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

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 �� Felice Foresti. Il quale abbandon�� 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,--sar�� 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 _��meutes_, 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 a foreign tongue, the _caff��s_ of Milan resound with Teutonic gutturals, and under the arcades of Bologna every other face wears the yellow beard