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    MARIOTTl'S ITALY IN, 1848. Italy in 1848...

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    tions . He did not publish it , because his colleagues the professors at Marburg violently opposed his notions and discouraged him against putting them forth . This was in 1681 . Profoundly hurt at the bigotry of his colleagues , and the obstacles to which science was exposed through the reigning pedantry , Papin quitted the medical profession to devote himself to the study of physics , which was to immortalize him . His manuscript has [ recently been discovered at Marburg , in Hesse where Papin was professor—and will , it is hoped , soon be given to the press .

    298 ©!) * %Ta*Tx* [Saturday,

    298 ©!) * % ta * tX * [ Saturday ,

    Mariottl's Italy In, 1848. Italy In 1848...

    MARIOTTl ' S ITALY IN , 1848 . Italy in 1848 . By L . Mariotti . Chapman and Hall . In spite of the numerous publications , by various partizans , on the events through which Italy struggled in 1848—or perhaps somewhat also in consequence of these publications and their misleading onesidedness—a work like the present will receive general welcome . Mariotti relates with breadth yet , with minute detail , the story of the great struggle for national existence—the uprising of Italy against Austrian despotism—the causes

    which assisted , the causes which defeated it—the hopes , the means , the victories and defeats of the popular cause—and he relates these not as an eye witness or a partizan , but as one who , having played a part , now gathers together from friend or foe all materials , Italian , French , German , and English , and controlling the statements of one by official documents , of another by the better information of a fourth , treats them in an impartial historic spirit ; or , at any rate , with as much impartiality as can be demanded from one who has strong convictions of his own .

    Let us at the outset declare that we do not endorse all the opinions or criticisms of this book . On certain men and certain acts Mariotti has expressed himself in a manner to which the Leader would take exception ; but as we have no columns to spare to enter into the discussion , we content ourselves with making this general reservation . Our differences do nut blind us to the unusual vigour and spirit in which the work is executed ; none can be more sensible than we of the masterly manner in which the materials are massed , and the vast details of the whole troublous year grouped into intelligible sections . The style is powerful , eloquent , epigrammatic . The narrative hurries you irresistibly onwards , and the explanatory and critical passages are so dexterously interwoven with the story that they assist instead of impeding the

    progress . Italy in 184 S is not only a work of great interest , it is an enduring piece of history—hitherto the only history of these struggles that has assumed anything like completeness . From its compact pages we can make no abstract that would be readable , or would represent the book fairly ; we prefer , therefore , taking an extract or two as auniples of his style : —

    ITALIAN NATIONALITY . " Nothing is certainly less settled in men ' s minds than this suitie question of Italian nationality . Then ; is a set of men , both in and out of the country , who hiivo faith in am undying Italy , to whom the existence of an Italian nation is a long-established , growing , teeming fact , who refer to the away twice held hy Kdiiic over the world — by Imperial Rome , by Catholic Rome—to point out in thiil city , in that land , in that , climate , the ; ger m * of a pliUMiix-like vitality , a self redeeming power , —aneternil . y , not of existence merely , but of greatness , of Novcrcign ascendancy . " Those men look forward to a third epoch ; that of democratic Koine , or ' Italy of the people . ' hi their miixl the existence of l ' . aly is tantamount to ' Italian preeminence . '

    " There are other less sanguine thinkers , on tin ; other hand , who look in vain for a nation in Italy , not in the present , or future , merely , but even iu the past . They can nee nothing in it , Have only an idle , cliimerical abstraction . To them the history of the country , . since tlu 1 time of the ( ussars , unrest :, ; no idea but ihiit . of decline ; of a slow and gradual , but no less uniu tenanting decline ; . Rome , they think , could not fall , ho to say , Vertically . It . could not perish , as it wiih not made , in one day . The different altitudes occupied by that queen of nations at successive periods - ¦ from the Vatican throne ,

    from the Si .-. fine chapel—as t In ; metropolis of (/ hiiNUmdoin , un the mother of iheurtH—were only « h many steps by winch hlu- was descending Mom her old exulted station . They might break and retard her fall ;* th « y could give it mnjeHiy and composure )¦ but it was no less inevitable ; it j ' h now no less thoroughly consummated . Theru never wiih anything line u weennd riac—there is now no possible remiiTection . " JKor theHc men , also , Rome ia Italy . They know nothing of the , country , save only 'is un appendaji to il > gr 6 at metropolis ; a pahsive and not \ ery HlienucuB auxiliary to Kom & n KieutneaH . Italy was ouo wiiU

    Rome so long only as that city was identic with the world . Except as the first province of the empire , no one ever heard of Italy as having an existence of its own . It never exhibited any unity of either action or purpose ; it never originated anything , save only disorganizing Guelphism . Stiong symptoms of vitality , —the rebound , as it were , of old Roman energy , —developed themselves in mediwval republicanism here and there , at Florence especially , and at Venice ; but never a tendency to cohesion and harmony : anything like Italian nationality never was in the nature of things ; hence the cutting

    conclusion—it never can be . * ' So many different ways there are of reading history " Unquestionably Italy has long been unconscious of its own being ; is so still to an fncredible extent . Hardly a deep , intuitive poet , like Dante , in the fourteenth century—hardly a keen , precocious thinker , like Macchiavello in the sixteenth , could be found , to whorn this word ' Italy ' conveyed any clear , definite meaning . ± iVen at the present day , nineteen out of twenty among the living Italians are ignorant of their own appellation , and use it with hardly any discrimination or precision . " Still the idea exists—no matter wherefrom sprung , no matter how far spread—the idea that there is an Italy , entitled to the enjoyment of a united , independent existence , destined to a mission of its own , to a share in the common destinies of the human race . Scarcely any one of the men of the present generation but can bear witness to the rapid growth and development of that

    redeeming idea . " There may , indeed , be something terribly true m the assertion of those who reject as improbable all that is simply unprecedented . The moral world may be subject to laws as uniform and impreterible as the material . As we are not likely ever to see the sun rising from the west , so may the Jews never again be gathered round the Temp le of Jerusalem , so may never the Italians live to realize that fond dream , first attributed to Julius II ., and see the last of the ' barbarians ' out of the country . . " That fond dream , however , that idea of nationality , with all its vagueness—to be or not to be realized to all eternity—has , however , become universal , uppermost , clearly inextinguishable . to to trace that idea

    " It were idle , perhaps , attempt to its first recondite sources . It was not merely such stern and exalted intellects as iJante ' s and Aliieri's , that the thought of their country ' s humiliation inspired with their sublime and touching disdain of tne world ; it was not only such deep and teeming brains as Macchiavello or Lorenzo de' Medici , that fretted and raged against a coincidence of fatal circumstances , against an aggravation of evils which no human fpresight could anticipate , no human endeavour avert . " Italian patriotism , such < is it is now , with many a mere matter of instinct , made up of vain repining and vague longing , always harboured in the heart of the great aud good—always was the test of loltiness and gentleness in that weary Italian land .

    " Even such amiable triflers as Ariostc or Berni never happen , in the midst of their frolicsome narratives to stumble , as it were , on that sacred subject—the name of Italy never comes to their lips—without at once sobering them . The vein of irresistible mirth suffers sudden intermission , and the gladsome notes sink into a long plaintive strain of ' Italia ! Italia ! ' —a strain of woe familiar to Italian ears since the days of Petrarch . " But with the poets and thinkers of former ages , the sorrows of Italy were , in a great measure , mere prophetic abstraction . The niost far-sighted could hardly beaware of the real extent of the evil . They hardly knew what to dread or wish . Their mournful strain arose not so much from a sense of present dejection , as from a foreboding of sorrows to come . Theirs was a dirge for dying , not fur dead Italy .

    " When Julius II . first dreamt of preaching a crusade against the ' barbarians , ' these were still , so to su . ) , strangers in the land . The fiery odes of Petrarch , and the good lances of Alberico di Uarbiano , of Braccioand Sfoiza , had driven them beyond the Alps with ignominy nearly two hundred years before . They had now , it is true , once more come to the charge;—once more they had poured in from west , and south , and north , by land and sea . Tlu-y had startled Italy by their headlong fury , by their wanton ferocity . Italy had been taken by surprise . iSlie was stunned , not overthrown . ( She had favoured their onset by unnatural feuds and dissensioiiH . But for the rest , her strength , they fancied , was still unbroken . She had only to lift up her hand—so it were only witli one heart and mind—and the invading hordes would still be crushed .

    " Alas ! when did Italy ever act . with one mind and heart ? The proud Julius 11 . died of impotent rage . The . Italians took part , some with France , some with Spain , till , at last , all Italy laid her arms at the feet of the fortunate Austrian , in 15110 . " All the inteival between Julius II . and Pius VI ., between Charles V . and Napoleon , was for that country u long agony . Italy was u > ing , uying by inches , dying unconsciously . Tlie chill of death was at the heart ; but . by an unnatural anomaly from the wonted course of

    nature , symptoms of vitality were still discernible at the extremi ies . IViilun aud IMii |> les wen ; lost ; but Venice and ( jienon still stood magnanimous wrecks of incUianal Italian fortune ; and Rome , papal Rome , still preserved Home of its old prestige , the vain shadow of Hpiiitual sovereignty . " Moreover—and that wan j'et . a third style of supremacy men still looked up to Italian genius ; for political annihilation had not yet brought with it mental prostration aud dctfenerucy .

    " These cireuiuMiineeis contributed to keep up 1 ho Had illusion of an Italian existence . The foreign ruler huh permanently Mettled in Lombardy , the centre of Italian life in modern times ; he lorded it over both Hiciliofl ; and from ihcKohis head-quarters , his nod wax law at l ' 'l <>» enee aud . Rome , lie kept tho rciuuiuiuir ouiten in cowtiuuwl

    alarm by open threats , by perfidious intrigues ; and these had no defence against him besides the most selfish , subservient , pusillanimous policy . " All this for nearly three centuries . At the breaking out of the JFrench Revolution in 1789 , the death-blow was scarcely needed . Napoleon , in 1797 , or his conquerors in 1814 , blotted out Venice and Genoa , the last states of genuine Italian growth : 1820 and 1831 stripped even Naples , Piedmont , and Rome , —those foreign structures of the Holy Alliance on Italian ground , —of their tinsel of nominal self-existence , by throwing thetn helplessly , for very life , on Austrian protection . From thfe Alps to the sea , the Austrian made himself at home . Where he was not to-day he might be expected to morrow . All the princes still bearing the name of '

    Independent' were only the first of hid Vassals . Compelled by him , even when not prompted by natural indication , to arbitrary measures * they engaged in a perpetual struggle with their subjects ; thus putting themselves at the mercy of an overbearing ally , who used them As blind instruments of his anti-national policy . Their weakness and servility abroad were only commensurate with their arrogance at home . An Austrian Minister at Turin or Florence , an English Admiral or American Commodore at Naples , were more than sufficient to bully an Italian po > - tentate into abject submission ; and this not merely from the immense disproportion between the contending parties , as from aa intimate misgiving in the heart of those Tuscan , Sardinian , or Sicilian despots , that any attack from without would be the infallible sign *! for a tteneral

    commotion within , that hardly one of their subjects — hardly one of their very minions—but would be sure to turn against them , would loudly exult at least , if lie did not actually aid , in their "humiliation and defeat . " Every one of those Italian states presented the melancholy spectacle of a ' house divided against itself ;' and it was especially this deep-rooted animosity between the Government and the people that made Italy Austrian throughout . It was a state of things to make many a patriot wish for an actual annexation of those mere Austrian dependencies into the Austrian monarchy . The Roman , Neapolitan , or Sardinian Governments were , in fa « t , Austrian with a vengeance , ' To what extent of utter helplessness the princes of Italy had fallen , they knew not themselves , —the Holy Alliance had no adequate idea . The experience of the last thirtv years has at last made it clear to the world .

    " This universal conviction that all was lost—that the brightest Italian diadem was merely the badge ol Austrian lieutenancy , gave Italian patriotism some scope and consistency . Nationality was raised into a prominent idea . _ ¦ . " It was by her foreign oppressor himself that Italy had been made aware of the enormity and irreparableness of her loss , aware of the doom that awaited her , and of the necessity of a combined effort to escape it . The Italians had oome to this at last , that they must all be crushed utterly , or must assert their rights to a united PXlStdlCG " After " all the efforts of 1848-49 , the question still presents the same formidable , inevitable alternative .

    •• All revolutionary attempts from 1820 to 1848 , the demands , for a French charter or a Spanish constitution set . up at Naples or in Piedmont in 1820-1 , the attacki upon priestly government in Romagna ten years later , were absolutely nothing but preliminary steps by patriots who did not consider themselves sufficiently strong to take up the national contest . " During these last thirty years , the Italians had only been feeling their way . They cared very little , and of

    understood even less , about the representative forms Transalpine freedom . The thorn in their side was plainly the foreigner . They tried him by indirect attacks , by a feint upon the Bourbon , or the Pope , at Naples , at Rome , at Turin . Before they were fairly on their guards , down he came upon them ; and this ubiquity of the Austrian , this promptness and decision of his movements , this omnipresence and omnipotence , ought , if anything , to have , as it actually had , the effect of simplifying the question and identifying Italian interests . "

    CHARACTER OF PIO NONO . " The world has by this time come to a sufficiently clear understanding respecting the character of this unfortunate priest , and has set a right value upon the amnesty and other humane and would-be liberal measures which signalized his accession . Those measures were slow and insufficient , in many cases specious and . nugatory . The reluctant hand of the timid , crafty , bigoted priest was visible through the concessions of the well meaning , perhaps , but weak and vain , irresolute prince . Inadequate as they were , and out of keeping wete further

    with the spirit of the age , PiuB ' s reforms frustrated by the bad faith and iniquity of their executors ; utterly powerless to redeem the countiy from deeprooted , all pervading abuse . They were , above all , circuniHcribed within the narrow limits of the I op « » own pusillanimous mind , who had from the very outset pledged himself to the maintenance of all the privileges and immunities of the clergy , and who could »»<> l " " how the spirit , of the age would soon put to a severe tes tin ; determination he professed to have taken , to resist all innovation , however harmless in itself , which might be deemed incompatible with the principle of a noverelgu

    hierarchy . . " From tho beginning there was mutual bad ^ faith ^ unit wilful deception between Pius aud Italy . The 1 <> P « ' » ' short sighted and self-conceited , ' flattered himself that lie could inidie Itali . in patriotism a prop to the Church-The patriots , hardly less blind , fancied they could use the Pope an a tool to be brolu « n on the first opportunity . We do not , indeed , think that , many cntertuin « l lne / f intention expressed by a Venetian old reprobate to JVU - Macfailane of ' cutting off the old fool ' s head ; ' but most Italians were too true to Alfieri ' H teaching , not to be aware that it was of the most vital Importance K > r Italy that the ' high priest should ultimately fco tivnt buok to the U « h . crfuivn ' H net . '

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), March 29, 1851, page 14, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_29031851/page/14/