With the rise of Bonaparte, the eclipse not only of Savoy but of Piedmont, under Charles Emmanuel IV., who had succeeded to Victor Amadeus III., became perfect. The whole country passed with the battle of Marengo under French rule. Victor Emmanuel I., who had succeeded on the abdication of Charles Emmanuel, took the field, however, with a legion in the pay of England, for William Pitt had always uppermost in his mind the liberation of Italy from French thraldom, and the country, abandoned by the French, dropped, as it were, into the power of its sovereign. The reign of Victor Emmanuel I., of Charles Felix, and of Charles Albert, possess almost solely an Italian interest. They were marked by the struggle of old monarchical conservation and the principle of constitutionalism, which was fast gaining adherents in the countries beyond the Alps. The latter reign was, in as far as Savoy is concerned, curiously marked by the rash projects of "Young Italy," guided by Mazzini. The latter made Geneva the head-quarters of his threadbare conspiracies. He had about him some thousand Italian, Polish, and other refugees, and these advanced on Savoy from Carouge, and marched upon St. Jullien. Thence they wandered, with hardly a settled plan, about the country. They had reached Annecy, and occupied it, when they turned and coasted the lake towards Thonon. Mazzini's proclamations in the Italian language, and in behalf of Italian nationality, made but little impression on the unimaginative Savoyards. Ultimately, this ridiculous demonstration was put down without scarcely a shot having been fired. It was the same in 1848, when, upon the defeat of Charles Albert by the Austrians, Mazzini proclaimed the "War of the Peoples" from Lugnano, but which, notwithstanding some dashing feats of Garibaldi on the Lake Maggiore, was as summarily put to an end. Little or nothing has been done for Savoy by the present king, Victor Emmanuel II. The treaties of 1814 bound Savoy to the Holy Alliance, and engaged her, therefore, to the pursuance of their hostile views to France. The military task imposed upon Sardinia was merely the defence of its western frontiers-its old task as guardian of the Alps. Its own share of the war contributions exacted from France at the peace (ten millions of francs) was to be exclusively employed in works of fortification against that power; consequently, instead of the demolished Brunetta di Susa, which barred both the roads of Mont Genèvre and Mont Cenis, Victor Emmanuel I. restored the Fort d'Exilles on the road to the former pass, and reared L'Esseillon near the summit of the latter, on the Savoy side. Charles Albert, indeed, completed the "armour of Piedmont" by his works at Vinadio, in Val di Stura, by additions to Bard, in Val d'Aosta, and by formidable bastions at Ventimiglia, in the western Riviera. But by this arrangement, while Piedmont was strengthened, Savoy and Nice were left entirely defenceless, though part of Savoy, Chablais, and Faucigny are protected by the compacts of 1814, which extend to them the neutrality of the Swiss cantons. (Treaty of Vienna, Art. 92.) It has been found (Morelli, Dei Diversi Passaggi delle Alpi) that the Western Alps, from the Great St. Bernard to the Appenines, have on sixty-six different occasions been made the theatre of great warlike exploits, from the crossing of the Mont Genèvre or Mont Cenis by Hannibal, to the passage of the Great St. Bernard by Napoleon; that in thirty-two instances the passage was effected either without resistance, or even with the consent and favour of the inhabitants; that in eighteen cases a feeble opposition was easily overcome; but that only in seven occurrences the mountains were forced against great deliberate efforts on the part of their defenders, whilst, on the other hand, the invaders' attacks have been nine times strenuously repulsed. On the late advance of the French by Mont Cenis, the Savoyards of Maurienne manifested the utmost unconcern-an indifference which may be either attributed to want of sympathy in the cause of Piedmont, or a feeling that it was too dearly purchased by prostration at the feet of France. It was different at Genoa, where the Italians, seduced by the promises of liberation held out by Napoleon III., welcomed him at the port which was especially granted to Piedmont for the security of Europe against such invasions. The House of Savoy has failed to recognise that since 1848 it could no longer, as an intermediate state, depend for its safety on the mutual, eternal, inevitable jealousy of those two powers, France and Austria; their hostile interests might still-as they did after Custoza and Novara-guarantee its territorial integrity, but an independent course of policy imposes on a nation the duty of complete self-reliance. Freedom must consider itself as isolated; it must be ever ready to give battle to the whole world, sure that energy and resolution cannot fail ultimately to command the respect and sympathy-to enlist the very interests of the world itself in its cause. It will be seen, by this glance at the geographical relations and historical antecedents of Savoy, in what a false position Victor Emmanuel places himself and his subjects, as well as all Italy, by ceding that territory to France. He relinquishes alike the cradle and the sepulchre of his ancestry, the guardianship of the Alps, and the centre of all the historical, political, and religious traditions of his family. He cedes the highlands, that have ever been held by hardy, independent, and almost indomitable races, and the rocky barriers that have so often checked the torrent of invasion from without. Neither Gaul, nor Frank, nor Burgundian, have ever held but temporary possession of the Alpine summits, and the mountaineers themselves were even then rather held in check than really subjected. To found claims upon the temporary occupation of these snow-clad heights by Napoleon I. is as vain as to urge a similar demand founded upon the transitory conquests of Charlemagne. The Saracens could urge a longer tenure as a plea to the possession of the same region. The The removal of the strongholds from Susa and the Italian valleys to the Exilles and L'Esseillon may be made to turn to the benefit of that power, which will then look down upon the North Italian kingdom from the summits of the Graian, Cottian, Taurinian, and Maritime Alps, with something of that feeling with which we can imagine the Lämmergeier to contemplate the lambs pasturing in the vales below. "armour of Piedmont," laid aside with the feudal ages, and trampled under foot by the Revolution, has been finally cast off for an uncertain future. The faithful subjects of a dynasty for hundreds of years, who have struggled so heroically for freedom, are shamelessly bartered away to wear the garlands of Florence, whilst an immense imperial citadel is being constructed in the north of the Italian peninsula. Nor is this all. Nice is included in this disgraceful cession. Thus the French frontier extends into the very Gulf of Genoa, and the entire coast, with San Remo, Albenga, and Savona, on to the splendid city of palaces, is placed under the protection of that faithful and disinterested ally who declared himself averse from territorial acquisition. But perhaps the most grievous point of all connected with this new arrangement of the territories of Central Europe, is the manner in which it affects the interests of Switzerland, the last home of freedom of conscience and of political liberty on the Continent. Chablais, Faucigny, and the Genevois, were, we have before seen, guaranteed by a treaty, which is now looked upon as so much waste paper. What possible independence can remain to Geneva, or to the canton of Vaud, when pressed on all sides by a freedom-crushing race? The independence of the republic at large is threatened, and this is a matter which concerns the states of Europe as much practically as it does us theoretically. The Swiss federal republic can appeal with justice to all Europe against this invasion of her rights. The whole character of French policy, of Sardinian patriotism, of Helvetian independence, of the past and future to Central Europe, is indeed changed by this significant diplomatic transfer, and, such an example once conceded, a system is inaugurated that is calculated to overthrow all confidence in imperial honour and integrity. At the very moment when a new industrial and commercial era was about to be opened to the future, and more real honour gained by such a triumph than by a hundred sanguinary revivals of Marengo, Jena, and Austerlitz, the cup of hope has been dashed to the ground, and the future buried in the gloom and despondency inseparable from treachery and deceit. THE SHAKSPEARE QUESTION: MR. HAMILTON'S INQUIRY.* As Mr. Maskelyne observed in his letter to the Times-which, following up Mr. Hamilton's exposé of the Perkins Annotations, dealt another heavy blow and great discouragement to the cause of that "Old Corrector"-there are three kinds of evidence that may be brought to bear on a literary forgery: the intrinsic literary character of the document being one of these; the palæological another, the value of which is to be estimated by the amount of experience and antiquarian erudition and skill of the critic; while the third rests on the physical scrutiny of the document, by the aids which science has placed in our hands. It is to the last that Mr. Maskelyne's researches have reference-that gentleman's microscope and chemical appliances having elucidated the damaging fact, that our "old corrector's" emendations were written in pencil, in a modern running hand, before (because literally beneath, and not over) the pen-work of Perkins, the aforesaid modern-antique. A nineteenth * An Inquiry into the Genuineness of the Manuscript Corrections in Mr. J. Payne Collier's Annotated Shakspere, folio, 1632; and of certain Shaksperian Documents likewise published by Mr. Collier. By N. E. S. A. Hamilton. With Fac-similes. London: R. Bentley. 1860. 2 E April-VOL. CXVIII. NO. CCCCLXXII. century corrector pencils hypothetical corrections, and over the pencilmarks (as microscope and chemical co-efficients have proved) a seventeenthcentury corrector (as supposed) pens their meaning, letter by letter, into a more crabbed-looking and a more durable form. He is caught, and convicted, flagrante delicto. Science is "down upon him" with his prepared sepia and Indian ink-and turns its microscope upon him to the same purpose that Mr. Herapath does for a West-country inquest, or Dr. Alfred Taylor for a case at the Old Bailey. It was in "confirmation doubly strong" of Mr. Hamilton's report, that Mr. Maskelyne announced in the leading journal the results of his investigation. The Duke of Devonshire's folio, erst Mr. Payne Collier's, was the corpus delicti upon which the Keeper of the Mineral Department operated, ex officio, at the British Museum. Mr. Hamilton had started the game, and Mr. Maskelyne ran it home. The former gentleman, it is to be observed, explicitly disavows any meddling whatever with the intrinsic and purely literary part of the question. That has been sufficiently ventilated from the first by a serried phalanx of objectors, in the persons of Messrs. Dyce, Charles Knight, Samuel Weller Singer, Howard Staunton, Halliwell, and R. G. White, whose protests against Perkins, on the score of internal evidence, have long been known to the reading world, and have often carried conviction with them. What Mr. Hamilton has done, is, to examine, on external grounds, the authenticity of the handwriting. And this he has done with effect-with disastrous effect to Perkins. Is Perkins alive, and still in work? If so, his occupation's gone. He need manufacture no more paint-composition of sepia and Indian ink. Why was not Perkins more free with his india-rubber? Ay, there's the rub. We have never, for one moment, suspected Mr. Collier himself of bad faith in this affair. It is unfortunate for him, however, that a certain reserve on his part,* together with certain inconsistencies in some of his statements, and oversights or contradictions in his various publications on this subject, should have laid him open to "obstinate questionings," which he finds it difficult or else displeasing to answer. At the time we write, at least, his answer remains a desideratum. Meanwhile, we are all of us indebted to Mr. Hamilton for the zeal and intelligence with which he has pushed home this vexed question. Not the least curious part of his Inquiry is that which fixes on one perpetrator (Perkins by hypothesis) a variety of scattered forgeries, ranging from Bridgewater House to the State Paper-office, and from Dulwich College to the British Museum. The same handwriting he detects here and there-the same joint-stock partnership of pencil and pen: "decidedly by the same hand," is a recurring phrase in his volume,—the more's the pity, for Perkins. The British Museum, as a national institution, may reasonably rejoice in its intelligent staff of detectives,-Sir Frederic Madden at their head. They have in this instance done the state some service. Thanks to their vigilance, Perkins has (though impersonally) come to grief. There seems an end put at last to his Pencillings by the Way. Perkins allowed himself too wide a margin for his marginal readings, and was not so careful as he should have been to rub off old scores. * See pp. iii. (note), 22 (note), 104-5, &c., of Mr. Hamilton's Inquiry. THE CHILD. FROM VICTOR HUGO. BY W. CHARLES KENT. WHEN comes the little babe, the household cries The saddest, ev'n remorseful, brows unbend Ofttimes while deep in converse, round the fire, With winning artless looks that love enforce, For his dear eyes are full of boundless charms; Never have his young feet yet touched our mire: Thou art to our poor ark the fluttering dove. Uncomprehending all thou seest from birth, Ah, but the child is fair! his witching ways, His errant looks with rapturous wonder rife: Lord! guard thou me, Lord! guard all those I love, Denying roseate flowers to summer trees, Το cages, birds-to silent hives, their bees- |