revenge a motive as strong as hatred, even with fanatics? Moreover, till the actual publication of the brief, the Jesuits might and did entertain hopes of averting their doom, through the fears or irresolution of the Pope. On the other hand, we cannot think the prophecies of the speedy death of the Pope, which were industriously disseminated among the people, by any means of the weight which is usually ascribed to them, as against the Jesuits. A peasant girl of Valentano, named Bernardina Renzi, who sig nified by certain mysterious letters, P.S.S.V., Presto Sara Sede Vacante, was visited, it is said, by many Jesuits, and even by Ricci, the General of the Order-of which latter fact we should have great doubts. But, granting that all these prophecies were actively propagated, encouraged, suggested by the Jesuits, it would only follow that they were pleasing and acceptable to their ears; they might have vague hopes of frightening Clement to death; at all events, to all who believed that they were of divine revelation, it showed that God was for the Jesuits and against the Pope. But if they, or any party of fanatics among them, entertained the design of making away with the Pope, it was not very consistent with Jesuit wisdom to give this public warning to the Pope and his friends-to commit themselves by frauds which would rather counteract than further their purpose. Crime of this kind is secret and noiseless; it does not sound a note of preparation; the utmost that can be said is that these prophecies may have worked on the morbid and excited brain of some of the more fanatical, and prompted a crime thus, as it might seem to them, predestined by heaven.

M. Crétineau Joly dwells on the disdain with which Frederick II. treated the story of the poisoning. We are not aware that his Prussian Majesty possessed any peculiar means for ascertaining the truth, except from the Jesuits whom he had taken under his especial patronage, thinking that he could employ them for his own purposes. The judgment of many Protestant writers, somewhat ostentatiously adduced, may prove their liberality: but the authority of each must depend on the information at his command. The report of the physicians would be conclusive if we knew more about their character and bias; and if Bernis had not asserted that the surgeons held a different language. On the physiology of the case we profess our ignorance-how far there are slow poisons which, imbibed into the constitution, do their work by degrees and during a long period of time. There is certainly no necessity for the dæmon ex machina,' the Jesuit with his cup of chocolate,* to account for the death of Clement,

if

* M. Crétineau Joly has great respect for the traditions of the higher, the priestly circles

if it be true (and there is no improbability in the case) that he was of a bad constitution, aggravated by improper diet and selftreatment,* and by those worst of maladies in certain diseases of the body, incessant mental agitation, daily dread of death, and horrors which, darkening into superstition, clouded for a time his reason. What we know of the state of the body after death might perhaps be ascribed to a natural death under such circumstances, as well as to poison.

But we have not done with the death-bed of Pope Ganganelli. We have alluded to the beautiful incident related by Cardinal Bernis, that just before his dissolution his full faculties returned, and that his dying words, like those of his Master's first martyr, of his Master himself, were of forgiveness to his enemies.† With this prayer we should have left the Pope in humble hope to the mercies of Him to whom all judgment is committed by the Father.

But this is not enough; a Pope, even though guilty of suppressing the Jesuits, must have a secure and certain absolution. In the extract which we are about to make we assure our readers that we invite their attention to no scrap from a monkish chronicle of the middle ages, no fragment of hagiography disinterred from any of the Greek menologies, or from the Golden Legend, but a grave statement offered to us in the nineteenth century as an historical fact, and guaranteed by a solemn decision of the papal see:—

'In his last moments his understanding was fully restored. The Cardinal Malvezzi, the evil angel of the Pontiff, was attending him at the hour of death. God did not permit the successor of the apostles to expire unreconciled with heaven. To snatch away the soul of the Pope from hell, which, according to his own words, had become his dwelling, and in order that the grave might not close without hope on him who ceased not to repeat, "O! Dio! sono dannato," a miracle was necessary -a miracle was wrought. Saint Alphonso de Liguori was then Bishop of Santa Agata dei Goti, in the kingdom of Naples. Providence, which was jealous rather for the honour of the supreme pontificate than for the salvation of a Christian compromised by a great fault, designated Alphonso de Liguori as his intermediator between heaven and Gancircles at Rome: the popular traditions are the other way. When the present Pope visited one of the Jesuit establishments, the mob cried out, 'Take care of the chocolate.'

*It is right to state that in a voluminous Dictionary of Ecclesiastical History, by Gaetano Moroni (a work the publication of which was commenced under the auspices of the late Pope, Gregory XVI.), among other arguments to discredit the poisoning, it is alleged that a celebrated Florentine surgeon, Nannoni, being in Rome, was consulted by the Pope. Nannoni told him that his malady was un affezione scorbutica universale, troppo avanzata nel sangue; that proper care and diet might alleviate but could not cure the disorder.-Art. Clement XIV.

The Spanish document is here more brief-'In mezzo agli atti di contrizione e pietà veramente esemplare rese l'anima al suo Creatore, verso l'ora 13,' &c.-P. 246.

ganelli.

ganelli. In the process for the canonization of that saint we read in what manner the prodigy was accomplished :-"The venerable servant of God, living at Arienzo, a small town in his diocese (it was on the 21st September, 1774), had a kind of fainting-fit. Seated on his couch, he remained two days in a sweet and profound sleep. One of his attendants wished to wake him. His vicar-general, Don John Nicolas de Rubino, ordered them to let him rest, but not to lose sight of him. When he at length awoke, he immediately rung his bell, and his servants hastened towards him. Seeing them much astonished, 'What is this?' he said; 'what is the matter?' 'What is the matter!' they replied; 'why, for two days you have neither spoken nor eaten, nor given any sign of life.' 'You indeed,' said the servant of God, thought that I was asleep; but it was no such thing you do not know that I have been away to minister to the Pope, who is now dead!' Before long, information arrived that Clement XIV. had died at thirteen o'clock (between eight and nine in the morning)—that is to say, at the precise moment when the servant of God rang his bell."

'Such is the statement which Rome, so difficult in the affair of miracles, and which does not avouch them till after mature examination, has guaranteed in the Acts of Canonization of Alphonso di Liguori.* Rome has discussed; Rome has pronounced: this bilocotion-[this being in two places at the same time]-is an historic fact !!'-p. 375.

And M. Crétineau Joly is not content to leave this story in privileged obscurity in the acts of canonization. Verily, we comprehend at length the solicitude of the Cardinals, the tears of the general of the Jesuits, the desire of the Pope for the suppression of M. Crétineau Joly's book.

ART. IV. Letters addressed to the Countess of Ossory from the year 1769 to 1797 by Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford; now first printed from the original MSS. Edited, with Notes, by the Right Hon. R. Vernon Smith, M.P. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1848.

WE have so often and so recently explained our views of the

personal and literary character of Horace Walpole, that we shall on this occasion have little more to do than to give our readers a brief notice of an unexpected and by no means inconsi

*Informatio; animadversiones et responsio super virtutibus V. S. D. Alphonsi Maria di Ligorio' (Rome, 1806). These acts we have not seen. We take them as quoted by our author. In Morone's Dictionary we read that Bishop Liguori was Beatified in 1816 and Canonized in 1839; but he died in 1786, and the taking of evidence about his claims had, of course, been begun early-and the decision on the various miracles recorded from time to time by the proper authorities, according to the rules which our readers may consult in the first three volumes of the Opera Omnia' of Pope Benedict XIV., edition the 14th-for no less than three of those folios are occupied with his grand Treatise De Beatificatione Servorum Dei et Canonizatione Beatorum.

derable

111

Horace Walpole's Letters to the Countess of Ossory. derable addition to the already vast harvest of his miscellaneous correspondence. In our number for September, 1843 (vol. lxxii. p. 516), we stated that his published letters (including the last batch of those to Sir Horace Mann then announced) fell little short of two thousand, and we expressed an opinion that the discovery of many others might be reasonably looked for. These volumes are come to confirm our former, without diminishing our further, expectation; for they are from a source which we had not anticipated. We knew that Lady Ossory had been an early and intimate acquaintance of Walpole; but we were not aware of their having been such frequent correspondents as that her cabinet could supply us with above four hundred of his letters; and we now see some reason to believe that there must have been many more. We are sorry to begin with repeating the complaints which we have had to make of the very defective way in which Walpole has been recently edited-perhaps our grievance on this occasion would be better phrased if we said that these volumes are not edited at all. The title-page, indeed, tells us that they are edited by Mr. Vernon Smith; but there is scarcely any other page of the work that confirms this promise. This is a great disappointment; because of all Walpole's letters, this batch especially and peculiarly needed marginal illustration, and the talents and position of Mr. Smith raised a confident hope that the task he had undertaken would be not merely adequately, but brilliantly, executed. From what causes Mr. Smith has to so great a degree abdicated his editorial functions, and, in the rare instances in which he has done anything, done it so superficially, we cannot conjecture. The kind of apology he makes is not unmixed with a sneer at the duty he has thus neglected :

'The few notes which I have added relate only to such circumstances as my relationship enabled me to explain of family history. I have purposely abstained from the repetition of accounts of persons which have been given in former editions of Walpole's letters, which are derived from registers and magazines, open to the observation of all who think it worth while to pursue such inquiries.'

We readily admit that if Mr. Smith considers his publication as a mere continuation-the 11th and 12th volumes as it were-of the vast mass of Walpole's letters,* it would have been needless to identify or characterise persons incidentally mentioned, and who were already familiarly known to all Walpole's readers; but as this is edited as a separate work, and, as is stated, for the amusement of the public,' we think as much should have been

* Mr. Bentley's collective edition of 6 vols., and the 4 vols. of the second set of the letters to Mann.

tol

told as would insure that necessary ingredient to amusement-the comprehending what and whom the correspondents are writing about; it is a little hard that those who take up a gossiping volume should be obliged to provide themselves further with the Annual Register, Gentleman's Magazine, and a succession of old Peerages, to discover the object and meaning of one of Walpole's jokes on Lady A or Lord B. Mr. Smith must feel this, and has accordingly in a very few instances afforded us some such lights; but unluckily he holds up his candle-almost, we think, without exception-where there was the least call for one. When Walpole mentions a dear old blind friend in Paris,' Mr. Smith-habitually so sparing of illustrations-need hardly have told us (i. 25) that Madame du Deffand' was meant: when Walpole, after having said that Lord Shelburne had married Lord Ossory's sister, calls him 'votre beau-frère,' it was rather superfluous in an editor usually so taciturn to repeat that it means 'Lord Shelburne, who had married Lord Ossory's sister,' p. 93: or when Walpole says that Lord Waldegrave had died at Lord Aylesford's house in the country, and that the scene of the catastrophe was Packington'-we could have guessed, without a note, that Packington was Lord Aylesford's house,' p. 401. these, be it observed, are three of, we believe, not much above a dozen explanatory notes in the whole volumes. We don't object even to such almost superfluous information, but we wonder that one who thought it necessary in such cases should have neglected it in so many others where it was more wanted.

6

And

But Mr. Smith, in his contempt of the humble duties of an annotator, mistakes we think the question. It is not merely of the want of such illustrations as may be collected from registers or magazines that we complain-they may be obtained, as Mr. Smith remarks, by all who think it worth while to pursue such inquiries,' or, as we should rather have said, by those who wish to be able to read his book without laying it down an hundred times to consult an hundred others—but what the reader most indispensably needs, and what registers and magazines cannot supply, is the explanation of small events, slight allusions, obscure anec

*And of the rest of the dozen, several are, we suspect, essentially erroneous; as these, for instance--in vol. i. p. 54, which is made nonsense by confounding a Poussin with a Claude-in p. 58, where a wrong name is given-in p. 153, where irony, we believe, is mistaken for a serious statement, which makes a puzzle in another note, p. 203—in p. 259, where Mr. Smith has forgotten the old French jeu d'esprit (if it can be so called) of La Palisse, whence Goldsmith pilfered his Madam Blaize. We submit these to Mr. Smith's reconsideration; two of them are of some importance. There are also some strange errors of the press. What do our readers think of a comparison of General Elliot, the governor of Gibraltar, to the old man of the mountain, who destroyed enemies with his few Gregeois '?-ii. 113.

dotes,