The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-12-29 00:00:00

and Reubens in appearance, he had forsaken the law for
" Why, replied he, four of us carried
a and four, and we sal-

the art of painting
on gloriously. We had a carria

lied out, and tasted their wine at every village and town
we passed through, picking up turkies, fowls, pigeons,
and Bologna sausages, such a lark !" Singing, smoking,
and shouting all the w y, and in such delirious go-a-bead
proceedings, is it any wonder that the English are fair
, travelling on the Continent is thought to be
exnP-

game, and

Every city, nay e

ry town, in Italy has something to

t tourist and searcher after interest-
ing objects and novel manners, customs, and works of
art. My advice is, read the best guide-books (Madame
Stark or Murray ;) have a good map ; and on entering a
town, stop but a night at the hotel—ltalian and French
always cheaper than English. The following morning
nd get your apartments by the day, week, or
nclination may prompt you, and the locality
t and repay you for a longer or shorter resi-
des, the people pay more attention to those
may meet at parties, soirees, &c., than they
swiftly migratory class. At Flo-
our letters of credit to

and the intellig

sally out,
month, al

a possibly do to t

rence, Roliie, and

your bankersi--the Prince Torlonia at Rome, Moody and
Company at Venice—will ensure you polite treatment,
hospitality, and the best introductions. At Florence you
cannct attend the Grand Duke's balls unless you have
had the entree at Court in London, or hold a commission
in the army or navy, with an unsullied name; and this
Admiralty or the Commander-in-

entied by

Chief. But all the Casino halls, and other festas where
the Grand Duke and Duchess are frequently present, are
open by your subscription, on the presentation of your

How u

-like scenes at Florence, Rome, and
to the stranger ! How munificent at
eiven by the Prince Torlonia and his

really fair, lovely, and ui bane Princess—she of the an-
cient and noble Cotonna family, abounding less now than
formerly in the possession of wealth and power ! This
last lovely descendant of the ancient house does the
honours of the reception- of visitors gracefully as an angel
might be supposed to do; but her name the punsters of
Rome play off their wit upon, and say, the rich princely
banker has by his marriag

_ put a capital to the almost
fallen Colonna, or column. Three of his palaces are in-
deed royal ; so also is the Colonna Palazzio, with fine,

~ and ch

Torlonia i

patron of the fine arts. One small
zures (a copy) he paid Gibson a thou-
and his new palace outside the walls of
to cost several hundred thousand
tion. You require tickets for ad-
it will amply repay the visit of the

sand gu
Rome

eas for

ties. Leo I. restored him, and sent him on several em-
bassies. Clement VII. divested him of the purple, and
again restored him to it. He was author of poems in
praise of Isabella Filamarini, and another work, " De
Laudabua Mulierum." He died Viceroy of Naples,
1532.

One of Torlonia's palaces is near St. Peter's. Let us
pass, in imagination, through the saloons, adorned with
masterpieces in painting, elegant sculpture, lofty and
richly-chrved candelabras, to the hall for dancing and
concerts during Lent. There is the nephew of Napo-
leon, a living picture of his ambitious and renowned
" great uncle," who literally waded through seas of hh,od
to his bad eminence ; here are dignitaries of the church,
noblemen, barons, princes, travellers from every nation,
ladies in rich, elegant, and diversified costumes, glittering
in diamonds, lovely in beauty, fascinating in true gentility
and kindness of manner. Around pass the richly-liveried
footmen, with massive silver waiters loaded with every
delicacy. Some of the more remote apartments are cooler,
and fitted up with card and billiard tables, chess-boards,
&c. ; and the fine orchestral band is heard at intervals in
the distance, giving life, motion, and spirit to the inspi-
ring waltz, quadrille, and polka. Truly, as Mr. Dombey
says to little Paul, his son, you see here " how powerful
money is" ; and whatever the commission charged by the
princely banker, he gives it back to his travelling and
visiting friends with a liberal, elegant, and munificent
hand. Fees were formerly collected by the servants, who
waited the day after these splendid balls and concerts on
the visitors for their contribution of a Franciscone each ;
but this custom has long since, when mentioned to the
Prince, been properly abolished by a written placard,
exhibited at the Bank in the Corso.

The gardens or Sallust were particularly interesting to
me. Here are slight remains of the temple of Vesta ;
and here, tradition affirms, one of the vestal virgins was
sacrificed by fire for the violation of her unhappy and
unholy vow. What is unnatural cannot be good or pleas-
ing to the benevolent Deity who rules with such benig-
nant sway over all worlds and all creatures. In this gar-
den the sublime statue of the Dying Gladiator was found.
To me, simple as it is, I think it a more wondrous work
of art, from its pathos, than the Apollo, Laocoon, or
Venus de Medici. As you stand gazing at it, soft pity
creeps into your soul, and your admiration of the won-
drous skill of the sculptor is lost in sympathising feelings
for the dying man before you. I know my readers will
pardon my quotation of Lord Byron's exquisite lines
upon this supreme effort of human skill :

" I see before me the Gladiator lie :
He leans upon his hand—his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers agony;
And his drooped head sinks gradually low,
And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy one by one,
Like the first of a thundershower. And now
The arena swims around him—he is gone,
Ere ceased the inhuman shout, which hailed the wretch
wt .o won.

He heard it. but he heeded not : his eyes
Were with his heart, and that was far away.
He recke I not of the life he lost, nor prize ;
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay,
There were his young barbarians all at play ;
There was their Dacian mother ;—he, their sire,
Butchered to make a Roman holiday !
All this rushed with his blood—shall he expire,
And unayenged ? Arise, ye Goths, and glut yodr ire !"
But lam forgetting the historian Sallust's gardens. Sal-
lust's writings have been translated by our Queen Eliza-
beth, and also by a Spanish princess. Nineteen hundred
years have passed s nce this remarkable man was scourged
by Milo, afterwards made Questor, and then Tribune,
then an expelled Senator, then restored by Caesar, and
sent to the province of Numidia as Praetor ; plundering
that province, he returned with immense riches to Rome,
and purchased a very magnificent building and the gar-
dens on Mount Quirinal, that still bear his name. Into
these gardens I strolled several times. The fine tall
reeds, ten to twelve feet in height, still grow ihere in
African luxuriance. I cut myself a walking-stick from
one of these reeds, and brought it safely through Italy,
Sicily, Malta, and Egypt, to England. And in this gar-
den, where a few poor labourers were employed, once
stood the temple of Vesta, the goddess of fire !'s But
Pope's poetical fiction of

" How happy is the blameless Vestal's lot,"
will not obtain credence in our enlightened age. These
girls, chosen from six to ten years of age, were bound by
holy vows as priestesses for thirty years—the first ten
years as learners of the ceremonies of the religion, the
next in the performance of those ceremonies, the last in
teaching them to others. It may be probable that the
white head-dress, garment, and purple stole of the vestal
virgins gave rise to the orders of Christian nuns ; and
their watching the ever-burning fires may have been the
precursor to the altar-lamps ever kept burning before the
Catholic shrines to this day, and which throw a solemn,
quiet light over the sublime architecture, paintings, and
sculpture of Christian temples !

NOTICES.

State and Prospects of Ireland. By Eyre Evans, EEci
Liverpool : Whitty and Ellis.
__ _

Whatever falls from Mr. Evans, upon any subject with
which he may be presumed to be acquainted, is entitled
to a considerable amount of attention, on account of his
standing in our town, and the known ability and energy
with which he is accustomed to press his views upon the
public. In taking up, therefore, a publication of his,
upon the state and prospects of Ireland, we undoubtedly
expected to find, amidst the rather violent assertion of
his opinions upon some political topics, much practical
information and even originality in the treatment of his
subject. In this we have not heen sit naether
ed. In tracing some of the most pressing difficulties
which retard the improvement of Ireland to the con:ipli-
cated state into which the tenure of its land has fallen,
considerable ingenuity has been sbewn, and not a little of
just at-aiment.

0 A
Mr. Evans maintains that the most material obstacle
opposing the improved cultivation of Ireland, is the divi-
sion of the fee simple of the soil amongst few hands,
many of whom are non-resident, and most of them se-
verely burrhened. To the fact that the law of entail pre-
vents the sale of common, reclaimable bog, or even of
cultivated land, in portions suited to the amount of capi-
tal to be employed, he attributes the fact that improve-
ment is paralysed ; and to the same cause he attributes
the middleman system, and the leases and subleases by
which estates become encumbered with a population too
great for them. As a remedy for these and other evils,
he proposes a removal, in Ireland, of the laws of primo-
geniture and entail. The mode of effecting this we allow
him to explain himself, only adding that the whole pam-
phlet is well worthy of a perusal :
" Having endeavoured to prove that the laws of primo-
geniture and entail are bad in principle, and destructive
in practice, it remains to show how they may be abolished
for the welfare of society, not only without prejudice to
the rights, but to the great advantage of those persons
who hold their possessions or reversionary rights under
these restricting laws. The first step towards the diffu-
sion of landed property should be the giving power to
tenants for life to sell as much land as will clear off the
existing incumbrances upon their estates.
" The next step should be the abolition, to take effect
from a certain prospective date, of the power of entailing
upon the unborn up to the time of, or in some cases nine
months after, the death of the testator.
" To hasten the beneficial result of this change, it
should he competent for the tenant for life to negotiate
with heirs i❑ remainder, either for the purchase by him-
self of their several interests in his estate, or for the sale
to them of his own ; care being taken, as at present, that
all interests be satisfied and properly secured.
" The right reserved to the testator to bequeath his
property amongst the living, or to public uses, should be
unlimited. The right to give, during life, supposes that
of giving at the last moment of existence, the transfer
from one possessor to the other being instantaneous. The
testator has also the right of giving reversions in survivor-
ship, which is, in fact, associating joint heirs with differ-
ent degrees of interest in the property bequeathed, which
he might otherwise have divided amongst them.
" It will require no space of time, of any consequence
in the life of a nation, to mature the new system. The
remnant obstacles of adjusting interests, and winding up
old accounts under the ancient regime, would soon melt
away by deaths or compromises ; and although a few of
the old school, for a time, may follow the old fashion of
making what is called a family in the person of the eldest
son, nature and justice will triumph before long, and, as
in the United States, public opinion will ensure from pa-
rents an equal distribution, of what they have to leave,
amongst their children. That the anticipated favourable
results of free transfers and division of property are well
founded, is proved by the high state of civilisation and
the great productiveness of those countries where property
is most divided, and the land cultivated by resident pro-
prietors. The Lothians of Scotland, where this system
has a considerable, although not a general existence,
shows the best and most productive farming in the empire.
Belgium end Switzerland, renowned for their productive-
ness, under the management of innumerable happy landed
proprietors, and the improved condition of a vast portion
of the French people, by the breaking up of the immense
estates of the nobles, is notorious. The inequalities of
property, which different degrees of talent, of industry,
of conduct, of the size of families, and of good or bad
fortune create, are quite enough (without the intervention
of laws which may be termed legislative treason to the
people at large) to ensure accumulations of wealth suffi-
cient for the purposes of all undertakings, and of main-
taining the refinement of educated society. Although
France has benefited so much by the multiplication of
landed proprietors, any approach to the French system
of compulsory division of patrimonial property, so fatal
to the peace of families, so subversive of control over the
young, and so irrespective of the judgment of the old,
should be carefully avoided in any system proposed for
Ireland.