Is dying in the lamp.
Fraser's Magazine.
The Selector;
AND LITERARY NOTICES OF NEW WORKS.
THE ITALIAN REPUBLICS.
M.J.C.L. De Sismondi, has, to suit the plan of the Cabinet Cyclopaedia, endeavoured to include in one of its volumes—a summary of Italian history from the fall of the Roman empire to the end of the Middle Age—a period of about six and a half centuries. What a succession of stirring scenes does this volume present; what fields of bloody action; what revelry of carnage; what schemes of petty ambition; what trampling on necks, what uncrowning of heads; what orgies of fire, sword, famine, and slaughter; what overtoppling of thrones, and unseating of rulers; what pantings after freedom; what slavery of passion; what sunny scenes of fortune to be shaded with melancholy pictures of desolation and decay—are comprised in these few pages of the history of a comparatively small portion of the world for a short period—a narrow segment of the cycle of time. What Sismondi so ably accomplished in sixteen volumes, he has here comprised in one. He tells us that he could sacrifice episodes and details without regret. The present is not, however, an abridgment of his great work, "but an entirely new history, in which, with my eyes fixed solely on the free people of the several Italian states, I have studied to portray their first deliverance, their heroism, and their misfortunes."
We quote a few sketchy extracts.