Every valley or pieve of Cape Corso has its marina, its little port, and anything more lonely and sequestered than these hamlets on the quiet shore, it would be difficult to find. It was sultry noon when I reached the strand of Luri, the hour when Pan is wont to sleep. The people in the house where I was to wait for the little coasting-vessel, which was to convey me to Bastia, sat all as if in slumber. A lovely girl, seated at the open window, was sewing as if in dream upon a fazoletto, with a mysterious faint smile on her face, and absorbed, plainly, in all sorts of secret, pretty thoughts of her own. She was embroidering something on the handkerchief; and this something, I could see, was a little poem which her happy heart was making on her near marriage. The blue sea laughed through the window behind her back; it knew the story, for the fisher-maiden had made it full confession. The girl had on a sea-green dress, a flowered vest, and the mandile neatly wound about her hair; the mandile was snow-white, checked with triple rows of fine red stripes. To me, too, did Maria Benvenuta make confession of her open mystery, with copious prattle about winds and waves, and the beautiful music and dancing there would be at the wedding, up in the vale of Luri. For after some months will come the marriage festival, and as fine a one it will be as ever was held in Corsica.

On the morning of the day on which Benvenuta is to leave her mother's house, a splendid trovata will stand at the entrance of her village, a green triumphal arch with many-coloured ribbons. The friends, the neighbours, the kinsfolk, will assemble on the Piazzetta to form the corteo—the bridal procession. Then a youth will go up to the gaily-dressed bride, and complain that she is leaving the place where she was so well cared for in her childhood, and where she never wanted for corals, nor flowers, nor friends. But since now she is resolved to go, he, with all his heart, in the name of her friends, wishes her happiness and prosperity, and bids her farewell. Then Maria Benvenuta bursts into tears, and she gives the youth a present, as a keepsake for the commune. A horse, finely decorated, is brought before the house, the bride mounts it, young men fully armed ride beside her, their hats wreathed with flowers and ribbons, and so the corteo moves onwards through the triumphal arch. One youth bears the freno—the symbol of fruitfulness, a distaff encircled at its top with spindles, and decked with ribbons. A handkerchief waves from it as flag. This freno in his hand, the freniere rides proudly at the head of the procession.

The cortège approaches Campo, where the bridegroom lives, and into his house the bride is now to be conducted. At the entrance of Campo stands another magnificent trovata. A youth steps forward, holding high in his hand an olive-twig streaming with ribbons. This, with wise old-fashioned sayings, he puts into the hand of the bride. Here two of the young men of the bride's corteo gallop off in furious haste towards the bridegroom's house; they are riding for the vanto, that is, the honour of being the first to bring the bride the key of the bridegroom's house. A flower is the symbol of the key. The fastest rider has won it, and exultingly holding it in his hand, he gallops back to the bride, to present to her the symbol. The procession is now moving towards the house. Women and girls crowd the balconies, and strew upon the bride, flowers, rice, grains of wheat, and throw the fruits that are in season among the procession with merry shoutings, and wishes of joy. This is called Le Grazie. Ceaseless is the din of muskets, mandolines, and the cornamusa, or bagpipe. Such jubilation as there is in Campo, such shooting, and huzzaing, and twanging, and fiddling! Such a joyous stir as there is in the air of spring-swallows, lark-songs, flying flowers, wheat-grains, ribbons—and all about this little Maria Benvenuta, who sits here at the window, and embroiders the whole story on the fazoletto.

But now the old father-in-law issues from the house, and thus gravely addresses the Corteo of strangers:—"Who are you, men thus armed?—friends or foes? Are you conductors of this donna gentile, or have you carried her off, although to appearance you are noble and valiant men?" The bridesman answers, "We are your friends and guests, and we escort this fair and worthy maiden, the pledge of our new friendship. We plucked the fairest flower of the strand of Luri, to bring it as a gift to Campo."

"Welcome, then, my friends and guests, enter my house, and refresh you at the feast;" thus replies again the bridegroom's father, lifts the maiden from her horse, embraces her, and leads her into the house. There the happy bridegroom folds her in his arms, and this is done to quite a reckless amount of merriment on the sixteen-stringed cithern, and the cornamusa.

Now we go into the church, where the tapers are already lit, and the myrtles profusely strewn. And when the pair have been joined, and again enter the bridegroom's house, they see, standing in the guest-chamber, two stools; on these the happy couple seat themselves, and now comes a woman, roguishly smiling, with a little child in swaddling clothes in her arms. She lays the child in the arm of the bride. The little Maria Benvenuta does not blush by any means, but takes the baby and kisses and fondles it right heartily. Then she puts on his head a little Phrygian cap, richly decked with particoloured ribbons. When this part of the ceremony has been gone through, the kinsfolk embrace the pair, and each wishes the good old wish:—

—that is, God give you good luck, three sons and a daughter. The bride now distributes little gifts to her husband's relatives; the nearest relation receives a small coin. Then follow the feast and the balls, at which they will dance the cerca, and the marsiliana, and the tarantella.

Whether they will observe the rest of the old usages, as they are given in the chronicle, I do not know. But in former times it was the custom that a young relation of the bride should precede her into the nuptial chamber. Here he jumped and rolled several times over the bridal-bed, then, the bride sitting down on it, he untied the ribbons on her shoes, as respectfully as we see upon the old sculptures Anchises unloosing the sandals of Venus, as she sits upon her couch. The bride now moved her little feet prettily till the shoes slipped to the ground; and to the youth who had untied them, she gave a present of money. To make a long story short, they will have a merry time of it at Benvenuta's wedding, and when long years have gone by, they will still remember it in the Valley of Campo.

All this we gossiped over very gravely in the boatman's little house at Luri; and I know the cradle-song too with which Maria Benvenuta will hush her little son to sleep—

Should, perhaps, the child be too much excited by such a fanciful song, the mother will sing him this little nanna, whereupon he will immediately fall asleep—

CHAPTER IX.

CORSICAN SUPERSTITIONS.

In the meantime, voices from the shore had announced the arrival of the boatmen; I therefore took my leave of the pretty Benvenuta, wished her all sorts of pleasant things, and stepped into the boat. We kept always as close as possible in shore. At Porticcioli, a little town with a Dogana, we ran in to have the names of our four passengers registered. A few sailing vessels were anchored here. The ripe figs on the trees, and the beautiful grapes in the gardens, tempted us; we had half a vineyard of the finest muscatel grapes, with the most delicious figs, brought us for a few pence.

Continuing our voyage in the evening, the beauty of the moonlit sea, and the singular forms of the rocky coast, served to beguile the way pleasantly. I saw a great many towers on the rocks, here and there a ruin, a church, or cloister. As we sailed past the old Church of St. Catherine of Sicco, which stands high and stately on the shore, the weather seemed going "to desolate itself," as they say in Italian, and threatened a storm. The old steersman, as we came opposite St. Catherine, doffed his baretto, and prayed aloud: "Holy Mother of God, Maria, we are sailing to Bastia; grant that we get safely into port!" The boatmen all took off their baretti, and devoutly made the sign of the cross. The moonlight breaking on the water from heavy black clouds; the fear of a storm; the grim, spectrally-lighted shore; and finally, St. Catherine,—suddenly brought over our entire company one of those moods which seek relief in ghost-stories. The boatmen began to tell them, in all varieties of the horrible and incredible. One of the passengers, meanwhile, anxious that at least not all Corsicans should seem, in the strangers' eyes, to be superstitious, kept incessantly shrugging his shoulders, indignant, as a person of enlightenment, that I should hear such nonsense; while another constantly supported his own and the boatmen's opinion, by the asseveration: "I have never seen witches with my own eyes, but that there is such a thing as the black art is undoubted." I, for my part, affirmed that I confidently believed in witches and sorceresses, and that I had had the honour of knowing some very fine specimens. The partisan of the black art, an inhabitant of Luri, had, I may mention, allowed me an interesting glimpse into his mysterious studies, when, in the course of a conversation about London, he very naïvely threw out the question, whether that great city was French or not.

The Corsicans call the witch strega. Her penchant is to suck, as vampire, the blood of children. One of the boatmen described to me how she looked, when he surprised her once in his father's house; she is black as pitch on the breast, and can transform herself from a cat into a beautiful girl, and from a beautiful girl into a cat. These sorceresses torment the children, make frightful faces at them, and all sorts of fattura. They can bewitch muskets, too, and make them miss fire. In this case, you must make a cross over the trigger, and, in general, you may be sure the cross is the best protection against sorcery. It is a very safe thing, too, to carry relics and amulets. Some of these will turn off a bullet, and are good against the bite of the venomous spider—the malmignatto.

Among these amulets they had formerly in Corsica a "travelling-stone," such as is frequently mentioned in the Scandinavian legends. It was found at the Tower of Seneca only—was four-cornered, and contained iron. Whoever tied such a stone over his knee made a safe and easy journey.

Many of the pagan usages of ancient Corsica have been lost, many still exist, particularly in the highland pasture-country of Niolo. Among these, the practice of soothsaying by bones is remarkable. The fortune-teller takes the shoulder-blade (scapula) of a goat or sheep, gives its surface a polish as of a mirror, and reads from it the history of the person concerned. But it must be the left shoulder-blade, for, according to the old proverb—la destra spalla sfalla—the right one deceives. Many famous Corsicans are said to have had their fortunes predicted by soothsayers. It is told that, as Sampiero sat with his friends at table, the evening before his death, an owl was heard to scream upon the house-top, where it sat hooting the whole night; and that, when a soothsayer hereupon read the scapula, to the horror of all, he found Sampiero's death written in it.

Napoleon's fortunes, too, were foretold from a spalla. An old herdsman of Ghidazzo, renowned for reading shoulder-blades, inspected the scapula one day, when Napoleon was still a child, and saw thereon, plainly represented, a tree rising with many branches high into the heavens, but having few and feeble roots. From this the herdsman saw that a Corsican would become ruler of the world, but only for a short time. The story of this prediction is very common in Corsica; it has a remarkable affinity with the dream of Mandane, in which she saw the tree interpreted to mean her son Cyrus.

Many superstitious beliefs of the Corsicans, with a great deal of poetic fancy in them, relate to death—the true genius of the Corsican popular poetry; since on this island of the Vendetta, death has so peculiarly his mythic abode; Corsica might be called the Island of Death, as other islands were called of Apollo, of Venus, or of Jupiter. When any one is about to die, a pale light upon the house-top frequently announces what is to happen. The owl screeches the whole night, the dog howls, and often a little drum is heard, which a ghost beats. If any one's death is near, sometimes the dead people come at night to his house, and make it known. They are dressed exactly like the Brothers of Death, in the long white mantles, with the pointed hoods in which are the spectral eye-holes; and they imitate all the gestures of the Brothers of Death, who place themselves round the bier, lift it, bear it, and go before it. This is their dismal pastime all night till the cock crows. When the cock crows, they slip away, some to the churchyard, some into their graves in the church.

The dead people are fond of each other's company; you will see them coming out of the graves if you go to the churchyard at night; then make quickly the sign of the cross over the trigger of your gun, that the ghost-shot may go off well. For a full shot has power over the spectres; and when you shoot among them, they disperse, and not till ten years after such a shot can they meet again.

Sometimes the dead come to the bedside of those who have survived, and say, "Now lament for me no more, and cease weeping, for I have the certainty that I shall yet be among the blessed."

In the silent night-hours, when you sit upon your bed, and your sad heart will not let you sleep, often the dead call you by name: "O Marì!—O Josè!" For your life do not answer, though they cry ever so mournfully, and your heart be like to break. Answer not! if you answer, you must die.

"Andate! andate! the storm is coming! Look at the tromba there, as it drives past Elba!" And vast and dark swept the mighty storm-spectre over the sea, a sight of terrific beauty; the moon was hid, and sea and shore lay wan in the glare of lightning.—God be praised! we are at the Tower of Bastia. The holy Mother of God had helped us, and as we stepped on land, the storm began in furious earnest. We, however, were in port.

BOOK V.—WANDERINGS IN CORSICA.

CHAPTER I.

VESCOVATO AND THE CORSICAN HISTORIANS.

Some miles to the southwards of Bastia, on the heights of the east coast, lies Vescovato, a spot celebrated in Corsican history. Leaving the coast-road at the tower of Buttafuoco, you turn upwards into the hills, the way leading through magnificent forests of chestnuts, which cover the heights on every side. The general name for this beautiful little district is Casinca; and the region round Vescovato is honoured with the special appellation of Castagniccia, or the land of chestnuts.

I was curious to see this Corsican paese, in which Count Matteo Buttafuoco once offered Rousseau an asylum; I expected to find a village such as I had already seen frequently enough among the mountains. I was astonished, therefore, when I saw Vescovato before me, lost in the green hills among magnificent groves of chestnuts, oranges, vines, fruit-trees of every kind, a mountain brook gushing down through it, the houses of primitive Corsican cast, yet here and there not without indications of architectural taste. I now could not but own to myself that of all the retreats that a misanthropic philosopher might select, the worst was by no means Vescovato. It is a mountain hermitage, in the greenest, shadiest solitude, with the loveliest walks, where you can dream undisturbed, now among the rocks by the wild stream, now under a blossom-laden bush of erica beside an ivy-hung cloister, or you are on the brow of a hill from which the eye looks down upon the plain of the Golo, rich and beautiful as a nook of paradise, and upon the sea.

A bishop built the place; and the bishops of the old town of Mariana, which lay below in the plain, latterly lived here.

Historic names and associations cluster thickly round Vescovato; especially is it honoured by its connexion with three Corsican historians of the sixteenth century—Ceccaldi, Monteggiani, and Filippini. Their memory is still as fresh as their houses are well preserved. The Curato of the place conducted me to Filippini's house, a mean peasant's cottage. I could not repress a smile when I was shown a stone taken from the wall, on which the most celebrated of the Corsican historians had in the fulness of his heart engraved the following inscription:—Has Ædes ad suum et amicorum usum in commodiorem Formam redegit anno MDLXXV., cal. Decemb. A. Petrus Philippinus Archid. Marian. In sooth, the pretensions of these worthy men were extremely humble. Another stone exhibits Filippini's coat of arms—his house, with a horse tied to a tree. It was the custom of the archdeacon to write his history in his vineyard, which they still show in Vescovato. After riding up from Mariana, he fastened his horse under a pine, and sat down to meditate or to write, protected by the high walls of his garden—for his life was in constant danger from the balls of his enemies. He thus wrote the history of the Corsicans under impressions highly exciting and dramatic.

Filippini's book is the leading work on Corsican history, and is of a thoroughly national character. The Corsicans may well be proud of it. It is an organic growth from the popular mind of the country; songs, traditions, chronicles, and, latterly, professed and conscious historical writing, go to constitute the work as it now lies before us. The first who wrought upon it was Giovanni della Grossa, lieutenant and secretary of the brave Vincentello d'Istria. He collected the old legends and traditions, and proceeded as Paul Diaconus did in his history. He brought down the history of Corsica to the year 1464. His scholar, Monteggiani, continued it to the year 1525,—but this part of the history is meagre; then came Ceccaldi, who continued it to the year 1559; and Filippini, who brought it as far as 1594. Of the thirteen books composing the whole, he has, therefore, written only the last four; but he edited and gave form to the entire work, so that it now bears his name. The editio princeps appeared in Tournon in France, in 1594, in Italian, under the following title:—

"The History of Corsica, in which all things are recorded that have happened from the time that it began to be inhabited up till the year 1594. With a general description of the entire Island; divided into thirteen books, and commenced by Giovanni della Grossa, who wrote the first nine thereof, which were continued by Pier Antonio Monteggiani, and afterwards by Marc' Antonio Ceccaldi, and were collected and enlarged by the Very Reverend Antonpietro Filippini, Archidiaconus of Mariana, the last four being composed by himself. Diligently revised and given to the light by the same Archidiaconus. In Tournon. In the printing-house of Claudio Michael, Printer to the University, 1594."

Although an opponent of Sampiero, and though, from timidity, or from deliberate intent to falsify, frequently guilty of suppressing or perverting facts, he, nevertheless, told the Genoese so many bitter truths in his book, that the Republic did everything in its power to prevent its circulation. It had become extremely scarce when Pozzo di Borgo did his country the signal service of having it edited anew. The learned Corsican, Gregori, was the new editor, and he furnished the work with an excellent introduction; it appeared, as edited by Gregori, at Pisa, in the year 1827, in five volumes. The Corsicans are certainly worthy to have the documentary monuments of their history well attended to. Their modern historians blame Filippini severely for incorporating in his history all the traditions and fables of Grossa. For my part, I have nothing but praise to give him for this; his history must not be judged according to strict scientific rules; it possesses, as we have it, the high value of bearing the undisguised impress of the popular mind. I have equally little sympathy with the fault-finders in their depreciation of Filippini's talent. He is somewhat prolix, but his vein is rich; and a sound philosophic morality, based on accurate observation of life, pervades his writings. The man is to be held in honour; he has done his people justice, though no adherent of the popular cause, but a partisan of Genoa. Without Filippini, a great part of Corsican history would by this time have been buried in obscurity. He dedicated his work to Alfonso d'Ornano, Sampiero's son, in token of his satisfaction at the young hero's reconciling himself to Genoa, and even visiting that city.

"When I undertook to write the History," he says, "I trusted more to the gifts which I enjoy from nature, than to that acquired skill and polish which is expected in those who make similar attempts. I thought to myself that I should stand excused in the eyes of those who should read me, if they considered how great the want of all provision for such an undertaking is in this island (in which I must live, since it has pleased God to cast my lot here); so that scientific pursuits, of whatever kind, are totally impossible, not to speak of writing a pure and quite faultless style." There are other passages in Filippini, in which he complains with equal bitterness of the ignorance of the Corsicans, and their total want of cultivation in any shape. He does not even except the clergy, "among whom," says he, "there are hardly a dozen who have learned grammar; while among the Franciscans, although they have five-and-twenty convents, there are scarcely so many as eight lettered men; and thus the whole nation grows up in ignorance."

He never conceals the faults of his countrymen. "Besides their ignorance," he remarks, "one can find no words to express the laziness of the islanders where the tilling of the ground is concerned. Even the fairest plain in the world—the plain that extends from Aleria to Mariana—lies desolate; and they will not so much as drive away the fowls. But when it chances that they have become masters of a single carlino, they imagine that it is impossible now that they can ever want, and so sink into complete idleness."—This is a strikingly apt characterization of the Corsicans of the present day. "Why does no one prop the numberless wild oleasters?" asks Filippini; "why not the chestnuts? But they do nothing, and therefore are they all poor. Poverty leads to crime; and daily we hear of robberies. They also swear false oaths. Their feuds and their hatred, their little love and their little faithfulness, are quite endless; hence that proverb is true which we are wont to hear: 'The Corsican never forgives.' And hence arises all that calumniating, and all that backbiting, that we see perpetually. The people of Corsica (as Braccellio has written) are, beyond other nations, rebellious, and given to change; many are addicted to a certain superstition which they call Magonie, and thereto they use the men as women. There prevails here also a kind of soothsaying, which they practise with the shoulder-bones of dead animals."

Such is the dark side of the picture which the Corsican historian draws of his countrymen; and he here spares them so little, that, in fact, he merely reproduces what Seneca is said to have written of them in the lines—

On the other hand, in the dedication to Alfonso, he defends most zealously the virtues of his people against Tomaso Porcacchi Aretino da Castiglione, who had attacked them in his "Description of the most famous Islands of the World." "This man," says Filippini, "speaks of the Corsicans as assassins, which makes me wonder at him with no small astonishment, for there will be found, I may well venture to say, no people in the world among whom strangers are more lovingly handled, and among whom they can travel with more safety; for throughout all Corsica they meet with the utmost hospitality and courteousness, without having ever to expend the smallest coin for their maintenance." This is true; a stranger here corroborates the Corsican historian, after a lapse of three hundred years.

As in Vescovato we are standing on the sacred ground of Corsican historiography, I may mention a few more of the Corsican historians. An insular people, with a past so rich in striking events, heroic struggles, and great men, and characterized by a patriotism so unparalleled, might also be expected to be rich in writers of the class referred to; and certainly their numbers, as compared with the small population, are astonishing. I give only the more prominent names.

Next to Filippini, the most note-worthy of the Corsican historiographers is Petrus Cyrnæus, Archdeacon of Aleria, the other ancient Roman colony. He lived in the fifteenth century, and wrote, besides his Commentarium de Bello Ferrariensi, a History of Corsica extending down to the year 1482, in Latin, with the title, Petri Cyrnæi de rebus Corsicis libri quatuor. His Latin is as classical as that of the best authors of his time; breadth and vigour characterize his style, which has a resemblance to that of Sallust or Tacitus; but his treatment of his materials is thoroughly unartistic. He dwells longest on the siege of Bonifazio by Alfonso of Arragon, and on the incidents of his own life. Filippini did not know, and therefore could not use the work of Cyrnæus; it existed only in manuscript till brought to light from the library of Louis XV., and incorporated in Muratori's large work in the year 1738. The excellent edition (Paris, 1834) which we now possess we owe to the munificence of Pozzo di Borgo, and the literary ability of Gregori, who has added an Italian translation of the Latin text.

This author's estimate of the Corsicans is still more characteristic and intelligent than that of Filippini. Let us hear what he has to say, that we may see whether the present Corsicans have retained much or little of the nature of their forefathers who lived in those early times:—

"They are eager to avenge an injury, and it is reckoned disgraceful not to take vengeance. When they cannot reach him who has done the murder, then they punish one of his relations. On this account, as soon as a murder has taken place, all the relatives of the murderer instantly arm themselves in their own defence. Only children and women are spared." He describes the arms of the Corsicans of his time as follows: "They wear pointed helms, called cerbelleras; others also round ones; further daggers, spears four ells long, of which each man has two. On the left side rests the sword, on the right the dagger.

"In their own country, they are at discord; out of it, they hold fast to each other. Their souls are ready for death (animi ad mortem parati). They are universally poor, and despise trade. They are greedy of renown; gold and silver they scarcely use at all. Drunkenness they think a great disgrace. They seldom learn to read and write; few of them hear the orators or the poets; but in disputation they exercise themselves so continually, that when a cause has to be decided, you would think them all very admirable pleaders. Among the Corsicans, I never saw a head that was bald. The Corsicans are of all men the most hospitable. Their own wives cook their victuals for the highest men in the land. They are by nature inclined to silence—made rather for acting than for speaking. They are also the most religious of mortals.

"It is the custom to separate the men from the women, more especially at table. The wives and daughters fetch the water from the well; for the Corsicans have almost no menials. The Corsican women are industrious: you may see them, as they go to the fountain, bearing the pitcher on their head, leading the horse, if they have one, by a halter over their arm, and at the same time turning the spindle. They are also very chaste, and are not long sleepers.

"The Corsicans inter their dead expensively; for they bury them not without exequies, without laments, without panegyric, without dirges, without prayer. For their funeral solemnities are very similar to those of the Romans. One of the neighbours raises the cry, and calls to the nearest village: 'Ho there! cry to the other village, for such a one is just dead.' Then they assemble according to their villages, their towns, and their communities, walking one by one in a long line—first the men and then the women. When these arrive, all raise a great wailing, and the wife and brothers tear the clothes upon their breast. The women, disfigured with weeping, smite themselves on the bosom, lacerate the face, and tear out the hair.—All Corsicans are free."

The reader will have found that this picture of the Corsicans resembles in many points the description Tacitus gives us of the ancient Germans.

Corsican historiography has at no time flourished more than during the heroic fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; it was silent during the seventeenth, because at that period the entire people lay in a state of death-like exhaustion; in the eighteenth, participating in the renewed vitality of the age, it again became active, and we have Natali's treatise Disinganno sulla guerra di Corsica, and Salvini's Giustificazione dell' Insurrezione—useful books, but of no great literary merit.

Dr. Limperani wrote a History of Corsica to the end of the seventeenth century, a work full of valuable materials, but prosy and long-winded. Very serviceable—in fact, from the documents it contains, indispensable—is the History of the Corsicans, by Cambiaggi, in four quarto volumes. Cambiaggi dedicated his work to Frederick the Great, the admirer of Pasquale Paoli and Corsican heroism.

Now that the Corsican people have lost their freedom, the learned patriots of Corsica—and Filippini would no longer have to complain of the dearth of literary cultivation among his countrymen—have devoted themselves with praiseworthy zeal to the history of their country. These men are generally advocates. We have, for example, Pompei's book, L'Etat actuel de la Corse; Gregori edited Filippini and Peter Cyrnæus, and made a collection of the Corsican Statutes—a highly meritorious work. These laws originated in the old traditionary jurisprudence of the Corsicans, which the democracy of Sampiero adopted, giving it a more definite and comprehensive form. They underwent further additions and improvements during the supremacy of the Genoese, who finally, in the sixteenth century, collected them into a code. They had become extremely scarce. The new edition is a splendid monument of Corsican history, and the codex itself does the Genoese much credit. Renucci, another talented Corsican, has written a Storia di Corsica, in two volumes, published at Bastia in 1833, which gives an abridgment of the earlier history, and a detailed account of events during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, up to 1830. The work is rich in material, but as a historical composition feeble. Arrighi wrote biographies of Sampiero and Pasquale Paoli. Jacobi's work in two volumes is the History of Corsica in most general use. It extends down to the end of the war of independence under Paoli, and is to be completed in a third volume. Jacobi's merit consists in having written a systematically developed history of the Corsicans, using all the available sources; his book is indispensable, but defective in critical acumen, and far from sufficiently objective. The latest book on Corsican history, is an excellent little compendium by Camillo Friess, keeper of the Archives in Ajaccio, who told me he proposed writing at greater length on the same subject. He has my best wishes for the success of such an undertaking, for he is a man of original and vigorous intellect. It is to be hoped he will not, like Jacobi, write his work in French, but, as he is bound in duty to his people, in Italian.

CHAPTER II.

ROUSSEAU AND THE CORSICANS.

I did not neglect to visit the house of Count Matteo Buttafuoco, which was at one time to have been the domicile of Rousseau. It is a structure of considerable pretensions, the stateliest in Vescovato. Part of it is at present occupied by Marshal Sebastiani, whose family belongs to the neighbouring village of Porta.

This Count Buttafuoco is the same man against whom Napoleon wrote an energetic pamphlet, when a fiery young democrat in Ajaccio. The Count was an officer in the French army when he invited Jean Jacques Rousseau to Vescovato. The philosopher of Geneva had, in his Contrat Social, written and prophesied as follows with regard to Corsica: "There is still one country in Europe susceptible of legislation—the island of Corsica. The vigour and perseverance displayed by the Corsicans, in gaining and defending their freedom, are such as entitle them to claim the aid of some wise man to teach them how to preserve it. I have an idea that this little island will one day astonish Europe." When the French were sending out their last and decisive expedition against Corsica, Rousseau wrote: "It must be confessed that your French are a very servile race, a people easily bought by despotism, and shamefully cruel to the unfortunate; if they knew of a free man at the other end of the world, I believe they would march all the way thither, for the mere pleasure of exterminating him."

I shall not affirm that this was a second prophecy of Rousseau's, but the first has certainly been fulfilled, for the day has come in which the Corsicans have astonished Europe.

The favourable opinion of the Corsican people, thus expressed by Rousseau, induced Paoli to invite him to Corsica in 1764, that he might escape from the persecution of his enemies in Switzerland. Voltaire, always enviously and derisively inclined towards Rousseau, had spread the malicious report that this offer of an asylum in Corsica was merely a ridiculous trick some one was playing on him. Upon this, Paoli had himself written the invitation. Buttafuoco had gone further; he had called upon the philosopher—of whom the Poles also begged a constitution—to compose a code of laws for the Corsicans. Paoli does not seem to have opposed the scheme, perhaps because he considered such a work, though useless for its intended purpose, still as, in one point of view, likely to increase the reputation of the Corsicans. The vain misanthrope thus saw himself in the flattering position of a Pythagoras, and joyfully wrote, in answer, that the simple idea of occupying himself with such a task elevated and inspired his soul; and that he should consider the remainder of his unhappy days nobly and virtuously spent, if he could spend them to the advantage of the brave Corsicans. He now, with all seriousness, asked for materials. The endless petty annoyances in which he was involved, prevented him ever producing the work. But what would have been its value if he had? What were the Corsicans to do with a theory, when they had already given themselves a constitution of practical efficiency, thoroughly popular, because formed on the material basis of their traditions and necessities?

Circumstances prevented Rousseau's going to Corsica—pity! He might have made trial of his theories there—for the island seems the realized Utopia of his views of that normal condition of society which he so lauds in his treatise on the question—Whether or not the arts and sciences have been beneficial to the human race? In Corsica, he would have had what he wanted, in plenty—primitive mortals in woollen blouses, living on goat's-milk and a few chestnuts, neither science nor art—equality, bravery, hospitality—and revenge to the death! I believe the warlike Corsicans would have laughed heartily to have seen Rousseau wandering about under the chestnuts, with his cat on his arm, or plaiting his basket-work. But Vendetta! vendetta! bawled once or twice, with a few shots of the fusil, would very soon have frightened poor Jacques away again. Nevertheless Rousseau's connexion with Corsica is memorable, and stands in intimate relation with the most characteristic features of his history.

In the letter in which he notifies to Count Buttafuoco his inability to accept his invitation, Rousseau writes: "I have not lost the sincere desire of living in your country; but the complete exhaustion of my energies, the anxieties I should incur, and the fatigues I should undergo, with other hindrances arising from my position, compel me, at least for the present, to relinquish my resolution; though, notwithstanding these difficulties, I find I cannot reconcile myself to the thought of utterly abandoning it. I am growing old; I am growing frail; my powers are leaving me; my wishes tempt me on, and yet my hopes grow dim. Whatever the issue may be, receive, and render to Signor Paoli, my liveliest, my heartfelt thanks, for the asylum which he has done me the honour to offer me. Brave and hospitable people! I shall never forget it so long as I live, that your hearts, your arms, were opened to me, at a time when there was hardly another asylum left for me in Europe. If it should not be my good fortune to leave my ashes in your island, I shall at least endeavour to leave there a monument of my gratitude; and I shall do myself honour, in the eyes of the whole world, when I call you my hosts and protectors. What I hereby promise to you, and what you may henceforth rely on, is this, that I shall occupy the rest of my life only with myself or with Corsica; all other interests are completely banished from my soul."

The concluding words promise largely; but they are in Rousseau's usual glowing and rhetorical vein. How singularly such a style, and the entire Rousseau nature, contrast with the austere taciturnity, the manly vigour, the wild and impetuous energy of the Corsican! Rousseau and Corsican seem ideas standing at an infinite distance apart—natures the very antipodes of each other, and yet they touch each other like corporeal and incorporeal, united in time and thought. It is strange to hear, amid the prophetic dreams of a universal democracy predicted by Rousseau, the wild clanging of that Corybantian war-dance of the Corsicans under Paoli, proclaiming the new era which their heroic struggle began. It is as if they would deafen, with the clangour of their arms, the old despotic gods, while the new divinity is being born upon their island, Jupiter—Napoleon, the revolutionary god of the iron age.

CHAPTER III.

THE MORESCA—ARMED DANCE OF THE CORSICANS.

The Corsicans, like other brave peoples of fiery and imaginative temperament, have a war-dance, called the Moresca. Its origin is matter of dispute—some asserting it to be Moorish and others Greek. The Greeks called these dances of warlike youths, armed with sword and shield, Pyrrhic dances; and ascribed their invention to Minerva, and Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles. It is uncertain how they spread themselves over the more western countries; but, ever since the struggles of the Christians and Moors, they have been called Moresca; and it appears that they are everywhere practised where the people are rich in traditions of that old gigantic, world-historical contest between Christian and Pagan, Europe and Asia,—as among the Albanians in Greece, among the Servians, the Montenegrins, the Spaniards, and other nations.

I do not know what significance is elsewhere attached to the Moresca, as I have only once, in Genoa, witnessed this magnificent dance; but in Corsica it has all along preserved peculiarities attaching to the period of the Crusades, the Moresca there always representing a conflict between Saracens and Christians; the deliverance of Jerusalem, perhaps, or the conquest of Granada, or the taking of the Corsican cities Aleria and Mariana, by Hugo Count Colonna. The Moresca has thus assumed a half religious, half profane character, and has received from its historical relations a distinctive and national impress.

The Corsicans have at all times produced the spectacle of this dance, particularly in times of popular excitement and struggle, when a national armed sport of this kind was likely of itself to inflame the beholders, while at the same time it reminded them of the great deeds of their forefathers. I know of no nobler pleasure for a free and manly people, than the spectacle of the Moresca, the flower and poetry of the mood that prompts to and exults in fight. It is the only national drama the Corsicans have; as they were without other amusement, they had the heroic deeds of their ancestors represented to them in dance, on the same soil that they had steeped in their blood. It might frequently happen that they rose from the Moresca to rush into battle.

Vescovato, as Filippini mentions, was often the theatre of the Moresca. The people still remember that it was danced there in honour of Sampiero; it was also produced in Vescovato in the time of Paoli. The most recent performance is that of the year 1817.

The representation of the conquest of Mariana, by Hugo Colonna, was that most in favour. A village was supposed to represent the town. The stage was a piece of open ground, the green hills served as amphitheatre, and on their sides lay thousands and thousands, gathered from all parts of the island. Let the reader picture to himself such a public as this—rude, fierce men, all in arms, grouped under the chestnuts, with look, voice, and gesture accompanying the clanging hero-dance. The actors, sometimes two hundred in number, are in two separate troops; all wear the Roman toga. Each dancer holds in his right hand a sword, in his left a dagger; the colour of the plume and the breastplate alone distinguish Moors from Christians. The fiddle-bow of a single violin-player rules the Moresca.

It begins. A Moorish astrologer issues from Mariana dressed in the caftan, and with a long white beard; he looks to the sky and consults the heavenly luminaries, and in dismay he predicts misfortune. With gestures of alarm he hastens back within the gate. And see! yonder comes a Moorish messenger, headlong terror in look and movement, rushing towards Mariana with the news that the Christians have already taken Aleria and Corte, and are marching on Mariana. Just as the messenger vanishes within the city, horns blow, and enter Hugo Colonna with the Christian army. Exulting shouts greet him from the hills.