posed. The votes of a certain proportion (say three-fourths) of the members should be binding on the proprietors, subject to an appeal to one or more arbitrators to be nominated at certain intervals. Such an institution would certainly bear some resemblance to the old manorial courts composed of the lord's tenants, who were bound by their feudal tenure to assist their lord in the administration of the manor. At all events some jurisdiction of this character ought to be constituted. The whims, the prejudices, and ignorances or animosities of a single proprietor or his agent ought no longer to rule absolutely over great tracts of land and dwellers upon them.

There is still a great number of educated persons who assert that the land question is by no means important and pressing, and that it is a kind of affectation to make so much of it as some writers and speakers now do. But this is not the truth of the matter. The fact is that the mode in which property, and especially land, is distributed has the chief influence in every State in determining the political and social character of the people. Property carries with it authority, influence, and power. Where the lower classes are destitute of it they are either servile and dependent, or they are painfully agitated by the desire of acquisition. Those who monopolize it are too often arrogant, arbitrary, and selfish. An eminent conveyancer was so penetrated with admiration of the system devised by the lawyers for keeping English land in the exclusive possession of a few families that he said that

Every intelligent person must admire the good sense with which the present system of entailing property has been formed; which, while it provides for the perpetuation of a numerous and respectable aristocracy, leaves a sufficient proportion to answer the demands of individuals for it, and allure purchasers by its stability, and the importance which the ownership of land confers.*

Indeed it may almost be said that land and aristocracy are in England convertible terms. What must the social and political effect of this relation be upon a county half of which or even more is owned by five or six individuals? In fact the evils of the land system are very serious, and it is the interest of the small body of owners themselves to promote reform. It is absolutely necessary that land should be rendered a more marketable commodity, be more widely held by the middle and lower classes, that encumbered estates should change hands, that the game laws should be modified, and that some approximation to fixity of tenure should be obtained

* Reminiscences of Charles Butler,' of Lincoln's Inn.

in the case of occupiers who can establish a well-grounded claim to it. These various measures would probably, nay, certainly, in a very few years create a body of perpetual tenants, equivalent to owners, who would have a personal and continuous interest in improvement, and who, as in France, would form a perfect barrier against revolutionary plunder and the deterioration of husbandry. We believe that the combined operation of all the reforms that have been suggested would in the course of one or two decades make English rural life more energetic, more happy, and less dependent upon the arbitrary will and pleasure of sporting and non-resident

owners.

ART. II. Francesco Cancellieri.

(1) Nuovo Catalogo delle opere Edite ed Inedite delt' Abate Francesco Cancellieri, con un Ragionamento su ia Vita e gli scritti del Madesimo. Del Conte ALESSANDRO MORONI. Roma. 1881. (A New Catalogue of the Published and Unpublished Writings of the Abate Francesco Concellieri, with an Account of his life and Writings. By Count ALESSANDRO MORONI. Rome. 1881.)

(2) Notizia Biografica sull' Abate Francesco Cancellieri.

dena. 1828.

Mo

(A Biographical Notice of the Abate Francesco Cancellieri. Modena. 1828.)

FRANCESCO CANCELLIERI, the subject of the above, and of a great number of other biographical and bibliographical monographs, has been, ever since his death in 1826, an object of interest and curiosity to Italian men of letters. But it could hardly perhaps be hoped that a sufficient degree of interest should be felt about him on this side of the Alps to recommend the following pages to English readers, were it not that he was in a very special degree a typical figure of a vanished social class, itself the peculiar product of a very singular epoch in an equally singular and peculiar society. In no other city of the world, save Rome, could such a phenomenon as the Abate Francesco Cancellieri have been produced; nor in Rome at any other period than the latter half of the eighteenth century.

It was a very singular time. Just as the mighty river, which is about to make its desperate Niagara leap, feels and indicates its feeling of the coming catastrophe, while still the fall is some miles off, so was the Roman world of that time,

as it approached the revolutionary whirlpool, apparently sensible of the unwonted rush which was carrying it towards the strange future. The churning up of the social waters, which bore along on their hurrying surface such heterogeneous objects as Cardinals like De Bernis, Albania, and Buoncompagni, adventurers like Casanova and Cagliostro, women like the Princesses Santa Croce and Rezzonico, diplomatists like D'Azara and the Abate Gianui, together with a motley crowd of other strangely mingled personalities, presaged the last hours of a social system.

In every one of the circles, strangely separated, yet strangely jumbled together, of which this social system consisted, the 'Abate,' by no means necessarily an ecclesiastic, is found playing a conspicuous part. He is always a bachelor, and always wears the 'abito talare,' or ecclesiastically cut garment. But these are the only points in which he necessarily resembles a clerk in holy orders. The petit maitre Abate is of course an old acquaintance of all who have ever read anything of the times in question. But our Francesco Cancellieri, though he was, despite his title, a layman, and though, from the remarkable handsomeness of his face and person, he was universally known in Rome as 'il Bell' Abate,' was an Abate of quite a different sort, and belonged to a different world. His was the learned world, and the one object for which he lived was to write books-an object which he must be allowed to have fully attained, when it is stated that the number of publications, which came from his pen, was a hundred and eighty, besides a hundred and fourteen other works, which he most unwillingly left unpublished at his death for want of means or patrons to pay for the printing of them!

We have mentioned this astounding fact at once, because it gives the keynote to our hero's character and career. But before saying anything of this wonderful mass of literature, it will be better to give some short account of the circumstances under which it was produced.

Francesco Girolamo Cancellieri was born in Rome on October 10, 1751. His forefathers were descended from the well-known historical house of that name which plays so large a part in the medieval records of Pistoia. His father was secretary to Cardinal Paolucci, Legate of Ferrara, and was married to his mother in 1750, as Cancellieri has recorded in language amusingly characteristic of the writer and of the time, in Ferrara by the Cardinal himself on his own birthday and in his own private chapel, with the attendance of his Eminence's Masters of the Ceremonies, chaplains, and many

cavaliers and gentlemen, all in full dress, and with the Swiss Guards, it being the Cardinal's wish to manifest to the whole Legation the especial regard he bore to his secretary.'

6

Having from his earliest years shown signs of a studious disposition, Francesco was placed at an early age under the Jesuits of the Collegio Romano, where he speedily acquired the good-will and affection of his masters, aud distinguished himself as one of their most promising scholars, especially in the very highly prized quality of an excellent Latin stylist. At fifteen he was elected an Arcadian,' under the name, Arcadian fashion, of Alicanto Nassio. And in the same year, before he was sixteen, we find him printing his first publication-some verses which he had recited with universal applause in Arcadia.' Before this, however, he had already appeared before the Roman public. The Jesuits of the Collegio Romano were in the habit, especially in Carnival, of getting up theatrical representations in which their pupils performed before audiences composed of the strangely mingled fashionable and learned worlds of Rome. The celebrated Latinist Cordara, who was one of Cancellieri's latest masters, and between whom and his pupil the warmest affection continued till the death of the former, was famous for the production of such dramas. Especially memorable was one, which he composed on the life of the celebrated Clementina Sobieski, the wife of the so-called James the third of England. Of course

it was hardly possible to put this on the stage without the appearance on it of the heroine herself. But it was absolutely contrary to all rule that any female performer should take part in these performances. Nor was it deemed permissible that a female part should be represented by one of the pupils of the college. Under these difficult circumstances the Jesuit was driven to content himself with allowing the heroine of his piece to be heard only from behind the scenes. And many stories are told of the extreme and successful ingenuity with which this was so managed as to carry on the action without any appearance of a forced or improbable situation. The remarkable beauty of face and person which Cancellieri is recorded to have possessed naturally marked him out as a promising performer in his friend Cordara's theatrical productions; and he was yet further fitted for the purpose by having a fine voice and considerable talent for singing. We hear of his appearing in three dramas in 1763, when he was twelve years old, as Saint Louis, Saint Stanislaus, and as Saint John the Apostle, and are told that his acting moved the audience to tears. Two years later, when he was fourteen,

he sang in public and Ave maris stella, the composition of his mother, with great applause.

While still in statu pupillari in the Jesuit College, Cancellieri's name had to a certain degree become known in Rome; and the high estimation his masters had formed of his attainments seemed to promise distinction and success in the career of jurisprudence to which he aspired. But all such hopes were dashed by family misfortunes, which made it necessary for him to find some means of earning immediate money for the assistance of his mother and sisters. Under these circumstances he was recommended, as master of Italian, to reside in the family of the Russian General Schouvalow, then at Rome as representative of Catherine II. Here he gave entire satisfaction to his employers. But the confidence he inspired led to a great disappointment which is curiously. characteristic of the time.

Dissensions had arisen between the Russian authorities and Monsignor Durini, the Pope's Nuncio in Poland, and the Empress Catherine insisted on his removal. The dispute led to a considerable correspondence, all of which passed through the hands of General Schouvalow, and was by him handed over to the young Italian master to be translated into that language. And when the affair had been finally arranged by the substitution of Monsignor Garampi for Durini, the new Nuncio proposed to take as his secretary the young man who had already been made acquainted with so many of the circumstances of his mission. It was an immense preferment for Cancellieri. In addition to the new career in a foreign country, so delightful to a youngster at his time of life, there was the more serious advantage of an admirable opening for almost unlimited ambitious aspirations. But when all seemed to be settled, and the young secretary was about to start with his new patron, a sudden intimation came from the Vatican that the Nuncio's choice of a secretary was not approved of, and the appointment must be cancelled! What could be the objection to a young man of just twenty-one, of wholly unblemished character, and

No

secret at all was made about the objection. He was known to be the creature of, or at all events strongly attached to, the Jesuits! This was in 1772; and in 1769,

Gonganelli had

ascended the papal throne as Pope Clement the Fourteenth. 'Coming events cast their shadows before.'

And this was one

small but significant shadow cast by that great event, which

was to

the ruin of a poor secretary's hopes.

cause infinitely greater results and worse woes than