Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 66, No 405, July 1849

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Various. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 66, No 405, July 1849

THE ISLAND OF SARDINIA.1

THE CAXTONS. – PART XIV

THE GAME LAWS IN SCOTLAND

DOMINIQUE

PESTALOZZIANA

THE CROWNING OF THE COLUMN, AND CRUSHING OF THE PEDESTAL

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The opinion of Nelson with regard to the importance of Sardinia, – that it is "worth a hundred Maltas," is well known; and that he strongly recommended its purchase to our government, thinking it might be obtained for £500,000. We can scarcely believe that Nelson failed to make an impression on the government, and conjecture rather that it was with the King of Sardinia the precious inheritance of a Naboth's vineyard. We do not remember to have met with a Sardinian tourist. Travellers as we are, with our ready "Hand-Books" for the remote corners of the earth, we seem, by a general consent, to have cut Sardinia from the map of observable countries. "Nos numerus sumus" – we plead guilty to this ignorance and neglect, and should have remained unconcerned about Sardinia still, had we not, in the work of Mr Tyndale, dipped into a few extracts from Lord Nelson's letters. Extending our reading, we find in these three volumes so much research, learning, historical speculation, and interesting matter, interspersed with amusing narrative, that we think a notice in Maga of this valuable and agreeable work may be not unacceptable.

The very circumstance that Sardinia is little known, renders it an agreeable speculation. The ignotum makes the charm. Our pleasure is in the fabulous, the dubious, the unexplained. In the ecstacy of ignorance the reader stands by the side of Mr Layard, watching the exhumation of the unknown gods or demons of Nineveh. "Ignorance is bliss," – for the subject-matter of ignorance is fact – fact isolated – or the broken links in time's long chain. The mind longs to fabricate, and connect. Were it possible that other sibylline books should be offered for sale, it would be preferable that Mr Murray should act the part of Tarquin than publish them as "Hand-Books." In truth, curiosity, that happy ingredient in the clay of the human mind, if so material an expression be allowed, is fed by ignorance, but dies under a surfeit of knowledge. Now, to apply this to our subject – Sardinia. The island is full of monuments, as mysterious to us as the Pyramids. There is sufficient obscurity to make a "sublime." It is happy for the reader, who has not lost his natural propensity to wonder, that there is so little known respecting them, and yet such grounds for conjecture; for he may be sure that, if any documents existed anywhere, Mr Tyndale would have discovered them, for he is the most indefatigable of authors in exploring in all the mines of literature. But he has to treat of things that were before literature was. The traveller who should first discover a Stonehenge – one who, walking on a hitherto untrodden plain, should come suddenly upon two such great sedate sitting images in stone as look over Egyptian sands – is he not greatly to be envied? We, who peer about our cities and villages, raking out decayed stone and mortar for broken pieces of antique art or memorial, as we facetiously term the remnants of a few hundred years, and of whose "whereabouts," from the beginning, we can receive some tolerable assurance, have but a slight glimpse of the delight experienced by the first finder of a monument of the Pelasgi, or even Cyclopean walls. But to make conjecture upon monuments beyond centuries – to count by thousands of years, and make out of them a dream that shall, like an Arabian magician, take the dreamer back to the Flood – is a happiness enjoyed by few. We never envied traveller more than we once did that lady who came suddenly upon the Etrurian monument, in which there was just aperture enough to see for a moment only a sitting figure, with its look and drapery of more than thousands of years; who just saw it for a few seconds, preserved only in the stillness of antiquity, and falling to dust at her very breathing. Not so ancient the monument, but of like character the discovery of him who, digging within the walls of his own house at Portici, came upon marble steps that led him down and down, till he found before him, in the obscure, a white marble equestrian statue the size of life. If one could be made a poet, these two incidents were enough. The interior of Sardinia has been hitherto a kind of "terra incognita." Mr Tyndale must therefore have ascended and descended its craggy or wooded mountains, and threaded its ravines, and crossed its fertile or desolate plains, with no common feeling of expectation; and though the frequent "Noraghe" and "Sepolture de is Gigantes," and their accompanying strange conical stones, were not of a character to fill him with that amazement produced by the above-mentioned incidents, they were sufficiently mysterious, and the attempt to reach them in some instances sufficiently adventurous – to keep alive the mind, and stir the imagination to the working out visions, and conjuring up the seeming-probable existences of the past, or wilder dreams, in such variety as reason deduced or fancy willed. On one occasion he descended an aperture, in a domed chamber of a Noraghe, groped his way through a subterranean passage, and came upon some finely-pulverised matter, "about fifteen inches deep, which at first appeared to be earth, but on scraping into it were several human bones, some broken and others mouldering away on being touched." But here the reader unacquainted with Sardinia, as it may be presumed very many are, may ask something about these Noraghe, with their domed chambers, and the Sepolture. There may be a preliminary inquiry into the origin of the inhabitants. Various are the statements of different authors: without following chronological order, we may readily concur in their conclusions, that the island was peopled by Phœnician, Libyan, Tyrrhenian, Greek, Trojan, and other colonies – unless the disquisitions of some historians of our day would compel us to reject the Trojans, in the doubt as to the existence of Troy itself. But many of these may have been only partial, temporary immigrations, which found a people in prior possession. The argument is strongly in favour of the supposition that the Sarde nation are of Phœnician origin, and that its antiquities are Phœnician, or of a still earlier epoch. In descending to more historic times, we find the Carthaginians exercising influence there as early as 700 B.C., and that the island suffered severely from the alternate sway of the rival powers of Rome and Carthage. And here we are disposed to rest, utterly disinclined to follow the labyrinth of cruelties which the history of every people, nation, and language under the sun presents.

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After the mention of these singular monuments, perhaps of three thousand years ago, it may be scarcely worth while to notice the antiquities of, comparatively speaking, a modern date, Roman or other. Nor do we intend to speak of the history of the people under the Romans or Carthaginians, and but shortly notice that kind of government under "Giudici," as princes presiding over the several provinces some centuries before the Pisan, Genoese, and Aragon possession of the island. The origin of this government is involved in much obscurity; there are, however, documents of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, which speak of preceding Giudici, and their acts. It would be idle to inquire why they were called Giudici: it may suffice, that the "judges" were the actual rulers.

"It is supposed," says our author, "that the whole island was originally comprehended in one Giudicato, of which Cagliari was the capital; but, in the course of time, the local interests of each grew sufficiently self-important to cause a subdivision and establishment of separate Giudicati." The minor ones were in time swallowed up by the others, and only four remained, of which there is a precise history, Cagliari, Arborea, Gallura, and Logudoro.

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