ties is named, and when the element of general memory bows before the powers which have rent its empire into fourteen sad dependancies. It is not that the names of Stahl and Locke are not venerable in science, but, fact versus man, man must be nonsuited.

The reasons, too, why error so long prevailed in both these sciences, are not without analogy to each other; and they who have examined both sides of both questions, and have finally been guided by experiment, find in them much subject of reflection upon the general march of the human mind. In the Stahlian doctrine, the increase of weight in metallic oxides was entirely overlooked, as was their loss of weight upon revivification; and phlogiston was a body endowed with positive levity, one which took away from the absolute weight of the substance with which it was combined, yet augmented its specific gravity. No account either was taken of the volatile products of an operation, of those which, when not allowed to escape, burst every vessel which would confine them. Not much more than half a century ago, the art of perforating air-tight bolt-heads was taught in chemical lectures; that is to say, the means of perpetuating ignorance; but the art of making impermeable lutes succeeded to it. All that was necessary to demonstrate the errors of Stahlism was, to weigh a metal and its oxide; to collect the aëriform products, and to examine them; to see that combustion could not take place without oxygen. These observations were made at length, and the science changed its whole hypothesis. All that was wanting to create phrenology, was, to know that all in metaphysics was conjecture; that not a single fact existed to prove that perception, memory, imagination, were simple fundamental faculties, but many to prove that they were not; that the various systems which had succeeded each other explained nothing; and that all we knew about the brain was, how to slice it. What future progress and vicissitudes remain to each of these sciences we shall not determine, for they are beyond our speculations. Chemistry embraces the most subtle properties of nature; but is not the mind of man a universe, and are not its relations infinite? Far greater, in our opinions, are the dependancies of human feeling and reason, of passion and intellect, than those which elaborate matter, or guide the world through space.

The facts adduced in favour of our science rest principally on the authorities of its great founders, and it is but fair that the objections should be brought forward by men whose endowments bear some proportion to theirs; or else that they be supported by an adequate number of competent witnesses. Although the

Edinburgh Reviewer could collect no information from the volumes of Dr. Gall, yet we (phrenologists) look upon them to be as extraordinary, in point of erudition, new facts, and new observations, as any that have honoured the present age; and Dr. Spurzheim has shown, in all his writings, a mind far above the common level of observing moralists and philosophers. These two men have devoted their lives to the study, and it would be unjust to overturn their doctrines by the hasty conclusions of a tyro. We do not, indeed, require so long and severe an apprenticeship in our opponents, as the masters of the science have undergone; but we exact a fair and honest competition.

Öne claim we must make in favour of our science, and this distinguishes it from all the branches of physiology which have been cultivated to this day, it has cost no blood: not a single act of cruelty has dishonoured it; while Messrs. Majendie, Flourens and others, have been torturing animals, to teach their pupils but little, and repeating their tortures, to learn that little over and over again, our masters have not mutilated a single insect while alive, or shortened the existence of a single being, to have its brain a few days sooner under their scalpel. Yet phrenologists might feel as much interest in scraping away a piece of cautiousness, and then observing how dauntless the animal would become; or of excavating an organ of locality, to make him lose his way, as any physiological butcher could do: or they might be as curious as Vesalius was to take a peep into the living organs of some human subject. But they have abstained from every act of cruelty, and shown that anatomy and physiology may receive some of its best additions without becoming inhu

man.

"The bantling which but a few years since we ushered into the world," say the phrenologists, "is now become a giant; and as well might you attempt to smother him as to entangle a lion in the gossamer, or drown him in the morning dew." "Your giant," say the anti-phrenologists," is a butterfly: to-day he roams on gilded wing, to-morrow he will show his hideousness and be forgotten."

And

Dixit the phrenologist. Dixit the anti-phrenologist. now the Foreign Quarterly resumes its wonted we, to repeat our assurances to our readers, that not one word of what precedes has been said by us, but by the advocates of the contending parties. Fiat justitia.

ART. II.-Teatro Comico dell' Avvocato Alberto Nota. 5 Vols. Livorno. 1822.

WHEN We consider how little affinity appears to exist between the church and the stage, nay with what abhorrent reprobation such devotees as profess any degree of austerity regard the delicious, though hitherto unexplained, emotions, and wilful illusion created by the union of the powers of the poet and the actor, we cannot but deem it a whimsical anomaly that the theatre, wherever we are acquainted with its origin, should have uniformly arisen amidst, and from, religious ceremonies. Choral hymns sung at the sacrifices offered to Bacchus, may not indeed seem altogether inappropriate parents for the comedies of Aristophanes, whatever we may say of their relation to the tragedies of Sophocles. But when we think of the severely pure spirit of Christianity as having, ever so remotely, given birth to the licentious ribaldry that has at times disgraced the scenic pleasures of, we believe, all nations, we are actually confounded by the apparent impossibility of what we nevertheless know to be matter of fact. We have, however, no present intention of investigating this strange incongruity; our business being with a theatre which, forming an exception to the general rule, sprang more from imitation of the admired and admirable remains of classical antiquity, than from the mysteries and moralities presented by ecclesiastical confraternities, in honor of the different festivals of the Christian church. In Italy, the nurse rather than the mother of the arts, literature has never, to the best of our knowledge, been a spontaneous growth. The orators and the poets, lyric, epic, and dramatic, of ancient Rome, were the disciples and copyists of the conquered Greeks; and at the epoch of the revival of letters, the younger sons of the fair, and then flourishing Ausonian peninsula, became in like manner disciples and copyists of their renowned elder

brethren.

Owing to this difference of origin, the regular drama did not, in Italy, as in other countries, bear from its earliest infancy the strong, and always interesting stamp of nationality. It had nothing of the raciness which distinguishes the natural produce of every soil. Coldly and dully imitative, it seems to have been equally uncongenial to author, actor, and audience. Hence it was, that unfostered by public favour, it improved but slowly, if at all, whilst the genius of the clime burst forth in other forms. One of these forms is the opera; but in those splendid exhibitions, the poet's part is held so subordinate to the musical composer's, that notwithstanding the acknowledged beauties of Metastasio, we name the opera only to observe how detrimental its unbounded

popularity must have proved to the legitimate drama. Of another of these forms, a species of comedy, original and national as heart can wish, but little calculated either to exalt the talent and reputation of the class of comic writers, or to cultivate a chastened dramatic taste, we shall presently have occasion to speak; our intention being to preface our review of Nota's Comedies, with a slight historical sketch of the earlier Teatro Comico of Italy.

Ariosto's are amongst the oldest Italian comedies that have fallen in our way, and cruelly indeed do they disappoint the admirer of the Orlando Furioso. They in fact possess no beauties capable of affording any sort of compensation for their intolerable grossness. In fable and conduct they are mere copies of Latin models. Their plots, like those of Terence, mainly turn upon the difficulty experienced by youths, whom parsimonious fathers keep short of cash, in finding means to purchase some beautiful slave-girl, profitably employed, meanwhile, by her trading owner as a courtezan. And this object of-we will not say love, but-all the intrigues of the play, frequently remains behind the scene throughout the five acts. In comedies of a somewhat later date, the fable so far approximates towards those of other modern theatres, that lawful wedlock with a virtuous and well-born maiden is the end in view: but in these likewise, the heroine-if the term be applicable to an unknown damsel-is kept so completely in the back-ground, as in some instances not even to appear in the dramatis persona of plays deriving their title from her name; and in others, where we are indulged with a glimpse of her in whose fortunes we are expected to take an interest, it is but a glimpse, at a door or window, or during a transient flitting across the stage at the denouement.

Macchiavelli's comedies are far more dramatic, and replete with drollery; they bear indeed the decided impress of a master's hand. This able, and in our opinion, calumniated statesman first taught his countrymen to emulate the spirit, instead of copying the letter of classic dramatists; to depict and satirize contemporaneous, instead of obsolete manners and vices. But his plays neither develope a story that can excite anxious curiosity, nor display characters that can awaken sympathy. The main drift of the plot is the deceiving a jealous husband, in order to effect an interview between his guilty wife and her libertine paramour. The extravagant absurdity of the means employed, and the imbecile credulity of the conjugal dupe of preposterous stratagems, constitute the chief source of the comic humour, or rather of the broad farcical buffoonery in which the Italian delights. Notwithstanding the immorality and indecency of these pieces,

which wholly unfit them for general perusal, it might have been hoped that the superior school thus introduced would have flourished, gradually acquiring interest and purity, as the progress of refinement demanded such improvements. But of the numerous authors who followed in Macchiavelli's track, none, with the exception we believe of l'unico Aretino, have left aught deserving notice; and the school itself seems to have sunk before the singular rival we are now to describe.

The species of comedy already alluded to as peculiar to Italy, and long the sole pretender to the epithet national, is that known by the name of Commedie dell' Arte. One essential characteristic of these plays is, that only the story and its conduct appertain to the poet, the dialogue being intrusted wholly to the care of improvvisatori actors. The English reader will probably inquire to which department belongs the conception of the various characters, whose adventures are to command the eager interest of a sympathizing audience. The answer is, to neither. The characters are determined by long-established custom; and the sole variety required to diversify the numerous comedies, represented in all the equally numerous states into which the country was divided, was sought, in addition to the constant novelty of the jests, in the methods employed by the self-same parents, rivals, and menial confidants, to thwart or to promote the loves of the self-same Lelios and Rosauras. The four principal personages, denominated le maschere, the masks, are Pantaloon, a Venetian merchant, a Bolognese doctor of laws, and two Bergamese servants, Brighella and Arlecchino; the first, the father of the French Scapin, himself probably a descendant from the classical intriguing slave; the second a whimsical compound of simplicity, amounting to niaiserie, and of waggery. Add to these immutable personages a couple of sons, one profligate and one virtuous, a couple of daughters of similarly dissimilar dispositions, and a pert, intriguing chambermaid, and we have nearly the whole dramatis persona of these unwritten plays; which, as far as the author is concerned, bear more analogy to our pantomime, than to any other familiar drama. Indeed considering the names of the indispensable characters in these last marvellous and mute entertainments, we incline to regard them as the degenerate offspring of the Commedie dell' Arte, from which they differ chiefly by relying for their principal attractions upon the machinist and scene-painter, and requiring from the performers agility instead of that extraordinary species of talent, the need of which must, it might be supposed, have rendered a play a very rare amusement. But either the improvvisatore talent actually is natural to, and frequent amongst, the natives of Italy, or even in genius,-accord