CURRENT LITERATURE.
Anglo-Roman Papers. By W. Maziere Brady. (Alex. Gardner.) —These papers are three in number, dealing each of them with what may be called a by-way in history. The subject of the first is " The English Palace," now the Torlonia Palace. It was in the garden of this palace, then (1503) newly built, that Alexander VI. met his death, not by poison, as common report has it, but by malarial fever, caught at a supper eaten in the open air. Shortly afterwards, its owner, Cardinal Hadrian de Castello, gave it to Henry VII. as a residence for English Ambassadors. Henry VIII. gave it to Campeggio. In this family it remained for a century and a half. In 1650, they sold it to a Colonna. In 1669, the then owner let it to Queen Maria Cristina of Sweden for 500 Bondi. In 1699, the Colonnas sold it to the Pope, who gave it to an Ecclesiastical Hospital for Sick Clergy. Found to be too small for this purpose, it was sold in 1720 to the Giraud family. Then it became a mosaic manufactory ; finally, in 1820, it passed into the hands of Prince Giovanni Torlonia, a Frenchman who had made a fortune as a contractor. The Torlonia balls were famous from about 1820 to 1850. It is now in the occupation of Mr. Heywood, an American millionaire with literary tastes. The second paper tells the story of the "eldest natural son of Charles II." This was James Stuart, the son of a Jersey lady of good birth. Mr. Brady has exhumed a number of documents which relate the story of this person. Whether worth doing or not, the task has been well done. James Stuart died in 1669, being then twenty-two years of age. The third paper is entitled " The Memoirs of Cardinal Erskine." Cardinal Erskine was sent by Pius VI. on a mission to the English Court to procure liberty in the exercise of clerical duties for the exiled French clergy after the Revolution.
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