Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, no. 25, November 1859 | Page 2

independent": yet his American friends must have
surmised the truth; for, one day, he received a letter stating that a sum,
fully adequate for two years' support, remained to his credit on the
books of a merchant,--one of those mysterious provisions, such as once
redeemed a note of Henry Clay's, and of which no explanation can be
given, except that "it is a way they have" among the merchant princes
of New York. By a providential coincidence, surgical skill, at this

juncture, essentially improved his physical condition; but it became
indispensable, at the same time, that he should exchange our rigorous
clime for one more congenial; and he sailed five years ago for Italy,
taking up his residence in Piedmont, where dwell so many of the
eminent adherents of the cause he loved, and where the institutions,
polity, and social life include so many elements of progress and of faith.
It was now that those who knew him best, including some of the
leading citizens of his adopted city, applied to the Executive for his
appointment as United States Consul at Genoa. There was a singular
propriety in the request. Having passed and honored the ordeal of
American citizenship, and being then a popular resident of the city
which gave birth to the discoverer of this continent,--familiar with our
institutions, and endeared to so many of the wise and brave in America
and Italy,--illustrious through suffering, a veteran disciple and martyr
of freedom,--he was eminently a representative man, whom freemen
should delight to honor; and while it then gratified our sense of the
appropriate that this distinction and resource should cheer his declining
years, we are impelled, now that death has canonized misfortune and
integrity, to avail ourselves of the occasion to rehearse the incidents
and revive the lessons of his life.[1]
[Footnote 1: It is to be lamented that Foresti had not anticipated our
purpose with that consecutive detail possible only in an autobiography.
"_Le Scene del Carcere Duro in Austria_," writes the Marquis
Pallavicino, "non sono ancora la storia del Ventuno. Un uomo potrebbe
scriverla e svelare molte infamie tuttavia occulte del governo Austriaco.
Quest' uomo è Felice Foresti. Il quale abbandonò gli agi Americani per
combattere un' altra volta, guerriero canuto, le gloriose battaglie dell'
Italico risorgimento. Il martire scriva: e la sua penna, come quella d' un
altro martire,--Silvio Pellico,--sarà una spada nel cuoro dell'
Austria."--Notes to Spielbergo e Gradisca.]
Underlying the external apathy and apparently frivolous life of the
Italian peninsula, there has ever been a resolute, clear, earnest
patriotism, fed in the scholar by memories of past glory, in the peasant
by intense local attachment, and kindled from time to time in all by the
reaction of gross wrongs and moral privations. Sometimes in
conversation, oftener in secret musing, now in the eloquent outburst of
the composer, and now in the adjuration of the poet or the vow of the

revolutionist, this latent spirit has found expression. Again and again,
spasmodic and abortive _émeutes_, the calm protest of a D'Azeglio and
the fanaticism of an Orsini, sacrifices of property, freedom, and
life,--all the more pathetic, because to human vision useless,--have
made known to the oppressor the writhings of the oppressed, and to the
world the arbitrary rule which conceals injustice by imposing silence.
The indirect, but most emphatic utterance of this deep, latent
self-respect of the nation we find in Alfieri, whose stern muse revived
the terse energy of Dante; and in our own day, this identical inspiration
fired the melancholy verse of Leopardi, the letters of Foscolo, the
novels of Guerrazzi, and the tender melody of Bellini. Recent literature
has exhibited the conditions under which Italian Liberals strive, and the
method of expiating their self-devotion. The novels of Ruffini, the
letters of the Countess d'Ossoli, the rhetoric of Gavazzi, and the
parliamentary reports of Gladstone, the leading reviews, the daily
journals, intercourse with political refugees, and the personal
observations of travel, have, more or less definitely, caused the problem
called the "Italian Question" to come nearer to our sympathies than any
other European exigency apart from practical interests. Moreover, the
complicated and dubious aspect of the subject, viewed by transatlantic
eyes, has, within the last ten years, been in a great measure dispelled by
experimental facts. That Italy needs chiefly to be _let alone_, to achieve
independence and realize a noble development, civic, economical, and
social, every intelligent traveller who crosses the Austrian frontier and
enters the Sardinian state, knows.
A greater contrast, as regards productive industry, intellectual
enterprise, religious progress, comfort, and happiness, no adjacent
countries ever exhibited; constitutional freedom, an unrestricted press,
toleration, and public education on the one hand, and foreign bayonets,
espionage, and priestcraft on the other, explain the anomaly. In Venice
the very trophies of national life are labelled in