Chapter VIII: Part 8

I can scarcely conceive of anything more unjust than the account which that ill-ordered being, Haydon, left behind him in his "Diary," respecting the idolized object of his former intimacy, John Keats. At his own eager request, after reading the manuscript specimens I had left with Leigh Hunt, I had introduced their author to him; and for some time subsequently I had frequent opportunities of seeing them together, and can testify to the laudations that Haydon trowelled on to the young poet. Before I left London, however, it had been said that things and opinions had changed,--and, in short, that Haydon had abjured all acquaintance with, and had even ignored, such a person as the author of the sonnet to him, and those "On the Elgin Marbles." I say nothing of the grounds of their separation; but, knowing the two men, and knowing, I believe, to the core, the humane principle of the poet, I have such faith in his steadfastness of friendship, that I am sure he would never have left behind him an unfavorable _truth_, while nothing could have induced him to utter a _calumny_ of one who had received pledges of his former regard and esteem. Haydon's detraction was the more odious because its object could not contradict the charge, and because it supplied his old critical antagonists (if any remained) with an authority for their charge against him of Cockney ostentation and display. The most mean-spirited and trumpery twaddle in the paragraph was, that Keats was so far gone in sensual excitement as to put Cayenne pepper upon his tongue, when taking his claret! Poor fellow! he never purchased a bottle of claret, within my knowledge of him; and, from such observation as could not escape me, I am bound to assert that his domestic expenses never could have occasioned him a regret or a self-reproof.

When Shelley left England for Italy, Keats told me that he had received from him an invitation to become his guest,--and, in short, to make one of his household. It was upon the purest principle that Keats declined the noble proffer; for he entertained an exalted opinion of Shelley's genius, in itself an inducement; he also knew of his deeds of bounty; and lastly, from their frequent intercourse, he had full faith in the sincerity of his proposal; for a more crystalline heart than Shelley's never beat in human bosom. He was incapable of an untruth or of a deceit in any ill form. Keats told me, that, in declining the invitation, his sole motive was the consciousness, which would be ever prevalent with him, of his not being, in its utter extent, a free agent,--even within such a circle as Shelley's,--himself, nevertheless, the most unrestricted of beings. Mr. Trelawney, a familiar of the family, has confirmed the unwavering testimony to Shelley's bounty of nature, where he says, "Shelley was a being absolutely without selfishness." The poorest cottagers knew and benefited by the thoroughly _practical_ and unselfish character of his Christianity, during his residence at Marlow, when he would visit them, and, having gone through a course of study in medicine, in order that he might assist them with his advice, would commonly administer the tonic which such systems usually require,--a good basin of broth, or pea-soup. And I believe I am infringing on no private domestic delicacy, when I repeat, that he has been known, upon a sudden and immediate emergency, to purloin ("_convey_ the wise it call") a portion of the warmest of Mrs. Shelley's wardrobe, to protect some poor starving sister. One of the richer residents of Marlow told me that "_they all_ considered him a madman." I wish he had bitten the whole squad.

"No settled senses of the world can match
The 'wisdom' of that madness."

Shelley's figure was a little above the middle height, slender, and of delicate construction, which appeared the rather from a lounging or waving manner in his gait, as though his frame was compounded merely of muscle and tendon, and that the power of walking was an achievement with him, and not a natural habit. Yet I should suppose that he was not a valetudinarian, although that has been said of him, on account of his spare and vegetable diet: for I have the remembrance of his scampering and bounding over the gorse-bushes on Hampstead Heath, late one night,--now close upon us, and now shouting from the height, like a wild school-boy. He was both an active and an enduring walker,--feats which do not accompany an ailing and feeble constitution. His face was round, flat, pale, with small features; mouth beautifully shaped; hair, bright-brown and wavy; and such a pair of eyes as are rarely seen in the human or any other head,--intensely blue, with a gentle and lambent expression, yet wonderfully alert and engrossing: nothing appeared to escape his knowledge.

Whatever peculiarity there might have been in Shelley's religious faith, I have the best authority for believing that it was confined to the early period of his life. The _practical_ result of its course of _action_, I am sure, had its source from the "Sermon on the Mount." There is not one clause in that divine code which his conduct towards his fellow-mortals did not confirm, and substantiate him to be a follower of Christ. Yet, when the news arrived in London of the death of Shelley and Captain Williams by drowning, the "Courier" newspaper--an evening journal of that day--capped the intelligence with the following remark:--"He will now know whether there is a hell or not!"--I believe that there are still one or two public fanatics who would _think_ that surmise, but not one would dare to utter it in his journal. So much for the progress of liberality, and the power of opinion.

At page 100 of the "Life of Keats," Vol. I., Mr. Monckton Milnes has quoted a literary portrait of him, which he received from a lady who used to see him at Hazlitt's lectures at the Surrey Institution. The building was on the south or right-hand side, and close to Blackfriars' Bridge. I believe that the whole of Hazlitt's lectures, on the British Poets, the Writers of the Time of Elizabeth, and the Comic Writers, were delivered in that Institution, during the years 1817 and 1818; shortly after which time the establishment appears to have been broken up. The lady's remark upon the character and expression of Keats's features is both happy and true. She says,--"His countenance lives in my mind as one of singular beauty and brightness; it had an expression _as if he had been looking on some glorious sight_." That's excellent.--"His mouth was full, and less intellectual than his other features." True again. But when our artist pronounces that "his eyes were large and _blue_" and that "his hair was _auburn_," I am naturally reminded of the fable of the "Chameleon":--"They're _brown_, Ma'am,--_brown_, I assure you!" The fact is, the lady was enchanted--and I cannot wonder at it--with the whole character of that beaming face; and "blue" and "auburn" being the favorite tints of the human front divine, in the lords of the creation, the poet's eyes consequently became "blue," and his hair "auburn." Colors, however, vary with the prejudice or partiality of the spectator; and, moreover, people do not agree even upon the most palpable prismatic tint. A writing-master whom we had at Enfield was an artist of more than ordinary merit; but he had one dominant defect: he could not distinguish between true blue and true green. So that, upon one occasion, when he was exhibiting to us a landscape he had just completed, I hazarded the critical question, why he painted his trees so _blue_? "Blue!" he replied,--"what do you call green?"--Reader, alter in your copy of Monckton Milnes's "Life of Keats," Vol. I., page 103, "eyes" _light hazel_, "hair" _lightish-brown and wavy_.

The most perfect, and withal the favorite portrait of him, was the one by Severn, published in Leigh Hunt's "Lord Byron and his Contemporaries," and which I remember the artist's sketching in a few minutes, one evening, when several of Keats's friends were at his apartments in the Poultry. The portrait prefixed to the "Life," also by Severn, is a most excellent one-look-and-expression likeness,--an every-day, and of "the earth, earthy" one;--and the last, which the same artist painted, and which is now in the possession of Mr. John Hunter, of Craig Crook, Edinburgh, may be an equally felicitous rendering of one look and manner; but I do not intimately recognize it. There is another, and a _curiously unconscious_ likeness of him, in the charming Dulwich Gallery of Pictures. It is in the portrait of Wouvermans, by Rembrandt. It is just so much of a resemblance as to remind the friends of the poet,--though not such a one as the immortal Dutchman would have made, had the poet been his sitter. It has a plaintive and melancholy expression, which, I rejoice to say, I do not associate with him.

There is one of his attitudes, during familiar conversation, which, at times, (with the whole earnest manner and sweet expression of the man) presents itself to me, as though I had seen him only last week. The attitude I speak of was that of cherishing one leg over the knee of the other, smoothing the instep with the palm of his hand. In this action I mostly associate him in an eager parley with Leigh Hunt, in his little cottage in the "Vale of Health." This position, if I mistake not, is in the last portrait of him at Craig Crook; if not, it is in a reminiscent one, painted after his death.

His stature could have been very little more than five feet; but he was, withal, compactly made and--well-proportioned; and before the hereditary disorder which carried him off began to show itself, he was active, athletic, and enduringly strong,--as the fight with the butcher gave full attestation.

The critical world,--by which term I mean the censorious portion of it; for many have no other idea of criticism than, that of censure and objection,--the critical world have so gloated over the feebler, or, if they will, the defective side of Keats's genius, and his friends, his gloryingly partial friends, have so amply justified him, that I feel inclined to add no more to the category of opinions than to say, that the only fault in his poetry I could discover was a redundancy of imagery,--that exuberance, by-the-by, being a quality of the greatest promise, seeing that it is the constant accompaniment of a young and teeming genius. But his steady friend, Leigh Hunt, has rendered the amplest and truest record of his mental accomplishment in the Preface to the "Foliage," quoted at page 150 of the first volume of the "Life of Keats"; and his biographer has so zealously, and, I would say, so amiably, summed up his character and intellectual qualities, that I can add no more than my assent.

Keats's whole course of life, to the very last act of it, was one routine of unselfishness and of consideration for others' feelings. The approaches of death having come on, he said to his untiring nurse--friend,--"Severn,--I,--lift me up,--I am dying:--_I shall die easy; don't be frightened;_--be firm, and thank God it has come."

There are constant indications through the memoirs, and in the letters of Keats, of his profound reverence for Shakspeare. His own intensity of thought and expression visibly strengthened with the study of his idol; and he knew but little of him till he himself had become an author. A marginal note by him in a folio copy of the Plays is an example of the complete absorption his mind had undergone during the process of his matriculation;--and, through life, however long with any of us, we are all in progress of matriculation, as we study the "myriad-minded's" system of philosophy. The note that Keats made was this;--"The genius of Shakspeare was an _innate universality;_ wherefore he laid the achievements of human intellect prostrate beneath his indolent and kingly gaze: _he could do easily men's utmost;_ his plan of tasks to come was not of this world. If what he proposed to do hereafter would not in the idea answer the aim, how tremendous must have been his conception of ultimates!"

THE EUROPEAN CRISIS.

It is not long since we listened to an interesting discussion of this question:--Which was the more important year to Europe,--1859 or 1860? The question is one that may be commended to the attention of those ingenuous young gentlemen, in debating-societies assembled, who have not yet settled whether Brutus, Cassius, & Co. were right in assassinating "the mighty Julius," or whether Mary Stuart was a martyred saint or a martyred sinner, or whether the cold chop to which Cromwell treated Charles I. on a memorable winter-day was either a just or a politic mode of touching for the king's evil. It would have the merit of novelty,--and Americans are as fond of new things in their day of power as ever were the Athenians in the day of their decline. A yet rarer merit it would have, in the fact that a great deal could justly be said on both sides of the question. An umpire would probably decide in favor of 1859,--because, he might say, had the events of that year been different, those of 1860 must have undergone a complete change.

The romantic conquest of Sicily by Garibaldi, and his successes in Naples, whereby a junior branch of the Bourbon family has been sent to "enjoy" that exile which has so long been the lot of the senior branch,--and the destruction of the _Papalini_ by the Italian army of Victor Emanuel II., which asserted the superiority of the children of the soil over the bands of foreign ruffians assembled by De Merode and Lamoricière for the oppression of the Peninsula in the name of the venerable head of the Church of Rome,--these are events even more striking than those by which the iron sceptre of Austria was cut through in the earlier year, because they have been accomplished by Italian genius and courage, the few foreigners in the army of Garibaldi not counting for much in the contest. They prove the regeneration of Italy. But it is evident that nothing of the kind could have been done in 1860, if 1859 had been as quiet a year for Italy as its immediate predecessor. Before the leaders and the soldiers of Italy could obtain the indispensable place whereon to stand, it was imperatively necessary that the power of Austria should be broken down, through the defeat and consequent demoralization of her army. For a period of forty-four years, Austria had had her own way in the Peninsula. From the fall of Napoleon's Italian dominion, in 1814, to the day when the third Napoleon's army entered Sardinia, there was, virtually, no other rule in Italy but that which Austria approved. The events of 1848, which at one time promised to remove "the barbarians," had for their conclusion the re-establishment of her ascendency in greater force than ever; and the last ten years of that ascendency will always be remembered as the period when its tyrannical character was most fully developed. The hoary proconsul of the Lorraines, Radetzky, if not personally cruel, was determined to do for his masters what Castilian lieutenants had done for the Austro-Burgundian monarchs of Spain and her dependencies, the fairest portions of Italy being among those dependencies, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,--to destroy the public spirit of Italy. Could he have completed a century of life, or had there been no European nation ready to prevent the success of the Germanic policy under which Italy was to wither to provincial worthlessness, he might have been successful. But Austria lost her best man, the only one of her soldiers who had shown himself capable of upholding her Italian position, when he had reached to more than ninety years; and it pleased Providence to raise up a friend to Italy in a quarter to which most men had ceased to look for anything good.

Well has it been said, that "it is not the best tools that shape out the best ends; if so, Martin Luther would not have been selected as the master-spirit of the Reformation." Napoleon III. may deserve all that is said against him by men of the extreme right and by men of the extreme left,--by Catholics and infidels,--by _Whites_, and _Reds_, and _Blues_,--but it cannot be denied that he gave to the Italians that assistance without which they never could have obtained even partial deliverance from the Austrian yoke, and which they could have procured from no other potentate or power. Bankrupt though she was, Austria's force was so superior to anything that Italy could present in the shape of an army, that Sardinia must have been conquered, if she had contended alone with her enemy; and a war between Austria and Sardinia was inevitable, and would probably have broken out long before 1859, had the former country been assured of the neutrality of France.

There has been a great inkshed, and a large expenditure of oratory, on the question of the origin of the Italian war of 1859; and, as usual, much nonsense has been written and said of and concerning the ambition of France and the encroachments of Sardinia. But that war was brought about neither by French ambition nor by Sardinian desire for territorial aggrandizement. That it occurred in 1859 was undoubtedly owing to the action of France, which country merely chose its own time to drub its old foe; but the point at issue was, whether Austrian or Sardinian ideas should predominate in the government of Italy. Austria's purpose never could be accomplished so long as a constitutional polity existed in the best, because the best governed and the best organized, of all the Italian States; and Sardinia's purpose never could be accomplished so long as Austria was in a condition to dictate to the Italians the manner in which they should be ruled. A war between the two nations was, as we have said, inevitable. The only point about which there could be any dispute was, whether Sardinia would have to fight the battle of Italy unaided, or be backed by some power beyond the mountains.

It shows how much men respect a military monarchy, how deferential they are to the sword, that even those persons who assumed that France must espouse the Sardinian cause were far from feeling confident that Austria would be overmatched by an alliance of the two most liberal of the Catholic nations of Europe. That monarchy is the type of force to all minds; and though she has seldom won any splendid successes in the field over the armies of enlightened nations, and has been repeatedly beaten by Prussia and France, men cling to old ideas, and give her great advantages at the beginning of every war in which she engages. The common opinion, in the spring of 1859, was, that Austria would crush Sardinia before the French could reach the field in force, and that her soldiers, flushed by successes over the Italians, would hurl their new foes out of the country, or leave them in its soil. As before, Italy was to be the grave of the French,--only that their grave was to be dug at the very beginning of the war, instead of being made, as in other days, at its close. But it was otherwise ordered. The Austrians lost the advantage which certainly was theirs at the opening of the contest, and, that lost, disaster after disaster befell their arms, until the "crowning mercy" of Solferino freed Italy from their rule, if it did not entirely banish them from her land. That Solferino was not so great a victory to the Allies as it was claimed to be at the time, that it resembled less Austerlitz than Wagram, may be admitted, and yet its importance remain unquestioned; for its decision gained for Italy the only thing that it was necessary she should have in order to work out her own salvation. Henceforth, she was not to tremble at the mere touch of the hilt of the sword worn by the Viceroy at Milan, but was to have the chance, at least, of ordering her own destinies. If not thoroughly free, she was no longer utterly enslaved.

The peace of Villafranca surprised every one, from the Czar on the Neva to the gold-gatherers on the Sacramento. Strange as had been the doings--the world called them tricks--of Napoleon III., no man was prepared for that; and even now, though seventeen eventful months have rolled away since the first shock of it was experienced, the summer-day it was received seems more like one of those days we see in dreams than like a day of real life. Doubt, laughter, astonishment, and disgust followed each other through the minds of millions of men. If curses could kill, the man who had escaped the bombs of Orsini and the bullets of the Austrians would certainly have died in the month that followed the interview he had flogged his imperial brother into granting him. In America,--where we are always doing so much (on paper) for the cause of freedom, and for the deliverance of "oppressed nationalities" of the proper degrees and shades of whiteness, in the firm conviction that the free man is the better customer,--in America the reaction of opinion was overwhelming; and there were but few persons in the United States who would not have shouted over news that Henri Cinq was in Paris, and that the French Empire had a third time made way for the Kingdom of France. Time has not altogether removed the impression then created; for, if it has not justified the belief that the French Emperor had abandoned the Italian cause, it has convinced the world that he lost a noble opportunity to effect the destruction of Austria. There may be--most probably there are--facts yet unknown to the public, knowledge of which would partially justify the conduct of the victor toward the vanquished, in 1859; but, if we judge from what we know, which is all that any monarch can demand of the formers of opinion, Napoleon III. was guilty of a monstrous political and military blunder when he forced a truce upon Francis Joseph.

There is no evidence that any European power was about to interfere in behalf of Austria. Prussia, it is true, had taken a stern attitude, and showed a disposition to place herself at the head of those German States which were for beginning a march upon Paris at once, though M. le Maréchal Duc de Malakoff was ready with two hundred thousand men to receive them, and Paris itself was not the feeble place it had been in 1814 and 1815. It is altogether likely that Prussia was, as is usual with her at every European crisis, shamming. She had no interest in the maintenance of Austria's territorial integrity, and it was rather late in the day to assume that Berlin was affected by the mortifications of Vienna. Could the hearts of kings and the counsels of cabinets be known with that literal exactness which is so desirable in politics, and yet so unattainable, we should probably find that Prussia's apparent readiness to lead Germany was owing to her determination that German armies should be led nowhere to the assistance of Austria. England had just changed her Ministry, the Derby Cabinet giving way to Lord Palmerston's, which was recognized on all sides as a great gain to the cause of Italian independence; and Lord John Russell had written one of those crusty notes to the Prussian government for which he is so famous, and which was hardly less Italian in its sentiments than that in which, written in October last, he upheld the course of Garibaldi and Victor Emanuel. Russia had evinced no disposition to interfere in behalf of Austria, and perhaps the news of Magenta and Solferino was as agreeable to the dwellers in St. Petersburg and Moscow as it was to the citizens of New York and Boston. She was, indeed, believed to be backing France. Politically, so far as we can judge, there was no cause or occasion for the throwing up of the cards by the French, after Solferino.

Nor were the military reasons for the cessation of warlike operations of a nature to convince men of their irresistible weightiness. A great deal was said about the strength of "the Quadrilateral," and of the impregnability of the position which it formed,--as if there ever had existed a military position which could not be carried or turned, or out of which its defenders could not be bought, or forced, or starved! The strength of the Quadrilateral was as well known to the Emperor in January as it was in July, and he must have counted its powers of resistance before he resolved upon war. Victory he had organized, like Carnot; and victory in Lombardy was sure to take his army to the Mincio. Verona and Venetia were to be the complement of Milan. Then there was the story that he frightened the Kaiser into giving his consent to the truce by proving to him that the fortresses upon which he relied were not in good defensible condition, his commissaries having placed the funds in their pockets that should have been devoted to the purchase of stores,--a story that wears a very probable air, in view of the discovery subsequently made of the malversations of some of the highest persons at Vienna, and which had much to do with the suicide of the Minister of Finance. It is known, too, that the force which Napoleon III. had assembled in the Adriatic was very strong, and could have been so used as to have promoted an Hungarian insurrection in a sense not at all pleasant to the Austrians, to have attacked Dalmatia and Istria, and to have aided in the deliverance of Venice. That force was largely naval in its character, and the French navy was burning to distinguish itself in a war that had been so productive of glory to the sister-service: it would have had a Magenta and a Palestro of its own, won where the Dorias and the Pisani had struggled for fame and their countries' ascendency. Instead of the Quadrilateral being a bar to the French, it would have been a trap to the Austrians, who would have been taken there after the manner in which Napoleon I. took their predecessors at Ulm. After the war was over, it came out that Verona was not even half armed.

If Napoleon III. was bent upon carrying that imitation of his uncle, of which he is so fond, to the extent of granting a magnanimous peace to a crushed foe, he may be said to have caricatured that which he sought to imitate. The first Napoleon's magnanimity after Austerlitz has been attributed to the craft of the beaten party,--he allowing the Russians to escape when they had extricated themselves from the false position in which their master's folly had caused them to be placed. But the third Napoleon did allow the Austrians to avoid the consequences of their defeat, and so disappointed Italy and the world. He _was_ magnanimous, and most astonishing to the minds of men was his magnanimity. Most people called it stupidity, and strange stories were told of his nervous system having been shattered by the sights and sounds of those slaughter-fields which he had planned and fought and won!

We live rapidly in this age, when nations are breaking up all around us, when unions are dissolving, when dynasties disappear before the light like ghosts at cock-crowing, and when emperors and kings rely upon universal suffrage, once so terrible a bugbear in their eyes, for the titles to their crowns. Opinion is rapidly formed, and is as rapidly dismissed. We may be as much astonished now at the peace of Villafranca as we were on the day when first it was announced, and while looking upon it only as a piece of diplomacy intended to put an end to a contest costly in blood and gold; but we cannot say, as it was common then to say, that the war which it closed has decided nothing. That war established the freedom and nationality of Italy, and the peace so much condemned was the means of demonstrating to the world the existence of an _Italian People_. How far the French Emperor was self-deceived, and to what extent he believed in the practicability of the arrangements made at Villafranca and Zurich, are inscrutable mysteries. _Que sais-je_? might be the form of his own answer, were any one entitled to question him concerning his own opinion on his own acts of 1859. But of the effects of his attack on Austria there can be no doubt. That Lorraines and Bourbons have ceased to reign in Italy,--that the Kingdom of Victor Emanuel has increased from six millions of people to twenty-four millions,--that the same constitutional monarch who ruled at Turin is now acknowledged in Milan, in Ancona, in Florence, in Naples, and in Palermo, being King of Lombards, and Tuscans, and Romans, and Neapolitans, and Sicilians,--and that the Austrians are no longer the rulers of the Peninsula,--these things are all due to the conduct of the French Emperor. Had the peace of Europe not been broken by France, the Austrian power in Italy would have been unbroken at this moment, and Naples have been still under the dominion of that mad tyrant whose supreme delight it was to offend the moral sense of the world, and who found even in the remonstrances of his brother-despots occasion for increasing the weight of the chains of his victims, and of adding to the intensity and the exquisiteness of their tortures.

These solid advantages to Italy, this freedom of hers from domestic despotism and foreign control, are the fruits of French intervention; and they could have been obtained in no other way. There was no nation but France to which Italy could look for aid, and to France she did not look in vain. Of the motives of her ally it would be idle to speak, as there is no occasion to go beyond consequences; and those consequences are just as good as if the French Emperor were as pure-minded and unselfish as the most perfect of those paladins of romance who went about redressing one class of wrongs by the creation of another. What Italy desired, what alone she needed, was freedom from foreign intervention; and that she got through the interposition of French armies, and that she could have got from no other human source. This single fact is an all-sufficient answer to the myriads of sneers that were called forth by the failure of Napoleon III. to redeem his pledge to make Italy free from the Alps to the Adriatic. What other potentate did anything for that country in 1859, or has done anything for it since that memorable year? Neither prince nor people, leaving Napoleon III. and the French aside, has so much as lifted a hand to promote the regeneration of Italy. America has enough to do in the way of attending to domestic slavery, without concerning herself about the freedom of foreigners; and she has given the Italians her--sympathies, which are of as much real worth to her as would be a treatise on the Resolutions of '98 to a man who should happen to tumble into the Niagara, with the Falls close upon him. England would have had Italy submit to that Austrian rule which had been established over her by English influence in 1814, when even the perverse, pig-headed Francis II. could see sound objections to it; and all because want of submission on her part would disturb the equilibrium of Europe, and might tend to the aggrandizement of France,--two things which she by no means desired to see happen. Russia, like America, gave Italy her sympathies; but she had a better excuse than we had for being prudent, as her monarch was engaged in planning at least the freedom of the serfs. If the Russians desired the overthrow of the Austrians, it was not because they loved the Italians, but from hatred of their oppressors; and that hatred had its origin in the refusal of Austria to join Russia when she was so hard pressed by France and England, Turkey and Piedmont. Prussia, us we have seen, sided with Austria; and though it is impossible to believe in her sincerity, her moral power, so far as it went, was adverse to the Italian cause. The other European nations were of no account, having no will of their own, and being influenced only by the action of the members of the Pentarchy. Save France, Italy had no friend possessed of the disposition and the ability to afford her that assistance without which she must soon have become in name, as she was fast becoming in fact, a mere collection of Austrian provinces.

We dwell upon those well-known facts because an opinion seems to prevail that no nation or government shall interfere for the protection of the weak against the strong, unless it shall be able to show that it is perfect itself, and that its intentions are of the most unselfish nature. Peoples are to be delivered from oppression only as the Israelites were delivered, by the direct and immediate interposition of Heaven in human affairs; and the delivering agent must be as high-minded and generous as Moses, who was allowed merely to gaze upon the Promised Land. Men who thus reason about human action, and the motives of actors on the great stage of life, must have read history to very little purpose, and have observed the making of history round about them to no purpose at all. The instruments of Providence are seldom perfect men, and the broad light in which they live brings out their faults in full force. Napoleon III. is not above the average morality of his time; and if he had been so, probably he never would have become Emperor of the French. But in this respect differs he much from those men who have wrought great things for the world, and whom the world is content to reverence? Robert Bruce, who saved Scotland from the misery that befell Ireland; Henry IV., who renewed the life of France; Maurice of Saxony, who prevented the Reformation from proving a stupendous failure; and William III., without whose aid the Constitutionalists of England must have gone down before the Stuarts: not one of these men was perfect; and yet what losses the world would have experienced, if they had never lived, or had failed in their great labors! It has been claimed for Gustavus Adolphus that he was the only pure conqueror that ever lived; but his purity may safely be placed to the account of the balls of Lützen: he was not left unto temptation. We should extend to Napoleon III. the same charity that we extend to men who have long been historical characters, and judge him by his actions and their results, and not criticise him by the canons of faction.

Italy was delivered by the war of 1859, and that war was terminated by the peace of Villafranca. For the moment, it seemed as if there were to be a restoration of the petty princes who had fled from Tuscany and Parma and Modena, and that an Italian Confederation had been resolved upon, in which the noxious influences of Austria and Naples and Papal Rome should stifle the pure principles upheld by Sardinia. A few months sufficed to show that these evils existed in apprehension only. The Italians, by the withdrawal of the French, were thrown upon their own resources, and by their conduct they dissipated the belief that they were unequal to the emergency. Had the war been continued, had Venetia been conquered, and had the last of the Austrians been driven beyond the Isonzo, Italy would have been the prize of French valor and genius; for all this must have been done on the instant, and before the Italians, less the Sardinians, could have taken an effective part in the war. The most devoted believer in the patriotism and bravery of the Italians must perforce admit that they had little to do with the war of 1859. Leaving the Sardinians aside, the Italian element in that contest was scarcely appreciable. This we say without meaning any reflection on the Italians. There were many good reasons why they should remain quiet. In common with the rest of the world, even France herself, the war took them by surprise, Austria bringing it on weeks, if not months, before Napoleon III. had meant it to begin. They, too, had seen their country so often abused by those who had conquered there, that they had some excuse for waiting the progress of events. The most industrious and studied efforts had been made to convince them that the object of the ruler of France was the realization of another Napoleonic idea, namely, the restoration of that Kingdom of Italy which perished in 1814; and though the rule of Napoleon I. was the best that Italy had known for three hundred years, it was hardly worth while to enter upon a doubtful fight for its restoration. Hence the majority of the people of Italy were not so active as they might have been; and their coolness is said to have had much effect on the mind of the victor, who must have thought that the people he had come to deliver were taking things very easily, and who could not have felt much flattered, when assured, in the politest terms, that those people believed him to be a selfish liar. His work, therefore, was but partially performed. Instead of halting on the shores of the historical Adriatic, his armies drew up on the banks of the classic Mincius. Trance had done her part; let Italy do the rest, if it were to be done. Thus abdicating his original purpose, and probably feeling much as William III. felt when the English were so slow in joining him that he talked of returning to his ships, Napoleon III. gave up his power to dictate the future of Italy. He had no right, thereafter, to say that the Bourbons should continue to govern in the Two Sicilies, that the Dukes should be restored to their Duchies, and that Venetia should be guarantied to Austria. He felt this, as the terms of the treaties that were made very clearly show; for he was careful to abstain from pledging himself to anything of a definite character. If he had perfected his original work, and been possessed of the power to effect a new settlement of Italy, he would, we presume, have stipulated for the continuance of the Bourbon power in the southern portion of the Peninsula and in Sicily; while the much talked-of purpose of creating an Italian Kingdom or Duchy for Prince Napoleon would probably have been carried out, and that gentleman have been established on the Arno. To the Sardinian monarchy would have been assigned the spoils taken from Austria,--Venice and Lombardy. The change in his political plans was the consequence of the change in his military plan,--though either change may be pronounced the cause or the effect, according to the point from which the observer views the entire series of transactions. Thus the peace of 1859 may be considered to have been a benefit to Italy, just as the war it terminated had been. The war freed her from Austrian dominion; the peace, from its character, and from the circumstances under which it was made, left her people at liberty to act as they pleased in the fair field that had been won for their exertions by the skill and courage of the French and Sardinian armies.

The destinies of Italy being placed in her own hands, the Italians were as prompt as politic considerations would allow them to be in promoting the unification of their country. Central Italy soon became a part of the constitutional monarchy which had grown up under the shadow of the Alps. This could not have happened, if Napoleon III. had chosen to veto the proceedings of the Italians, which had virtually nullified one of his purposes. That he consented to this large addition to the power of Sardinia on the condition of receiving Savoy and Nice is by no means unlikely; and we do not think that Victor Emanuel was either unwise or wanting in patriotism in parting with those countries for the benefit of Italy. Taking advantage of the troubles in Sicily, Garibaldi led a small expedition to that island, which there landed, and began those operations which had their appropriate termination, in five months, in the addition of all the territories of the wretched Francis II., except Gaëta, to the dominions of the Sardinian King. The importance of Garibaldi's undertaking it is quite impossible to overrate; but of what account could it have been, if the Austrians had stood to Italy in the same position that they held at the opening of 1859? Of none at all. Garibaldi is preeminently a man of sense, and he would never have thought of moving against Francis II., if Francis Joseph had been at liberty to assist that scandalous caricature of kings. Or, if he had been tempted to enter upon the project, he would have been "snuffed out" as easily as was Murat, when, in 1815, he sought to recover the Neapolitan throne. If Austrian ships had not prevented him from landing in Sicily, Austrian troops would have destroyed him in that island. Nay, it is but reasonable to believe that Bomba's navy and army would have been amply sufficient to do their master's work. That his men were not wanting in courage and conduct has been proved by their deeds since the tyrant left his capital, on the Volturno and around Capua and at Gaëta. It was not want of bravery that led to their failure in Sicily, but the belief that their employer's system had failed, and that he and they were given up to the vengeance of Italy, supposing the Italians to be strong enough to do justice on them. They took courage when European circumstances led them to conclude that Austria would be advised, at the Warsaw Conference, to use her forces for the restoration of the old order of things in Italy, and receive the support of Russia and Prussia. To deserve such aid from the North, the Neapolitan army struggled hard, but in vain. The Absolutist cause was lost in Naples when the sovereigns met in the Polish capital; and though, forty years earlier, this would have been held an additional reason for the entrance of the barbarians into Italy, the successes of the patriots must have had their proper weight with the Prince Regent of Prussia and the Czar, who are understood to have been as deaf as adders to the charming of their young brother from Vienna. What was resolved upon at Warsaw the world has no positive means of knowing, and but little reliance is to be placed upon the rumors that have been so abundant; but, as Austria has not moved against the Italians, and as the instructions to her new commander-in-chief in Venetia (Von Benedek) are reported to be strong on the point of non-intervention, we are at liberty to infer that she accepts all that has been done as accomplished facts, and means to stand upon the defensive, in the hope of gaining moral support by her moderation in being outwardly content with less than half the spoil which was given to her at the expense of Italy, when Europe was "settled," for the time, four-and-forty years ago.

The action of the Sardinian government, in sending its soldiers against the legal banditti whom Lamoricière had sought to drill into the semblance of an army, which was a direct attack on the Pope, and the subsequent employment of those soldiers, and of the Sardinian fleet, against the forces of Francis II., were model pieces of statesmanship, and worthy of the great man whose name and fame have become indissolubly associated with the redemption of Italy. The decision thus to act could not have been taken without the consent of Napoleon III. having first been had and obtained; and there is probably much truth in the story, that, when Lamoricière had the coolness to threaten his conquerors with the vengeance of the Emperor, they told him, half-laughingly, that, they had planned the campaign with that illustrious personage at Chambéry, which must have convinced him that the cause of the Keys had nothing to expect from France beyond the sort of police aid which General Goyon was affording to it in the name of his master. Lamoricière also expected help from Austria, and professed to be able to number the few days at the expiration of which the white-coats would be at Alessandria, which would have been a diversion in his favor, that, had it been made, must have saved him from the mortification of surrendering to men whom he affected to despise, but who brought him and his army under the yoke. The faith of the commander of the rabble of the Faith in Austrian assistance was a Viennese inspiration, and was meant to induce him to resist to the last. Nor was it altogether false; for the Kaiser and Count Rechberg appear to have believed that they could induce the governments of Russia and Prussia to support them in a crusade in behalf of Rome and Naples, which was to rely upon Lutherans and supporters of the Eastern Church for the salvation of the Western Church and its worst members. The first interview between Rechberg and Gortschakoff, if we can believe a despatch from Warsaw, led quickly to a quarrel, which must have taken place not long after their chiefs, the Kaiser and the Czar, had been locked in each other's arms at the railway-station. It is but just to the Austrians to state, that they probably had received from St. Petersburg some promises of assistance, which Alexander found himself unable to redeem, so determined was Russian opinion in its expression of aversion to Austria when its organs began to suspect that the old game was to be renewed, and that Alexander contemplated doing in 1861 what Nicholas had done in 1849,--to step between Francis Joseph and humiliation, perhaps destruction. If it be true that the Czar has ordered all Russians to leave Italy, that piece of pitiful spite would show how he hates the Italian cause, and also that it is not in his power seriously to retard its progress at present. Instead of ordering Russians from Italy, he would send them to that country in great masses, could he have his way in directing the foreign policy of his empire.

The entire success of Victor Emanuel and Garibaldi has brought Italian matters to a crisis. Carrying out the policy of Cavour, the King and the Soldier have all but completed the unification of their country, at the very time when the United States are threatened with disunion. The Kingdom of Italy exists at this time, virtually, if not in terms, and contains about twenty-four million people. It comprises the original territories of Victor Emanuel, _minus_ Savoy and Nice, the Two Sicilies, Lombardy, almost the whole of the Papal States, and Tuscany, Parma, and Modena. If we except the fragment of his old possessions yet held by the Pope, and the Austrian hold on Venetia, all Italy now acknowledges the rule of Victor Emanuel, who is to meet an _Italian_ Parliament in January, 1861. No political change of our century has been more remarkable than this, whether we look to its extent, or have regard to the agencies by which it has been brought about. Two years ago, there was more reason to believe that the King of Sardinia would be an exile than that the Bourbon King of Naples would be on his travels. No man would have dared to prophesy that the former would be reigning over seven-eighths of the Italians, while the latter should be reduced to one town, garrisoned by foreign mercenaries. That these changes should be wrought by universal suffrage, had it been predicted, would have been thought too much to be related as a dream. Yet it is the voice of the Italian People, speaking under a suffrage-system apparently more liberal than ever has been known in America, which has accomplished all that has been done since the summer of 1859 in the Peninsula and in Sicily. It was because Napoleon III. would not place himself in opposition to the opinion of the people of Central Italy, that the petty monarchs of that country were not restored to their thrones, and that they became subjects of Victor Emanuel; and the voting in Sicily and Naples has confirmed the decision of arms, and made it imperative on the reactionists to attack the people, should their policy lead them to seek a reversal of the decrees of 1860. The new monarch of the Italians expressly bases his title to reign on the will of the people, expressed through the exercise of the least restricted mode of voting that ever has been known among men; and the people of Southern Italy never could have had the opportunity to vote their crown to him, if Garibaldi had not first freed them from the savage tyranny of Francis II.; and Garibaldi himself could not have acted for their deliverance, if Italy had not previously been delivered from the Austrians by France. Thus we have the French Emperor, designated as a _parvenu_ both in England and America, and owing his power to his name,--the democrat Garibaldi, whose power is from his deeds, and whose income is not equal to that of an Irish laborer in the United States,--the rich and noble Cavour, whose weekly revenues would suffice to purchase the fee-simple of Garibaldi's island-farm,--the King of Sardinia, representing a race that was renowned before the Normans reigned in England,--and the masses of the Italian people,--all acting together for the redemption of a country which needs only justice to enable it to assume, as near as modern circumstances will permit, its old importance in the world's scale. That there should have been such a concurrence of foreign friendship, democratic patriotism, royal sagacity, aristocratic talent, and popular good sense, for Italy's benefit, must help to strengthen the belief that the Italians are indeed about to become a new _Power_ in Europe, and in the world, and that their country is no more to be rated as a mere "geographical expression."