The Sun.
London, England, 1846-05-25 00:00:00

the little fishing town of Camoglia, "amphibious-looking
fellows lying as'ecp on the parapet of the rude pier, with
their legs dangling over the wall, as though earth and water
were all one id them, and if they slipped in they would
float away, dozing comfortably among the fishes 1' The
account given us by lir. Dickens, of the ruined
Colceseum is, to our thinking, about the finest passage
in the volume, considered of itself, and irrespective of
its relation to the general text. ‘4 It is no fiction," says
Boz, "but plain, sober, honest truth, to say—se suggis-
tive and distinct is it at this hour—that, for a moment,
actually in passing in, they who will, may have the whole
great pile before them, as it used to be, with thousands
of eager faces staring down into the arena, and such a
athe its
whirl of etrife, and dust, and blood, going on there, as
dno lengu.ge can describe. Its solitude, its awful
beauty,
next
ter strikemednieseonlztionlikea
upon
the
stranger, nsoftened
sorrow ; and never in his life, perhaps, will
he
be so moved and Overcome by any sight, not
immediately connected with his own affections and
afflictions. To see it crumbling there, an inch a year ;
its walls and arches overgrown with green ; its cor
ridors open to the day ; the long grass growing in its
porches ; young trees of yesterday springing up on its
ragged parapets, and bearing fruit ; chancer uc
p d eof
the seeds dropped there by the brds who build their
nests within its chinks and crannies ; to see tt
of fight filled up with earth, and thepeacefulr i
aross
s t
pie tired in the centre ;to climb into its upper halls, i
look down on ruin, ruin, ruin, all about it • the trium-
phal an(
arches of Constantine, Septimus, geverus, and
Titus ; the Roman Forum ; the palace of tin-
Cr2sars ; the teznples of the old religion fallen
down and gone ; is to see the ghost of old
Rome, wicked wonderful old city, haunting the
very ground on which its people trod. It is the
most impressive, the most stately, the most solemn,
grand, majestic, mournful sight conceivable. Never, in
its bloodiest prime, can the sight of the gigantic Colos-
seum, full and running over with the lustiest lire, have
moved one heart, as it must move all who look upon it
now, a ruin. GOD be thanked : a ruin!—The ghostly
pillars in the Forum ; the triumphal arches of Oki
Emperors ; those enormous masses of ruin which were
once their palaces ; the grass-grown mounds that marl;
the graves of ruined temples ; the stones of the Via
Sacra, smooth with the tread of feet in ancient Rome ;
even hese were dimmed, in their transcendent melan-
choly, by the dark ghost of its bloody holidays,
erect and grim, haunting the old scene ; despoiled by
pillaging popes, end fighting princes, but not laid,
wringing wild hands if weed, and grass, and bramble ;
and lamenting to the night in every gap and broken
arch—the shadow of its awful self, immovable 1"

To follow our author through his peregrinations in
classic land would be an useless impertinence, seeing
that our readers will avail aernselves of the first oppor
tunity to follow him themselves. Surely the truth, and
arnestness, and poetry of thought contained in the above
brief extract, will be an ample incitement to the perusal
of the little volume from which it is transcribed. And
of incitements to pursue the track of the narrative when
once commenced, there will be enow in all conscience.
Nor is this attractive characteristic of the " Pictures
from Italy" so much attributable to the zestful
mannerisms of "Boz," scarcely resistible, as these
mannerisms are in alternate drollery, solemnity,
and picturesque elegance—as in the unconscionable ad
ventures and the grotesque characters with which it is
enlivened throughout. As to the adventures, for in-
stance, we have Mr. Dickens at the theatre of puppets,
or Marionetti, watching the comic puppet " with extra
joints in his legs, and a practical eye, with which he
winks at the pit, in. a manner that is absolutely insup-
portable to a stranger ;" then we have him (Mr. Dickens.
not the puppet), in the travelling caravan, boxed up
with an old priest " who was troubled with cramps in his
legs, so that he had to give a terrible yell every ten
minutes or so, and be hoisted out by the united efforts
of the company ; the coach always stopping for him
with great gravity." Then again we have "Boz" over-
taken on the frontiers of the Papal States by a hurricane
"so terrific that they were obliged to take his other
half out of the carriage, lest sho should be blown
over, carriage and all, and to hang to it on the
windy side (as well as they could for laughing), to
prevent its going, Heaven knows where." At another
time we find him outside the picture-gallery at Mantua.
where he observes, " The moment the gate of this re-
treat was opened, some 500 geese came waddling round
us, stretching out their necks, and clamouring in the
most hideous manner, as if they were ejaculating.
Ch! here's somebody come to see the pictures ! Don't
go up! Don't go up! While we 'went up, they waited
very quietly about the door, in a crowd, cackling to one
another occasionally, in a subdued tone ; but the instant
we appeared again, their necks came out like telescopes,
and setting up a great noise, which meant, I have
no doubt, What, you would go, would you ! What
do you think of it ! How do you like it !
They attended us to the outer gate, and cast us
forth, derisively, into Mantua." Foremost amongst the
characters delineated by our author in his present
volume is undoubtedly "The Brave Courier," who
figures more or less throughout its pages, and who, be-
cause of the goodly appearance of his purse, "is doated
upon to such an extent by the landlord that he can
hardly wait fur his coming down from the box, but em
braces his very legs and boot-heels as he descands."
There is a very jewel of a French Postilion also, who
is sure to have a contest with his horses before they have
gone very far ; and then he calls him a thief, and a
brigand, and a pig, and what not ; and beats him about
the head as if he were made of wood." A mob oi
minor personages, all capital in their way, is scattered
over the chapters, such as " a yellow dwarf of a woman (at.
Valmontone) who stands on tiptoe to arrange the
hatchet knives, and takes a flying leap to look into the
water-jug ;" or the " heavy gentleman from Naples,"
who insists upon going up the steepest part of Mount
Vesuvius, borne upon a litter, and who in consequence
is incessantly horrifying the rest of his companions by
presenting to them "a whole length of himself alarm ingl)
foreshortened with his head downwards. The candour
and boldness of Mr. Dickens's criticisms, upon many of
the most vaunted paintings of the great masters, are
agreeable enough for those very qualities, even though
they scared away some of our most cherished visions o:
pictorial beauty. Of the caricatures of religious cere-
monies with which the volume is replete, we shall only
say they possess to us a most painful discordance. We
would, however, ask Mr. Dickens if the grotesqueness
of those ceremonies consists in their own inherent absur.
dity, or in his misapprehension of their meaning ? Alto
gether as a melange of Italian sketches, pencilled with
that keen and humourous familiarity of manner so pe•
culiar to Boz. these "Pictures from Italy" will amuse
hundreds of his countrymen, without militating against
his reputation. We wish him a blithesome Godspeed on
his visit to Switzerland (which he announces in the pre-
face), and look forward gladly fur a renewal of our
literary communion on the first of next October.

THE ARISTOCRACY OF ENGLAND. By
John Hampden, jun.
William Cobbett we would wager a very considerable
amount is a name fraught with enthusiasm in the recol-
lections of the writer of this remarkable volume. So ne
of the pages are luminous with the reflex of that
leveller's spirit; the thoughts are not unfrequently.akin
to those which marked his idiosyncracy ; there is a
caustic rashness, we might almost term it an audacity of
sarcasm in its tone, which cannot fail to remind the
reader of the register and of the " Legacy to Parsons."
To some this comparison will seem of a laudatory
character ; to others a most unenviable resemblance;
the late Member of Parliament for Oldham
having left at his demise a memory of " very
bad odour," according to his antagonists, while, if we
may credit his worshippers, he departed life in "the
odour of (political) sanctity." W hatever may be the
estimate formed of Cobbett as a legislator, everyone
must, however, concede that as a satirist upon the
abuses of his contemporaries, as a hater of bigotry
whether in Church or State, as a divulger of impositions
which had been sanctified by the accordance of our
very credulous ancestry, he was a man of infinite daring,
consistency, and talent. He wrote upon marble with an
iron pen ; his words found a ready access to, and a
staunch abiding place in, the hearts of the people.
Even when he appeared the most to evade a
dangerous topic his scorn was hurled at it
with the most crushing impetuosity, like the
Parthian soldiers of antiquity flying before the enemy,
but levelling them in the dust with random arrows. As.
partaking somewhat of the earnestness of his renowned
master, John Hamden, junior (a noble pseudonyms by
the way!) excites our interest by his very mannerisms,
arouses our kindliness by the extreme bitter with which
his lucubrations are tinctured, and stirs up a strange
sympathy within us by the astonishing boldness which
characterises his present undertaking. "Kingcraft" has
long been the pet rallying word of revolutionary repub-
licans. " Priestcraft" again has, time out of mind,
formed the favourite text of the free-thinker, and is
about the most showy and trumpery decoy that can
well be imagined to lead Ignorance into the bogs
and quagmires of Infidelity. "Aristoeraft," however, has
hitherto remained unnoticed, or 1-ut very indifferently
hinted at, in these fierce bandyings about of vitupe-
ration—and what opportunities would it not afford for
the utterance of rhetorical indignation ! Our author
has availed himself of the oversight of his predecessors.
He has flung his gauntlet down amidst the dust and
cobwebs of the herald office, any snapped his fingers de
risively at all the strawberry leaves ever modelled in
gold. The oldest family tree in the peerage is regarded
by him as nothing more than an upas grafted upon the
national stock, and one whose fruits are extortion, vice,
and unnatural sloth. Every attribute attached to the
Right Honourables in the land is to him a most uncon-
scionable deceit ; all the ribands, and titles, and
ermines, and coronets, and trains, and stars, and
precious stones with which their Lordships are bedizened
are to bim merely as flowers upon dunghills. The
Moloch, before whom thousands from time immemorial
have prostrated themselves in the enthusiasm of their
reverence, he is ready to tweak by the nose and roll from
its pedestal. Now, in this endeavour, viewed of itself
there are considerable courage, considerable imperti-
nence, no little justice, and an extraordinary number of
fallacies. Upon one inference we jt,in issue with Hamp-
den, junior, cordially ; upon another we must acknow-
ledge the decided divergence of our opinions
from each other : here, we assent to his premises ;
there we dissent from his deductions. A book
has yet to be written upon the Aristocracy, tracing their
history dispassionately, with no view to the aggrandize-
ment or advantage of any class whatsoever, even if that
class be the people. Deal justly with the many, but in
God's name ! deal justly with the few likewise, no
matter what may have been their pecadillocs or their
giant offences. Diffuse happiness over the many, but,
again, in God's name I do not shower misery upon the
few ; no matter how great may be the alloy of their
villainies, they are made, as well as ourselves, of human
stuff, and consequently have some grain or so
of good at the bottom. For those scanty gra as,
allay, your indignation, modulate . your wrath ;
(19 Notice, and diffuse happiness, If possible,