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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 .

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    MABIOTTl ' 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—va& 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 not 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 1848 is not only a work of great interest , it is un 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 samples of his style : — ITALIAN NATIONALITY . " Nothing is certainly loss settled in men ' s minds than this same question of Italian nationality . There is ; t set of men , both in ami out of the country , who have < iiit . li in an undying Italy , to whom the existence of an Italian nation is u long-established , growing , teeming fact , who refer to the sway twice held hy Rome over the world — by Imperial Koine , by Catholic Koine—to point out in that city , in that l ; ut « l , in that climate , the germs of a p hofiiiix like vitality , a Helf redeeming power , —an eternity , not . of existence ineicly , but of greatness , of sovereign ascendancy . " These men look forward to a third epoch ; that , of democratic ; Koine , or * Italy of the people .. ' In their mind the existence of 1 ' al y 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 in the past . They can nee nothing in it , nave only an idle , chimerical abstraction . To them the history of the country , since the time of the ( - ' a ! Siiin , suggest m no idea but . that , ol decline ; of a slow and gradual , but no less nnintcrmitling decline ; Koine , they think , could not fall , mo to Nay , vertically . It could Jiot . penult , as it was not made in

    one day . The ditlerent altitudes occupied by that , queen of nations at successive , ' periods---front the Vatican throne , from the iSir . tine chaptl—as the metropolis of Christendom , as the mother of the arts—were only as many ¦ steps by which she was descending / roin her old exalted station They might , break and retard her fall ; they could givo it majesty and oomposui •<; ; but ii . was no loan inevitable ; it ) h now no less thoroughly consummated . There never was anything like a second rise—there is now no possible resurrection .

    " For thoBo men , also , Koine ia Italy . I hey know nothing of the country , save only >>* an appendage to 11 *» - great metropolis ; m , | ian « ivo and not very Mtienuona auxiliary to Jiomuu utvutnvuH . Italy wuu one with

    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 . Strong symptoms of vitality , —the rebound , as it were , of old Roman energy , —developed themselves in medifeval 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 incredible 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 whom this ¦ word ' Italy ' conveyed any clear , definite meaning . Even at the present day , nineteen out of twenty among the living Italians are ignorant of their own appellation , arid 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 ia 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 in 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 Temple 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 . " It were idle , perhaps , to attempt to trace that idea to its first recondite sources . It was not merely such stern and exalted intellects as l ) ante ' s and Alfieri ' 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 foresight could anticipate , no human endeavour avert .

    " Italian patriotism , such as it is now , with many a mere matter of instinct , made up of vaiu repining and vague longing , always harboured in the heart of the great aad good—always was the test of loftiness and gentleness in that weary Italian land . " Even such amiable triflers as Ariosto 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 p laintive 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 most far-sighted could hardly beaware of the real extent of the evil . They hardly knew what to dread or wish . Their mournful strain aro . se not so much from a sense of present dejection , as from a foreboding of sorrows to come . Theirs was a dirge / or dying , not fur dead Italy . " When Julius II . first dreamt of preaching a crusade against the 'barbarians , ' these were still , si > to saj , strangers in the land . The fiery odea of Petrarch , and the uood lances of Alberico di Barbiano , o f Uraceio and

    yforza , had driven them beyond the Alps with ignominy nearly two hundred years before . They had now , it ia true , once more come to the charge ;—once more they had poured in from west , and south , and north , by land and sea . Tiny had startled Italy by their headlong fury , by their wanton ferocity . Italy had been taken by surprise . JSlie was stunned , not overthrown . She had favoured their onset by unnatural feuds and dissensions . Hut for the rest , her . strength , they fancied , was still unbroken , Mho had only to lift up her hand—so it were only with 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 ol the fortunate Austrian , in 1 « W () . " All the inteival between Julius II . and Pius VI ., between Charles V . and Napoleon , was for that country a long agony . Italy was dying , dying by inches , dying unconsciously . The chill of death wan at the ; heart ; but by an unnatural anomaly from the wonted course of

    nature , symptoms of vitality were still discernible at the cxtremincs . Milan and Naples were lout ; hut Venice uuil ( ienou still stood magnanimous wreckti of mediaeval Italian fortune ; and Koine , papal Koine , Ml . i 11 preserved ho me of its old prestige , the vain shadow of upiiitual Hovereignty . "Moreover—and that was yet . a third Htyhs of Mupremacy men still looked up to Italian genius ; for political annihilation had not yet brought with it mental prostration and degeneracy .

    " i hese circumstances contributed to keep up the aad ill union of an Italian existence . The foreign ruler wuh iMMinaneiitly settled in Lombard y , the centre of ltaliun lift : in modem times ; lie lorded itover bothSiuilicn ; and limn these his head-quurleru , his nod wub law at J . ' loienee uud Koine , lie kept the . remaining atutcu in , continual

    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 French 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 Home , —those foreign structures of the Holy Alliance on Italian ground , —of their tinsel of nominal self-existence , by throwing them helplessly , for very life , on Austrian protection . From the Alps to the sea , the Austrian made himself at home . Where he wag not to-day , he might be expected tomorrow . All the princes still bearing the name of Independent * were only the first of his vassals . Compelled by him , even when not prompted by natural inclination

    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 potentate into abject submission ; and this not merely from the immense disproportion between the contending parties , as from an intimate misgiving in the heart of those Tuscan , Sardinian , or Sicilian despots , that any attack from without would be the infallible signal for a general commotion within , that hardly one of their subjectshardly one of their very minions—but would be sure to turn against them , would loudly exult at least , if he 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 fact , 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 thirty 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 of 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 come to this at last , that they must all be crushed utterly , or must assert their rights to a united existence . " 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 attacks 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 repsesentative 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 liome , at Turin . Before they were fairly on their guards , down he came upon them ; aad this ubiquity of the Austrian , this promptness and decision of hia movements , this omnipresence and omnipotence , ought , if anything , to have , as it actually had , the efFect of simplifying the question and identifying Italian interests . "

    CHA 1 UCTEH OV 1 * IO NONO . " The world has b y this time come to a sufficiently clear understanding respecting the character of this unfortunate priest , and haa set a right value up on 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 aa they were , and out of k eeping

    with the spirit of the age , Pius ' s reform * weie further 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 , circumscribed within the narrow limits of the 1 ° P " own pusillanimous mind , who had from the very outset pledged himself to the maintenance of all the privik'gt ' and immunities of the clorgy , and who could not sen how the spirit of the age would soon put to a never * - tes the determination he professed to have taken , to r '; . ^ all innovation , however harmless in itself , which un gH be deemed incompatible with the principle ol u . sovereign hierarchy . , anil

    " From the beginning there was mutual bad faith wilful deception between Pius and Italy . The I <>!>«'» ' short-Highied and Btilf-coiiceited , ' flattered himself t » j » he uould make Italian patriotism a prop to the Churnli . The patriot ** , hardly lean bliud , fancied they could uno I ho Pope us u tool to be broken on the firBt opportunity-We do not , indeed , think that many entertained the feu intention expressed by a Venetian old reprobate to Mr . Macfarlnne of ' cutting off the old fool ' H head ; ' «» ut most Italians were too truo to Alfiei'i ' H teaching , not to be aware that it was of the moat vitul important » ° * Italy that the 'high i > rie « t uhyuld ultinuttoly 1 »» aen buck to the liuhcrnian ' o net . '

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    298 &t ) e QLeaiiet . [ Saturday ,

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), March 29, 1851, page 298, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1876/page/14/