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1

For Love had written it within my heart.
Th' incoming tide with its incessant flood
Dashed o'er the letters, leaving level sand;
But as the expended foam crept slowly My thoughts are turned from care to all

From Winter's bonds the waters wake, and Yet what is love, good shepherd, sain ?

My heart is filled with music and my lips | Yet, shepherd, what is love I pray?

From Macmillan's Magazine.
THE SITUATION IN ITALY.

and diplomatist; Manin, the dictator of Venice; D'Azeglio, the versatile novelist, painter, and political pamphleteer; Ricasoli, the "Iron Baron; Gioberti, the eloquent and erudite priest, whose book on "The Primacy of Italy" sounded like a trumpet-call to action; Garibaldi, the prince of guerrilla soldiers; Ugo Bassi, the monk and martyr; Mamiani, Minghetti, and many others who with their various talents served their country well. Is the mould then already broken, the type destroyed? Is the race of heroes

WITH the closing days of last year there passed away in the person of Francis the Second, the ex-king of Naples, one of the last survivals of the old régime of an oppressed and disunited Italy. He had outlived his short and troubled reign for over thirty years, a period which, though it seems long, is relatively short in the history of nations; and his death, occurring at a time when the fortunes of Italy had reached a lower ebb than at any period 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 disap- brought their country back from a state pointed, and how closely intertwined of death to life should thus apparently is the present state of Italy with her degenerate. Yet the explanation, after past. 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 ;
As hounds and greyhounds, mongrels,
spaniels, curs,

Sloughs, water-rugs, and demi-wolves, are
clept

All by the name of dogs.

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).” But 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 of the State was either a scion of the Austrian house of Hapsburg or under its protection; or, as Giusti well said, there hung over Italy a sword of which Austria formed the blade and the Papacy the cross. The sword and the crozier were welded together. Only in the Sardinian State and in Austrian Lombardy and Venice was there any government which was not hopelessly inefficient and corrupt; elsewhere men lived in a realm of darkness, a veritable intellectual ghetto. As D'Azeglio put it, 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 force of foreign arms. It had been the Italian nationality. If it had not been proud boast of the Italians that they for sordid provincial jealousies and would work out their own salvation quarrels Italy might have been one and (Italia farà da se). Yet to the aid of independent long before she actually France alone can the victories which became so. The events of 1848 are a drove out Austria be ascribed. And it striking illustration of the fact. Never may certainly be doubted whether it

eventually Pius the Ninth shrank back from the national war of independence, and in a moment of crisis the king of Naples recalled his troops from the field of operations. He was afraid, as indeed were many others, that victory might end in the aggrandizement of the Sardinian State and crown. There were few who saw that there was one road only to Italian independence; and that was through the might of the Sardinian arms. There lay the only great military force which Italy possessed; there, as events subsequently 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.

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. But 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