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to doubt, but that agreement leaves no stain upon his honour. He surrendered a province to secure a kingdom, and the mournful silence of Italy confirmed the policy of the act. Savoy and Nice were not more Italian than Normandy was English, and each was the cradle of the dynasty which surrendered it to fate, and grew greater for the cession. The province, Italy once developed to a sixth power, must have been the cause of incessant jealousy between Italy and France; while from its exposed position it could have added nothing to the strength of either land. It was wisely relinquished, and even the men who sympathise with Garibaldi's feeling for his birthplace, may still believe that it was Cavour, and not Garibaldi, whose first thought was for Italy as a whole.

From the day of the cession, the career of the Italian Premier was one unbroken success. His king was still sovereign of only the half of Italy, when the minister aided Garibaldi to attack the Bourbon dynasty of Naples. Had the guerrilla leader failed, Northern Italy would have been clear of all but a foiled intrigue. As it was, the rotten house crumbled under the first serious attack; and Cavour, representing always the Italians, claimed the heritage of the ruin. He had first to clear his road. He convinced the Emperor of the French that Garibaldi, left to attack Rome, would raise the revolution, and then with matchless audacity occupied the Roman States. The Pope threatened and howled, Catholic Europe denounced Cavour as the enemy of the human race, the Emperor withdrew his envoy from Turin, and the Italian Premier, smiling as men smile when nominated to a forlorn hope, sent an army to complete the work of Garibaldi, and see that its fruits should be gathered by Italy, and not by the revolution. Garibaldi, always heartily an Italian, yielded his own project; Naples was added to the Italian kingdom, and Victor Emanuel was solemnly proclaimed King of the Peninsula. Meanwhile the sleepless Premier had been engaged in his old task of organising a monarchy. The unity of Northern Italy had been completed, the heavy taxation of Piedmont pressed upon Tuscany with acclamations, the strong conscription - laws of Sardinia frankly accepted by populations hitherto exempt. The army had been raised to rather more than twice its strength, the Neapolitan fleet remanned and rendered effective, and a Parliament organised for the entire kingdom. If the reader will only recollect the difficulties of our own Union, the bitter provincial jealousies of Italy, and the danger of giving power to States who must of necessity outvote Piedmont, he may form some idea of the courage which conceived this plan, the masterly ability which evolved from it a Parliament in which every interest found a voice, but in which the repre

sentative of Italy, who had just sold an Italian province, was left the master still.

A still greater task was left to be accomplished; Venetia and Rome were still outside the Italian kingdom, and appealed to Italians, Venetia as a suffering province, Rome as the essential capital of the monarchy. We can hardly estimate the savage feeling which the sufferings of Venetia produce in the Italian mind. Let our readers recall their feelings when the Indian massacres were reported, and remember that to Italians the sufferings of their kinsmen were visible as well as audible, and they may attain some idea of the fierce sympathy which filled the national heart. The instinct of the people was to rush on Austria en masse, and perish or set free the people of Venice. At the same time the necessity of acquiring Rome became daily more apparent. It was the one city all sections of Italy could heartily obey. No province, whatever its history or its prejudices, could feel degraded by submission to the ancient capital of the world. At the same time the Papacy was intriguing actively against the new kingdom, turning Rome into an arsenal which furnished every day new weapons for attack. The educated classes, raving for Venetia, craved for Rome. Cavour determined to attack neither. With an audacious wisdom, which, as one reads the account, still brings the blood to the forehead, he boldly appealed to the people,-bade them stand back while he reasoned, and, in the pause thus gained, pointed out the utter insanity of their impatience. To seize Rome, it would be necessary to defeat France; to rescue Venetia, it was imperative to expel Austria. The educated classes listened and comprehended, and, as they monopolise the suffrage, sent him up a Parliament which, prepared for all sacrifices, still waited to make those sacrifices successful. The Revolutionists sank back, angry but cowed; and Cavour commenced negotiation for Rome, and plans for the simultaneous rescue of Hungary and Venice. He had almost succeeded in shaking the Emperor, when anxiety and over-work brought on an attack of nervous fever. The rest is but too well known to our readers; the incessant bleedings, the gradual sinking, the fits of delirium, during which the dying statesman shouted his denunciation of the "state of siege" for Naples, and then the death, which made Englishmen feel as if-in a foreign and Catholic noble-they had each individually lost a friend. Count Cavour had woven himself into the popular heart in England as well as Italy, and for the first time in our history, the prejudiced insular race, so apt to believe that virtue is limited by the four seas, mourned openly for the servant of a foreign crown.

The precise nature of the loss thus sustained by Italy will

only be revealed by events; but Cavour fulfilled one function no other man can ever adequately perform. The country needed above all things freedom, yet required at the same moment the strong hand of an able and secret despot. The unquestioning confidence felt in Cavour enabled him to combine both these necessities. He acted always through a Parliament, always refused to violate individual freedom, sometimes seemed to fear-as in Naples-lest a just severity should resemble too closely the proceedings of an absolutist court. Yet he seldom explained his plans. The real negotiations with Napoleon are still unknown beyond the palace-walls. He raised loans, summoned armies, and annexed kingdoms, without calling on Parliament for any thing save the ratification of his acts. He was enabled, in fact, by popular trust to perform, without suspending the constitution, those tremendous functions the Romans comprised within the brief phrase, "see you that the republic suffer no wrong." The want of such an authority may yet be severely felt. Ricasoli is, in all probability, the equal in ability of his friend. A cabinet, of many capacities, may execute all the plans Cavour's single sagacity would have carried out. But no other man will ever be able to act for Italy as if he were its owner, yet be certain of the support of those he has kept without information. It was as the representative Italian, even more than as the statesman, that Cavour was invaluable to Italy.

The character of the deceased statesman will be very differently described by his admirers from different points of view. To the Frenchman, conscious of momentary slavery, its most wonderful point seemed the power of guiding without restraining the opinion of his countrymen. The slow German admired the wily craft against which he felt himself powerless to contend, which kept up, even when inactive, a permanent sense of peril among his foes. Italians forget every thing in their glowing love for one who so heartily and ardently loved the "beautiful land." But to Englishmen, whose records are unstained by the name of even one great traitor, who are accustomed to freedom, and half contemptuous of policy, but who resent what they think the over-caution of their own statesmen, the marvellous quality of Cavour seems courage. The man dared, as if his daring sprang from prescience. Whether fighting a colleague, or braving a stormy Parliament, or bidding defiance to half Europe, not only did his courage never fail, but he could never be shaken out of a confidence so complete as to suggest the idea of a contempt for politics. It was this imperturbable humour, this disdain in his manner of treating difficulties, which suggested the Mazzinian charge that he regarded politics as a game, an amusement, which

stretched his faculties to the highest, and in which the reward was the struggle rather than the victory. There was some slight truth in the accusation; about as much as in the same when brought against the Roman patrician. There are natures so strong that the difficulties which to ordinary men seem appalling, yield them only a delicious excitement. They have the lust for civil contest which some men have for battle; but they are not the less earnest because they cannot fear. Twice within two years did Count Cavour dare acts which seemed rather those of a Jacobin, of a Saint Just, who cannot crane at the leap because he cannot see the chasm, rather than of a deeply reflective thinker. The first was when he seized Umbria. The consent of the Emperor had been barely extorted, that of Europe had not been sought. There was almost the certainty of exciting a frenzied wrath in the Catholic world, and rousing the lingering fanaticism of Naples to defend the priests. Count Cavour dared all; and amidst the screams of the Pope, the wrath of conservatives through Europe, he swept his troops forward to within sight of Rome. The second example was in Naples. The one thing it was supposed the Government dare not do, was to strike at the priesthood of the South. The population was superstitious, the educated few, the priests wealthy and determined. The Premier struck them to the ground; in one decree confiscated their revenues, suppressed their superfluous houses, and changed them from an order in the State into powerless pensionnaires. The truth is, that, popular in his sympathies and imperial in his designs, Cavour was in temperament an aristocrat. The contempt with which, in the last parliamentary debate at which he assisted, he laughed down the idea of Neapolitan resistance, was a true index to his mind. His views, once clear to himself, were inflexible; and the circumstances which to other men seemed so insuperable, appeared to him only to call for more vigorous exertion. It was the temperament we admire in the Roman patricians and in the history of England, but which seems marvellous, because, though often found in a class, it is seldom so conspicuous in the individual.

We have left ourselves small space to sum up the character of Cavour; but if ever man united in himself the highest praise of the ancient statesman, "he made a small State great,' with the highest claim of the modern patriot, "he deserved well of his country,"-that man was the one whom all that is best in Europe has now agreed to mourn.

BOOKS OF THE QUARTER SUITABLE FOR READING

SOCIETIES.

Lectures on the History of the Eastern Church, with an Introduction on the Study of Ecclesiastical History. By Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D., Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the University of Oxford, and Canon of Christ Church. Murray. [Reviewed in Article II.]

The History of Civilization in England. By Thomas Henry Buckle. Vol. II. Parker, Son, and Bourn.

[A volume remarkable for its very dogmatic scepticism, and carrying the strange and often foolish theories of its predecessor to even greater extremes; but full of interest, and of Mr. Buckle's one-sided ability.]

The Early and Middle Ages of England. By Charles H. Pearson. Bell and Daldy.

[The work of a true scholar, and yet calculated to prove a most useful instrument of education in the highest class of schools.]

The Monks of the West, from St. Benedict to St. Bernard. By the Count de Montalembert. Authorised Translation. 2 vols. Blackwood.

The New Examen; or, an Inquiry into the Evidence relating to certain Passages in Lord Macaulay's History. By John Paget, Barristerat-Law. Blackwood and Son.

[Noticed in Article IV.]

The Life of the Right Honourable William Pitt. By Earl Stanhope. Vols. I. and II. Murray.

[Reviewed in Article IX.]

Some Account of the Life and Opinions of Charles, second Earl Grey. By Lieutenant-General C. Grey. Bentley.

Private Correspondence of Thomas Raikes with the Duke of Wellington, and other distinguished Contemporaries. Edited by his daughter, Harriet Raikes. Bentley.

My Own Life and Times, 1741-1814. By Thomas Somerville, D.D., Minister of Jedburgh. Edmonton and Douglas.

[A book of shrewd sense and some humour, and extremely well edited.]

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