For EIGHT DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & CO. Single copies of the LIVING AGE, 18 cents. 1 A MURMUR. I WROTE her name on the soft, shifting sand, Now Spring has come, grey Winter goes; "Good-bye, old friend," cry we. "You will return as Spring returns, but, now your day is o'er ; As grief is all forgotten we'll remember you no more." For Love had written it within my heart. THE FIRST OF APRIL. THE clouded sun of April casts a shadow on the lea, The diamond drops of April fly a-dancing down the air, And lo! bewitching April comes again our hearts to snare, To madden us with smiles that mourn, and tears lit up with glee; O wild maid, April, you will make a fool of me. NOW, WHAT IS LOVE? It is December matched with May, From Winter's bonds the waters wake, and Yet what is love, good shepherd, sain ? birds on every tree Sweet singing from the streamlet, and a carol from the wood; And who can silent stay with all the world in such a mood? My heart is filled with music and my lips with melody; I laugh, cry, sing, sigh; April makes a fool of me. The blossoms hover round her head, and nestle at her knee, The birds are feathered all for her in festi val array; So would I, too, in splendor shine as radiantly as they, In flowing lines and color clad, a joy for her to see. O gay maid, April, you have made a fool of me. It is a sunshine mixed with rain, Yet, shepherd, what is love I pray? A pretty kind of sporting fay, And this is love, as I hear say. Yet what is love, good shepherd, show? SIR WALTER RALEIGH. From Macmillan's Magazine. and diplomatist; Manin, the dictator of Venice; D'Azeglio, the versatile WITH the closing days of last year novelist, painter, and political pamthere passed away in the person of phleteer; Ricasoli, the "Iron Baron; Francis the Second, the ex-king of Gioberti, the eloquent and erudite Naples, one of the last survivals of priest, whose book on "The Primacy the old régime of an oppressed and of Italy" sounded like a trumpet-call disunited Italy. He had outlived his to action; Garibaldi, the prince of short and troubled reign for over thirty guerrilla soldiers; Ugo Bassi, the monk years, a period which, though it seems and martyr; Mamiani, Minghetti, and long, is relatively short in the history many others who with their various of nations; and his death, occurring at talents served their country well. Is a time when the fortunes of Italy had the mould then already broken, the reached a lower ebb than at any period type destroyed? Is the race of heroes since the attainment of national inde- now extinct? It passes comprehenpendence, serves to remind us how sion that a people who but yesterday constantly human hopes are disappointed, and how closely intertwined is the present state of Italy with her past. brought their country back from a state of death to life should thus apparently degenerate. Yet the explanation, after all, is simple. The roots of the evil are deep and firmly laid in anterior events and in that past history which, as the old Greeks said, the gods themselves cannot recall. Time has its revenges; the past is the seed-plot of the present, and as man has sown, so shall he reap. There is in truth hardly a single element in the present situation which, with an adequate knowledge of Italian history and of human nature, might not have been predicted. How natural has been the sequence of cause and effect will be clearly seen from a brief consideration of the problem with which the makers of Italy had to grapple, and the way in which that problem was ultimately solved. The contemplation of Italy to-day awakens a feeling of surprise and disappointment; surprise that her affairs should have been allowed to drift from bad to worse, and disappointment at the apparent inability of the Italians to cope with a condition of things which is already scandalous, and which threatens, if it be not quickly mended, to land the country in a state of anarchy and ruin. Italy has fallen indeed on evil days. The perilous financial situation with its continually recurring deficits, the burdensome taxation, the riotous protestations of the suffering people, were bad enough in themselves; but as though the cup was not yet full, there have been added a series Up to the days of Solferino and of bank scandals which have almost Magenta in 1859 Italy was nothing but equalled those of the Panama Canal, a group of disconnected States, a mere have spread everywhere a sense of "geographical expression," over which deep distrust, and have culminated in the weight of Austrian domination insinuations on the personal integrity hung like a pall. Everywhere were of Signor Crispi himself. That such a differences of race, language, history, spectacle should arouse a sense of and tradition. In Rome and Florence pained surprise is but natural; for it only was pure Italian spoken. In Piedmight well have been expected that mont and Savoy French was the lanmen would have been found among the guage of the educated classes; in the Italians equal to grappling with the Chamber at Turin both French and crisis. The making of Italy, it is re- Italian were permitted to be spoken, membered, produced a band of men, and Cavour himself was much more each in their divers ways of extraordi- fluent in the former than in the latter. nary powers; Mazzini, the dreamy The Earl of Derby once gave great democrat and irreconcilable repub- offence by applying to the Italians a lican; Cavour, the master statesman quotation from “Macbeth: Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men ; Sloughs, water-rugs, and demi-wolves, are All by the name of dogs. But were events more glorious for Italy than when after the "Five Days of Milan," the Austrians were driven almost bag and baggage out of Lombardy. But while the Italians were wrangling and debating, the Austrians Yet in depreciatory sneers he hardly walked in again. For the only thing exceeded the Italians themselves. on which the Italians were agreed was D'Azeglio in his memoirs tells us that in raising the cry of "Out with the in the presence of foreigners he foreigner (fuori lo straniero)." blushed to call himself Italian; Guer- what was to replace him hardly two razzi, the Tuscan novelist and dema- persons could agree. Some, like Mazgogue, likened his country to "a bundle zini, were for republics everywhere; of rags in the shop of a second-hand others for a single State with the king dealer; "" while the satirist Giusti in of Sardinia for sovereign; while some, his famous poem of "The Boot" called like Gioberti, urged a loose confederaher a thing of shreds and patches. tion under the presidency of the pope. Except in the kingdom of Sardinia Turin was jealous of Milan; the Rethere was no national dynasty which publicans and Monarchists hated one was deeply rooted in the affections of another only less than Austria; and the people. Everywhere else the chief eventually Pius the Ninth shrank back of the State was either a scion of the from the national war of indepenAustrian house of Hapsburg or under dence, and in a moment of crisis the its protection; or, as Giusti well said, king of Naples recalled his troops from there hung over Italy a sword of which the field of operations. He was afraid, Austria formed the blade and the as indeed were many others, that vicPapacy the cross. The sword and the tory might end in the aggrandizement crozier were welded together. Only of the Sardinian State and crown. in the Sardinian State and in Austrian There were few who saw that there Lombardy and Venice was there any was one road only to Italian indepengovernment which was not hopelessly dence; and that was through the might inefficient and corrupt; elsewhere men of the Sardinian arms. There lay the lived in a realm of darkness, a veritable only great military force which Italy intellectual ghetto. As D'Azeglio put possessed; there, as events subseit, the hand of Thersites wielded the spear of Achilles. A more deplorable and apparently hopeless situation can scarcely be imagined; robed in despair Italy sat "elegiacally dreaming on her ruins." And to this wretched state of things it must in candor be admitted Such in brief was the state of things that the Italians themselves contrib- with which the builders of Italian unity uted not a little. Individualist, calcu- had to grapple. What then was the lating, and practical in the pursuit of way in which they met it, and the key worldly ends, passionate and suspi- of their success? In the first place it cious, they never combined to consum- must be said that victory was achieved mate any great and national object. in a very different way from that which Provincialism and municipalism were had been hoped; it was in fact by the canker that eat the heart out of Italian nationality. If it had not been for sordid provincial jealousies and quarrels Italy might have been one and independent long before she actually became so. The events of 1848 are a striking illustration of the fact. Never may certainly be doubted whether it quently proved, was the Italian Prussia, which alone could lead the way to victory. It was obvious to all whom a parochial spirit did not blind; but it blinded most, and the chance that fortune gave was lost. force of foreign arms. It had been the proud boast of the Italians that they would work out their own salvation (Italia farà da se). Yet to the aid of France alone can the victories which drove out Austria be ascribed. And it would not have been better for the ary change. Self-satisfied and sleek, Italians as a nation that their indepen- they fattened on abuse, and were well dence should have been postponed for content to allow the world to continue at least a generation, if they could have as it was. If not the best possible, it only gained that independence through was a good world enough for them. their own unaided force and genius. In a word the revolution was in the As it was they had not received a suffi- main the work of the professional and cient political education. Almost at a trading classes. To those who craved single bound they advanced from a for intellectual light, for liberty of state of slavery to freedom, and ex- thought and speech, for freedom from cepting in the North there was no restraint, the old régime was a suffocatperiod of transition, no time of prepa- ing hell. It was the rule of the priest, ration, no apprenticeship in the exer- the censor, and the police; and there cise of the rights and duties of a was no alternative but the resignation citizen. So that when the day of of submission, or a life of underground emancipation came, the majority were revolutionary intrigue, which usually wholly unprepared to assume the grave ended on the scaffold or in exile. As responsibilities of self-government. Mazzini tells us in his memoirs, no Nor is this the limit of the evil. If government in Italy could endure a Italy had gained her independence young man who lived much alone and alone and without the aid of foreign was given to meditation. The press arms, she would be to-day a greater was gagged and muzzled, scientific and a freer power; for be it right or congresses were looked upon askance, wrong, no Frenchman can forget the and railways were frequently forbiddebt, and the weight of obligation den. The course of trade was choked hangs heavy as a millstone round Ital- by a rank growth of interminable cusian necks. toms-duties and irritating taxes, so that Secondly, it should not be forgotten there was no outlet for the capitalist, that the victory was almost entirely due the manufacturer, or the merchant. to the efforts and self-sacrifice of the In the face of all this it cannot be a middle classes. The lower classes, matter of surprise that the middle sunk in ignorance and superstition, classes, sick with hope deferred and hardly stirred a finger, if they did not driven to despair, should at any cost sometimes show an actually hostile have wrought the revolution. spirit to the movement. So long as when that was carried through they they were assured of the bare necessi- were left in possession of the field as ties of life, it mattered not to them the governing body in the newly emanwhether they were governed by a des- cipated State; and this has brought pot or a parliament; and it is perfectly with it a train of most disastrous consewell known that in the war of 1848 the quences. For when the pressure was Lombards rendered supplies and valu- removed they began forthwith to disable information to the Austrian troops. play in the extremest form the worst Except in Piedmont and Lombardy of the vices which are apparently inthe aristocracy almost entirely held herent to the undiluted rule of the aloof. To men like Count Cavour, the middle classes of society. That rule is Marquis D'Azeglio, Counts Confalo- not usually one which is actively bad; nieri, Arrivabene, and Baron Poerio, its vices are rather negative than posithe cause was indebted for services of tive; but it is narrow, leaden, and the very highest kind. But for the one-sided. What it was in France in most part, as satellites that revolved the reign of Louis Philippe, the Citizen with a dim, reflected light round the King, and how it ultimately ended is various petty courts, or as allied by now generally known. De Tocqueinterests and ambitions to the Church, ville has described it well enough. they thought they had everything to The spirit, he said, of the middle lose and little to gain by a revolution-classes, when united with that of the But |