ligent men of other parts of Italy, Turin's the military virtues and exploits of its increase in size and prosperity has also princes and people. We live in an age borne testimony to the benefits of consti- of steel and steam, when the sword is tutional government. While deploring more often in request than the lyre and the the disastrous change now impending easel, especially in a country whose very over her, one can not but wonder at the existence is still disputed, and whose persistent conviction the Turinese have nearest neighbor is a powerful foe. It cherished, that their city would continue may be urged that the arsenal rather than to be the capital of Italy whole and unit- the picture-gallery claims the presence of ed. This might have been possible, had a soldier-sovereign. Cialdini's arguments the peninsula accrued to the house of in favor of the strategical advantages of Savoy by right of conquest. Consider- Florence find opponents among Italian ing the way in which the kingdom of generals not less experienced than himItaly has been formed, it was unreason self, and whose military education has able to expect that its numerous famous been more regular than his. In short, cities should be content, one and all, to the Piedmontese have much to urge waive their claims and doff their bonnets against the change, and it is natural that before a traditionless town in a remote they should dispute its propriety and corner of the kingdom, with inhabitants only semi-Italian, and whose habitual discourse is in a harsh and barbarous patois. Such an expectation could hardly, one would think, survive calm reflection. Before Rome, it is true, Turin bowed her head and declared her readiness to resign her supremacy. But the transfer to the Capitol was a remote contingency; who could tell what time would elapse ere the tricolor should wave over the city of the Cæsars? Turin has been called upon for an earlier sacrifice, and, great though it be, it is not to be denied that some compensation has already been afforded. It is no small glory to have been the armed hand, civilized and liberating, which has drawn together the severed portions of the fairest of European lands, which has combined into one state Tuscany and the Sicilies, Lombardy and the Romagna, extending to them all the benefits of example, and inspiring even the ignorant and degraded Neapolitan with a sense of his inferiority and a desire for improvement. One of the most striking features of the change that has taken place in Southern Italy is the progress of education--many schools now open and well attended, where lately scarcely one was to be found. This is satisfactory to reflect upon, but still, for Piedmont, and especially for Turin, the change of capital is hard to bear, the more so as it was decided only two years ago that, until Rome should be acquired, Turin was the most fitting seat of government. IfTuscany be renowned in the annals of poetry and the art, Piedmont is no less celebrated for

justice. The contrivers of the Convention, the Minghetti Ministry, might have found it difficult fully to prepare the minds of the people of this city for the loss of rank about to befall it; but they should at least have endeavored to break the news to them gently, and to spare them the shock of a sudden announcement. If they thought themselves justified in concluding a convention of which the change of capital was a condition, without consulting Parliament as to whether that condition were a proper one, they should have taken measures to conciliate public opinion. But nothing of the kind was done-not so much as a newspaper article in any of the numerous journals then subsidized with the funds of the State. It is still a matter of dispute how the news got out. As many believe, the present Secretary of Legation at Paris, a protégé of Cavour's, and who in September last was doing duty at the Italian Foreign Office, communicated it to a friend of his, the editor of a Turin morning paper. The Secretary and the editor are both Jews, and a considerable intimacy existed between them. According to another and more accredited version, Minghetti himself, with characteristic levity and want of foresight, authorized the publication of the change of capital, which was suddenly announced by the halfpenny journal referred to. One morning the Turinese read at every street corner the totally unexpected intelligence that their capital was to be reduced to a provincial town. It is hardly worth while to mention the story circulated at

themselves among wreaths of roses. The

certain Turinese tea-tables, to the effect that the king's favorite, the well-known arched embrasures of the windows, Rosina, to whom he is reported to be which, owing to the near approach of privately married, taunted an uncivil adjacent walls, admit, at the brightest shopkeeper with the coming change. By season, only a subdued light, are profusewhomsoever first betrayed, the news ly gilt, and partly filled with crimson came out abruptly, and the shock was draperies. The decorators were evidentelectric. But there was no danger of se- ly resolved to leave no plain service whererious disturbances as its consequence, on to rest the eye: walls and ceiling and it was the fault of the authorities, of alike are crowded with figures, flowers, the poltroonery of some and the folly of fanciful borders, and elaborate adornothers, that Turin's streets were stained ments, until the beholder is dazzled and with blood. "Who would have sup- bewildered, and suffers his weary gaze posed," a member of the late cabinet was to fall upon the floor, or to stray through heard to say, "that the Turinese would the window to the time-stained and have risen in insurrection?" They did weather-worn walls, balconies, and externothing of the sort; there was not an at-nal staircases of the unpretending dweltempt at a barricade, and not a firearm was captured from the rioters, if such they may be called, who were chiefly mere lads urged on by a small number of mischievious democratic agents, and whose utmost misdeeds consisted in a few shouts and volleys of stones. In the days of Cavour a more serious demonstration was met by a glance from the window, a smile, and the jest, "My Turinese are merry to-night." But Cavour was of different stuff from the Minghettis, Peruzzis, and Spaventas. Such measures as were taken were calculated rather to provoke and irritate than to soothe.

Instead of allowing the effervescence to subside of itself as it would have done, gendarmes were suffered and encouraged to fire on the people. Numerous victims testified to the combined cowardice, incapacity, and recklessness of human life which distinguished some of the men highest in authority at that disastrous conjuncture. The shameful and most unnecessary massacres of the 21st and 22d of September will long be remembered with indignation and rage in Turin, where they cost the Ministers their places and the King his popularity. Tu ning from these melancholy memories, let us enter a room whose aspect is probably familiar to not a few who read these pages. A spacious oblong hall, overloaded with decoration in the most superlative modern Italian style. The walls disappear under color and gilding, corpulent Cupids clamber and gambol over them in all directions, resting upon arabesques and clinging to garlands, while verdant dragons rear

lings outside. Only a professional gilder could estimate the amount of the precious metal that has been expended upon those walls and cornices; the carmine upon the cheeks of the Cupids would supply the whole corps de ballet of the Teatro Regio for a long season; rumor tells of the enormous sums, the scores of thousands of francs, that have been disbursed to the cunning artists and artificers who have made this great saloon the gaudiest in Europe. The triumph of their art, the ne plus ultra of their achievements, is displayed upon the ceiling, where all the gods of Olympus are assembled at their revels; where Jupiter quaffs nectar from the hand of Hebe, while jealous Juno bends her brows, and the bird of Jove, red lightning in its clutch, seems to menace the mortals assembled below. It is towards six of the clock; dinner is in full progress at Trombetta's; the session is at its height; the hotel is full to its very roof, partly with passing foreigners, but still more with the senators and deputies who have come together from all parts of Italy. Down the center of the vast room runs the long table d'hôte, prolonged by cross tables at the further end, and showing not a single vacant place. The hall is sufficiently wide to allow of rows of small tables along each of its sides, and at these dine solitary guests, or groups of from two to four persons. The gilt chandeliers suspended from the roof and distributed profusely round the room flame with gas, while a huge vase in the middle of the table supports a system of waxlights. It is the best hour of the

du pays, the company assembled furnishes

day; culinary furnaces are in full blast: great ancestor, the saintly Carlo Borroa regiment of slim black-coated waiters meo. There has been a hot discussion glide swiftly and noiselessly about the in the Lower Chamber to-day, and the room, or hover round the table d'hôte, conversation at table, at least among a watchful for the wants of the guests. dozen deputies, chiefly relates to it, and If you have been long enough in Turin, is of a most animated character. Yonto acquire some knowledge of the carte der sits one who knows everybody, and takes a leading part in the talk; an old man seemingly, but looking older than he really is; a pleasing face, with weak eyes, often blinking as if distressed by light to which they had long been unused; a gentle, genial, suffering expression which enlists sympathy, and almost excites compassion. He takes much snuff; his voice is weak and hoarse, and frequently broken by a deep cough. It is not with impunity that eleven years are passed in Neapolitan prisons. Carlo Poerio, condemned on the evidence of suborned witnesses, was fettered to a galley-slave, and wore a chain weighing fifteen English pounds, like a common felon. One wonders to see no bitterness in the benign face of the prisoner of Montesarchio, but one discerns in the placid lineaments more capability of patient endurance than energy or mental power. The amiable and loquacious old gentleman glides gently down the vale of age. He would be better at Naples inhaling its soft breezes than in this harsh and cloudy climate, but he is used to selfsacrifice; and duty detains him at Turin. Not far from him sits Lacaita, also from Naples, but well known in England, which he dearly loves and warmly admires. He is a striking example of the admirable results of English principles, habits, and thoughts, engrafted upon the warm, impressionable, and perceptive nature of the southern Italian. Near him sit several Tuscan deputies, in whom the keen observer remarks a degree of mental balance and calm judgment generally deficient in the more impulsive and volatile Neapolitans. Those gentlemen, with characteristic courtesy, suppress all outward signs of joy and exultation at the transfer of the capital to their beautiful Florence. Here is an Italian admiral, fat, fair, and bald; and near to him a slender, handsome aide-de-camp of one of the princes of the blood. His friends point him out as the mirror of honor, the personification of modern chivalry; and the passing stranger is

materials for amusing study and observation. Neglecting the often-described English groups, immediately recognizable by the beards of the gentlemen, and the flat, smooth hair of the ladies, formerly a foreign, but now exclusively an English style, let us limit ourselves to the Italian element. One finds plenty of names of ancient fame, some of them borne by men of mark. Here are scions of old nobility from Milan, Florence, and Genoa, whose patronymics figure in many a gorgeous page of Italian history, crowded with narratives of war and enterprise of revel and tourney. One almost wonders to see what humdrum prosaic personages these inheritors of great names and far-descended titles in many instances are, and to find the sages and warriors of the middle ages dwindled into prosy deputies and puny carpet-knights. Here, from Naples, are princes by the half-score, many of whom would be puzzled to show the whereabout of their principalities, but who are doubtless great men in their own land, although they may scarcely have been heard of out of it. Now and then one hears a name which brings a flood of associations to one's memory. Here, for example, sits a calm and gentlemanlike senator from Florence whose name is Strozzi, and one is carried back to the days of Cosmo di Medici, the implacable enemy of his great ancestor Filippo, the Rothschild of the middle ages, who died for the liberties of Florence after thrice enduring the torture. Near the gentle and refined-looking bearer of this great name sits a young man with an eminently Italian physiognomy. Gherardesca, direct descendant of that Ungolino who perished with his two sons and two grandsons in the Tower of Famine at Pisa. Further on, in a little old man, you see the owner of those fairy islands in Lake Maggiore, Isola Bella and Isola Madre, where one feels transported to the luxurious tropics; he too boasts of a