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most improper, is exhibited in Savonarola's refusing absolution to the dying Lorenzo de Medicis, because he would not restore liberty to his country. The Carbonaro spirit also breathes forth most strongly in Cirillo, Pagano, Conforti, Delfico, and Filangieri, at the close of the eighteenth century: as also in Napoleon's Cisalpine ministry in 1794, comprising Alexandri, Moscati, Paradisi, Porro, Luosi and Sommariva. In 1798 a secret society for promoting Italian independence was formed against the French by Lahoz of Mantua, and Bigaro of Cremona; of course it had little or no effect. In 1808 the Calabrian Carbonari were put down by General Manhés, one of Murat's officers. The Neapolitan and Piedmontese seditions of 1820, and 1821, are too well known to require detail; and by them Carbonaro history is brought down into our own times.

At present there is every reason to suppose that the confederacy of the Italian Carbonari is large and influential, by no means confined to the lower ranks of society, and with a high degree of party union and mutual understanding. Their object still remains the same as ever, the liberation of Italy from Transalpine rulers, its union into one country, the dignity of Rome, and the readjustment of the papal jurisdiction. It has been asserted in a dark way, that among the higher orders of society in the Papal States another party has been formed, which includes within itself a few of the princes of the Church, and affords some disquiet to the Austrian embassy at Rome. The

members of this society call themselves Sanfedists. It is indeed little but a revival of old Guelphic principles, somewhat modified because of the altered circumstances of the Italian peninsula. Austria, as the personification of the Ghibeline principle, is the object of their dislike and jealousy; the temporal power of the papacy within the Alps, the end of their desires and dreams. They are of course in themselves very feeble, and contain none of the strong, rough, racy elements, none of the volcanic life and energy of the Carbonari. The Sanfedists are said to have arisen in 1780 as an anti-Austrian

party at Turin, Gregory VII. and Sixtus V. being the great objects of their admiration. The obvious wish exhibited by Russia in her diplomatic movements, and her actual influence in the Roman Curia, point out to them the quarter for an anti-Austrian alliance. It is said also that Russia, whose diplomacy seems everywhere distinguished, as that of old Rome was, by a most immoral wisdom and corrupt sagacity, has dealings both with the Carbonari and with the Sanfedists, playing off the one against the other, alternately betraying and shielding them, ready to give them up in failure, to respect and use them in success. As friends within a besieged city the Sanfedists may have importance; otherwise they have none 3. It would, however, require something like

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See the Sanfedist documents in the Appendix to Charles Didier's Rome Souterraine; also his two volumes of Mémoires et

a gift of prophecy to say whether these convulsive movements of Italian democracy are the muscular agitations after the mortal wound, or the ungainly restlessness of one freshly awakening from a trance. What was said at the outset of this account of the Carbonari must not be forgotten. It is not intended to express any such sympathy for them here as should deaden our sense of the sin of unquietness and secret caballing, or should lend a patronage to the socalled principles of liberty, which seem to consist in making every man a bad subject to the government he lives under, whatever it may be. But a student of history can hardly refuse his sympathy to the Italians, who during centuries of Transalpine thraldom have striven to write the name of Italy once more among the nations of Europe; and if his political principles square not with those of any party, in some things stretching beyond them, in other things seeing cause to shrink back, there is no reason why he should withhold the expression of his sympathy. Indeed, after the old monarchical house of my own country, I know no political object which calls forth any feeling in me so near to reverence and affection as the paternal government of Austria, witnessed in all her provinces, save Gallicia, and the honesthearted family which presides over that broad and beautiful empire. Doubtless the Lombardo-Venetian

Fragmens sur l'Italie: but the most copious, though precarious, sources of information regarding the Carbonari are not of course in publications.

kingdom is happier beneath the light hand of Ferdinand than it would be in the fierce enjoyment of Carbonaro liberty, and the Hungarian regiments are a less evil than a National Guard or democratic gensd'armerie. Yet, as a student of history, contemplating the past and calculating the future, the convulsive struggles of the heirs, to whom great Rome has bequeathed her tremendous legacy of stirring associations, must be objects of interest and sympathy. There must be these volcanic tremors in the land. To an Italian the very beauty of his father-land is misery to him. Wonderful, gigantic memories pursue him, speaking to his fiery soul with the voices of clarions. He is like a war-horse checked by a heavy bit, yet maddened for battle by the perpetual braying of weird trumpets. O Italy, thou consecrated precinct of old Rome! in the very alleys of Schönbrunn, and beneath the disarming eye of the Kaiser Ferdinand, I must perforce hear within myself an echo to the wild shout that bursts ever and anon from the rice-grounds of Milan, the arcades of grim Bologna, or the charcoal Baraccas of the Abruzzo.

Any one who has wandered about the quiet streets of Padua during the hot hours of noon will acknowledge the comfort, as well as the picturesque effect, of the frequent colonnades. I roamed or rested idly about in the neighbourhood of the church of the Annunziata della Arena, waiting till it was opened. I thought of the cruelties of which these streets had

been the witnesses during the sway of the horrible Eccelino. It is a fearful illustration of original sin, of the progressive corruption of the soul, and how it may descend into the very neighborhood of the nature of beasts, to see one single man become through the accident of powerful station unbearable to his fellow-beings, till they rose against him as one of the savage monsters of heroic antiquity, and the visible head of the Church preached a crusade with privilege and indulgences against an individual who had departed so far from human nature that the earth was weary of him. It reminded me of the last effort of Europe against Napoleon, which was like a crusade against one man, when the nations, not roused by the Church, but beaten from their selfish neutrality by fear, rose and crushed the oppressor, as they would have hunted down any new kind of beast which should appear among them, and ravage their fields.

While they were opening the doors of the Church of the Annunziata della Arena, I was joined by my mysterious companion. He enquired somewhat jocularly if I had got over my fever of enthusiasm for the Carbonari. "It is strange," said he, "that one who was so backward to admit a doubt respecting the divine right of kings, should be ready to take under his patronage a set of outlawed republicans. You cannot have thought much on the subject of politics, else you would have been more consistent." Nay," replied I, "it is because I have thought

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