A new edition of that excellent work, The History of the Poetic National Literature of the Germans, by Gerbinus, has just made its appearance at Leipzig.
Silvio Pellico is passing the present winter in Rome.
In Tuscany, a periodical similar to the International has been established under the title of Rivista Britannica. The main purpose is to select articles from English periodicals, and offer them in good Italian versions. French newspapers, novels, and magazines come in freely, too freely in Italy. The good ones will sometimes be seized at the frontier, or at the post-office, by the jealous police of Rome, Naples, and Tuscany: but against any thing that is corrupt and debauched no Italian despot, prince, or priest, was ever known to shut his door. French literature, such as it is under most circumstances, can have only a bad influence in that enslaved country, and scarcely an Italian is to be found able to read, who has any difficulty in understanding the French language. As an antidote to this poison, the editors of the Rivista Britannica have thought of ministering copious draughts of healthful English. We wish they might quote English and American journals with perfect independence of all censorship.
Gioberti, whose attack upon the Jesuits is fresh in the minds of all students of European literature, has lately published at Turin an elaborate work entitled Del Rinovamento Civile d' Italia (Of the Civil Regeneration of Italy). It is in two parts, the first treating of the errors and misfortunes that have marked the past, the second of the remedies practicable in the present, and the hopes existing for the future. So large is the circle of readers who look with interest for every one of Gioberti's productions, that two simultaneous editions have been issued; one in two volumes 8vo. each of eight hundred pages, and the other in two volumes, 16mo. each of six hundred.
The Israel of the Alps, a History of the Vaudois of Piedmont and of their Colonies, is the title of a work, by Alexis Muston, fulfilling a promise made by the author in 1834, in a volume on the same subject. It consists of an account of the martyrdoms of Calabria and Provence, and embraces a period from the origin of those colonies to the end of the sixteenth century. In the second part are described the extraordinary sufferings and deliverances of the Piedmontese—the massacre of 1658—the dispersion of the Vaudois into foreign lands—the return to their own, under the orders of Colonel Arnaud—and an entirely new exposition is given of the negotiations which led to the official re-establishment of the Vaudois in their native valleys. The author has filled up the gaps of the Vaudois historians, Gilles, Leger, and Arnaud, and, by the aid of numerous inedited documents, has established a succession of facts in relation to the history of the churches of the Piedmontese, and those of the colonies, to which Wirtemberg, Brandenburg, and Switzerland are indebted for their evangelical faith. M. Muston, contrary to the opinions of Gieseler, Neander, and Schmidt, agrees with that school of writers—from Perrin to Monastier—who suppose that the evangelical churches of Piedmont existed before the reformer Pierre Waldo, and trace their origin to the apostolic ages. This opinion has much to support it—in the authority of many centuries, in the unanimous convictions of the Vaudois historians, and in evidences given by the most ancient monuments of their language, particularly the poem entitled the Noble Lesson, which bears inscribed its own date (1100), and the literary perfection of which certainly suggests an anterior literature. J. Bonnett (Archives du Christianisme, for October 16) notices the work very favorably, but considers it imperfect in many particulars, and the author is charged especially with omissions in the catalogue of the defenders of the faith, whose blood was so profusely spilled in their beautiful valleys, and
"Whose bones
Lie bleaching on the Alpine mountains cold."