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. And ever as she sang Bbe sWpped with glee , Joying in Itiskfsh health and -liberty ^ " . 01 quanto 6 bella , la campagna ! " ! Por here the milk is good , the air is pure , And primroses througn years of Spring endure ; Here trails the vine , here hangs the sweet-grained fig , Here powdery Bucklers with red gourds wax big , Here plumey pinks I gather of the best , Here dart green lizards , here bees have no rest . " 0 ! quanfco e bella la campagna !" Lift me within the arch and hold me there , For I can gaze without a thought or care . How plunge the swallows in the inyrtled rock ! How snow the myrtles where the swallows flock ! How float the lily-ships upon the deep ! Like white moths on a blue sword ^ blade they creep . " 0 ! quanto e bella la campagna !" The sun , so fear , so liquid bright he ' s sped , Seemed to drop gold-dust slowly on my head . . The waves so calm , so azure-rich their dye , Seem but a darker fragment of the sky ; , Madonna mia ! we wiLl loudly sing , Till from our pergola afar doth ring . " 0 \ quanto e bella la campagna ! "
Not such the gaiety , though sueh the song , Of a poor child that dragged its limbs along , Wasted and ragged on the foul curb-stones , Where busy Naples echoes with , the groans Of tottering jades ; where narrow streets are rife With sulphur-dust and dirt , and wheeling strife , " Ahi me ! quanto e bella la campagna ! " Here , every breath I draw is thick and hot , Here fche sun blisters me with painful spot j I swoon with sickly vapours , and am lost Between the frequent wheels , or roxaghly tost In the wild crowd ;—there , all is quickening bloom , Sunshine , and cool , and blives grateful gloom . " Alii me ! quanto & bella la eampagna !" God pity me , that I must linger here , — I cannot eat , —yet starving am , I fear ! Oh that some fair sea-sprite who loved me well Would waft me o ' er to Capri in a shell ! But what to me the flowers or leaflets sheen ?—I must be dead to rest me in the green ! " Ahi me ! quanto h bella la campagna ! " Yet not the less our child sang loud and free , — What glossy eggplums nestle on the tree ! What golden javelins the reapers hold ! What silken roses deepen fold on fold , What starry blossoms by each path are spread , Purple and lilac , ivory-white , "blood-red . " 6 ! quanto e bella la campagna ! " And Nature kissed her lightly on the mouth . ; For all are not so grateful ¦;— their ' s the drouth And peevish murmur—nor can they esteem Deep draughts of sunshine , summer ' s vivid dream ! But let us swell the dhild-entoned lay , And chant the memories of dull towns away , — " O J quanto e bella la campagna I " The author already possesses elegance : let him seek for strength .
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LIFE IN BRAZIL . Life in Brazil ; or , Tttc Land of the Cocoa and the Palm . By T . JEwbank . _ Sampaon 3 Jow . JExckvting a few chapters , this book might be entitled "A Manual of Church Ceremonies in Brazil . " Where it is not a Penance , it is a Camiyal . Nor is Mr . Ewbank at fault when he promises to describe " Life in Brazil , " and describes , for the most part , sacred interiors , altars , vestments , processions , rites , fasts , feasts , and the zodiac of Catholic anniversaries . To to . a Brazilian is to be immersed in ecclesiastical affairs , to find saints , crosses , and carvings , not only in the market places , but in rural seclusions , and the passes of the mountains ; to see in every street , and at all hours of the ( lay , the flutter of priestly robes , and hear , in the light and in the darkness , Latin chaunta and the roll of organ music . Mr . Ewbank , consequently , professing to depict the manners of ttrazil , could not fail to bring into tho foreground a crowd of ccclesiasticmls , bright masses of church-plate , flower-wreathed cliapela , and youthful nuns , with all tho anecdotes that appertain , customarily , to those Christian vestala . But , though these matters fill n large
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is not essential to the prosperous existence of a community . His prelWrnaiy argument is one of astounding sitnplieity . The government of tlie Thirty Tyrants , he says , was bad . Athens shook off that bad government and flourished ; therefore had government is not a destructive influence . But what if Athens had submitted to the Thirty Tyrants?—if France had yielded passively to the domination of , Engl ^ nd ? Spain , the writer proceeds , endured centuries of oppression , yet resisted the arms of Bonaparte , vrhich is a mere fallacy , since it did not resist Bonaparte , who was expelled by English armies *; and since , under ignominiously weak and corrupt governors , Spain has fallen to the lowest condition of degeneracy and decay . From controversy the Count de Gobineau proceeds to theory . A nation is degenerate , he says , when the blood of its founders no longer flows ha its veins , but has heen gradually deteriorated by successive foreign admixtures . f the Hinduthe
It being impossible to ascertain who were the " founders " o , Chinese , the Greek , or Roman races , and it being equally impossible to deny that the English , French , and Italian races are mixed , we do not see how far the argument is to he carried . National purity , in this sense , # ould be best preserved by isolation , the effects of which are illustrate by the condition of China and Japan . The Chinese have made no progress for five hundred years , and have retrograded in political and military power . The Japanese are protected , not by their own forces , but by the jealousy of European nations . The Hindus , who have transmitted their blood for tw / enty centuries throtigh undeviating channels , have been repeatedly conquered , and seem to have lost the initiative faculty . Parity of race is to be found in the Guinea negro , the black tribes of the Indian islands , the aborigines of ^ Australia , the N ^ rtb American Indians ; it is not found in Malays , before whose natural strength the curly-haired nation has invariably
succumbed-We concur with the Count de Gobineau in the belief that the accidents of soil and climate have exercised only a limited influence on the character of nations and the destiny of empires . Of course maritime populations naturally produce a race of navigators ; the inhabitants of arable valleys adopt agriculture by instinct ; the tribes that roam over the Tartar pastures prize their flocks and herds above all other possessions ; mountainous territories have nursed liberty ; exposed plains have been easily conquered ; but the extremes of prosperity and poverty have existed in the valley of the Nile ; Italy has "been at times free , at times enslaved ; there was nothing in the position of Bipme to ensure its political eminence , nothing in the Tiber to indicate it as the
centre of a vast range of commercial enterprise . From these examples the Count de Gobineau derives a legitimate conclusion ; but they were too Obvious to escape so enthusiastic an inquirer ; Unfortunately , however , his enthusiasm is in a tenfold ratio to his judgment . What will it be supposed does he adduce in corroboration of his opinion that it is futile to bestow upon any nation institutions not suggested by its own geniusT NotJing more than the miserable parody of constitutionalism in the Sandwich Islands —the Republic of Dominica ., the Empire of Hayti , as if the imperial Munabo-Jumbo of Hayti > or a black imposture in the purple and ermine of George the Third , furnished political and historical illustrations . Gobineau
THE DECAY OF NATIONS . The Moral and Intellectual Diversity of Races , with Particular Referenceto their Respective Influence in . the Civil and Political History oj Mankind . From the French of Count do Gobineau . With an Analytical Introduction by H . Hotz . Trubner . The subject of the Count de Gobineau ' s work is one which can only be discussed within vague limits , and upon uncertain data . Investigations of such a nature can have little more than a negative result . In this instance , the French writer and his American editor are successful in discrediting a number of old theories ; but when they propose a new axiom , it is a paradox . The main object of a somewhat desultory argument is to discover by what process , and under what law , nations arid empires inevitably decay . The Count de
Gobmeau affirms that it is by the exhaustion of the " ethnic " principle , —by the corruption or obliteration of the original nationality . It was the doctrine of certain ancient philosophers that states and civilisations perished through luxury , effeminacy , uiisgovemment , immorality , and fanaticism . The Count de Gobineau argues in opposition to this theory—that the Aztec empire , which was the type of organised fanaticism , fell , not because it was fanatical , but before the arias of Cortez ; that Greek , Roman , and Persian luxury did not surpass the luxury of England , France , and Russia ; that Pisn , Genoa , and Venice wejre not ruined by enervation ; that immorality could not have destroyed Rome since Home never was moral ; that no antiqup monarchy was more virtuous in its flourishiner asre than at its
tall ; and ^ hat Paris , in the height of its glory , is a dissolute city . This reasoiungijs very , incomplete and inconclusive , First , nothing can be assumed from the actual prosperity of France or England , beqause England or France may bo ruined within a hundred yeara . When an European army subjugated Mexico , it is by no moans probable # at the empire was at its highest point of opulence or power , and one sto p further , in logical sequence , deprives the Count de Gobineau ' s reasoning of all its weight . He says the Mexicans were conquered by Cortez . But why wore they conquered by Cortez ? It was not m every ago of Grecian history that Cheroncea would have been a defeat , or m every age of Roman history that the Goths could have entered tl > c Capitol . When the Italian xepublica declined , it was through tho extinction of the military spirit , through jenlauay eclipsing patriotism , through a sordid devotion to riches , and a still more sordid devotion to peaoe . From this paradox , the Count de Gobineau advances to another—that good government
In his consideration of uncultivated tribes , the Count de , assuming" the intellectual imparity of races , and the permanence of that imparity , does not appear to have extended his researches very far . It is scarcely accurate to place the Samoyedes , the Fidas , and the Pelagian negroes on one level , and the Mongul Tartars , tie Quiehuas , and the Azuaras of Peru on another . The points of dissimilitude and of positive imparity are numerous and distinct . The Kaffirs of southern , and the I > ahomans of western Africa present strong contrasts of tendencies and manners ; there is no barljaric Kaffir kingdom , centralised , decorated with a grotesque royalty , and systematised , like that of Dahomey . Nor would it be safe to suggest a circumstantial analogy between the Chinese , the populations of ancient Italy , the early Romansand the German tribes , or an intellectual lineage connecting the
* Hindus with the Egyptians and the natives of tlie Assyrian Empire . The discrepancies between the Assyrian and Egyptian forms of thought are sufficiently evident to disjoint any parallel that might be sought between those two races , and the dim ancestry of the Hindus . We doubt whether tlie Hindus did not arrive at a stage of material civilisation—creating a " cotnfortable" system of domestic life—as perfect as that of China . Certainly , they invented appliances of social luxury far superior to the angular mechanics of tlie Chinese . It is true that national unity has been preserved in a high degree in China , -where , from the architecture of a palace , to the lacquering of a tea-caddy , or the decoration of a coffin , one form is incessantly repeated . It is to the same extent true that in China . concrete ignorance does
not prevail in any class ; but if scholastic rudiments are the testimonies of civilisation , Germany stands far in advance of England ; and if mechanical superiority be the standard , the Malay , as Count de Gobineau remarks , who weaves a brillant dress , constructs a light canoe , paints it gaily , and launches it in quest of plunder , is as a human being higher than the mild , pacific and innocent South Seajslander . The volume is interesting and suggestive , but too shallow and paradoxical to be accepted as a contribution to historical philosophy .
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BtoeH 8 , 1856 . 1 ¦ ' . T ^ E LEAP ^ fe' : jSj >
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Leader (1850-1860), March 8, 1856, page 235, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2131/page/19/
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