Every day produces these remarkable documents. So many years as we have been suffocated and poisoned by the atmosphere of falsehood in official papers, how refreshing is the tone of noble sentiment in Lamartine! What a real wisdom and pure dignity in the letter of Béranger! He was always absolutely true,—an oasis in the pestilential desert of Humbug; but the present time allowed him a fine occasion.
The Poles have also made noble manifestations. Their great poet, Adam Mickiewicz, has been here to enroll the Italian Poles, publish the declaration of faith in which they hope to re-enter and re-establish their country, and receive the Pope's benediction on their banner. In their declaration of faith are found these three articles:—
"Every one of the nation a citizen,—every citizen equal in rights and before authorities.
"To the Jew, our elder brother, respect, brotherhood, aid on the way to his eternal and terrestrial good, entire equality in political and civil rights.
"To the companion of life, woman, citizenship, entire equality of rights."
This last expression of just thought the Poles ought to initiate, for what other nation has had such truly heroic women? Women indeed,—not children, servants, or playthings.
Mickiewicz, with the squadron that accompanied him from Rome, was received with the greatest enthusiasm at Florence. Deputations from the clubs and journals went to his hotel and escorted him to the Piazza del Gran Dúca, where, amid an immense concourse of people, some good speeches were made. A Florentine, with a generous forgetfulness of national vanity, addressed him as the Dante of Poland, who, more fortunate than the great bard and seer of Italy, was likely to return to his country to reap the harvest of the seed he had sown.
"O Dante of Poland! who, like our Alighieri, hast received from Heaven sovereign genius, divine song, but from earth sufferings and exile,—more happy than our Alighieri, thou hast reacquired a country; already thou art meditating on the sacred harp the patriotic hymn of restoration and of victory. The pilgrims of Poland have become the warriors of their nation. Long live Poland, and the brotherhood of nations!"
When this address was finished, the great poet appeared on the balcony to answer. The people received him with a tumult of applause, followed by a profound silence, as they anxiously awaited his voice. Those who are acquainted with the powerful eloquence, the magnetism, of Mickiewicz as an orator, will not be surprised at the effect produced by this speech, though delivered in a foreign language. It is the force of truth, the great vitality of his presence, that loads his words with such electric power. He spoke as follows:—
"People of Tuscany! Friends! Brothers! We receive your shouts of sympathy in the name of Poland; not for us, but for our country. Our country, though distant, claims from you this sympathy by its long martyrdom. The glory of Poland, its only glory, truly Christian, is to have suffered more than all the nations. In other countries the goodness, the generosity of heart, of some sovereigns protected the people; as yours has enjoyed the dawn of the era now coming, under the protection of your excellent prince. [Viva Leopold II.!] But conquered Poland, slave and victim, of sovereigns who were her sworn enemies and executioners,—Poland, abandoned by the governments and the nations, lay in agony on her solitary Golgotha. She was believed slain, dead, burred. 'We have slain her,' shouted the despots; 'she is dead!' [No, no! long live Poland!] 'The dead cannot rise again,' replied the diplomatists; 'we may now be tranquil.' [A universal shudder of feeling in the crowd.] There came a moment in which the world doubted of the mercy and justice of the Omnipotent. There was a moment in which the nations thought that the earth might be for ever abandoned by God, and condemned to the rule of the demon, its ancient lord. The nations forgot that Jesus Christ came down from heaven to give liberty and peace to the earth. The nations had forgotten all this. But God is just. The voice of Pius IX. roused Italy. [Long live Pius IX.!] The people of Paris have driven out the great traitor against the cause of the nations. [Bravo! Viva the people of Paris!] Very soon will be heard the voice of Poland. Poland will rise again! [Yes, yes! Poland will rise again!] Poland will call to life all the Slavonic races,—the Croats, the Dalmatians, the Bohemians, the Moravians, the Illyrians. These will form the bulwark against the tyrant of the North. [Great applause.] They will close for ever the way against the barbarians of the North,—destroyers of liberty and of civilization. Poland is called to do more yet: Poland, as crucified nation, is risen again, and called to serve her sister nations. The will of God is, that Christianity should become in Poland, and through Poland elsewhere, no more a dead letter of the law, but the living law of states and civil associations;—[Great applause;]—that Christianity should be manifested by acts, the sacrifices of generosity and liberality. This Christianity is not new to you, Florentines; your ancient republic knew and has acted upon it: it is time that the same spirit should make to itself a larger sphere. The will of God is that the nations should act towards one another as neighbors,—as brothers. [A tumult of applause.] And you, Tuscans, have to-day done an act of Christian brotherhood. Receiving thus foreign, unknown pilgrims, who go to defy the greatest powers of the earth, you have in us saluted only what is in us of spiritual and immortal,—our faith and our patriotism. [Applause.] We thank you; and we will now go into the church to thank God."
"All the people then followed the Poles to the church of Santa Cróce, where was sung the Benedictus Dominus, and amid the memorials of the greatness of Italy collected in that temple was forged more strongly the chain of sympathy and of union between two nations, sisters in misfortune and in glory."
This speech and its reception, literally translated from the journal of the day, show how pleasant it is on great occasions to be brought in contact with this people, so full of natural eloquence and of lively sensibility to what is great and beautiful.
It is a glorious time too for the exiles who return, and reap even a momentary fruit of their long sorrows. Mazzini has been able to return from his seventeen years' exile, during which there was no hour, night or day, that the thought of Italy was banished from his heart,—no possible effort that he did not make to achieve the emancipation of his people, and with it the progress of mankind. He returns, like Wordsworth's great man, "to see what he foresaw." He will see his predictions accomplishing yet for a long time, for Mazzini has a mind far in advance of his times in general, and his nation in particular,—a mind that will be best revered and understood when the "illustrious Gioberti" shall be remembered as a pompous verbose charlatan, with just talent enough to catch the echo from the advancing wave of his day, but without any true sight of the wants of man at this epoch. And yet Mazzini sees not all: he aims at political emancipation; but he sees not, perhaps would deny, the bearing of some events, which even now begin to work their way. Of this, more anon; but not to-day, nor in the small print of the Tribune. Suffice it to say, I allude to that of which the cry of Communism, the systems of Fourier, &c., are but forerunners. Mazzini sees much already,—at Milan, where he is, he has probably this day received the intelligence of the accomplishment of his foresight, implied in his letter to the Pope, which angered Italy by what was thought its tone of irreverence and doubt, some six months since.
To-day is the 7th of May, for I had thrown aside this letter, begun the 19th of April, from a sense that there was something coming that would supersede what was then to say. This something has appeared in a form that will cause deep sadness to good hearts everywhere. Good and loving hearts, that long for a human form which they can revere, will be unprepared and for a time must suffer much from the final dereliction of Pius IX. to the cause of freedom, progress, and of the war. He was a fair image, and men went nigh to idolize it; this they can do no more, though they may be able to find excuse for his feebleness, love his good heart no less than before, and draw instruction from the causes that have produced his failure, more valuable than his success would have been.
Pius IX., no one can doubt who has looked on him, has a good and pure heart; but it needed also, not only a strong, but a great mind,
"To comprehend his trust, and to the same
Keep faithful, with a singleness of aim."
A highly esteemed friend in the United States wrote to express distaste to some observations in a letter of mine to the Tribune on first seeing the Pontiff a year ago, observing, "To say that he had not the expression of great intellect was uncalled for" Alas! far from it; it was an observation that rose inevitably on knowing something of the task before Pius IX., and the hopes he had excited. The problem he had to solve was one of such difficulty, that only one of those minds, the rare product of ages for the redemption of mankind, could be equal to its solution. The question that inevitably rose on seeing him was, "Is he such a one?" The answer was immediately negative. But at the same time, he had such an aspect of true benevolence and piety, that a hope arose that Heaven would act through him, and impel him to measures wise beyond his knowledge.
This hope was confirmed by the calmness he showed at the time of the conspiracy of July, and the occupation of Ferrara by the Austrians. Tales were told of simple wisdom, of instinct, which he obeyed in opposition to the counsels of all his Cardinals. Everything went on well for a time.
But tokens of indubitable weakness were shown by the Pope in early acts of the winter, in the removal of a censor at the suggestion of others, in his speech, to the Consistory, in his answer to the first address of the Council. In these he declared that, when there was conflict between the priest and the man, he always meant to be the priest; and that he preferred the wisdom of the past to that of the future.
Still, times went on bending his predeterminations to the call of the moment. He acted wiselier than he intended; as, for instance, three weeks after declaring he would not give a constitution to his people, he gave it,—a sop to Cerberus, indeed,—a poor vamped-up thing that will by and by have to give place to something more legitimate, but which served its purpose at the time as declaration of rights for the people. When the news of the revolution of Vienna arrived, the Pope himself cried Viva Pio Nono! and this ebullition of truth in one so humble, though opposed to his formal declarations, was received by his people with that immediate assent which truth commands.
The revolution of Lombardy followed. The troops of the line were sent thither; the volunteers rushed to accompany them. In the streets of Rome was read the proclamation of Charles Albert, in which he styles himself the servant of Italy and of Pius IX. The priests preached the war, and justly, as a crusade; the Pope blessed their banners. Nobody dreamed, or had cause to dream, that these movements had not his full sympathy; and his name was in every form invoked as the chosen instrument of God to inspire Italy to throw off the oppressive yoke of the foreigner, and recover her rights in the civilized world.
At the same time, however, the Pope was seen to act with great blindness in the affair of the Jesuits. The other states of Italy drove them out by main force, resolved not to have in the midst of the war a foe and spy in the camp. Rome wished to do the same, but the Pope rose in their defence. He talked as if they were assailed as a religious body, when he could not fail, like everybody else, to be aware that they were dreaded and hated solely as agents of despotism. He demanded that they should be assailed only by legal means, when none such were available. The end was in half-measures, always the worst possible. He would not entirely yield, and the people would not at all. The Order was ostensibly dissolved; but great part of the Jesuits really remain here in disguise, a constant source of irritation and mischief, which, if still greater difficulties had not arisen, would of itself have created enough. Meanwhile, in the earnestness of the clergy about the pretended loss of the head of St. Andrew, in the ceremonies of the holy week, which at this juncture excited no real interest, was much matter for thought to the calm observer as to the restlessness of the new wine, the old bottles being heard to crack on every side, and hour by hour.
Thus affairs went on from day to day,—the Pope kissing the foot of the brazen Jupiter and blessing palms of straw at St. Peter's; the Circolo Romano erecting itself into a kind of Jacobin Club, dictating programmes for an Italian Diet-General, and choosing committees to provide for the expenses of the war; the Civic Guard arresting people who tried to make mobs as if famishing, and, being searched, were found well provided both with arms and money; the ministry at their wits' end, with their trunks packed up ready to be off at a moment's warning,—when the report, it is not yet known whether true or false, that one of the Roman Civic Guard, a well-known artist engaged in the war of Lombardy, had been taken and hung by the Austrians as a brigand, roused the people to a sense of the position of their friends, and they went to the Pope to demand that he should take a decisive stand, and declare war against the Austrians.
The Pope summoned, a consistory; the people waited anxiously, for expressions of his were reported, as if the troops ought not to have thought of leaving the frontier, while every man, woman, and child in Rome knew, and every letter and bulletin declared, that all their thought was to render active aid to the cause of Italian independence. This anxious doubt, however, had not prepared at all for the excess to which they were to be disappointed.
The speech of the Pope declared, that he had never any thought of the great results which had followed his actions; that he had only intended local reforms, such as had previously been suggested by the potentates of Europe; that he regretted the misuse which had been made of his name; and wound up by lamenting over the war,—dear to every Italian heart as the best and holiest cause in which for ages they had been called to embark their hopes,—as if it was something offensive to the spirit of religion, and which he would fain see hushed up, and its motives smoothed out and ironed over.
A momentary stupefaction followed this astounding performance, succeeded by a passion of indignation, in which the words traitor and imbecile were associated with the name that had been so dear to his people. This again yielded to a settled grief: they felt that he was betrayed, but no traitor; timid and weak, but still a sovereign whom they had adored, and a man who had brought them much good, which could not be quite destroyed by his wishing to disown it. Even of this fact they had no time to stop and think; the necessity was too imminent of obviating the worst consequences of this ill; and the first thought was to prevent the news leaving Rome, to dishearten the provinces and army, before they had tried to persuade the Pontiff to wiser resolves, or, if this could not be, to supersede his power.
I cannot repress my admiration at the gentleness, clearness, and good sense with which the Roman people acted under these most difficult circumstances. It was astonishing to see the clear understanding which animated the crowd, as one man, and the decision with which they acted to effect their purpose. Wonderfully has this people been developed within a year!
The Pope, besieged by deputations, who mildly but firmly showed him that, if he persisted, the temporal power must be placed in other hands, his ears filled with reports of Cardinals, "such venerable persons," as he pathetically styles them, would not yield in spirit, though compelled to in act. After two days' struggle, he was obliged to place the power in the hands of the persons most opposed to him, and nominally acquiesce in their proceedings, while in his second proclamation, very touching from the sweetness of its tone, he shows a fixed misunderstanding of the cause at issue, which leaves no hope of his ever again being more than a name or an effigy in their affairs.
His people were much affected, and entirely laid aside their anger, but they would not be blinded as to the truth. While gladly returning to their accustomed habits of affectionate homage toward the Pontiff, their unanimous sense and resolve is thus expressed in an able pamphlet of the day, such as in every respect would have been deemed impossible to the Rome of 1847:—
"From the last allocution of Pius result two facts of extreme gravity;—the entire separation between the spiritual and temporal power, and the express refusal of the Pontiff to be chief of an Italian Republic. But far from drawing hence reason for discouragement and grief, who looks well at the destiny of Italy may bless Providence, which breaks or changes the instrument when the work is completed, and by secret and inscrutable ways conducts us to the fulfilment of our desires and of our hopes.
"If Pius IX. refuses, the Italian people does not therefore draw back. Nothing remains to the free people of Italy, except to unite in one constitutional kingdom, founded on the largest basis; and if the chief who, by our assemblies, shall be called to the highest honor, either declines or does not answer worthily, the people will take care of itself.
"Italians! down with all emblems of private and partial interests. Let us unite under one single banner, the tricolor, and if he who has carried it bravely thus far lets it fall from his hand, we will take it one from the other, twenty-four millions of us, and, till the last of us shall have perished under the banner of our redemption, the stranger shall not return into Italy.
"Viva Italy! viva the Italian people!"M
These events make indeed a crisis. The work begun by Napoleon is finished. There will never more be really a Pope, but only the effigy or simulacrum of one.
The loss of Pius IX. is for the moment a great one. His name had real moral weight,—was a trumpet appeal to sentiment. It is not the same with any man that is left. There is not one that can be truly a leader in the Roman dominion, not one who has even great intellectual weight.
The responsibility of events now lies wholly with the people, and that wave of thought which has begun to pervade them. Sovereigns and statesmen will go where they are carried; it is probable power will be changed continually from, hand to hand, and government become, to all intents and purposes, representative. Italy needs now quite to throw aside her stupid king of Naples, who hangs like a dead weight on her movements. The king of Sardinia and the Grand Duke of Tuscany will be trusted while they keep their present course; but who can feel sure of any sovereign, now that Louis Philippe has shown himself so mad and Pius IX. so blind? It seems as if fate was at work to bewilder and cast down the dignities of the world and democratize society at a blow.
In Rome there is now no anchor except the good sense of the people. It seems impossible that collision should not arise between him who retains the name but not the place of sovereign, and the provisional government which calls itself a ministry. The Count Mamiani, its new head, is a man of reputation as a writer, but untried as yet as a leader or a statesman. Should agitations arise, the Pope can no longer calm them by one of his fatherly looks.
All lies in the future; and our best hope must be that the Power which has begun so great a work will find due means to end it, and make the year 1850 a year of true jubilee to Italy; a year not merely of pomps and tributes, but of recognized rights and intelligent joys; a year of real peace,—peace, founded not on compromise and the lying etiquettes of diplomacy, but on truth and justice.
Then this sad disappointment in Pius IX. may be forgotten, or, while all that was lovely and generous in his life is prized and reverenced, deep instruction may be drawn from his errors as to the inevitable dangers of a priestly or a princely environment, and a higher knowledge may elevate a nobler commonwealth than the world has yet known.
Hoping this era, I remain at present here. Should my hopes be dashed to the ground, it will not change my faith, but the struggle for its manifestation is to me of vital interest. My friends write to urge my return; they talk of our country as the land of the future. It is so, but that spirit which made it all it is of value in my eyes, which gave all of hope with which I can sympathize for that future, is more alive here at present than in America. My country is at present spoiled by prosperity, stupid with the lust of gain, soiled by crime in its willing perpetuation of slavery, shamed by an unjust war, noble sentiment much forgotten even by individuals, the aims of politicians selfish or petty, the literature frivolous and venal. In Europe, amid the teachings of adversity, a nobler spirit is struggling,—a spirit which cheers and animates mine. I hear earnest words of pure faith and love. I see deeds of brotherhood. This is what makes my America. I do not deeply distrust my country. She is not dead, but in my time she sleepeth, and the spirit of our fathers flames no more, but lies hid beneath the ashes. It will not be so long; bodies cannot live when the soul gets too overgrown with gluttony and falsehood. But it is not the making a President out of the Mexican war that would make me wish to come back. Here things are before my eyes worth recording, and, if I cannot help this work, I would gladly be its historian.
Returning from a little tour in the Alban Mount, where everything looks so glorious this glorious spring, I find a temporary quiet. The Pope's brothers have come to sympathize with him; the crowd sighs over what he has done, presents him with great bouquets of flowers, and reads anxiously the news from the north and the proclamations of the new ministry. Meanwhile the nightingales sing; every tree and plant is in flower, and the sun and moon shine as if paradise were already re-established on earth. I go to one of the villas to dream it is so, beneath the pale light of the stars.
Footnote M: (return)Close of "A Comment by Pio Angelo Fierortino on the Allocution of Pius IX. spoken in the Secret Consistory of 29th April, 1848," dated Italy, 30th April, 1st year of the Redemption of Italy.
LETTER XXV.
Review of the Course of Pius IX.—Mamiani.—The People's disappointed Hopes.—The Monuments in Milan, Naples, etc.—The King of Naples and his Troops.—Calamities of the War.—The Italian People.—Charles Albert.—Deductions.—Summer among the Mountains of Italy.
I have not written for six months, and within that time what changes have taken place on this side "the great water,"—changes of how great dramatic interest historically,—of bearing infinitely important ideally! Easy is the descent in ill.
I wrote last when Pius IX. had taken the first stride on the downward road. He had proclaimed himself the foe of further reform measures, when he implied that Italian independence was not important in his eyes, when he abandoned the crowd of heroic youth who had gone to the field with his benediction, to some of whom his own hand had given crosses. All the Popes, his predecessors, had meddled with, most frequently instigated, war; now came one who must carry out, literally, the doctrines of the Prince of Peace, when the war was not for wrong, or the aggrandizement of individuals, but to redeem national, to redeem human, rights from the grasp of foreign oppression.
I said some cried "traitor," some "imbecile," some wept, but In the minds of all, I believe, at that time, grief was predominant. They could no longer depend on him they had thought their best friend. They had lost their father.
Meanwhile his people would not submit to the inaction he urged. They saw it was not only ruinous to themselves, but base and treacherous to the rest of Italy. They said to the Pope, "This cannot be; you must follow up the pledges you have given, or, if you will not act to redeem them, you must have a ministry that will." The Pope, after he had once declared to the contrary, ought to have persisted. He should have said, "I cannot thus belie myself, I cannot put my name to acts I have just declared to be against my conscience."
The ministers of the people ought to have seen that the position they assumed was utterly untenable; that they could not advance with an enemy in the background cutting off all supplies. But some patriotism and some vanity exhilarated them, and, the Pope having weakly yielded, they unwisely began their impossible task. Mamiani, their chief, I esteem a man, under all circumstances, unequal to such a position,—a man of rhetoric merely. But no man could have acted, unless the Pope had resigned his temporal power, the Cardinals been put under sufficient check, and the Jesuits and emissaries of Austria driven from their lurking-places.
A sad scene began. The Pope,—shut up more and more in his palace, the crowd of selfish and insidious advisers darkening round, enslaved by a confessor,—he who might have been the liberator of suffering Europe permitted the most infamous treacheries to be practised in his name. Private letters were written to the foreign powers, denying the acts he outwardly sanctioned; the hopes of the people were evaded or dallied with; the Chamber of Deputies permitted to talk and pass measures which they never could get funds to put into execution; legions to form and manoeuvre, but never to have the arms and clothing they needed. Again and again the people went to the Pope for satisfaction. They got only—benediction.
Thus plotted and thus worked the scarlet men of sin, playing the hopes of Italy off and on, while their hope was of the miserable defeat consummated by a still worse traitor at Milan on the 6th of August. But, indeed, what could be expected from the "Sword of Pius IX.," when Pius IX. himself had thus failed in his high vocation. The king of Naples bombarded his city, and set on the Lazzaroni to rob and murder the subjects he had deluded by his pretended gift of the Constitution. Pius proclaimed that he longed to embrace all the princes of Italy. He talked of peace, when all knew for a great part of the Italians there was no longer hope of peace, except in the sepulchre, or freedom.
The taunting manifestos of Welden are a sufficient comment on the conduct of the Pope. "As the government of his Holiness is too weak to control his subjects,"—"As, singularly enough, a great number of Romans are found, fighting against us, contrary to the expressed will of their prince,"—such were the excuses for invasions of the Pontifical dominions, and the robbery and insult by which they were accompanied. Such invasions, it was said, made his Holiness very indignant; he remonstrated against these; but we find no word of remonstrance against the tyranny of the king of Naples,—no word of sympathy for the victims of Lombardy, the sufferings of Verona, Vicenza, Padua, Mantua, Venice.
In the affairs of Europe there are continued signs of the plan of the retrograde party to effect similar demonstrations in different places at the same hour. The 15th of May was one of these marked days. On that day the king of Naples made use of the insurrection he had contrived to excite, to massacre his people, and find an excuse for recalling his troops from Lombardy. The same day a similar crisis was hoped in Rome from the declarations of the Pope, but that did not work at the moment exactly as the foes of enfranchisement hoped.
However, the wounds were cruel enough. The Roman volunteers received the astounding news that they were not to expect protection or countenance from their prince; all the army stood aghast, that they were no longer to fight in the name of Pio. It had been so dear, so sweet, to love and really reverence the head of their Church, so inspiring to find their religion for once in accordance with the aspirations of the soul! They were to be deprived, too, of the aid of the disciplined Neapolitan troops and their artillery, on which they had counted. How cunningly all this was contrived to cause dissension and dismay may easily be seen.
The Neapolitan General Pepe nobly refused to obey, and called on the troops to remain with him. They wavered; but they are a pampered army, personally much attached to the king, who pays them well and indulges them at the expense of his people, that they may be his support against that people when in a throe of nature it rises and striven for its rights. For the same reason, the sentiment of patriotism was little diffused among them in comparison with the other troops. And the alternative presented was one in which it required a very clear sense of higher duty to act against habit. Generally, after wavering awhile, they obeyed and returned. The Roman States, which had received them with so many testimonials of affection and honor, on their retreat were not slack to show a correspondent aversion and contempt. The towns would not suffer their passage; the hamlets were unwilling to serve them even with fire and water. They were filled at once with shame and rage; one officer killed himself, unable to bear it; in the unreflecting minds of the soldiers, hate sprung up for the rest of Italy, and especially Rome, which will make them admirable tools of tyranny in case of civil war.
This was the first great calamity of the war. But apart from the treachery of the king of Naples and the dereliction of the Pope, it was impossible it should end thoroughly well. The people were in earnest, and have shown themselves so; brave, and able to bear privation. No one should dare, after the proofs of the summer, to reiterate the taunt, so unfriendly frequent on foreign lips at the beginning of the contest, that the Italian can boast, shout, and fling garlands, but not act. The Italian always showed himself noble and brave, even in foreign service, and is doubly so in the cause of his country. But efficient heads were wanting. The princes were not in earnest; they were looking at expediency. The Grand Duke, timid and prudent, wanted to do what was safest for Tuscany; his ministry, "Moderate" and prudent, would have liked to win a great prize at small risk. They went no farther than the people pulled them. The king of Sardinia had taken the first bold step, and the idea that treachery on his part was premeditated cannot be sustained; it arises from the extraordinary aspect of his measures, and the knowledge that he is not incapable of treachery, as he proved in early youth. But now it was only his selfishness that worked to the same results. He fought and planned, not for Italy, but the house of Savoy, which his Balbis and Giobertis had so long been prophesying was to reign supreme in the new great era of Italy. These prophecies he more than half believed, because they chimed with his ambitious wishes; but he had not soul enough to realize them; he trusted only in his disciplined troops; he had not nobleness enough to believe he might rely at all on the sentiment of the people. For his troops he dared not have good generals; conscious of meanness and timidity, he shrank from the approach of able and earnest men; he was inly afraid they would, in helping Italy, take her and themselves out of his guardianship. Antonini was insulted, Garibaldi rejected; other experienced leaders, who had rushed to Italy at the first trumpet-sound, could never get employment from him. As to his generalship, it was entirely inadequate, even if he had made use of the first favorable moments. But his first thought was not to strike a blow at the Austrians before they recovered from the discomfiture of Milan, but to use the panic and need of his assistance to induce Lombardy and Venice to annex themselves to his kingdom. He did not even wish seriously to get the better till this was done, and when this was done, it was too late. The Austrian army was recruited, the generals had recovered their spirits, and were burning to retrieve and avenge their past defeat. The conduct of Charles Albert had been shamefully evasive in the first months. The account given by Franzini, when challenged in the Chamber of Deputies at Turin, might be summed up thus: "Why, gentlemen, what would you have? Every one knows that the army is in excellent condition, and eager for action. They are often reviewed, hear speeches, and sometimes get medals. We take places always, if it is not difficult. I myself was present once when the troops advanced; our men behaved gallantly, and had the advantage in the first skirmish; but afterward the enemy pointed on us artillery from the heights, and, naturally, we retired. But as to supposing that his Majesty Charles Albert is indifferent to the success of Italy in the war, that is absurd. He is 'the Sword of Italy'; he is the most magnanimous of princes; he is seriously occupied about the war; many a day I have been called into his tent to talk it over, before he was up in the morning!"
Sad was it that the heroic Milan, the heroic Venice, the heroic Sicily, should lean on such a reed as this, and by hurried acts, equally unworthy as unwise, sully the glory of their shields. Some names, indeed, stand, out quite free from this blame. Mazzini, who kept up a combat against folly and cowardice, day by day and hour by hour, with almost supernatural strength, warned the people constantly of the evils which their advisers were drawing upon them. He was heard then only by a few, but in this "Italia del Popolo" may be found many prophecies exactly fulfilled, as those of "the golden-haired love of Phoebus" during the struggles of Ilium. He himself, in the last sad days of Milan, compared his lot to that of Cassandra. At all events, his hands are pure from that ill. What could be done to arouse Lombardy he did, but the "Moderate" party unable to wean themselves from old habits, the pupils of the wordy Gioberti thought there could be no safety unless under the mantle of a prince. They did not foresee that he would run away, and throw that mantle on the ground.
Tommaso and Manin also were clear in their aversion to these measures; and with them, as with all who were resolute in principle at that time, a great influence has followed.
It is said Charles Albert feels bitterly the imputations on his courage, and says they are most ungrateful, since he has exposed the lives of himself and his sons in the combat. Indeed, there ought to be made a distinction between personal and mental courage. The former Charles Albert may possess, may have too much of what this still aristocratic world calls "the feelings of a gentleman" to shun exposing himself to a chance shot now and then. An entire want of mental courage he has shown. The battle, decisive against him, was made so by his giving up the moment fortune turned against him. It is shameful to hear so many say this result was inevitable, just because the material advantages were in favor of the Austrians. Pray, was never a battle won against material odds? It is precisely such that a good leader, a noble man, may expect to win. Were the Austrians driven out of Milan because the Milanese had that advantage? The Austrians would again, have suffered repulse from them, but for the baseness of this man, on whom they had been cajoled into relying,—a baseness that deserves the pillory; and on a pillory will the "Magnanimous," as he was meanly called in face of the crimes of his youth and the timid selfishness of his middle age, stand in the sight of posterity. He made use of his power only to betray Milan; he took from the citizens all means of defence, and then gave them up to the spoiler; he promised to defend them "to the last drop of his blood," and sold them the next minute; even the paltry terms he made, he has not seen maintained. Had the people slain him in their rage, he well deserved it at their hands; and all his conduct since show how righteous would have been that sudden verdict of passion.
Of all this great drama I have much to write, but elsewhere, in a more full form, and where I can duly sketch the portraits of actors little known in America. The materials are over-rich. I have bought my right in them by much sympathetic suffering; yet, amid the blood and tears of Italy, 't is joy to see some glorious new births. The Italians are getting cured of mean adulation and hasty boasts; they are learning to prize and seek realities; the effigies of straw are getting knocked down, and living, growing men take their places. Italy is being educated for the future, her leaders are learning that the time is past for trust in princes and precedents,—that there is no hope except in truth and God; her lower people are learning to shout less and think more.
Though my thoughts have been much with the public in this struggle for life, I have been away from it during the summer months, in the quiet valleys, on the lonely mountains. There, personally undisturbed, I have seen the glorious Italian summer wax and wane,—the summer of Southern Italy, which I did not see last year. On the mountains it was not too hot for me, and I enjoyed the great luxuriance of vegetation. I had the advantage of having visited the scene of the war minutely last summer, so that, in mind, I could follow every step of the campaign, while around me were the glorious relics of old times,—the crumbling theatre or temple of the Roman day, the bird's-nest village of the Middle Ages, on whose purple height shone the sun and moon of Italy in changeless lustre. It was great pleasure to me to watch the gradual growth and change of the seasons, so different from ours. Last year I had not leisure for this quiet acquaintance. Now I saw the fields first dressed in their carpets of green, enamelled richly with the red poppy and blue corn-flower,—in that sunshine how resplendent! Then swelled the fig, the grape, the olive, the almond; and my food was of these products of this rich clime. For near three months I had grapes every day; the last four weeks, enough daily for two persons for a cent! Exquisite salad for two persons' dinner and supper cost but a cent, and all other products of the region were in the same proportion. One who keeps still in Italy, and lives as the people do, may really have much simple luxury for very little money; though both travel, and, to the inexperienced foreigner, life in the cities, are expensive.
LETTER XXVI.
Thoughts of the Italian Race, the Seasons, and Rome.—Changes.—The Death of the Minister Rossi.—The Church of San Luigi del Francesi.—St. Cecilia and the Domenichino Chapel.—The Piazza del Popolo.—The Troops: Preparatory Movements toward the Quirinal.—The Demonstration on the Palace.—The Church: its Position and Aims.—The Pope's Flight, &c.—Social Life.—Don Tirlone.—The New Year.
Not till I saw the snow on the mountains grow rosy in the autumn sunset did I turn my steps again toward Rome. I was very ready to return. After three or four years of constant excitement, this six months of seclusion had been welcome; but now I felt the need of meeting other eyes beside those, so bright and so shallow, of the Italian peasant. Indeed, I left what was most precious, but which I could not take with me;N still it was a compensation that I was again to see Rome,—Rome, that almost killed me with her cold breath of last winter, yet still with that cold breath whispered a tale of import so divine. Rome so beautiful, so great! her presence stupefies, and one has to withdraw to prize the treasures she has given. City of the soul! yes, it is that; the very dust magnetizes you, and thousand spells have been chaining you in every careless, every murmuring moment. Yes! Rome, however seen, thou must be still adored; and every hour of absence or presence must deepen love with one who has known what it is to repose in thy arms.
Repose! for whatever be the revolutions, tumults, panics, hopes, of the present day, still the temper of life here is repose. The great past enfolds us, and the emotions of the moment cannot here greatly disturb that impression. From the wild shout and throng of the streets the setting sun recalls us as it rests on a hundred domes and temples,—rests on the Campagna, whose grass is rooted in departed human greatness. Burial-place so full of spirit that death itself seems no longer cold! O let me rest here, too! Hest here seems possible; meseems myriad lives still linger here, awaiting some one great summons.
The rivers had burst their bounds, and beneath the moon the fields round Rome lay one sheet of silver. Entering the gate while the baggage was under examination, I walked to the entrance of a villa. Far stretched its overarching shrubberies, its deep green bowers; two statues, with foot advanced and uplifted finger, seemed to greet me; it was near the scene of great revels, great splendors in the old time; there lay the gardens of Sallust, where were combined palace, theatre, library, bath, and villa. Strange things have happened since, the most attractive part of which—the secret heart—lies buried or has fled to animate other forms; for of that part historians have rarely given a hint more than they do now of the truest life of our day, which refuses to be embodied, by the pen, craving forms more mutable, more eloquent than the pen can give.
I found Rome empty of foreigners. Most of the English have fled in affright,—the Germans and French are wanted at home,—the Czar has recalled many of his younger subjects; he does not like the schooling they get here. That large part of the population, which lives by the visits of foreigners was suffering very much,—trade, industry, for every reason, stagnant. The people were every moment becoming more exasperated by the impudent measures of the Minister Rossi, and their mortification at seeing Rome represented and betrayed by a foreigner. And what foreigner? A pupil of Guizot and Louis Philippe. The news of the bombardment and storm of Vienna had just reached Rome. Zucchi, the Minister of War, at once left the city to put down over-free manifestations in the provinces, and impede the entrance of the troops of the patriot chief, Garibaldi, into Bologna. From the provinces came soldiery, called by Rossi to keep order at the opening of the Chamber of Deputies. He reviewed them in the face of the Civic Guard; the press began to be restrained; men were arbitrarily seized and sent out of the kingdom. The public indignation rose to its height; the cup overflowed.
The 15th was a beautiful day, and I had gone out for a long walk. Returning at night, the old Padrona met me with her usual smile a little clouded. "Do you know," said she, "that the Minister Rossi has been killed?" No Roman said murdered.
"Killed?"
"Yes,—with a thrust in the back. A wicked man, surely; but is that the way to punish even the wicked?"
"I cannot," observed a philosopher, "sympathize under any circumstances with so immoral a deed; but surely the manner of doing it was great."
The people at large were not so refined in their comments as either the Padrona or the philosopher; but soldiers and populace alike ran up and down, singing, "Blessed the hand that rids the earth of a tyrant."
Certainly, the manner was "great."
The Chamber was awaiting the entrance of Rossi. Had he lived to enter, he would have found the Assembly, without a single exception, ranged upon the Opposition benches. His carriage approached, attended by a howling, hissing multitude. He smiled, affected unconcern, but must have felt relieved when his horses entered the courtyard gate of the Cancelleria. He did not know he was entering the place of his execution. The horses stopped; he alighted in the midst of a crowd; it jostled him, as if for the purpose of insult; he turned abruptly, and received as he did so the fatal blow. It was dealt by a resolute, perhaps experienced, hand; he fell and spoke no word more.
The crowd, as if all previously acquainted with the plan, as no doubt most of them were, issued quietly from the gate, and passed through the outside crowd,—its members, among whom was he who dealt the blow, dispersing in all directions. For two or three minutes this outside crowd did not know that anything special had happened. When they did, the news was at the moment received in silence. The soldiers in whom Rossi had trusted, whom he had hoped to flatter and bribe, stood at their posts and said not a word. Neither they nor any one asked, "Who did this? Where is he gone?" The sense of the people certainly was that it was an act of summary justice on an offender whom the laws could not reach, but they felt it to be indecent to shout or exult on the spot where he was breathing his last. Rome, so long supposed the capital of Christendom, certainly took a very pagan view of this act, and the piece represented on the occasion at the theatres was "The Death of Nero."
The next morning I went to the Church of St. Andrea della Valle, where was to be performed a funeral service, with fine music, in honor of the victims of Vienna; for this they do here for the victims of every place,—"victims of Milan," "victims of Paris," "victims of Naples," and now "victims of Vienna." But to-day I found the church closed, the service put off,—Rome was thinking about her own victims.
I passed into the Ripetta, and entered the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi. The Republican flag was flying at the door; the young sacristan said the fine musical service, which this church gave formerly on St. Philip's day in honor of Louis Philippe, would now be transferred to the Republican anniversary, the 25th of February. I looked at the monument Chateaubriand erected when here, to a poor girl who died, last of her family, having seen all the others perish round her. I entered the Domenichino Chapel, and gazed anew on the magnificent representations of the Life and Death of St. Cecilia. She and St. Agnes are my favorite saints. I love to think of those angel visits which her husband knew by the fragrance of roses and lilies left behind in the apartment. I love to think of his visit to the Catacombs, and all that followed. In one of the pictures St. Cecilia, as she stretches out her arms toward the suffering multitude, seems as if an immortal fount of purest love sprung from her heart. It gives very strongly the idea of an inexhaustible love,—the only love that is much worth thinking about.
Leaving the church, I passed along toward the Piazza del Popolo. "Yellow Tiber rose," but not high enough to cause "distress," as he does when in a swelling mood. I heard the drums beating, and, entering the Piazza, I found the troops of the line already assembled, and the Civic Guard marching in by platoons, each battalion saluted as it entered by trumpets and a fine strain from the band of the Carbineers.
I climbed the Pincian to see better. There is no place so fine for anything of this kind as the Piazza del Popolo, it is so full of light, so fair and grand, the obelisk and fountain make so fine a centre to all kinds of groups.
The object of the present meeting was for the Civic Guard and troops of the line to give pledges of sympathy preparatory to going to the Quirinal to demand a change of ministry and of measures. The flag of the Union was placed in front of the obelisk; all present saluted it; some officials made addresses; the trumpets sounded, and all moved toward the Quirinal.
Nothing could be gentler than the disposition of those composing the crowd. They were resolved to be played with no longer, but no threat was uttered or thought. They believed that the court would be convinced by the fate of Rossi that the retrograde movement it had attempted was impracticable. They knew the retrograde party were panic-struck, and hoped to use the occasion to free the Pope from its meshes. All felt that Pius IX. had fallen irrevocably from his high place as the friend of progress and father of Italy; but still he was personally beloved, and still his name, so often shouted in hope and joy, had not quite lost its prestige.
I returned to the house, which is very near the Quirinal. On one side I could see the palace and gardens of the Pope, on the other the Piazza Barberini and street of the Four Fountains. Presently I saw the carriage of Prince Barberini drive hurriedly into his court-yard gate, the footman signing to close it, a discharge of fire-arms was heard, and the drums of the Civic Guard beat to arms.
The Padrona ran up and down, crying with every round of shot, "Jesu Maria, they are killing the Pope! O poor Holy Father!—Tito, Tito," (out of the window to her husband,) "what is the matter?"