Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, no. 25, November 1859 | Page 9

But it was the moral suffering against which all his wisdom and courage were invoked to struggle,--the resolute maintenance of healthful mental activity, without an object or motive underived from will,--the repression of hopeless, vague, self-tormenting reverie, which perverts intellect and drains moral energy,--the habitual exercise of memory, reflection, and fancy, to preserve their functions unimpaired. Such expedients were of special necessity at Spielberg; for never were educated men so barbarously deprived of the legitimate resources of mind and heart; thought and love were left uninvited, unappeased. Sir Walter Raleigh had the materials, at the Tower, to write a history; Lafayette, at Olmutz, lived in perpetual expectancy of release; Moore and Byron, children, flowers, birds, and the Muses cheered Leigh Hunt's year of durance: but in this bleak fortress, innocent and magnanimous men beheld the seasons come and go, night succeed day, and year follow year, with no cognizance of kindred or the world's doings,--no works of bard or sage,--no element of life,--but a grim, cold, deadly routine within stone walls,--all tender sympathies, the very breath of the soul, denied,--all influx of knowledge, the food of the mind, prohibited, experience a blank, existence a void!
Had we need of evidence that conscience is a normal attribute of humanity, that the soul is endowed with relations to the Infinite, we should find it in the self-preservation realized under such circumstances as these. Only conscious rectitude could arm humanity against the sense of degradation and deprivation thus surrounding and pressing upon it for years,--only the belief in a Power above and beyond human will and perversity,--only, in a word, the recuperative force of moral individuality and aspiration, could keep intact and uninvaded the integrity of conscious being. Of course, the method thereof depends on character; a cheerful heart In one, a buoyant imagination in another, and the sweet self-oblivion which Faith imparts in a third, sentiment here and will there, work the same miracle. Foresti belonged to that class of Italians who combine perspicacity and force of reasoning with a frank, affectionate, and trustful disposition,--types of the manly intellect, the childlike heart; incarceration, while it failed to enfeeble the former, by seclusion from life's game and the world's encroachments from early youth to middle age, perhaps confirmed the latter into the candid and loving nature which endeared him to so many friends in Europe and America. Sterne says, that, if he were in a desert, he would love some cypress; and Isaac Taylor has observed, that the devout heart can find in a single blade of grass the evidence of a Divine Creator. We have all read of Bruce testing his fate, when a captive, by the gyrations of a spider, of Baron Trenck finding solace in a dungeon in the companionship of a mouse, and the imaginative prisoner of Fenestrelle absorbed in vigilant and even affectionate observation of a little plant,--its germination, slow approach to maturity, and consummate flowering. But there were alleviating circumstances in the situation of these captives,--a definite hope of release or a certainty of life-bondage, either of which alternatives is more favorable to tranquillity of soul than absolute suspense; they enjoyed tidings from without or indulgences within. At Spielberg, the _sistema diabolico_, as it has been justly called, especially at the epoch of Foresti's incarceration, retained the galling chain on the limbs, cut off the supply of moral and intellectual vitality, refused appropriate occupation, baffled hope, eclipsed knowledge, and kept up a vile inquisitorial process to goad the crushed heart, sap the heroic will, and stupefy or alienate the mental faculties; dawn ushered in the twilight of a mausoleum, noon fell dimly on paralyzed manhood, night canopied aggravating dreams.
"To such sad pitch their gathering griefs were wrought, Life seemed not life, save when convulsed by thought."
Casual evasions of this fiendish torture, through ingenuity or the compassion of officials, are among the few animated episodes of their dreary experiences recorded by the victims. At length the Emperor died (an event they had surmised from a change in the form of the public prayer); his son Ferdinand succeeded to the throne, and signalized his accession by a decree liberating the Italian patriots, but condemning them to perpetual exile in America. Those long years of such captivity did not even gain them the privilege of again enjoying civil rights, their country, and kindred! Protests were vain, appeals disregarded. In November, 1835, their chains were removed; the same blacksmith who had welded Foresti's shackles fourteen years before, now severed them, and wept with joy as they fell! One night they were all summoned to the director's room, and he, too, announced their enfranchisement with congratulations; the prison garb was exchanged for citizen's dress, and they were taken in carriages to the police prison of Brunn, where comfortable apartments, good food, free intercourse,