THE OCCASIONAL. By LEIGH HUNT.

No. X. THE LATE XING OF NAPLES. Nis family 00/tHerions—Miss Smith and EU bfinim—Ferdinand's personal appearance—Quevedo's gentleman and coach- man—Characters of .Ferdinand from various writers—His real nature, career. and suet excuses as can be found for him.

THIS miserable man, the Xing of Naples, having at length departed, and

• e kind of say respecting him having been announced by us, the pain-

ful promise must be kept. Laughter, however, as well as tears, being given to man to help him on throligh his trials, to keep him in heart with melancholy and absurdity, the reader will pardon us, if we mix up, on the occasion, something of levity with ow gravity. It will not, we fear, be much, though the event must have put hope in the hearta of imprisoned thousands ; and we shall probably be grave enough before we conclude.

Ferdinand .Tanuarius Joseph, King of Naples, or of the Two Sicilies, grandson of the hunting animal, called Ferdinand the First, who passed his life with a fowling-piece in his hand, and son of the poor bigoted in- valid, called Francis the First, was born January the 12th, 1810, a month which was considered fortunate, no doubt, for the new comer into the world, as it gave him a double title to be named after the great Nea- politan saint, whose blood has so often boiled in behalf of the family. His mother was Maria Isabella of Spain. He married, first, Christina of Savoy, sister of the present King of Sardinia, by which princess he be- came father of the Neapolitan monarch now reigning ; and secondly, Maria Teresa of Austria, who is the mother of all the rest of his chil- dren, nine in number. He was brother of Christina, Queen Dow- ager of Spain, who has made such a noise as the wife of Munoz ; of the Duchess of Berry, mother of the Duke of Bordeaux, a lady who has also made a noise in her time ; and of Charles Ferdinand, Prince of Capua, who produced such dismay in the family by marrying our beautiful countrywoman, with the terrible universal name, Miss Smith. His Royal Highness should have elevated the word Miss into a title, after the example set him by the gentle Sicilian poet, Giovanni Meli ; who, in addressing some complimentary verses to an English maiden lady and esteemed authoress, Ellis Cornelia Knight, directed them to "Ellis Cornelia, Miss Knight." "Isabella Sophia, Miss Smith," might have sounded with a less horrible abruptness in royal ears than plain "Miss Smith" ; which must have struck them with something of the blow that was experienced by the dignified Spanish admiral, with his long list of names, whose ship was taken by Sir Chris- topher Mimics, when, upon inquiring of the seamen who the fortunate personage was that had the honour of receiving his sword, he was told that it was one "Kit Minns."

Though a Bourbon by the mother's as well as father's side, and come of a stock abounding in intermarriages, Ferdinand is said to have had nothing Bonrbonite in his appearance, except in bulk, and perhaps in lowness of forehead. His tall huge person is described as having been surmounted with a little round head, and a nose broad and turned up. Perhaps the nose came from Austria ; for it is_surprising how ancestors, even remote ones, dip up again in families ; and what great-grand- uncles and aunts will reappear, moral qualities and all, in the persons of their unfortunate nephews. But it is idle to speculate on departures from family likeness, when the families themselves, especially in South- ern courts, may have had nothing to do with them. History will not allow a reader to accuse himself of scandal, if the question reminds him of Quevedo's anecdote of the gentleman in the next world; who, finding himself not in the best quarter of it in consequence of his indulgence of a bad son, and lamenting the circumstance to a coachman of his whom he found there, and whom he asked, with some surprise, how he name to be his companion in misfortune, as he had always considered him an honest man, was answered, with a liberty suitable to his new :equality—" All! sir, it was because I was the father of that son of yours."

Ferdinand, however, appears to have resembled his Bourbon predeces- sors in many family respects, if not those of face. The earliest account of him, which to the best of our recollection, is that by Ms. Spalding in his "Italy and the Italian Islands," written some twenty years ago, be- fore his enormities had taken place, (see volume the third of that work, page 137) says, "The character of this sovereign seems to bear a con- siderable likeness to that of his grandfather, in his goodnature, his aver- sion to letters, and his relish for buffoonery ; besides which he has lately been charged with avarice, and with peremptory and unwise interference in the current business of the cabinet."

The late Mr. Macfarlane, a conservative who lived a long time in Italy, and who from the warmth of his personal predilections was apt to pro- nounce rash judgments on the opposite party and to take sweeping con- Aradictions for counter-evidence, but who was at the same time far from -being a man illiberal or unkindly disposed by nature, has the following passage on the King in the first volume of his "Glance at Revolutionized Italy" p. 100.—" Ferdinand's early education," he says, "was certainly not a good one : his father, Francis, a valetudinarian and a bigot, stir- rounded him with priests and old men of the most antiquated ideas ; but as a boy and youth he was noted for anything rather than for a cruel and ferocious temper. Mild, gentle, generous, and warm-hearted—this was the character he universally bore twenty years ago. Some of the effects of his early education are seen in his conduct and demeanour : he will on no amount pass the meanest crucifix, or picture of saint or virgin, with- out taking off his hat : if he is approaching any very conspicuous effigies, he will begin bowing and crossing himself while he is yet a hundred yards off. His enemies set all this down as a base, calculating hypocrisy ; but it is quite as reasonable to believe that it is sincere devotion or superstition. It is quite true that this reverential behaviour singularly endears him to the great body of the people."

Alas! some of the worst Roman emperors were famous for reverential behaviour to their gods ; and Nero himself, when young, appeared to be "gentle, generous, and warm-hearted." In other words he was pleasing enough as long as he was pleased and had his way. When his will grew to be contradicted, he became furious ; and we know how he reigned and ended.

As the reign of Ferdinand advanced, these intermixtures of favour- able reports and guesses as to points of his nature gradually felt them- selves under the necessity of disappearing. In a later publication, en- titled "Naples and Xing Ferdinand," which was compiled from the narratives of esteemed native writers, credit is still given him for in- sinuating manners, whenever he chose to assume them; and there are persons no doubt upon whom royal endeavours to that effect would never fail, however clumsy in reality they might be. But he is at the same time described as timid, sordid, superstitious, cunning, disbelieving in any human goodness, delighting to oppose and persecute Ids subjects, and listening to the most affecting accounts of distress and oppression With a countenance of marble.

At length comes the indignant burning-glass of Mr. Gladstone with the history of Poerio and his fellow patriots ; and before the arrival of those exiles in this country, and the affair of the Cagliari and our own countrymen, the whole real monster of a man makes his appearance be- fore the disgusted world.

Fortunately, there was something low and foolish by nature in the monster—something inherently and involuntarily vulgar, incompetent, and base, which in some measure diminishes our disgust by enabling us to despise him. It is clear enough, indeed, by all the accounts of him, from first to last, what sort of a man he was. Ferdinand .Tanuaries Joseph, Xing of the Two Sicilies, was a born vulgarian and pedlar, shrewd enough in turning a penny and cheating his customers, but wholly incompetent to the station in which he found himself, and ex- asperated by the unconscious sense of being so. He ought to have been a costermonger, cheating six days out of the seven, and frequenting the lowest chapel on Sundays, in order to cheat the devil. He believed, out of an instinct of self-defence, that all men were thieves and liars ; or he just had perception enough of the existence of better and wiser men, to hate and fear thetti for the difference. He felt it ridiculous, and fancied it to be dangerous, that he and such men should cooperate, as lords of the ascendant ; and the only point in his character which might have been the salvation both of him and his country, had he known how to make lads servant instead of his master—his will,— made him determine, that he and they should neither cooperate, nor as far as in him lay, coexist. So he weakens, kills, or at all events, keeps them at a distance, by imprisonment, torment, and exile. We verily believe, that he was for getting Poerio and the rest as far away from him as three thousand miles, out of fear for his personal safety. Fear was his ruling passion, and accounted for all thereat. He was a timid horse.- man; a prostrate bigot ; a conceder of constitutions out of fright ; a vio- lator of them for the same reason ; a delighter in refusing, whenever he thought he could do it with safety, out of that secret love of power in any repulsive shape, which is natural to weakness ; it was the cowardice of fear, which made him cruel ; and we should not at all be surprised, were it to turn out, that like the rich man who died the other day, he loved to get a penny, from fear of coming to want. For who, now-a-days, he might think, can say what princes may come to ?

We have said nothing of his political career, partly because it has long been too well-known, and partly because it did not originate with him- self. It differed in nothing from that of his predecessors, except in the frightened excess to which it carried him. The principle of all of them was to stand by old abuses, with Austrian help ; to pretend to advance with the age, when they could not avoid it ; to resume the old stand- still the moment they could do so ; and to quiet their consciences for vio- lated oaths and attestings of Holy Trinities by the ever-ready Jesuitical excuse of having acted "on compulsion."

And would it be possible, then, for Charity itself to say a word in be- half of such a wretch ? Yes, it would; and what is more, the most suf- fering of his victims would, we have no doubt, be the first to say it ; not because suffering had made them weaker than other men, but because it had made them more thoughtful. The charity of the heart, like that of the pocket, (a man's born nature not opposing it) is apt enough to "begin at home"; though it can hardly find it so easy to "end there." Amen in pris' on for any length of time, if at all gifted with powers of reflection, and believing that he does not deserve it, is on every account inclined to turn those powers to finer purpose than other men. His won- der at his being there turns to wonder at all things, and to inquiries into first causes. Learning to know himself better, he learns better to knew

his fellow creatures ; to find reasons for their being superior or in- ferior to himself; and to wish for some advancement in good, that shall be of service to all. What comfort ean it be to him, when the first ex- asperation at captivity is over, to continue an irritability which does but increase impatience, and to look upon any fellow-creature in the light of a devil ? Mr. Gladstone was "astonished at the mildness" with which Poerio and his fellow-captives "spoke of those at whose hands they were suffering their abominable persecutions, and at their Christian resigna- tion as well as their forgiving temper ; for they seemed ready to under- go with cheerfulness whatever might yet be in store for them." Yet "their health was evidently suffering." Poerio was so altered the second time his visitor saw him, that he "should not have known him." Poerio, nevertheless, though so gentle and considerate in temper, was so strong in principle, that he would not ask the King for pardon, even to please his poor anxious mother; which must have been a hard trial. Still, we have no hesitation in repeating, that out of the mouths of such men as Poerio would come such excuse for their tyrant, as by any possibilty could be found for him.

And to what, after all, does it amount? To something poor enough, it must be owned, and yet not small of its kind, nor yet at the same time difficult for a little calm reflection to concede ; to wit, the birth and breeding of the man. For what were those ? and what miserable disadvantages were they not ? First, the birth, from a race of silly people, a stock famous for the physiological objection of breeding "in and in," and thus making itself worse and worse :—then bred as well as born to have their little self-knowledge endangered as princes, perhaps utterly thwarted and perverted, their wills at the same time being pam- pered, and their understandings purposely dwarfed and corrupted by jesuitical tampering with truth, and bigoted terrors at science ; and lastly, poor wretches, succeeding to the power of indulging:all the follies and vices thus generated, presenting spectacles to their fellow-creatures sufficient, according to Shakspeare, to make angels weep, and taking themselves all the while for gods on earth, or vicegerents of God him- self !

The -wonder might be carried further: but suffice to add for the present, that it is such considerations as these which enable Poerios to think of their persecutors with patience, and that will prevent civilized nations from putting more of their kings to death.

Meantime may we all do the best which Heaven can put in our heads to hinder kings from ruling without constitutions, and being the death of their subjects.