some length, has lately discoursed on coach-building, Another fashion prevalent in this country may prove, in the opinion of the drivers of the future, to be a fallacy; I mean the supposed necessity for the driver to sit nearly upright, which necessitates a deep boot and a clumsy thick coachman's cushion.' Now the clumsy cushion' is due to the clumsiness of the English coach-builder. His foreign competitor will show him that a coachman's seat should be based on a properly constructed frame, the front of which should be at an angle of 40°, if not 45°. As we have already said, several Victorias are running about London, with these very seats for the driver copied from the French; but the builders of drags do not seem to be able to get it into their heads that what is comfortable for the servant is fitting for the master, and that to recline at an angle very different from that of a person in a chair is a necessity for the driver of four horses. Hence we have this 'cushion' that is clumsy' indeed, secured by cross-straps, an ugly antiquated contrivance, because an English carriage-builder will not accept an idea unless forced on him by the carriage-user. The objection to putting a coach-box too high is sound; the suggestion that men should lie at an angle of 20° with their feet against a bar in front of the foot-board, as this writer would seem to recommend, instead of, as we have said, at an angle of from 40° to 45°, is simply ridiculous.

A coachman should have his legs well before him, and his knees nearly straight,' says Nimrod; and Mr. Birch-Reynardson, in his 'Down the Road,' has put into a more forcible form his objection to seeing a coachman sit as if he were in a chair. For practical purposes the height of the box-seat from the ground should be no more than is sufficient to secure such an angle for the reins between the terrets and the driver's hand as will free them from the possibility of being caught by the whisking of a wheeler's tail, involving certain delay and a possible accident; but the seat should be quite this height, and anything less is unworkmanlike. From the middle of the inclined box-seat to the foot-board, the legs should form a nearly straight line.

One word, without offence, to the proprietors of summer coaches in the interest of the fair sex and of those who dislike

superfluous noise. A constant to-tooing on the horn without reference to a change of horses, a sharp corner, or a cart, is out of place. Still worse is it when amateurs are allowed to experiment. Neither do travellers seek fresh air or the pleasure of admiring the skilled driving of proprietors for the sake of learning the experiences of young guards, who have been 'liquored up,' and otherwise spoilt by youngsters of the day.

Their conversation may be interesting in the form of respectful replies to pertinent questions; but to have a young fellow for two hours give the back-seat passengers the results of his experience on men and things is-not only not edifying-but an intense bore. Neither young Cracknell, nor the capital guards on the Tunbridge Wells and Wycombe coaches have sinned in this respect, and we are quite sure that when the attention of other coach-proprietors has been drawn to the subject, their passengers will not have to complain again.

We cannot do better than conclude this Article with the following valuable precepts by Mr. Birch-Reynardson :—

'Always have an apron on your box; it hides a bad seat and a pair of bent knees. Sit straight on your box, with your elbows close to your side, your hands well down, your shoulders well back, your head erect, and your eyes well in front of you. Do not set your back up like a "pig in a rage," and do not bend over your footboard as if you were looking after the stump of the cigar you have just dropped. Above all, do not sit with your knees bent. Start quietly off the crown of a hill. If your pole-chain breaks, look out for loose gravel or fresh broken stones; they are a wonderful help in times of need. Never omit to have a pair of worsted gloves about the coach to put on in case of rain. They are the only things through which the reins do not slip. Always have a chain-trace in your boot.'

And we will add to these a precept taught us by a very old hand. 'Never crack your whip-punish a lazy one-don't disturb those that are doing their work well.'

The objects discussed in this paper are, in a measure, small compared with matters affecting nations, or those scientific results which, as in the case of Bessemer steel, may influence the whole world, but they are not the less of interest to those engaged in a commerce (carriage-building) which ought, with intelligence directing it, to export the best of its kind to every part of the world. The pavements for cities affect the inhabitants of every large town; and if we have allowed some extra space to what some may deem the plaything of the hour, it is because we decline to see, in a pastime that may give healthy pleasure to numbers, a subject less worthy of discussion, criticism, and advice to those who have a liking for the art of the charioteer. Nimrod has already reminded us that Nestor gave instruction in it to his son, and some ancient author has it that Amphitryon, the putative father, trusted no one but himself to instruct Hercules in the art of coachmanship.

ART.

ART. V.-1. Opere edite ed inedite del Cavaliere Giovanni Prati. Milano, 1862. 5 vols.

2. Canti di Aleardo Aleardi. Firenze, 1864. 1 vol.

3. Armando. Per Giovanni Prati. Firenze, 1868. 1 vol.

4. Poesie di Giacomo Zanella. Firenze, 1868. 1 vol.

5. Poesie di Giosuè Carducci (Enotrio Romano). Firenze, 1871. 1 vol.

6. Versi di Alessandro Arnaboldi. Milano, 1872. 1 vol.

7. Psiche (Sonetti). Per Giov. Prati. Padova, 1876. 1 vol. 8. Ricordi Biografici del Prof. Cav. Angelo de Gubernatis. 1* serie. Firenze, 1873. 1 vol.

TH

HE authors of the above-named works belong to a generation of Italian poets which is distinctly separated from all its predecessors, because the period in which it flourishes is totally different from any other period in Italian history. Every phase of the political and social existence of Italy has had its own poets, representing it in its good and bad characteristics:-the disunited, turbulent, prosperous, semi-Pagan, semi-Gothic Italy of the Middle Ages and of the Renaissance had its Dante, its Petrarch, its Lorenzo de' Medici, and its Ariosto;-the crushed, dismembered, sentimental, and fantastical Italy of the Spanish and Jesuitical domination had its Tasso and Guarini, its Marini and Chiabrera ;-the politically inert, but intellectually active, Italy of the despotic and tolerant eighteenth century had its Metastasio and its Parini; and later, when a gust of Republicanism came across the Alps, its Alfieri and its Monti;—the earlier part of this century had its Leopardi and Giusti, its Foscolo and Manzoni, its poets by turns desponding and sneering, visionary and active, who represent the strange time of prostration yet of aspiration, of oppression and of revolt. The poets we are about to examine belong to the period of national formation and consolidation, of practical efforts brought to a happy close. And it is precisely to this peculiar political stage that are due the characteristics of the four poets whom new Italy recognises as her greatest-Giovanni Prati, Aleardo Aleardi, Giosuè Carducci, and Giacomo Zanella-to whom will soon be added a fifth, superior to any of the others, Alessandro Arnaboldi.

The difference between the last thirty years and any other phase in Italian history is that in them, for the first time since the Middle Ages, the Italian nation has been making a great and practical effort towards a great and practical aim-that of creating a whole united people which could go along with the other great nations on the path of progress, and the prosperity

of

of each of whose parts should contribute only to the prosperity of the whole. Such has been the work of the last quarter of a century, a work which contrasts forcibly with the utter absence of any political ideal characterising the Italians from the middle of the sixteenth to the end of the eighteenth century, and with the vague, hopeless aspirations and aimless and abortive efforts of their descendants of the earlier part of this century. An expectation, varying from a vague hope to a distinct conviction, had long been entertained that the political regeneration of Italy would necessarily produce a poetical and artistic one. People foresaw what indeed has come to pass, that the national movement in Italy, by breaking through the habit of mental inertness and diffusing a general enthusiasm, would produce an additional amount of poetical talent; but they could not then foresee what has undoubtedly happened, that the poetical talent would be forced by the national movement into wrong channels, or thrown aside into a barren isolation. The work of all Italians within the last thirty years has been the building and cementing of a national structure, the consolidating and perfecting and defending of it; the raising of Italy to the rank of an European power, not only in politics, but in science, and this work for its completion required the concentrated attention of the whole people,-a concentration of attention which not only withdrew all interest from literary and artistic concerns as such, but, when it began to relax, left the public mind in a condition momentarily unfit for anything but what had just been absorbing it.

This prejudicial action of the political and social movement may be traced fully as much among the Italian literary public and critics as among the poets themselves, warping the judgment of the former and spoiling the works of the latter. As, before entering into an examination of the works of the modern Italian poets, it is necessary to understand the condition of the literary public to which their peculiarities are in great measure due, we shall first glance at the book of Professor De Gubernatis, which, while purporting to give merely the biography of the most distinguished of living Italian men of letters, aims in reality at diffusing what is held by superior Italian thinkers to be the right conception of literature and literary life. Professor De Gubernatis' book shows much really generous feeling, much liberal thinking, much noble aspiration; and although tainted with the pernicious political views of the Radical minority, who regard with suspicion and aversion the Liberal-Conservative Government, which alone could have made, and alone can preserve Italy, the Cenni Biografici' may, on the whole, be

taken

taken as a compendium of Italian thought on literary matters, and as a picture of Italian literary life.

It must be remembered that the generation of the last thirty years has had not only to establish Italian independence and liberty, and to form a financial and military organisation, but to create a nation out of a number of heterogeneous elements never before united, and to raise that nation to the level of the other great nations in instruction, in discipline, in science, and in industry, in all of which it had, during the first half of this century, been far behindhand. Such a task includes a great number of smaller ones, and to one or more of them every honourable and able Italian has devoted himself. The first and most important branch, politics, has of course absorbed most of the public attention.

'English statesmen,' writes Professor De Gubernatis in his Life of Anselmo Guerrieri Gonzaga,' gladly avail themselves of the leisure hours afforded them by the political ups and downs to refresh their minds in the genial world of literature. In Italy, on the contrary, not only do politics not encourage literary occupations, but they disturb and very often destroy them. Messedaglia and Correnti, for instance, were in their youth refined poets and elegant prose writers; but what fruit will literature have obtained from their talents? Politics have absorbed them, and left them nothing for themselves.'

Italians engaged in political concerns cannot, and will not, pay any attention to literature. On the other hand, Italian writers cannot often devote themselves to poetry; they have greater and more practical interests, even if their fortune allows of their exclusively employing their time in a work which the public, bent on the practically useful, will not remunerate. The Italian poets are poets, so to say, only in their lost moments; their serious, engrossing occupation is some branch of science or of philosophy. Thus Carducci is professor of Italian lite rature at Bologna; Aleardi, professor of æsthetics at Florence; Zendrini, professor of German literature at Padua; De Gubernatis himself, who holds an honourable place among Italian poets by his 'Indian Dramas,' professor of Sanskrit. Tullo Massarani is a political pamphleteer and literary historian; Dall' Ongaro was a lecturer on Dante in Paris and in Brussels. Even such Italian poets as are not themselves men of science, appear, like Zanella, to live among University professors. Poets who, like Cowper, Wordsworth, Shelley, and Coleridge, are satisfied with their own art and a country life, it would be difficult to find in Italy, where all intellectual life is connected either with the Parliament or with the Universities. This