Mi: Lyman on the Political State of Italy. 



1821.] 



a tissue wliich accomplishes the secre- 

 tion of thouglit." 



That thought may be a motion of 

 those animal fibres, which are endowed 

 with perception, or consciousness, is 

 pi'obable enough : and indeed sensation 

 and idea appear to differ only in this, 

 that sensation is a motion from without 

 inwards, and idea a motion from wilh- 

 in outwards. But to maintain that any 

 substance is secreted, absorbed or ett"iis- 



539 



ed, during the supposed inlialatory or 

 exlialatory state of the organs of percep- 

 tion, is surely a new opinion, of which 

 satisfactory proofs arc not adduced by 

 M. Oabanis. 



RARBINICAL PUN. 



Quod ad nomen Epicurus, says Moses 

 Maimonides, p. 163, vox est Syriaca, 

 cujus significatus est: Despectus et con- 

 tomptus legis, aut eoruni qui legem 

 prae se ferunt. 



NOVELTIES OF FOREIGN LITERATURE. 



» MK. LYMAN On the Political S'aie of 

 '• Italy. 



CConditded from our last. J 



THE tenth and eleventh chapters of 

 the work before us contain accurate 

 statistical accounts of Rome and Flo- 

 rence, but our limits oblige us to pass 

 them over. Tlie twel fth is devoted to 

 tLe subject of monasteries and con- 

 verts, and comprises the only details 

 of any statistical accuracy which we 

 have happened to meet with, on this 

 subject. The foHowing views of the 

 monastic life and cliaracter, seem to us 

 just and candid, 



' The monlvs and nuns of the richer 

 orders, not included in the name of 

 Mendicant or Franciscan, have a re- 

 spectable appearance, and addict them- 

 selves to no particular penance of self- 

 denial. Tn general, tliey observe no 

 more fasts than are prescribed to all the 

 church ; and if they go to prayer five 

 times in the twenty- four hours, they 

 are no more meritorious than all men, 

 who perforin faithfully the calling ap- 

 l)ointed unto them ; and surely no man 

 will say, that the duties of a monk are 

 to be named, on the score of toil and 

 hardship, with the trades that the great 

 proportion of men drive. As for seclu- 

 sion from the world, the average are 

 not more secluded and obscure in con- 

 ■^ents, than they would have been in 

 their paternal houses. All uKmks have 

 permission to leave their convents at 

 certain hours, and ihcre is but one 

 nunnery wliich forbi<ls its inhabitants 

 Iiolding co'iverse with their relatives 

 whenever they clioose. As for (he mo- 

 notony of the life, it is no doubt very 

 ^eat ; for (iiree-fourihs of it js passed 

 in sleep and prayers, which, managed 

 as they are in convents, doubtless re- 

 semble sleep, and (Ik^ n;st in a ill tie 

 reading and writing, coarse work, or 

 iinproiitable ainusement. I saw among 

 the ruins, in the museum of the cele- 



brated Vallombrosa, devastated by tlie 

 French, several hundred little seals in 

 sulphur, which a patient monk had 

 passed a wliole life in copying from the 

 briefs, pastoral letters, and other re- 

 ligious documents preserved in the li- 

 brary. But this monotony is hardly 

 less great or dispiriting, than that to 

 which the Italians of the higher classes 

 are condemned in the world ; and it is 

 precisely the monotony of that exist- 

 ence, joined with the great number of 

 the Italian nobility, their poverty, and 

 the reproach which belongs to industry, 

 that will always sujiply the convents, 

 until a government shall come suffi- 

 ciently powerful and enlightened, to 

 oblige this useless and degraded popu- 

 lation to engage in the public and pri- 

 vate concerns of the nation. As for 

 their abstemious diet, of which the 

 pious catholics make so great a merit, 

 T am satisfied by details of the manner 

 of living of several convents at Rome, 

 that the average of the monks do not 

 submit to more denials than they 

 would have been forced to do in other 

 vocations. A difficulty of supporting 

 themselves, and not a pious motive, is 

 one of the chief reasons that leads men 

 to convents. It is only another form 

 for receiving parish aid. The council 

 of New Castille, in its celebrated pro- 

 ject of reform, of 1619, prayed theking, 

 that the number of monasteries might 

 be reduced, for they served only as a 

 shelter to the indolent against want.' 



With the succeeding ciiapters begin 

 Mr. Lyman's observations on the king- 

 dom of Naples. 



In the thirteenth, is sketched a his- 

 tory of the clTorts at political and reli- 

 gious reform in that country, some of 

 which run liack to a remoter period 

 than we were prepared to expect. But 

 our limits oblige us to hasten over this, 

 as well as the chapter which follows, 

 and is devoted to the population of the 



city 



