The Express.
London, England, 1848-10-03 00:00:00

It appears that Mr. Whiteside, having injured his
health by too close an application to legal business,
was advised to quit the bar for a time, and recruit
himself by foreign travel. During two years spent
in Italy, desirous of some employment, he
occupied himself in the composition of these
volumes; the contents of which, in some respects
are curious enough.
We are surprised to find a writer of a learned
profession composing a work on such beaten
ground as Italy, without the least apparent con-
emousness ot the extent to which the common-
places respecting it are already known to all persons
of any education. To say nothing of the numbers
who have visited that country , those even who must
depend for their information on the reports of travel-
lers will be amused at the innocence with which Mr.
Whiteside proceeds to instruct his readers on matters
that have long been familiar to all the world, but
which he details with the air of one making discove-
rice. The impression thus produced, we must say, is
not the most favourable as to the general cul-
tivation of those cirales in which Mr. White-
side may have formed his notions of what
would be novel or interesting to general readers in
an account of Italian travel. More than one-half of
his book is stuffed with particulars that hare been re-
peated until one is tired of hearing them; and we
are indulged with the most copious extinct', is ex-
tens° from books that are in everybody's hands and
recollections. To say nothing of worn-out presages
from poor Ilorse,e and Virgil, which from their very
triteness all charitable writers of moderato culture
have long seamed to parade, he bestows upon us liberal
citations from such recondite authors as De Steel,
Gibbon, Sismondi, Forsyth, Mackintosh, Rogers,
and Byron. Even poor Inglis is pressed
into the service; and we have besides this
not only translations (very poor ones) from
the well known odes of ltianconi ; but actually.
passages of some length cut out from the Promess
Sposa, a work that has been current in English for
years among our students of the "five shilling
" novelists." The accounts of routes, scenery, pic-
tures, and buildings are such as one could have
expected from a writer new to foreign travel and
foreign ass addressing readers to whom everything
concerning both was equally new and strange.
Nor is the original matter supplied by Mr. White-
side of much higher value. His refiexions do
not strike us as very acute or considerate ; and
his arguments on the whole are more incohe-
rent than one might expect from the logical
training of a practised lawyer. No +r and then,
indeed, he actually- commits, in his reasoning,
something closely resembling the perplexity of au
Irish bull. In one place, for instance, he notices, with
woe distrust, an opinion of Von Reamer's, concerning
the social effects of the particular manner in which
Lind is held in Prussia, and then gives as the remit of
his own information to the contrary, an account of the
tendencies of a totally different system of tenure and
cultivation in Bavaria. He is severe on the pompe of
the Roman catholic church, which ho deems less
apostolic than the protestant, expressly on the ground
of the difference between the splendour of the papal
ceremonies and the simplicity of the immediate disci-
ples of Jesus, without explaining how he reconcilesthis
difference, where it also exists, in the matter of our
episcopal and other church arrangements and pot
sessions--or, indeed, appearing to feel that his argu-
ment (if worth anything) drives at the one as
directly's at the other.
Altogether, the book does not afford any each evi-
dence of masculine understanding, practical know-
ledge of life, or pointed remark, as ono might fairly
have expected from a learned author of high kirensic
reputation ; and we must say, that the want of any
kind of order in its arrangement, and the prevailing
commonplace of its tone, savour more of the relaxed
minder an invalid, than of the superior intelligence
one would like to ascribe to a distinguished lawyer.
Putting aside at least two-thirds of these volumes
as mere surplusage, we shall, however, find in the
remainia4 part some matter worth reading. The
best portions of this residue are accounts of the
=and procedure of law in the states of Tuscany,
is, Rome, and Naples. which Mr. Whiteside
has taken some pains tostady, and of which he is un-
doubtedly, as far as he has studied them, a com-
petent reporter. The result of his inquiries is not the
moat gratifying. His description of the Sardinian
end Tama codes is the most satisfactory • but the
administration of law, as he saw and has reported it,
sums in general to be most imperfect, even in
the most advanced states : the courts without
dignity; the judges anything but judicial in
manner or conduct; the malts of trial,
whether in civil or in criminal matters, far
from generally equitable or fitted to impress the
wwith a regard for the laws. In this
ily observes, there is now an urgent respect,ri
reform, as the two conditions most essential to the
maintenance of political liberty for, which the
Italians are now striving—on a sound hula, are the
education of the masses, and the righteous exercise of
just and equal law. From thee. sources alone can
proceed that moral elevation and composure of society
founded on respect of mutual rights and a security
for their enjoyment, which can qualify a people for
the urinous task of self-government.
Mr. Whiteside was in Rome before the decease
of Gregory, and gives a frightful account of the
condition of all things under that monkish regime of
bigotry and obstruction. lie also witnessed the sod-
den change that arose in the popular feeling on the
elevation of Pius IX., and has recorded his observe-
tions and opinions on the personal bearing, measure"
and conduct of that Pontiff daring the first eighteen
months of his pontificate. One cannot exactly dis-
cover the sum total of his conclusions on the ultimate
issue of the apparent reforms in the papal states; bat
it is evident enough that we must not regard the Pope
in the light of a reformer to Mr. Whiteside's salad.
He is, we are told, " every inch a Pope"—anoklostion
which must sound rather strangely, whoa it is
remembered that to be the contrary must
imply a resolution to ter-pope himself, that
can hardly be rationally expected from any wester
of the Roman tiara. The reforms which Mr. White-
side admits have been made, he considers as unexpest-
ally forced from him (by the moral force of circus.
stances, of course) at the instance of the popular en-
thusiasm which greeted his first acts, the effect of
which impulse has been increased by the resistance of
the hierarchy to those earliest liberal motions of the
Pope. But he seems on the whole to regard the ex- 1,
istence of pupal rule, according to the traditions of the '
church, as incompatible with any essential secular re-
form of a lasting character in the government of the
papal states ; and to think that the effect of the latter
must be to annihilate the former. Something to this
effect will be found in the following peerage taken
from the end of the third volume. After describing
the grant of the new constitution, he says:
Thus we find Reims now for the first time since the days
of Rienzi possessed of a free constitution. No future Pups
dare retrograde; if the rash attempt to undo what has been ,
done were made, the Pope and tl • papacy would perish to-
gether. The elections have been held; deputies have been
&mien ; the pediment he. met, and already stormy diseus.
done have talus *es. The limits have been expelled ;
and, I verily believe, had the Pops longer resisted the popular
demand far a declaration of war against Austria, he would
have been expelled also. What the future condition of the
papacy may be, or what effect this free constitution may
produce on the spiritual authority of the Pope, it is not easy
to prophesy. Some maintain the spiritual power will be
greater, and more respected and obeyed, when divested of
the übitrary temporal power with which it has been so long
associated and defiled. Others insist, the spiritual and tem-
poral authorities have been so long connected, that they can-
not exist in full independent action, separate and apart. I
incline to the latter opinion ; the habit of examining and
criticising the Pope's acts, as a temporal ruler, will lead Is
the like practice in reform* to his ode as a spiritual raker,
sad moon may be applied to the consideration of his con-
duct ha bath cepecities alike. Moreover, how is the Pope to
tame Ws spiritual edicts? Will the laity of Rome longer
submit to be imprisoned if they do not attend confession ?
Most unlikely; and if the ceremonies of the church cannot
be enforoed what becalm of their value in the eyes of the
people ? new keg will the /Mrs Expwrgateertue exist ?
Bow long the monasteries sad convents, and the religious
corporations ? The laws relating to landed property in the
Papal States met be changed; and, in so doing, the im-
mense poeesesionv of the dwelt will be interfered with, cur-
tailed, or a ted to secular purposes. The freedom of
the press encourage freedom of thought ; and bow the
latter can eirexist with absolute, iafellibiespiritual autho-
rity over the mind of man, it is very &omit to comprehend.
That ems reformation in the church of em
sast be =ads
I balm; the tion will be as as la saint My
beast is, political liberty in Italy will abAsseady alma the
mass el pare religion.
The emotion is one, indeed, full of perplexity, and
it may role deeper judgments than Mr. Whitaide's
to predict the ultimate consequences of what Pius IX.
has done, whether of hi,* own free will, or compelled
by hie position. In the meanwhile, any oontribu-
tionm matter of tact on this interesting
it "abject are
valuable, es aids to ',peculation concerning ; and
those afforded by the volume before us--sepssially as