FEMININE EDUCATION IN ITALY.

BY THE COUNTESS MONTEMERLI.

has been unfelt in a climate where, even during the winter, days of genial warmth and beauty are enjoyed. The history of ancient Rome, familiar by tradition to the most uncultivated, has ennobled this people, who, while in slavery, felt their hearts free, and employed familiarly the language of imagery and simile, and around whom all was poetry, light, and harmony. Even their superstitions are blended with grace and beauty. They treat their religion as a poem, crown the Virgin with flowers, and wed garlands of roses with the tomb.

It is a more difficult task to portray the middle class, which is perhaps more mixed and diffused in Italy than in any other country. The feeling of equality reigns among all. The people are on familiar terms with the aristocracy, servants with their masters, and persons are classed rather according to the amount of their fortune than to the race from which they have sprung. This is one of the most striking proofs of the predominance of genius in Italy, and how equally it is spread over all ranks. In France, a country curate always remains awkward and embarrassed. In Italy, the commonest individuals have polished manners, and servants are as refined as their The intelligence of this class is extraordinarily developed, and their natural ease and grace must excite admiration. These great national traits naturally pro duce a feeling of equality. The middle and the lower

THAT education is the element which produces the most decided results among any people is incontestable. Where religious scruples are made a pretext for the suppression of education, the intellect of man is dwarfed down to half its full development, and individuals who might have become eminent barely rise above mediocrity, while the great number, who in all countries and climes can but attain to mediocrity, remain in complete nullity. Such being the case, it must be matter of astonishment that Italy should have produced so many lofty intellects as she is able to boast. During many ages the state of education in Italy has been exceedingly low. The people have been deprived almost entirely of culture, have been without schools, without industry, without everything, in a word, which tends to enlarge the mind and raise the character. Ignorant of the gospel, knowing nothing of religion beyond a few formularies, they have been taught to repeat the rosary, a mere dry repetition of prayers which may acquire a certain degree of devotional warmth when uttered by the lips of the religious enthusiast, but which, commenced coldly, degenerates into a mere masters. mechanical performance. How then, encouraged by the priests in every imaginable superstition, has the Italian people remained so great? This has been the effect of the teaching of their immortal poets. Yes, here classes attach themselves to the upper by a thousand lies the secret of the grandeur of the Italians. Their bards and their brilliant sky alone have preserved them from the fanatic brutalization into which the efforts of popes, despotic princes, and European policy, have done their best to plunge them. The beautiful gives the idea of the great and the just. Nature, who marvellously produces beneath this enchanting sky all her treasures of fruits, flowers, perfumes, breezes, and waves, has preserved in the heart of this people, who, though once the masters of the world, were but yesterday the slaves of despotism, a spark of light sufficient to indicate their former greatness and encourage them to look for a brighter future. God willed not the extinction of this privileged race. He left it to slumber for awhile, knowing that, when it should awake, its instinctive wisdom and innate greatness would spring forth strong and vigorous, and it would joyfully shake off its unriveted chains, to take its place once again, beauteous and free, among the greatest of the nations. The Italian people, like the diamond, can but gain splendour from the lapidary's touch. The dust from the despot's heel may tarnish its brilliancy for a time, but the breath of liberty can in an instant restore its original sparkle. During the past few months this phenomenon has been strikingly presented to our view in the fair Peninsula.

Tuscany, having had a government far less oppressive than that of the Romagnas, has been enabled to provide the children of the lower orders with instruction by means of infant schools. Many can read and write, and it is no rare thing in this province, where nature is so profuse of its gifts in individual cases, to see the people's ranks yield eminent jurists, artists, poets, and men learned in every branch of literature and science. The arts have always flourished upon the soil of the muses, and Europe has ever been accustomed to seek inspiration there. The hearts of the greatest composers, the greatest writers, and the greatest artists, have been kindled to warmth and enthusiasm by the Italian sun of art and literature.

Such a denial of education as has been inflicted upon the lower classes in Italy would have produced effects much more disastrous elsewhere; but the Italians have forgotten despotism and oppression while singing Metastasio and Petrarch. Poverty, the result of the want of industry,

links which are undergoing perpetual renovation. The son of the farmer studies, becomes an eminent man, a celebrated advocate, a renowned sculptor, or a famous physician. He goes into the world, is received with favour, forms an attachment to the daughter of a noble family, and marries her. Artizans in Italy are artists. An Italian chorister wakes one morning to find himself first singer at La Scala or Her Majesty's Theatre. Such is Rubini's history. Place a pencil in the hand of a tailor's son, he becomes Andrea del Sarto. You meet a shepherd, he may afterwards be a Giotto or a Sixtus XV. When you have taught an Italian to read and write, you may expect anything from him. Let thirty years pass over, and you will find him professor at a university, or you will recognise him addressing the chamber of deputies, or taking a prominent place at a scientific congress: he will paint pictures, write sermons, or perhaps discover comets.

Italian manners are most gentle. The women of the middle class are essentially the same as those of the upper and fashionable ranks. They perhaps make rather less display in their toilette, are rather less silent, and employ rather more compliments; but here the difference ceases. They possess shining excellences both of head and heart, are in no way sordid or calculating, but are simple, affectionate, devoted, and self-sacrificing. Hitherto, their education has been much neglected, and is very defective. Generally speaking, they move in a very restricted circle, surrounded by an atmosphere of superstition, and occupied chiefly with scandal and gossip.

The men have been educated by priests ignorant of all family ties and obligations, and knowing nothing of women but their weaknesses and their confessions. Their views have thus been falsified from their youth up. In their minds, woman is not suffered to attain the place she ought to occupy, and is rather the housekeeper and the nurse than the moral and intellectual companion of man. In Italy, as elsewhere, men marry from love, and live happily with their wives, but in such a manner that the inequality of rights between husband and wife, and the differences between the two sexes, are strikingly apparent. The man of talent has a wife whose education is too restricted to enable her to understand and aid him. Italian women seldom know any.

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thing of public life, despotism having dried up that | Italy than elsewhere, immorality is not more general, nor fruitful source of human progress. Few women, belong- are the obligations of marriage less respected, though, ing to the middle class in Italy, have read anything owing to the causes to which we have already adverted, beyond their prayer-books and some novels. Active, scandalous chronicles may have a wider circulation than industrious, and intelligent, they need nothing but the would be the case under more favourable institutions. entire freedom of their country to enable them to acquire Of twenty intrigues which are talked about, probably not all in which they are deficient, and to take a foremost place more than two have any foundation in truth. among European women. house has its habitual guests; and a family can rarely escape criticism. The number of visitors you receive is counted, their object in visiting you canvassed, the reason why you admit them to your intimacy discussed; and the conclusions resulting from the examination are always more or less disastrous to your reputation. These and other social defects have been nurtured and encouraged, like petted children, by despotism. While the venom of calumny spread over a whole population, the public mind was occupied by the details of domestic disquietudes, and had no time or thought to bestow on the acts of government. On the same ground, the lottery found great support from the sovereigns of Italy. Gambling, and everything tending to material and moral ruin, was encouraged, while ignorance was sacredly guarded like the holy ark, and rewarded and caressed as the most efficacious handmaid of absolute power.

Italy is now on the verge of great material and intellectual development. Industry, commerce, art and science are about to take a fresh start. Employment will soon be found for all; movement will succeed to prostration, and activity to apathy and stagnation. When once the great lines of communication have been established between one part of the Peninsula and another, the desire of locomotion will follow; men will realize the value of independence, and will bestow an increased degree of freedom upon their conjugal partners. In a few years, in Italy, as in England, women will travel alone, will acquire that moral force which inspires respect and enables the weaker sex to maintain its independent position. Italy will copy British institutions, will model itself, in some sort, upon this great, laborious, and free people, and, like it, will attain to national glory and industrial power. Private life, which is now too much a prey to the calumnious attacks of those who, having no useful pursuits, spend their time in inventing and spread. ing calumnious reports, will be held sacred as in free countries peopled by men who unite vast intellectual powers with strong judgment and common sense. Domestic life is indispensable to the man who devotes his existence to incessant labour. The life of the father of a family cannot be the outdoor life of the café, in which woman can take no part. His own house will become the home of the Italian, as it is of the Englishman. Yet a few years, and great and liberal institutions will have totally changed the face of Italian society.

The writers and romancists of Italy are not numerous, while female authors are exceedingly rare. It must, however, be said, to the glory of the latter, that such as have made themselves known have displayed talents of incontestable superiority. To judge of the lofty reasoning and true nobleness of thought of which an Italian woman is capable, it is sufficient to read the beautiful work of Signora C. Ferrucci upon the intellectual education which Italian mothers should bestow upon their children. This book is the work of a savant. It displays ideas so profound, logical, and philosophic, and breathes such a tone of religion, that it proves its author to be one of those privileged beings who serve to show the power and wisdom to which the mind of women may attain. Were it known in England, it would not fail to be highly themselves by their writings are as remarkable as the appreciated. In Italy, the women who have distinguished greatest men.

names.

In Italy, many men still think that women should devote themselves exclusively to the material cares of the household, and that it is waste of time for a woman to occupy herself with literature, science, or politics. Her leisure Doubtless, in a few years' time, legions of hours, according to many, are better employed in useless trifling, in promenades or visits, which have no object in and fruitful intellects, will be revealed in all their splenthese delicate and emancipated minds, these sensitive view, than in recreations which occupy, ornament, and enrich her mind. Among the upper classes, if not per- She will powerfully aid in the improvement and embellishdour. The Italian woman has a great future in store. mitted and approved, it is at least tolerated, for women to smoke. It is by no means unusual to see great ladies, When she has learned to look upon life seriously, her ment of her country, and in the progress of humanity. young, beautiful, elegantly attired, smoke after their character will be marked by those grand traits which meals. Nor do they employ the elegant perfumed cigarette history has bequeathed to her from her ancestors. Sibyls, of the Spanish and Turkish ladies, but the ugly, common, vestals, poetesses, heroines, warriors, politicians, and long, black, native abomination, which can make no preten-patriots, have strewn the pathway of ages with female sion whatever to grace or poetry. Nothing can be more utterly unfeminine, nothing more revolting, than this odious How many of such glorious names have been lost habit, which is gaining ground deplorably. Surely it have illumined the world, have been crushed by tyranny! by despotism! how many noble intelligences, which might would be better to employ the hour thus worse than wasted But enough; we will forget the dreadful past. for the benefit of their country. It is greatly to be hoped Europe of to-day, with England and France at its head, that this feminine caprice will not extend itself any further, says to the Italians, Arise, and be free! In our age, nor become consolidated into an accepted custom. Up to jealousy and rivalry between different peoples are no this time, feminine smokers are looked upon somewhat as lionnes and coquettes, and, happily, those who pride them-common; each finds advantage in the superiority of longer possible. They possess virtues and talents in selves upon their eccentricity, form but a small proportion its neighbour, and the productions of the one circulate of the dwellers in any country. For the good of society, it is essential to decry evil and laud good. However painful it may be, a conscientious writer is bound to speak the whole truth, and, in addressing one people concerning the manners, habits, and attributes of another, is compelled to bring to light both their virtues and defects. It is not a romance that we are writing, but a history, and history must be truthful.

Vice and depravity are not more widely extended in

The

among the rest to the advantage of all. Europe hence-
forth will be one large family, sharing in common its
moral, material, and intellectual resources. Emulation
and competition will give life, power, and activity to the
springs of the grand social machine, which, released at
length from the bonds that fettered it during past ages,
is now free to speed its way unchecked and unembarrassed
to the loftiest realms of prosperity and advancement.
Pisa, February, 1861.

it seems to me, to stealing a man's thoughts, which indeed ought to be punished as a felony.

The Hogarth at Calais, of 1851, was a clever, though rather overdone picture, representing Hogarth being examined by a French magistrate for daring to sketch the old English gate at Calais.

In 1852, Mr. Frith's picture of Pope makes love to Lady Wortley Montague was a vulgar and entirely overstrained work; to me personally, entirely unpleasant.

at the busiest hour of the day, when that cockney paradise is at its fullest bloom. The artist drew the scene from the sea, so as to avoid, I suppose, the difficulty of wave painting, but this gave a stiff and set look to the whole that went far to spoil it. Somehow or other the characters looked as if drawn up before the foot-lights of a theatre. Still the picture was surprisingly varied and clever. The old tradesman in buff slippers, basking in the idle quiet, reading his newspaper; the children dabbling with their wooden spades; the handsome young couple; the Jew boy trying to sell toys to the indignant grand old lady; the flirting; the vulgar enjoyment of | the whole scene; were all admirable.

In 1853, Mr. Frith donned the crown of R.A., and deservedly enough. Yet, to return to good pictures we have omitted, we must mention his pleasant work of 1848, Sir Roger de Coverley and the Spectator, and his 1819 production of a Stage Coach Adventure of 1750, a very sound, But this picture (now engraved) was quite eclipsed by well-painted, strong scene, full of vigorous character. It the Derby Day, which was far more complete, strong, represented the interior of a stage-coach, with a highwayman, hideous in a black mask, staring in at the window, with a full cocked pistol in his hand. The passengers; the cowardly officer, the sly Quaker hiding his purse, and the pretty, frightened, fluttering women, are well contrasted. The ominous bullet-hole, too, in the robber's mask, is just one of Mr. Frith's clever inventions.

In 1850, too, Mr. Frith had well won a right to academic honours (whatever, apart from business reasons, they may be worth) by his fine picture from Goldsmith's comedy of the Good-Natured Man,-Honeywood introduces the Bailiffs as his Friends. This is one of the painter's most vigorous and honest bits of humour. The face of little Flanigan is inimitable, and the vulgar affectation of the two bailiffs is excellently caught, without undue smoothness or affectation.

The sequence of Mr. Frith's later pictures I need not trouble to follow, as the fame of them all is merged into the fame of two,-the Derby Day (1858) and Life at the Seaside (1854).

As for Sherry, Sir, it is a mere portrait, of arch, vulgar wantonness, only fit for tavern bar-rooms. The Claude Duval of 1860 was pale coloured and unpleasing, redeemed only by the pretty anger of the lady who is compelled to dance with the ungraceful highwayman. In another earlier exhibition Mr. Frith produced the best extant portrait of Mr. Charles Dickens, though the bronze ruddiness of that healthy face was a little too much toned down. I do not know in what year appeared his Dolly Varden, a pretty costume study.

and epical. It gave us a scene which, though, like the other, a mere stray page plucked from the book of life,— was yet a dramatic scene, embracing far more types of character. It represented the moment before a race, and it was divided into many clever episodes. There was a shop-boy who has been "cleaned out" at thimble rig, and looks the very image of disreputable despair. There are the thimble-riggers, with the sham countryman, the accomplice, and the real countryman, the approaching dupe. There are the rather over-exhilarated guardsmen frothing about champagne on the tops of drags. There is the acrobat and the little tinselled Belphegor, who forgets the performance in his longings for a game pie, whose varnish glistens on the grass, beside the groom, who is arranging a fashionable lunch. There is the vociferous betting-man, and the ladies assuming the airs of the turf with bewitching coquetry. There, too, is a sad corner where a neglected mistress, over-dressed and painted, frowns at a gipsy fortune-teller, while her vicious, debauched-looking owner bites his cigar between his black teeth, leaning against the barouch, and with his back to her. Underneath the carriage is a ragged urchin clutching at an empty champagne bottle. Beyond, in the background, there is a broad reach of sunny turf, and some jockeys in tulip jackets taking their thoroughbreds a breathing. Above are the stands black with heads. The grouping of this picture is excellent, its colours are brighter and fresher than Mr. Frith's generally are. Its perfect truth was, I have heard, insured by the use of photographs taken on the spot. The models, too, were carefully selected, the ladies and gentlemen were painted from ladies and gentle. men, which was a great advantage. The picture is now being engraved by Monsieur Blanchard,-one of Messionnier's engravers.

A great career is certainly open to Mr. Frith, if wealth and success do not spoil him, and blunt and paralyze his faculties. He has England in the nineteenth century to paint from, and all the poetry of London, that vast mine, as yet untouched, to discover. But he must not be flippant and trifling, and he must learn to appeal more to the heart, less to the eye.

The two great pictures eclipsed all. They showed that Mr. Frith still as no prophet,-but yet as a great seer. He had thrown off antique dresses, and was going to paint modern life, with some moral feeling too,—at least in the later picture; the Elizabethan demon,-as poor Blake would have called it,-had left him, and he had now reached the daylight. Crowds thronged to see these pictures at the Academy; a rail had indeed to be put up round the Derby Day, to prevent its injury, just as, long before, one of Wilkie's had had to be defended. All day, all through the Exhibition, they were crowded. Families came up from the country to town chiefly to see them. But though always popular from his arch humour, and the piquante prettiness of his faces, Mr. Frith did not really reach his "high-water mark" till he left the stage-Elizabethan and all such old conventions, which only the greatest genius can breathe Promethean life into, and ventured forth boldly into the pure fresh sunshine and the bright blue weather of our open air summer. It was Hogarth's great arena, so long left untenanted, that Mr. Frith now prepared to do battle in. He resolved to paint modern life and modern scenes; so that his pictures should be records for future ages of our social life in this Mr. Flatou has been much laughed at for his liberality, nineteenth century. but we feel sure he will earn £3,000 at least by the His first picture was a view of Ramsgate sands, taken picture, as Mr. Gambart's recent success with Mr. Holman

After many stories of Mr. Frith offering rewards for a new English subject, resolving upon painting the great prizefight, and other "shaves" of the day, we hear at last that he has been engaged by Mr. Flatou, the picture-dealer, to paint Life at a Railway Station, for the enormous sum of eight thousand seven hundred and fifty guineas. The picture will include episodes of lovers parting, a bridal party, a convict going to the hulks, etc. The sum given includes a small replica, the copyright, and the profits of a private exhibition. The work is to be ten feet long.

If any person speaks of the great building which contains these rarities, we call it a "wonderful place;" if he speaks of the rarities, we call them a “wonderful collec-Thursdays, and Fridays; but then the South Kensington tion." We are not generally aware, when we apply these terms, that the Museum is more entitled to claim them than we probably imagine.