The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-03-21 00:00:00

REVIEWS OF BOOKS.

The Carafas of .31addaloni : Naples under
Spanish dominion. Translated from the Ger-
man of Alfred de Renmont. London : Henry

G. Bohn.

In this volume we have presented t, us a lively
picture of public life and morals, as these were
affected and participated in by the noble family
whose history, during more than two centuries, was
intimately mixed up with public affairs in Naples ;
leading, as it not unfrequently did, to acts of oppres-
sion against the populace, which oftener than once
were avenged amid scenes of disorder, rapine, and
bloodshed, such as have few parallels in national or
family annals. The history opens in 1494,and is con-
tinued to the year 1799, duringwhich period many re-
markable events have to pass in review before the
compiler of this chronicle. The special object of
the author is to show the effect and peculiarities of
Spanish dominion in Naples, as these were illus-
trated in the course of events which have long
since passed away, and in the present circumstances
and social position of the people, arising in no small
degree out of those bygone events. In the course
of the narrative it is clearly shown how dangerous
and detrimental is the unchecked sway of power,
exercised in a spirit of harsh and overbearing
sternness, where commiseration, kindness, and love
find no place in the bosom of the ruler, and where
poverty in the ruled, unrelieved by pity, unsoothed
by sympathy, generates only reckless passion—finds
relief or enjoyment only in brutalising appetites.
The dangers to be apprehended from such a system
of the social relations, found frequent and cruel
illustration in the history of Naples ; one of which,
the extraordinary and sanguinary, though brief
revolution, effected by Masaniello, and terminated
by his treacherous murder, all within the short
space of ten days, forms an episode in human affairs
which cannot be viewed by an intelligent eye with-
out awakening feelings of a painfully conflicting
nature, and inculcating lessons of deep political and
moral import. Of this singular outbreak and its
chief actor our author gives a graphic account,
from which we take the annexed extracts :--

IRASANIELLO AND THE OUTBREAK OP HIS REBELLION.
In May, 1647, a rebellion broke out in Palermo, amongst
the lower class of people, which the Viceroy, Don Pedro
Fajardo Marquis de Los Veles, was not in a condition to
resist * * * The news of the disturbances in Sicily
reached Naples, when everything there was ripe for an
insurrection, which had for a long time been fermenting
and agitating men's minds. On all sides the threatening
indications increased.

On the Market-place at Naples, the scene of so many
tragedies and so many disturbances, stood a miserable
cottage, with nothing to distinguish it from the others,
but the name and arms of Charles V., which were placed
on the front wall. Here a poor fisherman lived.Tonamaso
Aniello, generally called by the abbreviated name of Masa-
niello. His father, Francesco or Ciceo, came from the
coast of Amalfi, and had married, in 1620, Antonia Gar-
gano, a Neapolitan woman. In the Vico Rotto by the
great market, which is only inhabited by the poorest peo-
ple, and where the pestilence began in the year 1656, the
son was born who was destined to act so remarkable a part.
Tommaso Aniello was baptised in the parish church of
Santa Catherina in Foro, on the 20th June, 1620. On the
25th of April, 1641, he married Berardina Pisa, a maiden
from the neighbourhood of that town. Their poverty was
so great that often Masaniello could not even follow up
his trade of a fisherman, but earned a scanty livelihood by
selling paper for the fish to be carried in. He was of the
middle height, well made and active ; his brilliant dark
eyes and his sunburnt face contrasted singularly with his
long, early, fair hair, hanging down his back. Thus his
cheerful, lively conversation agreed but little with his
grave countenance. His dress was that of a fisherman,
but as he is generally considered a remarkable person,
whatever may be thought of the part he performed, so he
understood, in spite of the meanness of his attire, by his
arrangement and choice of colours, to give it a peculiarity
that stamped it in the memory of his contemporaries.
The life of this remarkable man—a nine days' history—
clearly shows that he possessed wonderful presence of
mind, and a spirit that knew not fear.
It happened once, in the midst of the discontent which
was everywhere excited by the exorbitant increase of
taxation, that Masaniello's wife was detained by the
keepers of the gate whilst she was endeavouring to creep
into the town with a bundle of flour, done up in cloths to
look like a child in swaddling clothes. She was impri-
soned, and her husband, who loved her much, only suc-
ceeded in obtaining her liberation after eight days.
Almost the whole of his miserable goods went to pay the
fine which had been imposed upon her. Thus hatred was
smothering in the mind of Masaniello, and the flame was
still red when he, it is not known how, quarrelled with
the Duke of Maddaloni's people, and was ill-used by them
in an unusual manner. Then the idea seemed to have
occurred to him to avenge himself by the hand of the
people. Many have related that instigators were not
wanting : Giulio Genuino is named, formerly the favourite
of the Duke of Ossuna, who, after he had encountered the
strangest fate, and after wearing the chain of a galley
slave at Oran, on the coast of Barbary, had returned an
aged man, in the habit of an ecclesiastic, to his native
country, meditating upon new intrigues, as the old ones
had failed ; also a captain of banditti and a lay brother of
the Carmine, who gave Masaniello money, were amongst
the conspirators. Perhaps all this was only an attempt
to explain the extraordinary fact. Thus much only is
known with certainty—that "Masaniello sought to collect
a troop of boys and young people, who, amongst the nu-
merous vagrant population, thronged the market and its
neighbourhood from the adjacent districts, as whose leader
he intended to appear, as had often been done before, at
the feast of the Madonna of Cannel, which takes place in
the middle of July. At that festival it was the custom to
build a castle of wood and canvass in the middle of the
market-place, close to which was the church and convent
of the Carmelites, and this castle was besieged and de-
fended by troops of the people. The great mass of the
assailants was formed out of a band of lads of the lowest
class, about four hundred in number, who painted the
greatest part of their bodies and their faces black and.
red. ; their tattered clothes gave them an Oriental appear-
ance ; they were armed with sticks, and called the com-
pany of the Alarbes, perhaps an Arabian name. They
were drilled by Masaniello, and considered him their chief.
Thus the morning of July 7th, 1647, approached. It
was Sunday, and a number of fruitsellers, with carts and
donkeys, and full baskets, came into the town very early
from Pozzuoli, and went as usual to the great maret.
Scarcely had they reached it, when the dispute began.
The question was not so much whether the tax was to be
paid, as who was to pay it.
A serious tumult is here described as ensuing,
but as it bears no particular relation to the after
course of events, beyond the fact that it served as
the starting point of the rebellion, and differs little
in its details from other popular outbreaks, we for-
bear from giving it in extenso, although it is
written with much spirit. The scenes of outrage,
pillage, and murder which followed the riot in the
market-place, crowded on each other in a ceaseless
stream of unmitigated horrors. Respect for age,
sex, or station was at once uprooted and destroyed,
violence reigned triumphant, nobles and their de-
pendants were swept before the sanguinary torrent,
and everything gave place to the insensate fury of
a lawless mob. Meantime, Masaniello, strong in
the attachment of his ready followers, elated with
success, and relying
on the resources of his natu-
rally ardent temperament, added to his general
dexterity in the management of circumstances,
found himself in a condition to dictate terms to
those by whom he was formerly treated with con-
tumely, and regarded with contempt. Under the
excitement produced by so sudden an elevation,
his reason reeled, and speedily gave way. Intriee
and treachery were enlisted against him, and in
the midst of his sudden and unexpected splendour
he was as suddenly engnlphed in ruin ; his suc-
cesses being disfigured by the wild extravagances
of insanity, and his end accelerated by the barbarous
cruelty of hired assassins a sad picture of the
vanity of human ambition, a miserable instance of
the mockery of popular dictation.

MASANIELLO'S ABUSE Or POWER.

The power of the fisherman of Amalfi was at its height;

but already he was near his ruin. The unusual way of
life, the always increasing excitement, the constant speak-
ing and watching, the small quantity of nourishment
which he took; from dread of poison—all this, in the most
fearful heat of summer, affected him bodily, and completely
turned his head. His actions can only be explained by
their being the beginning of insanity. If a crowd of
people did not please him, he attacked and wounded them
right and left. All the persons, amounting to a thousand,
that lived near his cottage on the market-place, he ex-
pelled from their dwellings, that these might be destroyed,
and he might build a large palace for himself. He lavished
gold and silver with prodigality, and gave a number of
prostitutes large dowries ; he distributed the titles of
princes and dukes, gave great banquets at Poo.gio Reale
and at Posilipo, to which he invited the Viceroy, and sent
his wife and mother, in magnificent dresses, to visit the
Duchess of Arcos. "If your excellency is the vicequeen
of the ladies," said the fisherman's wife, " I am the vice-
queen of the women of the people." But fear of the Duke
of Maddaloni haunted him like a spectre. He ordered his
beautiful villa at Posilipo to be destroyed, and made his
people ransack once more his pillaged palace at Santa
Maria della Stella. The barber of the duke and a Moorish
slave bought their lives, the first giving him various jewels
that had been concealed, and the other told him that he
was Diomed Carafe, who had caused the admiral's ship to
be set on fire, which had been blown into the air last May.
The Moor, for this lie, obtained the command of four
companies of the people ; but Masaniello's fall was brought
about by his own people. The fisherman put to death
many poor musicians merely because they had been in the
service of Maddaloni. The new master of Naples repaired
himself to the desolate palace of Carafe, and wanted to
dine there ; but he changed his mind, and had dinner
served up, with great pomp, at a neighbouring convent.
Whilst he was eating there, some of his people dragged
thither two portraits of the duke and his father, Don
Marzio. Upon them he vented his childish rage ;
smashed the frames, cut out the heads, which he put on
pikes, which he commanded to be placed upon the table
before him. On his return from the market, he put on a
snit of Carafe's clothes, of blue silk embroidered with
silver ; he hung on his neck a gold chain, and fastened in
his hat a diamond clasp, all the property of his enemy,
who had escaped. Then he flung himself on a horse, drew
forth his pistols with both hands, and threatened to shoot
any one who approached him, or who showed himself at
the windows, galloped to the sea, where was the gondola
of the viceroy, undressed himself in it, was dried with fine
Dutch linen, and put on a shirt of Maddaloni's trimmed
with lace ; and hearing that Maddaloni had gone towards
Piedimonte d'Alife, he ordered a troop of two thousand
men to march thither to seize him.

It is needless further to pursue the career of
imbecility and maddened vanity of this unhappy
child of fortune, who, borne on the waves of popular
commotion, was tossed upon the seat of power. A
few brief hours sufficed to raise him from obscurity
and indigence to the pinnacle of wealth and great-
ness—his progress in elevation was too rapid to be
safe, he stumbled even in the assent—on reaching
the summit, he found the prospect too expansive,
the platform too narrow, to ensure stability—a few
days of anxious misery was his sum of earthly
glory—stained with crime— defiled with blood and
bereft of reason, he perished miserably beneath the
blow of assassination, a sad example of the punish-
ment which follows the lust and the abuse of power.
From the story of that tide of popular frenzy
we learn, also, the further and fearful lesson of the
danger to be apprehended from deeply-rooted ill-
feeling left rankling in the bosoms of the populace,
the frequent, though not invariable concomitant of
misrule and oppression ; and, above all, the off-
spring of estrangement between the different
classes of society, a condition at once seized on in
cases of emergency as a pretext for insurrection,
robbery, and murder.

The History of Xerxes
_the C-real. By Jacob

Abbott. London : Nathaniel Cooke.

In those biographical treatises which have ema-
nated from the pen of Mr. Abbott, due attention
has been paid to the chronological sequence of
events by which the narrative has to be marked
and illustrated ; and in general the selection of
subjects has been judicious. That which now lies
before us is of questionable merit in the last-named
respect. Xerxes is a name which, from very early
associations, we have been led to look on as nearly
synonymous with a rapacious lust of power, vain-
glory, intellectual weakness and personal pusilla-
nimity. In the narrative of Mr. Abbott we have
been unable to discover much reason for changing
the early formed impression alluded to, and con-
sequently we are left still in amazement at the
literary concatenation by which we find the
affix " Great" appended to his name. Like its
predecessors in the series, the life of Xerxes is a
volume in which youthful students will find much
to interest and inform them, and we therefore can-
not but regret to see so palpable a misapplication
of the sonorous and glorious title " Great."

Hogg's Instructor. Edinburgh : James Hogg.
The number of this periodical for March is rather
better than an average one. It opens with an
excellent article descriptive of " Constantinople and
the Bosphorus," a theme which, at the present
moment, is fraught with peculiar charms ; not that
the lovely natural scenery and gorgeous artificial
incidents of those localities have received any sud-
den or extensive acquisition of beauty, or been of
late invested with new attributes of glory ; but
chiefly because the inhabitants of that region have
become objects of solicitude to the ever wakeful
generosity of Britons in protecting the oppressed.
So long as Turkish indolence and sloth made the
nation the home of despotism and the chosen abode
of ignorance, superstition, and prejudice, so long
the history of its people, the charms of the country,
and the value of its productions, remained compa-
ratively matters of indifference to the British pub-
lic ; but the instant a cry of wailing, and a call for
help to ward off from her impending danger, has
reached our shores, every object connected with her
history and resources has become instinct with
vital interest to every class of Britons. Men who
before scarce heeded the warmest eulogia on the
natural beauties of the " golden horn," and who
listened with the most immovable apathy to descrip-
tions of its wonderful mercantile and naval capabi-
lities, are now eager in their inquiries on such
topics, and gladly avail themselves of such informa-
tion as design or accident places within their reach.
Such inquirers will find rational as well as interest-
ing information in the paper to which we allude,
which, we learn, is from the note-book of a
traveller who spent portions of 1852 and 1853
on the spot which he describes. It has freshness
as well as picturesque beauty to recommend it.
We had marked several portions for quotation, but
find the space devoted to such matter already filled ;
we must consequently content ourselves with a
general commendation. " The Eating and Drink-
ing Capabilities of the Metropolis" contains much
curious and well-selected matter ; and, in general,
the descriptive and statistical portions of the num-
ber deserve high praise. To some of its more aspir-
ing articles we cannot accord a similar judgment.
Several of them are beset by that bane of modern
literature, a love of fine writing ; and no one is
open to more deserved reprobation on this score
than the reputed editor of the periodical, the Rev.
George Gilfillan. Inflated and bombastical anti-
theses form no necessary part of English compo-
sition, yet in an article entitled "Modern British
Orators," by that gentleman, we find such turgid
trash as the following :
We do not mean to compare him to Burke, whose
enthusiasm was as slow as it was sanguine, as lasting in
its results as it was sudden in its rise.

It would be as cruel as it would be fruitless to ask
any one to picture to himself an enthusiasm at once
slow and sudden; but in addition to this puzzle, he
tells us in the same sentence that Burke's wrath
was at once generous and fierce ; so that, accord-
ing to Mr. Gallan, the wrath and the enthusiasm
of the great Edmund Burke must have been equally
enigmatical and contradictory. In another portion
of the same paper we are told of Brougham, that
on some wonderful occasion "the orator is sub-
limated into the man." Such escapades in most
instances would be only laughable but, as we have
reason to believe, this prolific writer is looked on
as a sort of literary deity among a certain knot of
small worshippers, it becomes a matter of duty to
expose such solecisms in composition, such outrages
upon common sense. The periodical to which our
observations apply is good in plan, and generally
respectable in execution. Can it continue to deserve
such a character, if its pages are befouled by stuff
like that which we have quoted P

On Shipping. Showing the Evils of the Broking
System. By Ralph. Darling. Newcastle-on-
Tyne : John Christie.
A pamphlet under the above title has been pub-
lished, in which its author undertakes to show that
numerous and heavy grievances are inflicted on the
shipping interests of this country by the system of
brokerage. He also proposes practical remedies
for the evils which he points out. He addresses
himself to the shipping and mercantile communi-
ties of Great Britain and Ireland, and by them the
suggestions he makes will no doubt be entertained
at their full worth. The subject is one of impor-
tance, and both merits and will repay attention.

The Newspaper Press Directory. London :
C. Mitchell.

In this case, which cannot be said in all in-
stances, the title is happily significant of the pur-
pose of the work ; which is to furnish a complete
list of all the newspapers, daily, weekly, or monthly,
which are published throughout the kingdom, It

also furnishes information relative to their political,
religious, and commercial views, generally furnished
by parties so connected with the respective publi-
cations as to give authenticity to the various state-
ments. To professional men of most denominations,
and to the commercial public it presents a mass of
useful information, and in its pages the general
public will meet with much to interest and amuse
them.
Chambers' Journal. London : Chambers.

The prominent feature in the part for this month
is Mr. W. Chambers's description of his journey
to America, which he commences by detailing the
incidents of the voyage, in the Cunard steamer
the America. His account of the accommodation
on board these magnificent steam-boats is highly
interesting, but his comment on the method of
putting the passengers on board is neither just nor
reasonable. The tenders are commodious and
extremely well adapted for the purpose, and the
Mersey is not a foggy river, except at rare inter-
vals, while an accident, such as he describes, per-
haps never occurred at any other time than the
one to which he alludes. The past is, on the
whole, as good as any of the preceding ones of
this ably-conducted periodical.