conspiracy, at the head of which was Luigi | emancipated cities. In 1203 they were alGonzaga, anxious to avenge the violence ready settled at Parma, and about 100 years offered by Francesco Bonaccolsi to the per- later Giberto da Correggio, with a policy son of Anna da Dovara, the wife of Filippino Gonzaga. The Gonzaga, first lords, then marquises and dukes of Mantua, secure in the impregnable position of their capital, redeemed the insignificance of their territory by their brilliant valour as leaders of the forces of allied powers. In 1495 one of them, the marquis Gian Francesco, was at the head of the Milanese and Venetian forces assembled to arrest Charles VIII. of France, in his hasty retreat from his ill-digested conquest of Naples. The battle of Fornovo, between the best lances of Christendom and those ill-assorted Italian recruits, has long been a source of discussion for the historians of the two nations, who have fought that fray analogous to that followed by Jacopo da Carrara, though not with the same single-mindedness and disinterestedness, exerted his influence to bring about a general reconciliation and amnesty between the two inveterate parties by which Parma, no less than every other Lombard city, had been for so many years distracted. The blind gratitude of his fellow citizens rewarded him with the sovereignty of the town; but the faithlessness and disloyalty of Giberto and of his son Azzo, the enmity of some of the native families, and above all the ambition of powerful neighbours, rendered that prond title beyond measure precarious and dangerous. The Correggio were driven from Parma with inces over and over again with an obstinacy equal sant vicissitudes, till at last, Azzo pressed hard at least to that of the combatants themselves. by Mastino Della Scala, with a most flagrant Count Litta, as may be expected, claims violation of all rights and treaties, sold Parma for his countrymen the honour of the day, to Obizzo of Este, defrauding his brothers of cians. The Sanvitale at a very early period | ardo Rangoni was the first Podestà of were Lords of Fontanellato; their castle has Modena in 1156. Another Gherardo disin all times been a favourite resort for Italian tinguished himself in the famous war of the nor can it indeed be called in question, that, if Gonzaga failed in his intent of cutting to pieces the invading host and taking its king prisoner, on the other hand, Charles was forced to abandon all his designs against Milan and Genoa, and had to thank his stars and St. Denis that he was preserved to see the Louvre again. But the lineal descendants of the warriors of Mantua degenerated with the universal decline of the Italian nation; and when at last, early in the eighteenth century, they were "feloniously," as Litta declares, despoiled of their estates, even the unjust policy to which they fell victims was insufficient to call forth men's sympathy in their favour. The extinction of the house of Mantua in 1708, was soon followed by that of its several branches reigning at Guastalla, Luzzara, Novellara, Sabbioneta, &c. The Marquises of Vescovado are the only noblemen bearing the name of Gonzaga, whose generation has been preserved to our own times. They are now living on their estates near the Po, forgotten by the busy world. "Napoleon," says Litta, "always so eager in his hunt after great names, sent the most flattering invitations, with the hope to draw the last representative of this house from obscurity. But even the great conqueror in his omnipotence could make nothing of him." The city of Parma had also its tyrants, the Lords of Correggio, a race of minor Lombard feudatories, who derived their name from their estate of Correggio as carly as the year 1009. Soon after the triumph of the national cause they abandoned their stronghold, suing for municipal magistracies in the their share in that infamous bargain, 1344. His descendants continued at Correggio till 1517; long after the extinction of the direct line another branch was invested with their titles from 1616 to 1631. They all ended in 1711. The two emulous families who were invariably to be found in the ranks of Correggio's opponents, the Rossi and Sanvitale, are also given by Litta in the fourth volume of his work. The Rossi of Parma, whose earliest memorials date from 1100, number several heroes in their family, many of whom gloriously fell during the wars of Frederic II., when the whole host of that powerful monarch was routed under the walls of their native town in 1248. The Rossi followed the Guelph party with zeal and consistency, and the two brothers, Marsiglio and Piero, the opponents of Azzo da Correggio, were considered as the noblest warriors of the time. They were invested with the title of Counts of San Secondo in 1300; and in that castle the family had their residence till the death of the last Rossi in 1825. The Sanvitale begin their genealogy with Ugo, who in 1100 built the tower of San Vitale, on the banks of the Enza. They also were Guelphs, and lavish of their blood for the Guelph cause during the memorable siege of Parma by Frederic II. In later times the ascendency of the Ghibelines of Milan and Verona occasionally drove them from home, when, together with a great many other Lombard families from every town, they sought their refuge at Venice, and were admitted among the Venetian patri literature and art. The late Count Stefano won a wide reputation as a founder of houses of asylum and education. Not a few of the most distinguished living artists were reared up in those liberal institutions, to which the good count consecrated all his time and pretty nearly his fortune. His son, Luigi, at his death endeavoured to repair his shattered "Rape of the Bucket" in 1249. The Rangoni were Lords of Castelvetro and Livizzano till 1702, when the elder branch came to its end; other branches however are still extant, and from them sprung a few but highly distinguished ecclesiastical or literary characters. The present representative of one of these houses is simply designated by Count patrimony by an alliance with the house of Litta under his Christian name "Taddeo;" Austria, that is, he espoused the unfortunate but his wife deserves a more particular nooffspring of Maria Louisa's frailty, more tice. lately legitimated by a left-handed marriage "Rosa, one of the daughters of Count with Count Neipperg, her paramour. The Carlo Testi, formerly a senator in the kingcousin of Luigi, Count Jacopo Sanvitale, dom of Italy, accused of participation in the followed a different, consequently a more rebellion of February 3d, 1831, at Modena, losing policy. At war with all the estab- for having embroidered a silken standard lished governments since his boyhood, he with the three colours of the Italian kingwas implicated in every conspiracy that ever dom. This lady was condemned by a triwas brewing in subterranean Italy. Im-bunale statario to three years' imprisonment prisoned at Fenestrelle by Napoleon in 1810, in a fortress of state. The penalty was afteron account of a disrespectful sonnet on the wards commuted by special clemency into a birth of the King of Rome, banished from Milan by the Austrians in 1816, sentenced to several years' imprisonment as a Carbonaro in 1820, and exiled in consequence of seclusion for as many years in the convent Della Mantellate in Reggio." The first instance, we believe, of female handiwork being accounted high treason. the insurrection of central Italy in 1831; he But there still exists in Modena a family, must be now, in spite of his eminent genius by the side of whose antiquity, even the and most amiable disposition, languishing in boasted genealogy of Este appears unimsome of the obscure depôts of Italian refu-portant. The Pico were certainly a disgees in France, unless indeed his cousin's tinguished family before the conquest of recent exaltation at the court of Parma may have smoothed the way for his return. The Rangoni of Modena also are among the few families preserving some traces of their former splendour. They are fond of deriving their origin from German ancestors, and were land owners before 1040. Gher * We think our readers may like to see this famous sibillone or sonnet à bouts rimés, which, Sanvitale wrote in an unlucky quarter of an hour among a company of friends, and which, when it fell into the hands of the emperor and king, so bitterly provoked him, that he exclaimed, "Send the man to Fenestrelle, and let him stay there as many months as there are lines in the poem." "PER LA NASCITA DEI, RE DI ROMA. Per la rabbia che proprio il cor mi tocca Em' arrovello se Firenze o Lucca Chitarrino strimpella o tromba imbocca Egli è del conio della stessa zecca E rammento la rana che s' impicca One Charlemagne in 774, since that emperor led away into France at his return, among other hostages, Manfredo, one of that house. Many years afterwards another Manfredo, Count of Milan, was among the opponents of Guido, Duke of Spoleto, for some time emperor and king of Italy. He continued his hostilities against Lamberto, son of Guido, also king of Italy, who laid siege to Milan, and after an obstinate resistance took prisoner and beheaded the Count, 896. Ugo, son of Manfredo, a youth of sixteen, also fell into the hands of the conqueror, but was pardoned. He even so far won the king's favour as to become his inseparable companion. morning in summer, 898, King Lamberto was hunting alone with his favourite on the plain of Marengo. Wearied with long riding he lay down to sleep. The desire of avenging his father's death had long slumbered but was not extinct in Ugo's heart. From that sleep Lamberto never awoke. What became of the young murderer is not known, but in 900 he was no longer Lord of Milan. From him through almost mythological traditions, the Pico, or, as they were called, "the children of Manfredo," with great plausibility derive their lineal descent. They reappear on the stage as Lords of Mirandola and imperial vicars in 1311. Ten years later Francesco Pico fell into the hands of a ruthless enemy, Passerino Bonaccolsi of Mantua, and, shut up in a dungeon with his family, he died the death of Ugolino, after having devoured two of his children. The Pico were successively created Counts of Concordia in 1432, Princes and then Dukes of Mirandole, &c., &c. Still the greatest lustre was conferred upon them by the illustrious and unfortunate Giovanni Pico, named by the Italians the phenix of geniuses. Giovanni died childless; the descendants of his brothers were stripped of their estates by the emperor in 1706, and became extinct forty years later. The Pio, at one time Lords of Carpi and Sassuolo, who derived from the same stock with the "children of Manfredo," are also extinct. But two different houses of their name, issuing from collateral branches, are still living at Carpi, and some of their members are still high in office; one of them, Galeazzo Pio, being Governor of Garfagnana for the Duke of Modena. A few of the many hundred families belonging to the feudal nobility, who acted in Lombardy a subordinate part under the Visconti, Scala, Este, &c., already occur in Count Litta's catalogue; such as the Bojardo of Reggio, Lords of Rubiera since 1095, afterwards Counts of Scandiano, extinct in 1560; Da Camino of Trevigi, powerful since 1089, and ended in 1422; the Castiglione of Milan, whose castle was built before the year 1000, and whose representatives, the lineal successors of the brave, amiable and accomplished Baldassar Castiglione, author of "Il Cortegiano," are still flourishing; the Giovio of Como, Fogliani of Reggio, Trinci of Foligno, Varano of Camerino, &c., &c., these last tracing their pedigree to the third century of the Christian era. - All these have been selected among the vast number, probably out of regard to some universally known individual, such as the poet Matteo Maria Bojardo, the historian Paolo Giovio, the poet Alphonso Varano, &c.; but were Litta really to give us the history of every feudal house of Lombardy or Romagna, of all the petty but renowned Lords of Polenta, in Ravenna; Malatesta, of Rimini; Montefeltro of Urbino; Manfredi, of Faenza, &c., &c., &c., there would positively be no end to his labours. To all these, which in a general point of view, and in consequence of the law which they were known to profess, we incline to consider as issuing from northern, that is, from Gothic, Lombard, Frankish or German blood, must be added the numerous descendants of those brave Norman adventurers (few in number at first, but afterwards nearly as numerous as the followers of Wil liam the Conqueror of England), who, from the latter end of the tenth to the close of the following century, founded in the south of Italy the kingdom of the two Sicilies. The Filangieri, Caracciolo, and other Neapolitan houses, are well known to look up to those warriors as their progenitors; but not one of them has yet appeared in our author's register. Next come, at Naples, the French barons of Charles of Anjou, settled in the country since 1265; in Sicily and Sardinia, the feudal nobles, either foreign or natives, constitutionally organized in an oligarchic body by the Kings of Arragon; and more lately the Spanish houses, both in those islands and at Milan and Naples, who followed in the train of the triumphant armies of Charles V. and Philip II. Finally, among the feudal nobility, may be ranged the houses of those Condottieri of the fifteenth and following centuries, the Del Verme, Malatesta, Baglioni, Coleoni, &c., many of whom, often arising from obscure and even ignominious sources, owed their rise to the might of their arm, and established their precarious sovereignty almost on every petty town of Romagna and Lombardy; some of them having the good luck, for a time, to escape the wholesale massacres by which Borgia, Della Rovere, Medici, and other such popes, contrived to rid themselves of their presence. Of these also the number is legion, and only two or three have as yet been published, nominally the Vitelli of Città di Castello, and the more famous Sforza Attendolo of Cotignola. These last, heirs to the greatness of the Visconti, were known as private gentlemen in their native place, towards the year 1326; Count Litta having successfully combated an idle tradition, according to which the first Sforza Attendolo had been represented as changing a woodman's hatchet for a trooper's battle-axe. Whatever his pedigree, however, it is well known how Sforza, the founder of one of the great military schools in Italy, owed his rise to the keen edge of his sword in the beginning of the fifteenth century. His son, Francesco, equally distinguished in arms, rendered his services acceptable to Filippo Maria Visconti, married the duke's daughter, Bianca, and, after the death of Visconti, was by the reluctant Milanese acknowledged as duke. The short and ignominious reign of Galeazzo, Francesco's son and successor, the usurpations and treacheries of Lodovico il Moro, and the fatal consequences entailed upon himself and his country by his improvident policy, are all matters essentially belonging to history. Maximilian and Francis, last heirs of Lodovico, both of whom (the former under Swiss, the latter under Austrian patronage) ascended From what has been said, the reader may be enabled to catch a glimpse of the vastness of this second division of Count Litta's subject. As with the genealogy of the classical or ancient Roman aristocracy, the history of Venice and Genoa is more essentially connected, so are the numerous vicissitudes of every town in the main land written in the records of the feudal or castellated nobility. But the history of Italy is a study bordering on immensity; formidable in its array of in dividualities, of which he alone who is gifted with the greatest powers of abstraction and generalization can conceive a distinct idea; and Litta's work, from the very nature of its compilation, rejects all classification and method. Whilst, therefore, we are thankful for what he has already, with so much diligence, laid before us, we feel also persuaded of the great weight of the task he has imposed upon himself, a weight under which, without the active co-operation of his countrymen, he must eventually succumb. It remains for us, before we proceed to take into consideration the third class of Italian families, those belonging to the burgher aristocracy (nobilità cittadina) to give a few words, and only a few words, "Però che si ne caccia il lungo tema," to two more of the feudal houses, still extant; one of them the most powerful, the other the most illustrious of all Italian surviving families-the Dukes of Savoy and the Colonna. At the head of the genealogy of the first house Litta places an Umberto dalle Bianche Mani, Count of Savoy, flourishing at the very opening of the eleventh century. The thick darkness involving the immediate preceding age, so justly considered by historians as the Nadir of human intelligence, renders it impracticable for any family to ascend any fur ther without resting on idle conjectures. The house of Savoy was till late regarded as deriving from, and connected with, the earliest Dukes of Saxony; but more recent researches seem to give a greater degree of plausibility to another tradition which would trace them to the Marquises or Dukes of Ivrea, lords of one of the thirty great feuds into which, as we have repeatedly stated, the country was divided soon after the Lombard conquest, and who during the decline of the Carlovingian dynasty, entered, with more ambition than success, into the lists against others of their 29 VOL. XXVIII. peers for the high dominion of the peninsula. Litta is evidently partial to this opinion, and corroborates it by the statement of an important fact, that in 1098, the Counts of Savoy professed Italian law, adopted perhaps by their ancestors during their contest for the sceptre of Italy. That white-handed Umberto possessed considerable estates on both sides of the Alps, among which was most probably the upper vale of Aosta. Umberto died about 1056, and his unbroken posterity, perhaps the most ancient among the reigning families of Europe, have been almost constantly rising in power for these last eight centuries. Their throne has been occupied by thirty-eight princes during twenty-six generations, and whilst all the illegitimate branches have become extinct, the direct line has been most wonderfully preserved. From its very beginning this house gradually extended its influence over those Subalpine provinces known under the vague name of Piedmont, overcoming the opposition of the rival houses of Saluzzo and Montferrat, and the democratic spirit prevailing at Asti, Turin, and Ivrea, formerly members of the Lombard league. What was at first merely high patronage or nominal allegiance ended by being acknowledged as absolute power, "in consequence," says Litta, "of inheritances, marriages, treaties, and the right of the strongest." The Dukes of Savoy did not reside on the sunny side of the Alps till about the middle of the sixteenth century, and even then, far from becoming naturalized to the climate of Italy, they gave Piedmont that tinge of French bastardism, against which the newly arisen national spirit is now so successfully reacting. "Since the sixteenth century," writes Litta at the close of his introductory remarks, " the Dukes of Savoy had in consequence of their position to struggle between France and Austria. Their valour and wisdom secured them that independence, which they were always resolved, at the rate of any sacrifice, to maintain. Twice were they brought to the last stage of adversity, and twice did they rise to still higher destinies. In the first instance a great man, Emmanuel Philibert, raised the house from its ruins. In the later epoch of which we were witnesses, not a name was heard of! Fortune alone stood them in stead of valour and policy. The blind goddess favours and rewards whom she chooses; and Fortune is the Providence of the house of Savoy." Seven fascicoli have already been consecrated to this family, and yet their pedigree has hardly reached the sixteenth century. We all know, however, in whose person their genealogy terminates for the present. Carlo Felice, last of the reigning dynasty, died in 1831, and Carlo Alberto, of the branch of Carignano, ascended the throne. This is the same glorious prince who in trowel, and to gird on his sword, in order to 1820, probably in imitation of his ancestors the Dukes of Ivrea, aspired to the great title of King of Italy, but who seems now satisfied with the more modest appellation of King of the Jesuits. Whether the Colonna are to be considered of German or of ancient Roman descent, is a matter of controversy that Count Litta seems unable to resolve. Their ancestry, however, ascends no higher than 1066, towards which epoch they were already Lords of Palestrina. Their name is familiar to every one who can defend the walls of his embryo metropolis against the attacks of his hostile neighbours. Several spots in the immediate vicinity of the city thus became memorable, and are still pointed out as the sites of imperial victories over the once dreaded Swedes. On one of these triumph-hallowed sites the conqueror built a palace for his consort Catherine. This modern edifice is still preserved in honour of its founder; and once a year, on the 1st of May, the population of St. Petersburg perform a kind of joyful pilgrimage to the gardens of read. No other family ever gave a greater the Catharinenhoff, to welcome the returning number of brave though fierce and restless warriors, nor ever was a throne more helplessly at the mercy of any one house than that of the popes in the hands of Colonna. Their house is still great, and stands on as firm and powerful a base as anything connected with old Italy may be said to remain. Yes; the successors of the most warlike among popes and cardinals, the descendants of the great spring among the snow-covered avenues planted by the man to whom every Russian still looks gratefully back as the author of the greatness and prosperity of the country. It was not till 1721, or ten years after the building of Catharinenhoff, that Peter was able, by the treaty of Neustadt, to remove the frontier of his empire permanently to about 150 miles from the walls of his new capital. leaders of factions, Stefano and Sciarra, of At present the place has become central the great generals Fabrizio, Prospero, and enough, and bids fair to become more and Pompeo, of the brave admiral Marcantonio, the conqueror at Lepanto, and of that noblest of her sex, Vittoria Colonna, still bear the titles of Principi, Gran Contestabili, &c., and are still greatest among the great in Rome, Naples, and Sicily. Yet their wealth more so every day. The empire, only a century old, already presses uncomfortably upon Western Europe. Germany feels that pressure in a multitude of ways, and may feel it more painfully at no very remote period. The first general war in Europe will be sure is far from corresponding to their station; to bring the Russians to the Oder and the and it was perhaps owing to economical Elbe again, where they will be able to hold views that one of the loveliest and most ac- a much more dictatorial language than in complished ladies of that proud house has 1815; but let us forbear to speculate about lately been given in marriage to a son of the the future; our business now is to speak of Banker-Duke Torlonia. Why not? even in St. Petersburg as it stands in the year 1841, this country, where aristocracy rests on the great rock of hereditary privileges, a mesalliance is oftentimes courted as the surest prop to a tottering house-even in this country, Mammon sits next to Blood in the house of lords, and the dwelling of a Jewish banker towers among the loftiest mansions in Piccadilly, second to none but that of the Hero of the age, ART. VI.-Petersburg in Bildern und THERE was certainly something bold in and the subject is amply sufficient for our present purpose without seeking to embellish it with a multitude of prospective dicta, which, probable as they may now seem, may none of them be ratified by future events. The author of the book before us is already favourably known to our readers. In our last number we reviewed Mr. Kohl's entertaining account of the Southern Provinces of Russia, and in so doing we made a passing mention of the work now under notice. Mr. Kohl seems to have chosen for himself the task of introducing his countrymen to an intimate acquaintance with their northern neighbours. What he has already done for Odessa, Riga and St. Petersburg, he will scarcely fail to do for Moscow and Archangel; and, as far as we are concerned, we shall certainly not complain of the task imposed upon us of reading and reviewing such agreeable volumes. It is a new department of literature St. Petersburg now stands had scarcely been that he has chosen for himself. His works conquered from the Swedes when the foun- can scarcely be classed among voyages and dations of the city were laid, and several travels; for that they enter too much into times, while the building was proceeding, local details; just as little must we speak of Peter was forced to lay aside the hod and them as guides for travellers, for there is |