language, and breathe in every page its generous and ennobling sentiments. Let us again turn to the Italian states. Naples has for many ages, indeed almost ever since the time of Cæsar, been under the sway of a monarch; Florence, for many a century, and in reality till the sixteenth, was a republic. How unproductive in genius is Naples; how exuberant Florence!

In pursuing these observations I am tempted to go a step farther, and to infer from the great prosperity of the Italian, as well as of the ancient Grecian republics, that small territories are better calculated for happiness and for liberty than extensive empires. Almost all the great towns in Italy, particularly on the coasts and in the northern provinces, have in their turns been independent; and during the era of their independence, whatsoever might be the form of their internal government, have enjoyed an unusual share of opulence, consideration, and public felicity. Mantua, Verona, and Vicenza, owe all their magnificence to their governors or to their senate, during that period; since their subjection or annexation to greater states, they have lost their population and riches, and seem to subsist on the scanty remains of their former prosperity.

Sienna and Pisa could once count each a hundred thousand inhabitants, and though their territories scarce extended ten miles around their walls, yet their opulence enabled them to erect edifices that would do honour to the richest monarchies. These cities yielded in time to the prevailing influence of their rival Florence, and under its Dukes withered away into secondary towns; while their wide circumference, stately streets, and marble edifices daily remind the few scattered inhabitants, of the greatness and of the glory of their ancestors.

Lucca still retains its independence and its liberty, and with them its full population, its opulence, and its fertility. Parma and Modena possess the latter advantages because independent, but in an inferior degree comparatively, because not free. Bologna is, (I am afraid I may now say, was,) a most flourishing city, though annexed to the papal territory; because though nominally subject to the pontiff, it is governed by its own magistrates, and enjoys. almost all the benefits of actual independence.

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These petty states, it is true, were agitated by factions at home, and engaged in perpetual warfare abroad; but their civic tempests and foreign hostilities, like the feuds and the contests of the ancient Greeks, seem to have produced more good than evil. They seldom terminated in carnage or in destruction; while they never failed to give a strong impulse to the public mind, and to call forth in the collision every latent spark of virtue and of genius. It may, perhaps, be objected, that such petty states are too much exposed to external hostility, and are incapable of opposing a long and an effectual resistance to a powerful invader; and the fate of Italy itself may be produced as an instance of the misery and desolation to which a country is exposed when divided, and subdivided into so many little independent communities. It may indeed be difficult for such states to preserve their independence at a time like the present, when two or three overgrown Powers dictate to the rest of Europe, and when great masses are necessary to resist the impetus of such preponderant agents. But I know not whether a sort of federal union, like that of Switzerland (for Switzerland lost her liberty, not because subdivided but because enervated);

or rather an occasional subjection, like that of the Greeks to Agammemnon, and that of the Italian municipal towns to the Roman republic, when the common cause required them to unite and act as one body, (while at other times each state enjoyed its own laws and was governed by its own magistrates, under the honourable appellation of Socii:) I know not whether such a conditional and qualified submission would not be adequate to all the purposes of defence, and even of conquest in general, without subverting the independence, or checking the prosperity of any state in particular.

-Sic fortis Etruria crevit :

Scilicet et rerum facta est pulcherrima Roma.

But to conclude, and to sum up the history of Italy in one short observation: no country has ever been the subject or the theatre of so many wars, has enjoyed a greater portion or a longer duration of liberty, exhibited more forms of government, or given birth to so many and such powerful empires and republics. Virgil seems, therefore, not only to have described its past, but explored its future destinies, when comprising in four emphatic words its eventful annals, he represents it as,

Gravidam imperiis, belloque frementem.

Eneid Iv. 229.

LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE OF MODERN ITALY.

IV. That a country subject to so many vicissitudes, colonized by so many different tribes, and convulsed by so many

destructive revolutions, should have not only varied its dialects. but sometimes totally changed its idiom, must appear natural and almost inevitable: we are only surprized when we find that in opposition to the influence of so many causes, Italy has retained, for so long a series of ages, so much of one language, and preserved amidst the influx of so many barbarous nations uttering such discordant jargons, the full harmonious sounds of its native Latin. I have elsewhere made some observations on the origin and progress of this language*, and need only add to them, that it remained long in a state of infancy and imperfection; that, in the short space of one hundred and fifty or two hundred years, it passed rapidly to the highest refinement; and that in the days of Cicero and Virgil, it was compared by the partial Romans, and not without some appearance of reason, for copiousness, grace, and majesty, to the most perfect of human dialects, the language of Plato and of Demosthenes. Its decline was as rapid as its progress. The same century may be said to have witnessed its perfection and its decay. The causes that produced this decay continued to operate during ten or even twelve centuries with increasing activity, during which Latin was first corrupted, and then repolished and softened into modern Italian. When this change took place, by what causes it was effected, or, in other words, when and from what the Italian language originated, has been a matter of much curious research and long discussion among the learned in Italy; and where the most eminent native critics differ, it would be presumption in a foreigner to decide. As to the precise period when pure

* Vol. II. Chap. X.

Latin ceased to be spoken it would indeed be useless to inquire, because impossible to discover. Languages are improved and corrupted, formed and lost almost imperceptibly: the change in them, as in the works of nature, though daily carried on, becomes observable only at distant periods, while the intermediate gradations are too nice to excite observation. Gibbon, who might have been expected to enlarge upon a point so interesting in itself and so intimately connected with his subject as the fate of the Latin language, has only mentioned in general terms and without any allusion to the time, its entire cessation as a living tongue. For want of better information on this point, the following observations may, perhaps, be acceptable.

The Latin language, stripped indeed of its elegance, but still grammatical and genuine, survived the invasion and expulsion of the Goths, and continued to be spoken in Rome in the beginning of the seventh century. That it was spoken under Theodoric and his successors appears evident from their laws, regulations, and letters in Cassiodorus. In one of these letters, Theodahatus, then king of Italy, speaking of the language of Rome, says " Roma tradit eloquium quo suavius nihil auditur*” After the long and most destructive war which terminated in the expulsion of the Goths, we find Gregory the Great, in the beginning of the seventh century, delivering his instructions to his flock in Latin, and in a style far more fluent and correct than Cassiodorus, who preceded him by more than fifty years. It is to be remembered, that these instructions were not learned

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* Cass. lib. x. ep. 7.