"But I willingly turn away my eyes from a picture, every detail of which is painful, and, having described the fortunes of the Venetian nobility, shall give some account of their honours. The patricians, as I said before, all equal in the eye of the law, had no titles as such, excepting that of your Excellency; though some bore them, as Counts &c. of terra ferma, before being enrolled in the nobility of Venice; and some had titles assigned them as compensations for, or rather as memorials of, fallen greatness. Thus the Querini, formerly lords of Crema, had the distinction continued to them, after Crema was absorbed in the Venetian state.

"These families, however, usually let their titles sleep, considering the quality of an untitled Venetian patrician as superior to any other distinction. Nor does this seem to have been an odd refinement, for the old republic sold titles for a pittance to whoever could pay for them, though such a person might not even have had the education of a gentleman. (1) It was natural, therefore, that a lord of Crema should fear being confounded with this countly canaglia, and sink his having any thing in common with such a crew.

"The great political revolution that has taken place, destroying the splendour of the libro d'oro, has induced some to produce their terra ferma titles; but the majority content themselves with the style of Cavaliere, (2) which does not necessarily denote actual knighthood; and is often used almost as liberally in Italy, as the denomination of Squire now is in England. A striking proof, indeed, of good sense and dignity was given by the great body of the Venetian nobility, on being invited by Austria to claim nobility and title from her, on the verification of their rights; the great body of them merely desiring a recognition of their rank, without availing them. selves of the offer held out to them. A few, indeed, have pursued a different line of conduct, and received patents of princes," &c.-ROSE: Letters from the North of Italy, vol. ii. p. 105.

have received?" "No!" was the answer, " and those others will be forced to refund."— Note that these pensions had been paid in virtue of a solemn and printed decree.

(1) The qualification to be a Count was about what is supposed to qualify for knighthood in England, and the fee paid for the title, if I am rightly informed, 201. or 40%.

(2) No order of knighthood was peculiar to Venice, and her citizens were precluded by law from becoming members of foreign orders.

THE

VISION OF JUDGMENT,

BY

QUEVEDO REDIVIVUS.

SUGGESTED BY THE COMPOSITION SO ENTITLED BY THE AUTHOR 66 OF WAT TYLER.

"A Daniel come to judgment! yea, a Daniel!
I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word."

[HAD not the chronological order been again departed from, on the same grounds already explained with reference to "Childe Harold," the reader would have had before him, ere he reaches this page of our collection, the two first Cantos of " Don Juan." Those Cantos were printed without Lord Byron's name; but all the world knew that they were his; and Mr. Southey was far from being singular, in lamenting and condemning the spirit in which parts of them had been written.

The Laureate, in 1821, published a piece, in English hexameters, entitled "A Vision of Judgment;" and which Lord Byron, in criticising it, laughs at as "the Apotheosis of George the Third." In the preface to this poem, after some observations on the peculiar style of its versification, Mr. Southey introduced the following remarks: —

"I am well aware that the public are peculiarly intolerant of such innovations; not less so than the populace are of any foreign fashion, whether of foppery or convenience. Would that this literary intolerance were under the influence of a saner judgment, and regarded the morals more than the manner of a composition; the spirit rather than the form! Would that it were directed against those monstrous combinations of horrors and mockery, lewdness and impiety, with which English poetry has, in our days, first been polluted! For more than half a century English literature had been distinguished by its moral purity, the effect, and, in its turn, the cause of an improvement in national manners. A father might, without apprehension of evil, have put into the hands of his children any book which issued from the press, if it did not bear, either in its title-page or frontispiece, manifest signs that it was intended as furniture for the brothel. There was no danger in any work which bore the name of a respectable publisher, or was to be procured at any respectable bookseller's. This was particularly the case with regard to our poetry. It is now no longer so: and woe to those by whom the offence cometh! The greater the talents of the offender, the greater is his guilt, and the more enduring will be his shame. Whether it be that the laws are in themselves unable to abate an evil of this magnitude, or whether it be that they are remissly administered, and with such injustice that the celebrity of an offender serves as a privilege whereby he obtains impunity, individuals are bound to consider that such pernicious works would neither be published nor written, if they were discouraged as they might, and ought to be, by public feeling: every person, therefore, who purchases such books, or admits them into his house, promotes the mischief, and thereby, as far as in him lies, becomes an aider and abettor of the crime.