difficult, in spite of all their vanities and follies, not to entertain a deep respect for men who, in such a climate, under such a sun, with a life of indolent and sensual pleasure within their reach, with the dolce far niente forced upon them, inculcated as a duty, compelled as a necessity, could yet turn away, loathing and unsatisfied, from the opera, the corso, and the gamingtable-from the convivial assembly and the midnight orgy-and say, 'No! life was not given us to be so wasted, and we will NOT so waste it; life has higher objects, more solemn obligations, more imperious calls; life so stagnant, so drawling, so slavish, is a gift we do not care to keep; and if we cannot bring about a better state of things, we may as well, at least, persist in the attempt to do so.'

It is obvious that it would be precisely the best, the purest, the most aspiring-if not the most wise and sober-who would feel thus, and who, under such a government as then weighed upon Italy, would be most sure to be found in the ranks of the conspirators. And accordingly, both then and since, the higher class of Italian patriots, whether in exile or in prison, have been honourably distinguished from those of almost every other land. We have known many of every class and shade of opinion, and from every part of Italy, and little as our admiration is excited for revolutionists in general, we cannot refrain from bearing willing testimony to the lofty morale and fine intellect which is the usual characteristic of the men of whom we speak. They are not disappointed intriguers. They are not mere vain and shallow egotists. They are not selfish disturbers of the public peace in the hope of something advantageous to themselves turning up in the confusion. They are not mere turbulent demagogues or vapid declaimers. On the contrary, they are for the most part earnest, sincere, and elevated characters-many of them, like Poerio and Settembrini, displaying a mixture of stoicism and tenderness which is especially attractive. They are often men of excellent education, deep reading, statesman-like capacity, high and brilliant conversational powers, and singular beauty, fidelity, and strength in their domestic affections, the whole tinged with that pathetic and indescribable sadness inseparable from noble minds in a world and in an age like this. Such were some whom we knew in Greece during the revolutionary war. Such is Manin, the ex-dictator of Venice. Such were the two victims of Neapolitan barbarism whom we have just named. Such is the author of the volume before us; and such, by the admission of both friends and foes, is the remarkable man of whom, under the name of Fantasio, a very truthful likeness is here drawn,

and regarding whom, as we have often had to speak of him with freedom and severity, we are glad to have an opportunity of stating our conviction that-mistaken, fanatical, and mischievous as we conceive him to have been-Europe holds few men of finer intellect, of more pure and spotless moral character, or of a richer, tenderer, more genial nature. Of much that we see in him to blame and to deplore, the autobiography of Lorenzo Benoni affords an explanation. We see the despicable, fatal, grinding nature of the despotism which irritated him and drove him forth; we see his most intimate friends exiled, imprisoned, or put to death by the Piedmontese monarch, and we can scarcely wonder that his distrust of that royal House (changed and constitutional as it has since become) should be insurmountable; we see the nature of the manstern, resolute, concentrated, enthusiastic, and pertinacious, and we cease to be surprised that love of the people' and hatred of the Austrians should have blinded him to the defects of the one and to the strength of the other.

Again. The volume before us explains clearly enough a circumstance which we have always deplored, and which has largely contributed to inspire distrust of all patriotic movement in Italy, we mean the extreme youth of most of the actors, and originators in them. Not only is it, there as elsewhere, that the young alone refuse to see difficulties, and to count the cost,' that they alone possess the sanguine imagination which can hope for victory, and the carelessness of danger which stakes life cheerfully and lightly in a noble cause; but, under such governments as that of Piedmont was, and those of all the other Italian States still are, the young alone retain the elasticity of spirit to dare any thing or to act at all. If they dawdle out their years under that leaden despotism till middle life, all energy has become extinct within them, all aspirations after a noble career have died away, an existence of pleasure has killed the capacity for exertion and for sacrifice, a long course of acquiescence has made the yoke endurable, and degraded the soul into harmony with its degraded lot. Those who have danced, and dreamed, and slumbered away the fifteen best years of life cannot at the age of five-and-thirty cast off their indolence and arouse themselves to an enterprise of danger and privation; if they have accepted their fate so long they will not begin to quarrel with it then; if the government has succeeded in keeping them quiet till then it has done its work effectually so far as they are concerned. Those accustomed to lounge, and smoke, and intrigue, and frequent cafés till they have reached maturity, are little likely then to gird on their armour for a

deadly struggle and a distant prize. They may be the men to turn the victory to profit when once gained, scarcely the men either to organise the army or to begin the strife.

There is another reason, too, why the young will always be the main movers in Italian revolutions. They are less likely than their elders to discern, and less willing to believe, what a slow process national regeneration must ever be, and what a broad and deep foundation must be laid for any change of system which is to be firm and lasting. There is one of the dramatis persone in the book we are reviewing, a merchantuncle of the author, who endeavoured to impress upon him this unpalatable wisdom, but in vain :

You see things (he would sometimes say) not as they are, but as your imagination paints them. Pretty nearly every one, I allow, despises and detests the government, but it does not thrive the less for that. Analyse society, and tell me where you see those manly virtues, that spirit of self-sacrifice, which regenerate nations. Look at our nobles, for instance. The old men sulk at the government; do you think it is from love of liberty? Pshaw! they do so because they would like to hold the reins themselves. The young ones think only of their horses and their mistresses. The middle class is eaten up by selfishness; each individual man is engrossed by his office, his counting-house, or his clients. Number One is their god. . . . The people are ignorant and superstitious (not by their own fault, to be sure, but they are so), and, therefore, the slaves of the priests, those born enemies of progress. They hear mass in the morning, and get drunk at night, and think, notwithstanding, that all is right with God and their conscience. What then remains? A certain number of young men, crammed with Greek and Roman History; enthusiastic, generous-I do not deny it but perfectly incapable of doing anything but getting themselves hanged. Absence of virtue, my dear boy, is synonymous with impotence. The mass is rotten at the core, I tell you. Suppose for a moment that you could make tabula rasa of that which exists, what could you build with such materials? An edifice which rests upon decayed rafters is faulty in its foundations, and will crumble with the first shock. .

'Progress comes of itself: Providence wills it so. There are in the moral world, as well as in the physical, mysterious principles at work unknown to ourselves, and even in spite of ourselves. Thanks to this latent working, things are better to-day than they were a hundred, or even fifty years ago; and fifty years hence, you who are young will see still further improvement. One must take present evil with patience, and give time leisure to do its work. Let each in his humble sphere try to become better, and render better those around him. There, and only there, lies the corner stone of our future regeneration. As for me, my dear friend, when in the first shop into which I may happen to go, I am only asked the fair price or thereabouts of the article I go to buy, I shall consider my country

to have made a more important conquest than if it had given itself all the institutions of Sparta and of Athens into the bargain.' (p. 146.)

The progress which this sagacious old man spoke of as so gradual and distant has come already. It is impossible to compare the events of 1821 and 1831 with those of 1848 without feeling that the progress has been great and signal. The feeble, abortive, purposeless movements of the earlier periods- the wildness or vagueness of their objects, the ludicrous inadequacy of their means, the want of organisation in preparing for the strife, the panic terror in the day of battle,-disappointed, and almost extinguished, European sympathy with Italian aspirations after emancipation and independence. The unexpected and sustained energy displayed at the latter date-the extent and comparative unanimity of the movement-the pertinacity of the struggle in many quarters-the obstinate resistance of the Sicilians the gallant exploits of the five days in Milan-the energetic but hopeless defence of Rome against a superior French force the prolonged, noble, and nearly successful maintenance of Venice, which wrung fair and clement terms even from the Austrians-served to prove, with a clear lustre which even subsequent follies and incapacities could not obscure, that in the interval which had elapsed the Italians had learned both to organise, to govern, and to fight. They made many blunders, betrayed many weaknesses, manifested deplorable immaturity, showed that they had yet much to learn and much to cure. Some held aloof when they ought to have joined cordially and unselfishly, because matters were not conducted precisely as they wished. Some quarrelled over the division of the spoil before the victory was fully won. Some remembered private wrongs, some dreamed idle visions, some loved their crotchets better than their country. There was the usual admixture of base alloy, of human infirmity, of permitted crime. But, after every deduction is made, the revolutions of 1831 will always bear to those of 1848 the same relation which the transient effervescence of the boy bears to the earnest enterprise of the serious and mature man.

The same comparison of the two epochs suggests another most encouraging phenomenon, which Mazzini and his followers would do well to lay to heart. It is singular that in perusing this autobiography of his early friend, exiled for participation in the same conspiracy with himself, he should not have been forcibly struck, as we have been, with the contrast between Piedmont then and Piedmont now, and should not have asked himself the question: Whose policy has brought about this blessed 'change—his own republicanism or the constitutionalism of his

'rival patriots?' Twenty years ago, Piedmont was such as we have described it; languishing under a stupid and leaden despotism; the press fettered; thought proscribed; literature extinguished; liberty at the mercy of every gendarme and of every priest; the very souls of men crushed out of them. Now, Piedmont has a constitutional monarch and a parliamentary government; law is everywhere paramount; commerce is reviving; life is being infused into every grade of society; education has received a new form and a mighty stimulus, and will make the rising generation very different from the expiring one; the priesthood is shackled, and the press is free; and Mazzini's own city of Genoa is, in nearly all points, in possession of as much individual liberty as Brussels or Geneva. If all Italy were as the Sardinian kingdom now is, what more could Mazzini himself desire? And what has made the Sardinian dominions thus free, thus enviable, thus the very reverse of what they were when Mazzini first raised the standard of revolt? What, but the labours of those moderate men,' those very constitutionalists, with whom he could never act, and whose principles and talents he considers alike inadequate to the grand work of national regeneration? We do not here enter into the question whether a republic or a monarchy will be the fittest government for the Peninsula-whether it would be best for Italy to form one great country or a congeries of small states, each with its own idiomatic character. We know Mazzini's argument, that to effect so mighty a work as national emancipation you need one of two things, either a great man or a great principle; that the niche of the first is empty, and that Victor Emanuel cannot fill the vacancy; and that therefore it is only by proclaiming the second, by raising the standard of Italy one and indivisible,' that you can ever achieve her independence or regeneration. But we ask him to contrast what he has actually effected for his countrymen with the faits accomplis of Azeglio. Mazzini has taught them to conspire; and admirable conspirators we allow he has made of them-secret, sagacious, astutely organised, and faithful to the death. He has set them an example by his gallant and heroic defence of Rome, and has infused into them much of his own elastic and indomitable spirit. He has provided a perennial crop of ever-ready martyrs, whose number and devotion, we confess, fill us with wonder and respect. But as yet he has done no more. He has been unable to consolidate anything. If he were to die to-morrow, he would have left no monuments of a life of toil and daring save barren scaffolds and unfruitful graves. But the party whose rival and opponent he has always been has at least