At Home And Abroad Part 26

This morning authentic news is received from Naples. The king, when a.s.sured by his own brother that Sicily was in a state of irresistible revolt, and that even the women quelled the troops,--showering on them stones, furniture, boiling oil, such means of warfare as the household may easily furnish to a thoughtful matron,--had, first, a stroke of apoplexy, from, which the loss of a good deal of bad blood relieved him. His mind apparently having become clearer thereby, he has offered his subjects an amnesty and terms of reform, which, it is hoped, will arrive before his troops have begun to bombard the cities in obedience to earlier orders.

Comes also to-day the news that the French Chamber of Peers propose an Address to the King, echoing back all the falsehoods of his speech, including those upon reform, and the enormous one that "the peace of Europe is now a.s.sured"; but that some members have worthily opposed this address, and spoken truth in an honorable manner.

Also, that the infamous sacrifice of the poor little queen of Spain puts on more tragic colors; that it is pretended she has epilepsy, and she is to be made to renounce the throne, which, indeed, has been a terrific curse to her. And Heaven and Earth have looked calmly on, while the king of France has managed all this with the most unnatural of mothers.

January 27.

This morning comes the plan of the Address of the Chamber of Deputies to the King: it contains some pa.s.sages that are keenest satire upon him, as also some remarks which have been made, some words of truth spoken in the Chamber of Peers, that must have given him some twinges of nervous shame as he read. M. Guizot's speech on the affairs of Switzerland shows his usual shabbiness and falsehood. Surely never prime minister stood in so mean a position as he: one like Metternich seems n.o.ble and manly in comparison; for if there is a cruel, atheistical, treacherous policy, there needs not at least continual evasion to avoid declaring in words what is so glaringly manifest in fact.

There is news that the revolution has now broken out in Naples; that neither Sicilians nor Neapolitans will trust the king, but demand his abdication; and that his bad demon, Coclo, has fled, carrying two hundred thousand ducats of gold. But in particulars this news is not yet sure, though, no doubt, there is truth, at the bottom.

Aggressions on the part of the Austrians continue in the North. The advocates Tommaso and Manin (a light thus reflected on the name of the last Doge), having dared to declare formally the necessity of reform, are thrown into prison. Every day the cloud swells, and the next fortnight is likely to bring important tidings.

LETTER XXIII.

UNPLEASANTNESS OF A ROMAN WINTER.--PROGRESS OF EVENTS IN EUROPE, AND THEIR EFFECT UPON ITALY.--THE CARNIVAL.--RAIN INTERRUPTS THE GAYETY.--REJOICINGS FOR THE REVOLUTIONS OF FRANCE AND AUSTRIA.--TRANSPORTS OF THE PEOPLE.--OBLATIONS TO THE CAUSE OF LIBERTY.--CASTLE FUSANO.--THE WEATHER, GLADSOMENESS OF NATURE, AND THE PLEASURE OF THOUGHT.

Rome, March 29, 1848.

It is long since I have written. My health entirely gave way beneath the Roman winter. The rain was constant, commonly falling in torrents from the 16th of December to the 19th of March. Nothing could surpa.s.s the dirt, the gloom, the desolation, of Rome. Let no one fancy he has seen her who comes here only in the winter. It is an immense mistake to do so. I cannot sufficiently rejoice that I did not first see Italy in the winter.

The climate of Rome at this time of extreme damp I have found equally exasperating and weakening. I have had constant nervous headache without strength to bear it, nightly fever, want of appet.i.te. Some const.i.tutions bear it better, but the complaint of weakness and extreme dejection of spirits is general among foreigners in the wet season. The English say they become acclimated in two or three years, and cease to suffer, though never so strong as at home.

Now this long dark dream--to me the most idle and most suffering season of my life--seems past. The Italian heavens wear again their deep blue; the sun s.h.i.+nes gloriously; the melancholy l.u.s.tres are stealing again over the Campagna, and hundreds of larks sing unwearied above its ruins.

Nature seems in sympathy with the great events that are transpiring,--with the emotions which are swelling the hearts of men. The morning sun is greeted by the trumpets of the Roman legions marching out once more, now not to oppress but to defend. The stars look down on their jubilees over the good news which nightly reaches them from their brothers of Lombardy. This week has been one of n.o.bler, sweeter feeling, of a better hope and faith, than Rome in her greatest days ever knew. How much has happened since I wrote! First, the victorious resistance of Sicily and the revolution of Naples.

This has led us yet only to half-measures, but even these have been of great use to the progress of Italy. The Neapolitans will probably have to get rid at last of the stupid crowned head who is at present their puppet; but their bearing with him has led to the wiser sovereigns granting these const.i.tutions, which, if eventually inadequate to the wants of Italy, will be so useful, are so needed, to educate her to seek better, completer forms of administration.

In the midst of all this serious work came the play of Carnival, in which there was much less interest felt than usual, but enough to dazzle and captivate a stranger. One thing, however, has been omitted in the description of the Roman Carnival; i.e. that it rains every day. Almost every day came on violent rain, just as the tide of gay masks was fairly engaged in the Corso. This would have been well worth bearing once or twice, for the sake of seeing the admirable good humor of this people. Those who had laid out all their savings in the gayest, thinnest dresses, on carriages and chairs for the Corso, found themselves suddenly drenched, their finery spoiled, and obliged to ride and sit s.h.i.+vering all the afternoon. But they never murmured, never scolded, never stopped throwing their flowers. Their strength of const.i.tution is wonderful. While I, in my shawl and boa, was coughing at the open window from the moment I inhaled the wet sepulchral air, the servant-girls of the house had taken off their woollen gowns, and, arrayed in white muslins and roses, sat in the drenched street beneath the drenching rain, quite happy, and have suffered nothing in consequence.

The Romans renounced the _Moccoletti_, ostensibly as an expression of sympathy for the sufferings of the Milanese, but really because, at that time, there was great disturbance about the Jesuits, and the government feared that difficulties would arise in the excitement of the evening. But, since, we have had this entertainment in honor of the revolutions of France and Austria, and nothing could be more beautiful. The fun usually consists in all the people blowing one another's lights out. We had not this; all the little tapers were left to blaze, and the long Corso swarmed with tall fire-flies. Lights crept out over the surface of all the houses, and such merry little twinkling lights, laughing and flickering with each slightest movement of those who held them! Up and down the Corso they twinkled, they swarmed, they streamed, while a surge of gay triumphant sound ebbed and flowed beneath that glittering surface. Here and there danced men carrying aloft _moccoli_, and clanking chains, emblem of the tyrannic power now vanquished by the people;--the people, sweet and n.o.ble, who, in the intoxication of their joy, were guilty of no rude or unkindly word or act, and who, no signal being given as usual for the termination of their diversion, closed, of their own accord and with one consent, singing the hymns for Pio, by nine o'clock, and retired peacefully to their homes, to dream of hopes they yet scarce understand.

This happened last week. The news of the dethronement of Louis Philippe reached us just after the close of the Carnival. It was just a year from my leaving Paris. I did not think, as I looked with such disgust on the empire of sham he had established in France, and saw the soul of the people imprisoned and held fast as in an iron vice, that it would burst its chains so soon. Whatever be the result, France has done gloriously; she has declared that she will not be satisfied with pretexts while there are facts in the world,--that to stop her march is a vain attempt, though the onward path be dangerous and difficult. It is vain to cry, Peace! peace! when there is no peace.

The news from France, in these days, sounds ominous, though still vague. It would appear that the political is being merged in the social struggle: it is well. Whatever blood is to be shed, whatever altars cast down, those tremendous problems MUST be solved, whatever be the cost! That cost cannot fail to break many a bank, many a heart, in Europe, before the good can bud again out of a mighty corruption.

To you, people of America, it may perhaps be given to look on and learn in time for a preventive wisdom. You may learn the real meaning of the words FRATERNITY, EQUALITY: you may, despite the apes of the past who strive to tutor you, learn the needs of a true democracy. You may in time learn to reverence, learn to guard, the true aristocracy of a nation, the only really n.o.bles,--the LABORING CLa.s.sES.

And Metternich, too, is crushed; the seed of the woman has had his foot on the serpent. I have seen the Austrian arms dragged through the streets of Rome and burned in the Piazza del Popolo. The Italians embraced one another, and cried, _Miracolo! Providenza!_ the modern Tribune Ciceronacchio fed the flame with f.a.ggots; Adam Mickiewicz, the great poet of Poland, long exiled from his country or the hopes of a country, looked on, while Polish women, exiled too, or who perhaps, like one nun who is here, had been daily scourged by the orders of a tyrant, brought little pieces that had been scattered in the street and threw them into the flames,--an offering received by the Italians with loud plaudits. It was a transport of the people, who found no way to vent their joy, but the symbol, the poesy, natural to the Italian mind. The ever-too-wise "upper cla.s.ses" regret it, and the Germans choose to resent it as an insult to Germany; but it was nothing of the kind; the insult was to the prisons of Spielberg, to those who commanded the ma.s.sacres of Milan,--a base tyranny little congenial to the native German heart, as the true Germans of Germany are at this moment showing by their resolves, by their struggles.

When the double-headed eagle was pulled down from above the lofty portal of the Palazzo di Venezia, the people placed there in its stead one of white and gold, inscribed with the name ALTA ITALIA, and quick upon the emblem followed the news that Milan was fighting against her tyrants,--that Venice had driven them out and freed from their prisons the courageous Protestants in favor of truth, Tommaso and Manin,--that Manin, descendant of the last Doge, had raised the republican banner on the Place St. Mark,--and that Modena, that Parma, were driving out the unfeeling and imbecile creatures who had mocked Heaven and man by the pretence of government there.

With indescribable rapture these tidings were received in Rome. Men were seen dancing, women weeping with joy along the street. The youth rushed to enroll themselves in regiments to go to the frontier. In the Colosseum their names were received. Father Gavazzi, a truly patriotic monk, gave them the cross to carry on a new, a better, because defensive, crusade. Sterbini, long exiled, addressed them. He said: "Romans, do you wish to go; do you wish to go with all your hearts?

If so, you _may_, and those who do not wish to go themselves may give money. To those who will go, the government gives bread and fifteen baiocchi a day." The people cried: "We wish to go, but we do not wish so much; the government is very poor; we can live on a paul a day."

The princes answered by giving, one sixty thousand, others twenty, fifteen, ten thousand dollars. The people responded by giving at the benches which are opened in the piazzas literally everything; street-pedlers gave the gains of each day; women gave every ornament,--from the splendid necklace and bracelet down to the poorest bit of coral; servant-girls gave five pauls, two pauls, even half a paul, if they had no more. A man all in rags gave two pauls. "It is," said he, "all I have." "Then," said Torlonia, "take from me this dollar." The man of rags thanked him warmly, and handed that also to the bench, which refused to receive it. "No! _that_ must stay with you," shouted all present. These are the people whom the traveller accuses of being unable to rise above selfish considerations;--a nation rich and glorious by nature, capable, like all nations, all men, of being degraded by slavery, capable, as are few nations, few men, of kindling into pure flame at the touch of a ray from the Sun of Truth, of Life.

The two or three days that followed, the troops were marching about by detachments, followed always by the people, to the Ponte Molle, often farther. The women wept; for the habits of the Romans are so domestic, that it seemed a great thing to have their sons and lovers gone even for a few months. The English--or at least those of the illiberal, bristling nature too often met here, which casts out its porcupine quills against everything like enthusiasm (of the more generous Saxon blood I know some n.o.ble examples)--laughed at all this. They have said that this people would not fight; when the Sicilians, men and women, did so n.o.bly, they said: "O, the Sicilians are quite unlike the Italians; you will see, when the struggle comes on in Lombardy, they cannot resist the Austrian force a moment." I said: "That force is only physical; do not you think a sentiment can sustain them?" They replied: "All stuff and poetry; it will fade the moment their blood flows." When the news came that the Milanese, men and women, fight as the Sicilians did, they said: "Well, the Lombards are a better race, but these Romans are good for nothing. It is a farce for a Roman to try to walk even; they never walk a mile; they will not be able to support the first day's march of thirty miles, and not have their usual _minestra_ to eat either." Now the troops were not willing to wait for the government to make the necessary arrangements for their march, so at the first night's station--Monterosi--they did _not_ find food or bedding; yet the second night, at Civita Castellana, they were so well alive as to remain dancing and vivaing Pio Nono in the piazza till after midnight. No, Gentlemen, soul is not quite nothing, if matter be a clog upon its transports.

The Americans show a better, warmer feeling than they did; the meeting in New York was of use in instructing the Americans abroad! The dinner given here on Was.h.i.+ngton's birthday was marked by fine expressions of sentiment, and a display of talent unusual on such occasions. There was a poem from Mr. Story of Boston, which gave great pleasure; a speech by Mr. Hillard, said to be very good, and one by Rev. Mr. Hedge of Bangor, exceedingly admired for the felicity of thought and image, and the finished beauty of style.

Next week we shall have more news, and I shall try to write and mention also some interesting things want of time obliges me to omit in this letter.

April 1.

Yesterday I pa.s.sed at Ostia and Castle Fusano. A million birds sang; the woods teemed with blossoms; the sod grew green hourly over the graves of the mighty Past; the surf rushed in on a fair sh.o.r.e; the Tiber majestically retreated to carry inland her share from the treasures of the deep; the sea-breezes burnt my face, but revived my heart. I felt the calm of thought, the sublime hopes of the future, nature, man,--so great, though so little,--so dear, though incomplete.

Returning to Rome, I find the news p.r.o.nounced official, that the viceroy Ranieri has capitulated at Verona; that Italy is free, independent, and one. I trust this will prove no April-foolery, no premature news; it seems too good, too speedy a realization of hope, to have come on earth, and can only be answered in the words of the proclamation made yesterday by Pius IX.:--

"The events which these two months past have seen rush after one another in rapid succession, are no human work. Woe to him who, in this wind, which shakes and tears up alike the lofty cedars and humble shrubs, hears not the voice of G.o.d! Woe to human pride, if to the fault or merit of any man whatsoever it refer these wonderful changes, instead of adoring the mysterious designs of Providence."

LETTER XXIV.

AFFAIRS IN ITALY.--THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT OF MILAN.--ADDRESS TO THE GERMAN NATION.--BROTHERHOOD, AND THE INDEPENDENCE OF ITALY.--THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT TO THE NATIONS SUBJECT TO THE RULE OF THE HOUSE OF AUSTRIA.--REFLECTIONS ON THESE MOVEMENTS.--LAMARTINE.-- BERANGER.--MICKIEWICZ IN FLORENCE: ENTHUSIASTIC RECEPTION: STYLED THE DANTE OF POLAND: HIS ADDRESS BEFORE THE FLORENTINES.--EXILES RETURNING.--MAZZINI.--THE POSITION OF PIUS IX.--HIS DERELICTION FROM THE CAUSE OF FREEDOM AND OF PROGRESS.--THE AFFAIR OF THE JESUITS.-- HIS COURSE IN VARIOUS MATTERS.--LANGUAGE OF THE PEOPLE.--THE WORK BEGUN BY NAPOLEON VIRTUALLY FINISHED.--THE LOSS OF PIUS IX. FOR THE MOMENT A GREAT ONE.--THE RESPONSIBILITY OF EVENTS LYING WHOLLY WITH THE PEOPLE.--HOPES AND PROSPECTS OF THE FUTURE.

Rome, April 19, 1848.

In closing my last, I hoped to have some decisive intelligence to impart by this time, as to the fortunes of Italy. But though everything, so far, turns in her favor, there has been no decisive battle, no final stroke. It pleases me much, as the news comes from day to day, that I pa.s.sed so leisurely last summer over that part of Lombardy now occupied by the opposing forces, that I have in my mind the faces both of the Lombard and Austrian leaders. A number of the present members of the Provisional Government of Milan I knew while there; they are men of twenty-eight and thirty, much more advanced in thought than the Moderates of Rome, Naples, Tuscany, who are too much fettered with a bygone state of things, and not on a par in thought, knowledge, preparation for the great future, with the rest of the civilized world at this moment. The papers that emanate from the Milanese government are far superior in tone to any that have been uttered by the other states. Their protest in favor of their rights, their addresses to the Germans at large and the countries under the dominion of Austria, are full of n.o.bleness and thoughts sufficiently great for the use of the coming age. These addresses I translate, thinking they may not in other form reach America.

"THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT OF MILAN TO THE GERMAN NATION.

"We hail you as brothers, valiant, learned, generous Germans!

"This salutation from a people just risen after a terrible struggle to self-consciousness and to the exercise of its rights, ought deeply to move your magnanimous hearts.

"We deem ourselves worthy to utter that great word Brotherhood, which effaces among nations the traditions of all ancient hate, and we proffer it over the new-made graves of our fellow-citizens, who have fought and died to give us the right to proffer it without fear or shame.

"We call brothers men of all nations who believe and hope in the improvement of the human family, and seek the occasion to further it; but you, especially, we call brothers, you Germans, with whom, we have in common so many n.o.ble sympathies,--the love of the arts and higher studies, the delight of n.o.ble contemplation,--with whom also we have much correspondence in our civil destinies.

"With you are of first importance the interests of the great country, Germany,--with us, those of the great country, Italy.

"We were induced to rise in arms against Austria, (we mean, not the people, but the government of Austria,) not only by the need of redeeming ourselves from the shame and grief of thirty-one years of the most abject despotism, but by a deliberate resolve to take our place upon the plane of nations, to unite with our brothers of the Peninsula, and take rank with them under the great banner raised by Pius IX., on which is written, THE INDEPENDENCE OF ITALY.

"Can you blame us, independent Germans? In blaming us, you would sink beneath your history, beneath your most honored and recent declarations.

"We have chased the Austrian from our soil; we shall give ourselves no repose till we have chased him from all parts of Italy. No this enterprise we are all sworn; for this fights our army enrolled in every part of the Peninsula,--an array of brothers led by the king of Sardinia, who prides himself on being the sword of Italy.

"And the Austrian is not more our enemy than yours.

"The Austrian--we speak still of the government, and not of the people--has always denied and contradicted the interests of the whole German nation, at the head of an a.s.semblage of races differing in language, in customs, in inst.i.tutions. When it was in his power to have corrected the errors of time and a dynastic policy, by a.s.suming the high mission of uniting them by great moral interests, he preferred to arm one against the other, and to corrupt them all.