers,
excellent hearts, and most enlightened and
cultivated understandings."

Most readers are familiar with the circumstances under which he here protected and assisted in the incubation of the Edinburgh

Sydney found that laurels, at all events, could take root in the Scottish soil, and, after the Review had made a hit, having in the meantime married and terminated his tutorial functions, he left Edinburgh at the suggestion of his wife, who had a discerning re

himself in London.

liance on his talents, and in 1804 established
At first he suffered
from the res anguustæ domi, his difficulties
from which were increased by the birth of
his eldest son.
his wife inherited were at this time sold, and
Some jewels of value which
he obtained the preachership of the Found-
ling Hospital through the acquaintance of Sir
Thomas Barnard, yet still he remained short
did not abate we may fairly infer from the
of appraisable assets. That his self-reliance
in a sermon to the volunteers of 1804. We
language he used respecting his countrymen
extract this, as not inappropriate now.
have," says he,

"I

Review. All the world knows of his relations with Jeffrey, Horner, Brougham, Playfair, &c. He has always appeared to us a happy incident in this sharp and hungry society-the "emollient potato" of this hyperborean salad. As a neutral element he "A boundless confidence in the English subdued the pungency of its other ingredi- character. I believe that they have more ents, and evidence is not wanting that he real religion, more probity, more knowledge tempered their rigour and modulated, inter and more genuine worth than exists in the alia, certain inclinations to scepticism. He whole world besides; they are the guardians was perpetually probing their points, especi- of pure Christianity, and from this prostitu ally if they were tender, and found that ted nation of merchants (as they are in dethey could "stand anything but an attack rision called) I believe more heroes will on their climate." "Jeffrey," he says, spring up in the hour of danger than all the "Cannot shake off the illusion that myr- military nations of ancient and modern Eutles flourish at Craig Crook. In vain I have rope have produced. Into the hands of God, represented to him that they are of the ge- then, and his ever-merciful Son we cast our

selves, and wait in humble patience the re- near his Yorkshire living. A few years lasult." ter, apparently in 1813, much against his This was the language not only of a good will, he was building his parsonage, a costly patriot, but of a brave man, who could sup- and troublesome work, of which he was port delays and disappointments in his own architect and superintendent, and which case. Happily that all befell him was not sorely taxed his energy and resources. of this dreary complexion. His brother Here, for the first time, we find him dispoRobert assisted him, supplying his needs, sing of himself cosily. "I am not leading and the friends he was making in the great precisely the life I should choose" he had world helped to swell his sails. He became already said, in a letter to Lady Holland; morning preacher at John-street, Berkeley- but square, and expanded into full flower in the

66

In this spirit he accommodated himself to his tabernacle in the wilderness, and solaced his lot by ingenuity and good humour.

I am resolved to like it, and to reconcile memorable lectures on moral philosophy myself to it, which is more manly than to which he delivered at the Royal Institution, feign myself above it, and to send up comand to the effect of which Mrs. Orie and plaints by the post of being thrown away Mrs. Marcet, Horner, and Sir Robert Peel and being desolate, and such-like trash." have alike testified. The proceeds of these lectures enabled him to furnish a new house, and added greatly to his rising reputation. About this time he was told that the King had been reading his reviews, and had said 'he was a very clever fellow, but he would never be a bishop." But he contented himself with his dinner of herbs and a pure conscience;" and in 1806 he was rewarded for his patient courage by the Chancellor, Lord Erskine, who, presented him with the living of Foston-le-Clay in Yorkshire.

The house he had erected was singularly ugly, but it was comfortable within and supplied with devices which were droll illustrations of his practical talents. He managed his farm from his door by means of a speaking trumpet and telescope. In the back settlement of a York coachmaker he had discovered an ancient green chariot, "supposed to have been the earliest invention of the As Foston-le-Clay had no parsonage house kind." This chariot the village tailor lined until he had built one, which he postponed as and the village blacksmith repaired; "each long as he could, he resided elsewhere, year added to its charms; it grew younger among other places at Sunning, whence it is and younger-a new wheel, a new spring," suggested came the first letter of Peter and he christened it "the Immortal." He Plymley to his Brother Abraham. Who, at contrived also a "universal scratcher" for this day, is insensible to its jocular logic and his cattle, cured his own smoky chimneys, sagacity? Lord Holland, to whom it is said he really owed his Yorkshire living, wrote on the performance as follows:

and attempted to make his own candles. He took into his service a carpenter, who came to him for parish relief, called Jack Robin"My Dear Sydney,-I wish you could son, with a face like a full moon, established have heard my conversation with Lord Gren- him in a barn, and said, "Jack, furnish my ville the other day, and the warm and en- house," with a result which he pointed out thusiastic way in which he spoke of Peter to his admiring visitors. He "caught up a Plymley. I did not fail to remind him that little garden girl, made like a millstone, the only author to whom we both thought it christened her Bunch, put a napkin in her could be compared in English lost a bishop- hand, and made her his butler." He taught ric for his wittiest performance, and I hoped her to repeat her "crimes," which were that, if we could discover the author, and "plate-snatching, gravy-spilling, door-slamhad ever a bishopric in our gift, we should ming, bluebottlefly-catching, and curtseyprove that Whigs were both more grateful bobbing." "Explain," said he, "to Mrs. and more liberal than Tories." Marcet what bluebottlefly-catching is."

But this hope, uttered, doubtless, in all" Standing with my mouth open and not atsincerity, was not destined to be realized, tending, Sir." "And what is curtsey-boband in 1809 Sydney went down to reside bing?" "Curtseying to the centre of the