views. Some natural disappointment and irritation would be excusable in him on the announcement that a work, of which he imagined he enjoyed a monopoly, was receiving the attention of so formidable a rival; but this does not excuse the bad taste and bad temper with which he has published his complaints. Of the merits of his dispute with Mr. Wheaton's heirs we know little, and shall say nothing, except that they have been guided in their conduct by what they regarded as high legal opinion of their rights and obligations, and that, if Mr. Lawrence has been wronged, the courts of which he talks so much, but to which he seems to be so slow to appeal, will give him redress. But if it be considered becoming to drag ladies and their private circumstances before the public in the manner in which Mr. Lawrence has done it, there must be a grievous decline of the old chivalrous feeling in regard to women. Still more solemnly must we protest against his recent charges against Mr. Dana. In these he impugns the honor of a distinguished contemporary, charging him with gross and impudent piracy of the results of another's labors. If there be foundation for these charges, they ought to be made; but there are two ways of making them, and the course which Mr. Lawrence has taken in bringing them, at a time when Mr. Dana is absent from the country, and leaving them to rest solely on his own unsupported assertion—without citing or referring to any of the facts which he declares exist—is highly censurable. We have found no evidence of the truth of his charges in a cursory examination of a considerable part of both works; and a friend upon whose judgment we place full reliance, and who has carefully compared the labors of the two editors, assures us that there is nothing which at all substantiates them. Mr. Lawrence has needlessly involved his own character in this affair; and the public will demand from him proofs of a most flagrant violation of the rights of literary property, before it will be inclined to admit any palliation for the errors he has committed in conducting the controversy.
The narrative of Mr. Moens, so far as it relates to the general subject of brigandage in South Italy, will hardly present anything novel to those who have at all studied the history or character of that scourge. In fact, Italian brigandage is a very simple affair, about which it is hard to say anything new. Given a starving, beaten, superstitious population in a mountainous country, destitute of roads, and abounding in easy refuges and inaccessible hiding-places, and you have brigandage naturally. Given centuries of weak, cruel, and corrupt government, and you have the perpetuation of brigandage inevitably. From time immemorial, the social and political conditions in Naples have been deprivation and oppression; and cause and effect have so long been convertible, that it is often difficult to know one from the other. The prevalence of brigandage demands measures on the part of the government compared with the severity of which martial law is lax and mild; and the crime which provokes these harsh measures has revived again from the disaffection which they produce. All authorities on the subject are agreed that brigandage finds its shield and support in the fears of the people, and the complete system of espionage which the robbers are enabled to maintain through their accomplices in society. These are sometimes priests and persons of station, but more commonly peasants whose friends or relatives are brigands. During the French-republican rule of Naples, when Manhès was at the head of the troops assigned the duty of extirpating brigandage, the robbers were for once destroyed by the terrible measures taken against their accomplices. No one suspected of communicating with them in any way was spared. Men were shot for selling them food. Women and children taking food into the fields to eat while at work were shot, under an order forbidding this custom lest the provisions should fall into the hands of the robbers. For once, the authorities outbid the brigands for the terror of the wretched inhabitants, and annihilated them. But it was natural, in a country where every peasant is a possible brigand, and only waits for a lawless impulse or lawless deed to make him an actual brigand, that brigandage should flourish again as
