sort of autocratic government, still clothe him with nobility. He was born close by the sunny sea-shore of Nice, and we follow him through his gay and irresponsible childhood, fired by acts of sudden daring, which displayed extraordinary spirit and courage, till he passes into the roving life of the Italian merchant service, and in the company of his sailor father penetrates into almost unknown ports and sojourns in strange lands among strange peoples. Their manners and customs, modes of life and government, made an indelible impression upon his mind, which was even then dominated. by the passionate determination to secure the freedom of Italy from the tyranny of Austria.

Stimulated by worship of liberty, Garibaldi, in January 1834, "threw himself" (to quote his own words) body and soul into what he had so long felt to be his true element. . . and quitted the 'Porta della Lanterna at Genoa disguised as a peasant, an outcast from his own country." From that hour he relinquished the life of the ordinary man, and we find him evading death, torture, and prison as we in our peaceful days avoid the passage of carriages in a crowded street.

The emancipation of the Empire of Brazil was the cause for which he and his daring little band of followers fought, and his countless deeds of chivalry, his miraculous escapes and stirring victories in those Southern lands sprang from a devotion to the cause of Freedom which has no parallel in history. It was here, amid these scenes of war and untamed nature, that his romantic love was born, the love which won a heroic, devoted wife. The story, a significant one, is best told in Garibaldi's own words:

By chance I cast my eyes towards the houses on the Barra—a tolerably high hill on the south side of the entrance to the Lagoon .. Outside one of these, by means of a telescope which I usually carried with me on deck, I espied a young woman, and forthwith gave orders for the boat to be got out. I landed, and, making for the houses where I expected to find the object of my excursion, had just given up all hope of seeing her again when I met an inhabitant of the place. . . . He invited me to take coffee in his house; we entered, and the first person

It was

who met my eyes was the damsel who had attracted me ashore. Anita, the mother of my children, who shared my life for better for worse, the wife whose devotion I have so often felt the loss of. We both remained enraptured and silent, gazing on one another like two people who meet for the first time, and seek in each other's faces some

thing which makes it easier to recall the forgotten past. At last I greeted her by saying "Thou oughtest to be mine." . . . I uttered the bold words in Italian, yet my insolence was magnetic. I had formed a tie, pronounced a decree which death alone could annul.

This strange yet noble romance throws a true light upon Garibaldi's character, and enables us to see the man. In 1848 his brilliant campaign in Uruguay was over; finding that nothing remained for him but the machina

tions of diplomacy, he gathered his bravest spirits together and set sail for Italy. Sixty-three of us left the banks of La Plata," he wrote; that little band was soon weakened by desertion and disease, but drew a few more reckless comrades to its ranks. Finding the terror-stricken towns of Italy a hopeless starting-place, the Garibaldians went into the fastnesses of the mountains near Como. Here their leader carried out a series of guerrilla engagements, and sought by perilous adventures to awaken enthusiasm in the apathetic and frightened Italian peasantry, who, numbed by oppression, dreaded his approach.

But failure and defeat, the horrors of fever, and even his heroic wife's sufferings were powerless to check the great patriot. The vision of a liberated and united

Italy dominated his soul.

We almost seem familiar with the fascinating, tireless figure wearing a red tunic with flaps and a little black sugar-loaf cap decorated with ostrich feathers pressed down upon the flaming, piercing eyes. "I saw him," wrote a celebrated writer of that time, "spring forward with his drawn sword shouting a popular hymn. In the thick of the mêlée he sang and struck about him with his heavy cavalry sabre, which next day was seen to be covered with blood." Small wonder that such a leader should eventually arouse popular enthusiasm, or that a character once tarnished by contumely should become the idol of romantic youth. In February 1849, Garibaldi proclaimed the short-lived Roman Republic, for which he had struggled so fiercely against the forces of Austria and Napoleonic France, and, indeed, most of the Powers of Europe, which resented the idea of United Italy. But his success was transitory; within a few months he and his little band of patriots had to surrender the citadel of Rome into the hands of the enemy.

Then through a series of terrible hardships, amid which he lost the guiding star of his existence, his noble and devoted wife, we see the devotee of Italy, on the verge of ruin and despair, fighting, marching, fever-stricken, pursued by relentless enemies, until at length as an exile,

he finds for a space a quiet home with friends in Tangiers. But even here the fever of restlessness was strongly upon him, and he began life again as a sailor, visiting Panama, Greece, and many other lands in the humble capacity of a paid servant. Yet when five years of exile and humiliation had passed, he found himself summoned by Count Cavour to membership of a Sardinian Cabinet, and once more he was in the stress of political and military life, leading a small but gallant band of men in an apparently hopeless cause the liberation of Italy from her external and internal enemies.

But the great day, the forerunner of that yet more glorious one when twenty-two millions of Italians formed by their own will "Italy one and Indivisible," dawned on the weary fighters at last, and on September 7, 1860, Garibaldi, accompanied by a small staff, passed in uninterrupted triumph through the midst of the Bourbon troops who still occupied Naples; within a month the decisive victory of Caserta Vecchia terminated a glorious campaign, and made Victor Emanuel King of Italy. But the insistent cry of battle had not as yet sounded its last note for Garibaldi; for now, as the leader of the King of Italy's troops, he had to withstand the united armies of France and Austria in the Tyrol.

Indeed, it would seem as if his tireless sword was never to rest in its sheath until age and the great peace-bringer compelled him to lay it down for ever. At the request of his late enemies, the French, he led a company of Italian troops against the Prussians, and in spite of advancing years and weakened energies he brought no little help to his ally's despairing and beaten forces, whose republican beliefs and tendencies had won his sympathies.

And now for the few years which yet remained to him he set his mind to the betterment of his beloved country, urging upon the people the importance of social improvement and the necessity of peaceful agricultural pursuits; he gave them as model the British nation, which he so passionately cccii-2118-June '07

2 R

admired. But "the loving lion heart," as Italians fondly name it, was fast approaching its last hour, and the spirit of the patriot, worn out by adventure, lay in hourly expectation of the final summons. All Italy, indeed every patriot in the world, mourned the loss of the man who, in spite of his failings and his romantic and (since his first wife's death) unconventional domestic relations, embodied most of the noblest qualities of manhood.

Italy owes him an everlasting debt, and we, in company with his devotees, that band of Garibaldians who year by year, each wearing a tiny silver lion as badge, go forth to pay their homage at his tomb in Nice, must render him his due guerdon of praise.

GWENDOLINE PERKS.

Charcoal Burning

T is an ancient craft that of the charcoal burners,

providing a picturesque and free life, for these men spend the greater part of their time far from the haunts of men, deep in the heart of the woods.

There are not now many parts of England where charcoal burning is carried on to any great extent. "One Purkiss"-perhaps a descendant of the historic personage of the same profession who bore the body of William Rufus to Winchester for burial-still burns charcoal in the heart of the New Forest, and there are other isolated spots, scattered up and down the country, where the industry survives. In the Furness district of the English Lake country charcoal is still made on a large scale. In and around Newby Bridge, Lake side, Haverthwaite, on the shores of Coniston, a well-wooded