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DIVINITY SCHOOL
TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY

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bookes bv William Koecor Cljaptr

ITALICA: Studies in Italian Life and Letters.
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ITALICA

ITALICA

STUDIES IN ITALIAN LIFE AND LETTEES

BY
WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER
MEMBER OF THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY
CAVALIERE DELL' ORDINE DELLA CORONA d' ITALIA

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
W&e fttfcertf&e pre&f, Camfcrttffle
1908

COPYRIGHT igo8 BY WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published April iqoS

HARRISON OTIS APTHORP

PREFACE
In gathering into a volume these bye-
products of the past ten or twelve years, I
am not unmindful of their fugitive charac
ter. But even fugitives may be message-
bearers. And there are some subjects which
must be treated swiftly or not at all, if the
passing aspect is to be caught with the fresh
ness, vividness, and bias which belong to it.
Several of the following papers contain
information about contemporary Italians and
the recent conditions of Italy that may not
be easily accessible elsewhere to readers in
English. Others record friendships, personal
or literary. Others, again, spring out of en
thusiasms, still unquenched, or were inspired
by some feature of that Enchanted Land,
whose beauty is inexhaustible and whose
boundless interests touch, and will always
touch, men and women who perceive the
deepest concerns of the human soul.
As a painter takes into account the place
where his picture is to hang, so I observed
carefully, in preparing several of these papers,

viii PREFACE
the special purpose or the limits set for each.
Thus, the essay on Senator Fogazzaro was
intended literally as an introduction of him
to American readers, and not as an elaborate
critical analysis of his work. So, too, the
studies of Italy in 1903 and in 1907 aim at
setting forth the usually neglected side — the
side of progress and of hope — in the condi
tion of the country and of its people. These
studies, I may add, written after patient in
quiry, represent, in solution, not merely my
own investigations, but views stored up dur
ing many talks with some of the persons,
scattered from Turin to Naples, whose opin
ions carry the greatest weight among their
countrymen, and who are regarded as the
spokesmen of their respective causes.
For permission to reprint the essays in
this volume, I have to thank Messrs. G. P.
Putnam's Sons, and the proprietors of the
Atlantic Monthly, the Century Magazine,
Lippincott's Magazine, the North Ameri
can Review, the World's Work, the Boston
Transcript, and the Nation. W. R. T.
Cambridge, Massachusetts
January 4, 1908.

CONTENTS
Fogazzaro and his Masterpiece .... 1
Venetian Legends and Pageants ... 29
Mazzini's Centenary  61
Dante in America  75
Giordano Bruno's "Expulsion of the Beast
Triumphant "  99
Countess Martinengo Cesaresco .... 141
Leopardi's Home  159
The Election of a Pope  173
Thirty Years of Italian Progress . . . 197
Luigi Chiala  231
Dante as Lyric Poet  243
Cardinal Hohenlohe — Liberal .... 285
Italy in 1907  305
Giosue Carducci  347

FOGAZZARO AND HIS MASTERPIECE

FOGAZZARO AND HIS MASTERPIECE'

Senator Fogazzaro, in "The Saint," has
confirmed the impression of his five-and-
twenty years' career as a novelist, and, thanks
to the extraordinary power and pertinence of
this crowning work, he has suddenly become
an international celebrity. The myopic censors
of the Index have assured the widest circu
lation of this book by condemning it as heret
ical. In the few months since its publication
it has been read by hundreds of thousands
of Italians ; it has appeared in French trans
lation in the Revue des Deux Mondes and
in German in the Hochland ; and it has
been the storm-centre of religious and liter
ary debate. Now it will be sought by a still
wider circle, eager to see what the doctrines
are, written by the leading Catholic layman
in Italy, at which the Papal advisers have
1 Introduction to the English translation of The Saint.
Reprinted by permission of Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons.
North American Review, August, 1905.

4 FOGAZZARO AND HIS MASTERPIECE
taken fright. Time was when it was the
books of the avowed enemies of the Church
— of some mocking Voltaire, of some learned
Renan, of some impassioned Michelet — which
they thrust on the Index ; now they pillory
the Catholic layman with the largest follow
ing in Italy, one who has never wavered in
his devotion to the Church. Whatever the
political result of their action may be, they
have made the fortune of the book they hoped
to suppress ; and this is good, for " The
Saint " is a real addition to Italian literature.
Lovers of Italy have regretted that for
eigners should judge her contemporary ideals
and literary achievements by the brilliant
but lubricious and degenerate books of Ga-
briele d'Annunzio. Such books, the products
of disease no matter what language they may
be written in, quickly penetrate from country
to country. Like epidemics they sweep up
and down the world, requiring no passports,
respecting no frontiers, while benefits travel
slowly from people to people, and often lose
much in the passage. D'Annunzio, speaking
the universal language, — Sin, — has been
accepted as the typical Italian by foreigners
who know Carducci merely as a name, and

FOGAZZARO AND HIS MASTERPIECE 5
have perhaps never heard of Fogazzaro. Yet
it is in these men that the better genius of
modern Italy has recently expressed itself.
Carducci's international reputation as the
foremost living poet in recent Europe and
a literary critic of the first class gains slowly,
but its future is secure. Borne by the wider
circulating medium of fiction, Fogazzaro' s
name is a household word in thousands of
Italian families, and he combines in his genius
so many rare and important strands that the
durability of his literary renown cannot be
questioned. II
Antonio Fogazzaro, the most eminent Ital
ian novelist since Manzoni, was born at
Vicenza on March 25, 1842. He was happy
in his parents, his father, Mariano Fogaz
zaro, being a man of refined tastes and
sound learning, while his mother, Teresa
Barrera, united feminine sweetness with wit
and a warm heart. From childhood they in
fluenced all sides of his nature, and when
the proper time came they put him in charge
of a wise tutor, Professor Zanella, who seems
to have divined his pupil's talents and the

6 FOGAZZARO AND HIS MASTERPIECE
best way to cultivate them. Young Fogazzaro,
having completed his course in the classics,
went on to the study of the law, which he
pursued first in the University of Padua and
then at Turin, where his father had taken
up a voluntary exile. For Vicenza, during
the forties and fifties, lay under Austrian
subjection, and any Italian who desired to
breathe freely in Italy had to seek the liberal
air of Piedmont.
Fogazzaro received his diploma in due
season, and began to practise as advocate,
but in that casual way common to young
men who know that their real leader is not
Themis but Apollo. Erelong he abandoned
the bar and devoted himself with equal en
thusiasm to music and poetry, for both of
which he had unusual aptitude. Down to 1881
he printed chiefly volumes of verse which
gave him a genuine if not popular reputa
tion. In that year he brought out his first
romance, " Malombra," and from time to time
during the past quarter of a century he has
followed it with "Daniele Cortis," "II
Mistero del Poeta," "Piccolo Mondo Antico,"
"Piccolo Mondo Moderno," and finally, in
the autumn of 1905, " II Santo." This list

FOGAZZARO AND HIS MASTERPIECE 7
by no means exhausts his productivity, for
he has worked in many fields, but it includes
the books by which, gradually at first, and
with triumphant strides of late, he has come
into great fame in Italy and has risen into
the small group of living authors who write
for a cosmopolitan public.
For many years past Signor Fogazzaro has
dwelt in his native Vicenza, the most hon
ored of her citizens, round whom has grown
up a band of eager disciples, who look to
him for guidance not merely in matters in
tellectual or esthetic, but in the conduct of
life. He has conceived of the career of the
man of letters as a great opportunity, not as
a mere trade. Nothing could show better his
high seriousness than his waiting until the
age of thirty-nine before publishing his first
novel, unless it be the restraint which led
him, after having embarked on the career of
novelist, to devote four or five years on the
average to his studies in fiction. So his books
are ripe, the fruits of a deliberate and rich
nature, and not the windfalls of a mere liter
ary trick. And now, at a little more than
threescore years, the publication of "The
Saint " confirms all his previous work, and

8 FOGAZZARO AND HIS MASTERPIECE
entitles him to rank among the few literary
masters of the time. Ill
Many elements in "The Saint" testify to
its importance ; but these would not make it
a work of art. And after all it is as a work
of art that it first appeals to readers, who
may care little for its religious purport. It is
a great novel — so great, that, after living
with its characters, we cease to regard it as
a novel at all. It keeps our suspense on the
stretch through nearly five hundred pages, —
Will the Saint triumph ? Will love victori
ously claim its own ? We hurry on, at the
first reading, for the solution ; then we go
back and discover in it another world of pro
found interest. That is one of the true signs
of a masterpiece.
In English we have only " John Inglesant"
and "Robert Elsmere" to compare it with ;
but such a comparison, though obviously
imperfect, shows at once how easily " The
Saint " surpasses them both, not merely by
the greater significance of its central theme,
but by its subtler psychology, its wider hori
zon, its more various contacts with life.

FOGAZZARO AND HIS MASTERPIECE 9
Benedetto, the Saint, is a new character in
fiction, a mingling of St. Francis and Dr.
Dollinger, a man of to-day in intelligence, a
medieval in faith. Nothing could be finer
than the way in which Signor Fogazzaro
depicts his zeal, his ecstasies, his visions, his
depressions, his doubts ; shows the physical
and mental reactions ; gives us, in a word, a
study in religious morbid psychology — for
say what we will, such abnormalities are
morbid — without rival in fiction. We follow
Benedetto's spiritual fortunes with as much
eagerness as if they were a love-story.
And then there is the love-story. Where
shall one turn to find another like it ? Jeanne
seldom appears in the foreground, but we
feel from first to last the magnetism of her
presence. There is always the possibility that
at sight or thought of her, Benedetto may
be swept back from his ascetic vows to the
life of passion. Their first meeting in the
monastery chapel is a masterpiece of dramatic
climax, and Benedetto's temptation in her
carriage, after the feverish interview with the
cabinet officer, is a marvel of psychological
subtlety. Both scenes illustrate Signor Fogaz-
zaro's power to achieve the highest artistic

10 FOGAZZARO AND HIS MASTERPIECE
results without exaggeration. This natural
ness is the more remarkable because the char
acter of a saint is unnatural according to our
modern point of view. We have a healthy
distrust of ascetics, whose anxiety over their
soul's condition we properly regard as a form
of egotism ; and we know how easily the unco'
guid become prigs. Fogazzaro's hero is
neither an egotist of the ordinary cloister
variety, nor a prig. That our sympathy goes
out to Jeanne and not to him shows that we
instinctively resent the sacrifice of the deep
est human cravings to sacerdotal prescriptions.
The highest ideal of holiness which medievals
could conceive does not satisfy us.
Why did Signor Fogazzaro in choosing his
hero revert to that outworn type ? He sees
very clearly how many of the Catholic prac
tices are what he calls " ossified organisms."
Why did he set up a lay monk as a model
for twentieth-century Christians who long
to devote their lives to uplifting their fellow
men? Did he not note the artificiality of
asceticism — the waste of energy that comes
with fasts, with mortification of the flesh,
and with morbidly pious excitement ? When
asked these questions by his followers he

FOGAZZARO AND HIS MASTERPIECE 11
replied that he did not mean to preach asceti
cism as a rule for all ; but that in individual
cases, like Benedetto's, for instance, it was
a psychological necessity. Herein Signor
Fogazzaro certainly discloses his profound
knowledge of the Italian heart — of that heart
from which in its early medieval vigor sprang
the Roman religion, with its message of renun
ciation. Even the Renaissance, and the subse
quent period of skepticism, have not blotted
out those tendencies that date back more than
a thousand years ; so that to-day, if an Italian
is engulfed in a passion of self-sacrifice, he nat
urally thinks first of asceticism as the method
for attaining it. Among Northern races a
similar religious experience does not suggest
hair shirts and debilitating pious orgies (ex
cept among Puseyites and similar survivals
from a different epoch) ; it suggests active
work, like that of General Booth of the Sal
vation Army ; or social service without any
necessary church inspiration or direction.
No one can gainsay, however, the superb
artistic effects which Signor Fogazzaro attains
through his Saint's varied experiences. He
causes to pass before you all classes of society,
— from the poorest peasant of the Subiaco

12 FOGAZZARO AND HIS MASTERPIECE
hills, to duchesses and the Pope himself, —
some incredulous, some mocking, some de
vout, some hesitating, some spellbound, in
the presence of a holy man. The fashionable
ladies wish to take him up and make a lion
of him ; the superstitious kiss the hem of his
garment and believe that he can work mir
acles, or, in a sudden revulsion, they jeer at
him and drive him away with stones. And
what a panorama of ecclesiastical life in Italy !
What a collection of priests and monks and
prelates, and with what inevitableness one
after another turns the cold shoulder on the
volunteer who dares to assert that the test of
religion is conduct ! There is an air of mystery,
of intrigue, of secret messages passing to and
fro — the atmosphere of craft which has hung
round the ecclesiastical institution so many,
many centuries. Few scenes in modern romance
can match Benedetto'sinterview with the Pope
— the pathetic figure who, you feel, is in sad
truth a prisoner, not of the Itahan Govern
ment, but of the crafty, able, remorseless
cabal of cardinals who surround him, dog
him with eavesdroppers, edit his briefs, check
his benign impulses, and effectually prevent
the truth from penetrating to his lonely study.

FOGAZZARO AND HIS MASTERPIECE 13
Benedetto's appeal to the Pope to heal the
four wounds from which the Church is lan
guishing is a model of impassioned argument.
The four wounds, be it noted, are the " spirit
of falsehood," " the spirit of clerical domina
tion," " the spirit of avarice," and " the spirit
of immobility." The Pope replies in a tone of
resignation ; he does not disguise his power-
lessness ; he hopes to meet Benedetto again
— in heaven ! rv
" The Saint " may be considered under
many aspects — indeed, the critics, in their
efforts to classify it, have already fallen out
over its real character. Some regard it as a
thinly disguised statement of a creed ; others,
as a novel pure and simple ; others, as a
campaign document (in the broadest sense) ;
others, as no novel at all but a dramatic sort
of confession. The Jesuits have had it put on
the Index; the Christian Democrats have
accepted it as their gospel : yet Jesuits and
Christian Democrats both profess to be Cath
olics. Such a divergence of opinion proves
conclusively that the book possesses unusual
power and that it is many-sided.

14 FOGAZZARO AND HIS MASTERPIECE
Instead of pitching upon one of these views
as right and declaring all the rest to be wrong,
it is more profitable to try to discover in the
book itself what grounds each class of critics
finds to justify its particular and exclusive
verdict. On the face of it what does the book say ?
This is what it says : That Piero Maironi,
a man of the world, cultivated far beyond his
kind, after having had a vehement love-affair
is stricken with remorse, " experiences relig
ion," becomes penitent, is filled with a strange
zeal — an ineffable comfort — and devotes
himself, body, heart, and soul to the worship
of God and the succor of his fellow men. As
Benedetto, the lay brother, he serves the
peasant populations among the Sabine Hills,
or moves on his errands of hope and mercy
among the poor of Rome. Everybody re
cognizes him as a holy man — "a saint."
Perhaps, if he had restricted himself to tak
ing only soup or simple medicines to the
hungry and sick, he would have been un
molested in his philanthropy ; but after his
conversion he had devoured the Scriptures
and studied the books of the Fathers, until
the spirit of the early, simple, untheological

FOGAZZARO AND HIS MASTERPIECE 15
Church had poured into him. It brought
a message the truth of which so stirred him
that he could not rest until he imparted it to
his fellows. He preached righteousness, — the
supremacy of conduct over ritual, — love as
the test and goal of life ; but always with full
acknowledgment of Mother Church as the
way of salvation. Indeed, he seems neither to
doubt the impregnability of the foundations
of Christianity, nor the validity of the Petrine
corner-stone; taking these for granted, he
aims to live the Christian life in every act, in
every thought. The superstructure — the
practices of the Catholic Church to-day, the
failures and sins of clerical society, the rigid
ecclesiasticism — these he must, in loyalty to
fundamental truths, criticise, and if need
be, condemn, where they interfere with the
exercise of pure religion. But Benedetto en
gages very Little in controversy ; his method
is to glorify the good, sure that the good
requires only to be revealed in all its beauty
and charm in order to draw irresistibly to
itself souls that, for lack of vision, have
been pursuing the mediocre or the bad.
Yet these utterances, so natural to Bene
detto, awaken the suspicion of his superiors,

16 FOGAZZARO AND HIS MASTERPIECE
who — we cannot say without cause — scent
heresy in them. Good works, righteous con
duct — what are these in comparison with
blind subscription to orthodox formulas?
Benedetto is persecuted not by an obviously
brutal or sanguinary persecution, — although
it might have come to that except for a cata
strophe of another sort, — but by the very
finesse of persecution. The sagacious politi
cians of the Vatican, inheritors of the accum
ulated craft of a thousand years, know too
much to break a butterfly on a wheel, to make
a martyr of an inconvenient person whom
they can be rid of quietly. Therein lies the
tragedy of Benedetto's experience, so far at
least as we regard him, or as he thought
himself, an instrument for the regeneration
of the Church.
On the face of it, therefore, " The Saint "
is the story of a man with a passion for doing
good in the most direct and human way, who
found the Church in which he believed, the
Church which existed ostensibly to do good
according to the direct and human ways of
Jesus Christ, thwarting him at every step.
Here is a conflict, let us remark in passing,
worthy to be the theme of a great tragedy.

FOGAZZARO AND HIS MASTERPIECE 17
Does not Antigone rest on a similar conflict
between Antigone's simple human way of
showing her sisterly affection and the rigid
formalism of the orthodoxy of her day ?
V
Or, look next at " The Saint " as a cam
paign document, the aspect under which it
has been most hotly discussed in Italy. It
has been accepted as the platform, or even
the gospel of the Christian Democrats. Who
are they ? They are a body of the younger
generation of Italians, among them being a
considerable number of religious, who yearn
to put into practice the concrete exhortations
of the Evangelists. They are really carried
forward by that ethical wave which has swept
over Western Europe and America during
the past generation, and has resulted in
"slumming," in practical social service, in
all kinds of efforts to improve the material
and moral condition of the poor, quite irre
spective of sectarian or even of Christian in
itiative. This great movement began, indeed,
outside of the churches, among men and
women who felt grievously the misery of their
fellow creatures and their own obligation to do

18 FOGAZZARO AND HIS MASTERPIECE
what they could to relieve it. From them, it
has reached the churches, and, last of all, the
Catholic Church in Italy. No doubt the spread
of Socialism, with its superficial resemblance
to some of the features of primitive Christian
ity, has somewhat modified the character of
this ethical movement; in fact, the Italian
Christian Democrats have been confounded, by
persons with only a blurred sense of outlines,
with the Socialists themselves. Whatever they
may become, however, they now profess views
in regard to property which separate them
by an unbridgable chasm from the Socialists.
In their zeal for their fellow men, and es
pecially for the poor and downtrodden classes,
they find the old agencies of charity insuffi
cient. To visit the sick, to comfort the dying,
to dole out soup at the convent gate, is well,
but it offers no remedy for the causes behind
poverty and behind remediable suffering.
Only through better laws, strictly adminis
tered, can effectual help come. So the Chris
tian Democrats deemed it indispensable that
they should be free to influence legislation.
At this point, however, the stubborn pro
hibition of the Vatican confronted them.
Since 1870, when the Italians entered Rome

FOGAZZARO AND HIS MASTERPIECE 19
and established there the capital of United
Italy, the Vatican had forbidden faithful
Catholics to take part, either as electors or as
candidates, in any of the national elections,
the fiction being that, were they to go to the
polls or to be elected to the Chamber of
Deputies, they would thereby recognize the
Royal Government which had destroyed
the temporal power of the Pope. Then what
would become of that other fiction — the
Pope's prisonership in the Vatican — which
was to prove for thirty years the best-paying
asset among the Papal investments ? So long
as the Curia maintained an irreconcilable
attitude towards the Kingdom, it could count
on kindling by irritation the sympathy and
zeal of Catholics all over the world. In Italy
itself many devout Catholics had long pro
tested that, as it was through the acquisition
of temporal power that the Church had be
come worldly and corrupt, so through the loss
of temporal power it would regain its spiritual
health and efficiency. They urged that the
Holy Father could perform his religious func
tions best if he were not involved in political
intrigues and governmental perplexities. No
one would assert that Jesus could have better

20 FOGAZZARO AND HIS MASTERPIECE
fulfilled his mission if he had been King
of Judea ; why, then, should the Pope, the
Vicar of Jesus, require worldly pomp and
power that his Master disdained ?
Neither Pius IX nor Leo XIII, however,
was open to arguments of this kind. Incident
ally, it was clear that if Catholics as such
were kept away from the polls, nobody could
say precisely just how many they numbered.
The Vatican constantly asserted that its ad
herents were in a majority — a claim which, if
true, meant that the Kingdom of Italy rested
on a very precarious basis. But other Catholics
sincerely deplored the harm which the irre
concilable attitude of the Curia caused to re
ligion. They regretted to see an affair purely
political treated as religious ; to have the belief
in the Pope's temporal power virtually set up
as a part of their creed. The Lord's work was
waiting to be done; yet they who ought to
be foremost in it were handicapped. Other
agencies had stepped in ahead of them. The
Socialists were making converts by myriads ;
skeptics and cynics were sowing hatred not
of the Church merely but of all religion. It
was time to abandon "the prisoner of the
Vatican " humbug, time to permit zealous

FOGAZZARO AND HIS MASTERPIECE 21
Catholics, whose orthodoxy no one could ques
tion, to serve God and their fellow men accord
ing to the needs and methods of the present
age. At last, in the autumn of 1905, the new
Pope, Pius X, gave the faithful tacit permis
sion, if he did not officially command them,
to take part in the elections. Various motives
were assigned for this change of front. Did
even the Ultramontanes realize that, since
France had repealed the Concordat, they
could find their best support in Italy? Or
were they driven by the instinct of self-pre
servation to accept the constitutional govern
ment as a bulwark against the incoming tide
of Anarchism, Socialism, and the other sub
versive forces? The Church is the most con
servative element in Christendom ; in a new
upheaval it will surely rally to the side of any
other element which promises to save society
from chaos. These motives have been cited
to explain the recent action of the Holy See,
but there were high-minded Catholics who
liked to think that the controlling reason was
religious — that the Pope and his counselors
had at last been persuaded that the old policy
of abstention wrought irreparable harm to

22 FOGAZZARO AND HIS MASTERPIECE
the religious life of millions of the faithful in
Italy. However this may be, Senator Fogazzaro's
book, filled with the Liberal and Christian
spirit, has been eagerly caught up as the
mouthpiece of the Christian Democrats, and
indeed of all intelligent Catholics in Italy
who have always held that religion and patri
otism are not incompatible, and that the
Church has most injured itself in prolonging
the antagonism. In this respect, " The Saint,"
like " Uncle Tom's Cabin " and similar books
which crystallize an entire series of ideals
or sum up a crisis, leaped immediately into
importance, and seems certain to enjoy, for
a long time to come, the prestige that crowns
such works. Putting it on the Index could
only add to its power.
But readers who imagine that this aspect
measures the significance of " The Saint "
have read the surface only. The probability
of restoring friendly relations between Church
and State is a matter of concern to everybody
in Italy : but of even greater concern are the
implications which issue from Signor Fogaz
zaro's thought. He is an evolutionist; he
respects the higher criticism; he knows that

FOGAZZARO AND HIS MASTERPIECE 23
religions, like states and secular institutions,
have their birth and growth and inevitable
decay. So Catholicism must take its course
in the human circuit, and expect sooner or
later to pass away. This would be the natural
deduction to draw from the premise of evolu
tion. Signor Fogazzaro, however, does not
draw it. He conceives that Catholicism con
tains a final deposit of truth which can neither
be superseded, wasted, nor destroyed.
" My friend," says Benedetto, " you say,
'We have reposed in the shade of this tree
but now its bark cracks and dries ; the tree
will die ; let us go in search of other shade.'
The tree will not die. If you had ears, you
would hear the movement of the new bark
forming, which will have its period of life,
will crack, will dry in its turn, because another
bark shall replace it. The tree does not die,
the tree grows."
Through this parable, Signor Fogazzaro
reveals his attitude, which, it appears, does
not differ from that proposed by many
Anglicans and other Protestants towards
their respective churches. Herein his Saint
takes on the largest significance. He is a re
ligious who constantly praises Reason, and

24 FOGAZZARO AND HIS MASTERPIECE
urges his hearers to trust Reason ; but who,
at a given moment, falls back on Faith,
cleaves to Faith, insists that Faith alone brings
its own warrant. Hence arise paradoxes, hence
contradictions which elude a reasonable solu
tion. For instance, in one discourse Benedetto
says : " The Catholic Church, which proclaims
itself the fountain of truth, opposes to-day the
search for Truth when it is carried on on its
own foundations, on the holy books, on the
dogmas, on its asserted infallibility. For us
this means that it has no longer faith in itself.
The Catholic Church which proclaims itself
the minister of Life, to-day shackles and
stifles whatever lives youthfully within it,
and to-day it props itself on all its decadent
and antiquated usages." Yet a little farther
on he exclaims : " But what sort of faith is
yours, if you talk of leaving the Church be
cause certain antiquated doctrines of its heads,
certain decrees of the Roman congregations,
certain ways in a pontiff's government offend
you ? What sort of sons are you who talk of
renouncing your mother because she wears
a garment which does not please you ? Is the
mother's heart changed by a garment?
When, bowed over her, weeping, you tell

FOGAZZARO AND HIS MASTERPIECE 25
your infirmities to Christ and Christ heals
you, do you think about the authenticity of
a passage in St. John, about the real author
of the Fourth Gospel, or about the two
Isaiahs ? When you commune with Christ in
the sacrament, do the decrees of the Index
or the Holy Office disturb you ? When, giv
ing yourself up to Mother Church, you enter
the shadows of death, is the peace she breathes
in you less sweet because a Pope is opposed
to Christian Democracy ? "
So far, therefore, as Fogazzaro is the
spokesman of loyal yet intelligent Catholics,
he shows that among them also the process
of theological solution has been going on.
Like Protestants who still profess creeds
which they do not believe, these intelligent
Catholics have to resort to strange devices —
to devices which to a looker-on appear un-
candid if not insincere — in order to patch up
a truce between their reason and their faith.
This insincerity is the blight of the present
age. It is far more serious than indifferent-
ism, or than the open scoffing of the eight
eenth-century philosophers. So long as it lasts,
no deep, general religious regeneration will
be possible. Be it remarked, however, that

26 FOGAZZARO AND HIS MASTERPIECE
Signor Fogazzaro himself is unaware of his
ambiguous position ; being still many removes
from Jowett, the typical British Mr. Facing-
both-Ways of the epoch. VI
In conclusion, we go back to the book
as a work of art, meaning by art not mere
artifice, but that power which takes the fleet
ing facts of life and endues them with per
manence, by revealing their deeper purports,
their order, and their beauty. In this sense,
Signor Fogazzaro is a great artist. He has
the gift of the masters which enables him to
rise without effort to the level of the tragic
crises. He has also a vein of humor, without
which such a theme as his could hardly be
successfully handled. And although there is,
by measure, much serious talk, yet so skilfully
does he bring in minor characters, with their
transient sidelights, that the total impression
is that of a book in which much happens. No
Realist could exceed the fidelity with which
Signor Fogazzaro outlines a landscape, or
fixes a passing scene ; yet being an Idealist
through and through, he has produced a mas
terpiece in which the imagination is sovereign.

FOGAZZARO AND HIS MASTERPIECE 27
Such a book, sprung from "no vain or
shallow thought," holding in solution the
hopes of many earnest souls, spreading before
us the mighty spiritual conflict between
Medievalism still triumphant and the young
undaunted Powers of Light, showing us with
wonderful lifeHkeness the tragedy of man's
baffled endeavor to establish the Kingdom
of God on earth, and of woman's unquench
able love, is a great fact in the world-literature
of our time.

VENETIAN LEGENDS AND
PAGEANTS

VENETIAN LEGENDS AND
PAGEANTS *
In our grandfathers' day few Yankee sea-
captains returned home without bringing back
some curiosity — a Buddhist idol, a South-
Sea Islander's weapons, a rare piece of Chinese
porcelain or silk — to remind them of their
voyages. So, from the ninth to the thirteenth
century, every thrifty Venetian who traded
to the Levant tucked away in his cargo the
leg or arm, or at least a knuckle, of some
saint, with which he enriched his parish church
and assured to himself and his family a safe
passage to heaven. Computing by the sum of
such relics as remain, the whole number which
passed from the East into Western Europe
must have been enormous. In the earlier
times it was possible to secure at reasonable
rates the entire body of a first-class saint.
But with the Crusades the stream of pur
chasers increased a thousand-fold, and the
canny Greek, who did a thriving business in
these commodities, might get as high a price
1 Lippincott's Magazine, November, 1904.

32 VENETIAN LEGENDS AND PAGEANTS
for a few hairs or the thumb-nail of a third-
century martyr as his grandfather got for an
entire apostle. The bodies of the favorite and
most potent saints having long before been
disposed of, dealers filled further orders more
parsimoniously, doling out fragments and
small bones, unconcernedly duplicating and
multiplying until, if all their wares could be
united, we should find that John the Baptist
had more arms than Briareus and Mary Mag
dalene more feet than a centipede.
But we shall miss a true understanding of
that age unless we check our reason and sense
of humor and try to see the relic-worshiping
medievals (whose progeny still survives) in a
sympathetic light. Relics were an indispensa
ble element in their religious practices. Every
city must have its supernatural patron, every
church its treasure latent with miraculous po
tentialities. To possess such a treasure became
one of the chief objects of zeal, and so keen
was the competition that the rules of common
honesty had no influence over the relic-hunt
ers. Body-snatching, against which a preju
dice has recently arisen, was the noblest of
professions, in which kings, knights, and
prelates zealously engaged. To rob a Saracen

VENETIAN LEGENDS AND PAGEANTS 33
of a piece of the True Cross was an act of
the highest virtue ; to steal a saint's mummy
from a schismatic Greek was not ghoulish but
devout. In this business the Venetians displayed
their characteristic combination of piety and
practicalness. Their commercial relations
gave them so great an advantage in the traffic
of relics that they must have made many for
tunes in it. For a relic had its market value,
which those sharp traders knew how to ap
praise as exactly as if they were quoting the
price of corn. Thus the Crown of Thorns was
pawned for seven thousand ducats, and such
rehgious assets were deemed a legitimate part
of a conqueror's plunder. As the medieval
was credulous, he never questioned the genu
ineness of his holy spoils. An autograph cer
tificate, reading " This is my head," signed
by John the Baptist and witnessed by a dozen
scribes, was not needed to convince folk that
already believed with an absolute faith and
had neither the desire nor the knowledge to
make critical tests. By theft or purchase they
eagerly got possession of the pious frauds
which the Greeks manufactured ; and if those
relics necessarily encouraged a gross and ma-

34 VENETIAN LEGENDS AND PAGEANTS
terialistic worship, they proved in many cases
so lucrative an investment that the city or the
church which was so fortunate as to own a
first-class relic was enriched by it for centuries.
Venice was already unique in site, in gov
ernment, and in independence before she se
cured in St. Mark such a protector as no other
nation had, and not merely a patron saint,
but the head of her Church, one as author
itative as Peter, under whose leadership she
successfully resisted the domination of the
Petrine Pope. St. Theodore, one of the war
rior saints of Byzantine Christians, was her
earliest patron, and his statue, which repre
sents him treading under foot a crocodile-
dragon, still stands on one of the columns in
the Piazzetta. Only at the beginning of the
ninth century did the Venetians supersede
him by St. Mark, who, being an Evangelist,
outshone Theodore in glory and matched the
ambition of the growing Republic.
Rustico of Torcello, Buono of Malamocco
and Stauracio, merchants who had gone to
Alexandria on a Venetian ship, felt a great
desire to carry the body of St. Mark back
to Venice. Accordingly, they won over the
guardian of his sepulchre, took the body,

VENETIAN LEGENDS AND PAGEANTS 35
and put it in a basket, which they covered
with cabbages and pork, and then hurried to
their ship. " And because they doubted the
pagans," says the chronicler Da Canale, "they
laid the holy body between two quarters of
pork and fastened it up on the ship's mast :
and this they did because the pagans would
not touch pork."
They sailed homeward, and after escaping
shipwreck through the miraculous interven
tion of the Saint, they reached Venice on the
last day of January, 827. Not long afterward
Mark became the patron of the Repubhc.
The myth-making instinct of the time in
vented a prophecy to show that he had been
predestined to watch over the Venetians. A
vineyard near the later church of St. Francis
was pointed out as the very spot on which the
Saint, overtaken by storm on his voyage from
Aquileia, had landed, and had met Christ,
who said to him, " Peace to thee, Mark, my
Evangelist." Venice adopted that phrase as
her motto, and believed implicitly in the truth
of the incident.
Mark was no slothful saint, content to re
ceive the adoration of his flock while he lolled
invisible in celestial ease. He was a doer, a

36 VENETIAN LEGENDS AND PAGEANTS
helper, a benefactor, unceasingly showering
his favors on his chosen flock. Through
him the Venetians prospered in their State
and in their commerce : he was their great
ally, insuring victory in war. He not only
allowed them to deduce his devotion to them
through these general results, but he often
vouchsafed to them special proof of his more
than paternal care. After his body had been
brought from Alexandria it was put in the
church, "not where every one knew," says the
chronicler, " but very privately in a certain
place. Then it happened that they who knew
the place where it was put died without mak
ing it known to others. Whereat the Venetians
grieved sorely, and they prayed the Patriarch
and Bishops that they should take means to
discover where the body of Monsignor St.
Mark was resting. Then Monsignor the
Patriarch caused every one to fast three days
on bread and water, and thereafter they
formed a procession, and whilst the Patri
arch was chanting mass a stone dropped out
of the column where Monsignor St. Mark
was reposing. Then the Venetians saw the
precious body of the Evangelist."
Two other legends of St. Mark became

VENETIAN LEGENDS AND PAGEANTS 37
embedded in the hearts of all Venetians,
legends which will be familiar to every vis
itor in Venice as long as the splendid can
vases on which the masters of the sixteenth
century painted them shall last.
The first, immortalized by Tintoret, shows
the Saint as the protector of his humblest
votary. A slave belonging to a nobleman of
Provence used constantly to pray to St. Mark.
His owner forbade him : the slave persisted,
and was condemned to be tortured. In the
picture, the executioner has bound him and
is just about to apply the torture, when
suddenly out of heaven St. Mark falls like
a thunderbolt upon the scene and frees his
worshiper. In the second story the unfailing devotion
of the Saint to the whole city is symboHzed
with all the definiteness of fact. On Febru
ary 25, 1340, when a great storm threatened
to inundate Venice, a fisherman was bidden
by a stranger to row from the Piazzetta to the
open sea. On the way they took in two other
passengers, and then, beyond the Lido, they
saw a ship laden with demons hurrying to
wards Venice. The stranger exorcised these
demons and they vanished; the tempest slack-

38 VENETIAN LEGENDS AND PAGEANTS
ened, the waves grew calm. When the stranger
returned to the quay he gave the fisherman
a ring and revealed to him that he was St.
Mark and his companions were St. George
and St. Nicholas. Giorgione has painted the
fisherman rowing the three Saints out to the
demon ship, and Paris Bordone has painted
him taking the ring to the Doge and telling
his story.
Of the many legends about other saints I
will recall here only one which, for its loveH-
ness, stays long in the memory. The Blessed
Countess Tagliapietra, as a little girl, had a
great passion for going to church. Her father
remonstrated, — possibly he saw that the
religious ecstasies harmed his high-strung
daughter, — but he could not persuade her
to be moderate. Accordingly, he bade the
gondoliers at the traghetto not to ferry her
across the Grand Canal. When she came, as
usual, to take passage for the Church of San
Vio, where she worshiped, and found no boat,
without hesitation she walked bravely on to
the water, which miraculously bore her up
till she reached the other side.
Dreams played an important part in the
earHer centuries at Venice, as they have

VENETIAN LEGENDS AND PAGEANTS 39
everywhere, when people have believed that
supernatural communications come most easily
during sleep. The church of Murano orig
inated in this way. The Virgin, appearing
to Otho the Great in his sleep, pointed out to
him a meadow at Murano carpeted with
scarlet lilies, and desired him to build there
a church in her honor. More wonderful still
was the vision vouchsafed to the priest Mauro,
soon after the founding of Torcello (a. d.
568). He saw God the Father, Christ, the
Virgin, and several saints, and was bidden to
build no fewer than five churches. John the
Baptist placed a bishop's ring on his finger
and a plan of a church in his hand, and when
he awoke both ring and plan were there. No
wonder that church-building flourished in an
age when a single priest in one night's dream
had warrant for erecting five churches ! And
what might not be expected of architecture
for which in its beginnings the highest celes
tial personages — too wise to trust imperfect
human architects — themselves furnished the
designs !
We must think of the medieval Venetian,
therefore, as living in a world of legend and
miracle and mystery. In what concerns his

40 VENETIAN LEGENDS AND PAGEANTS
daily affairs he is shrewd and prudent, as
hard-headed as the proverbial Yankee in
driving a bargain, and as tenacious as a
Scotchman in carrying out whatever he un
dertakes. He has also another self, which is
in constant communication with what he be
lieves to be the supernatural, a self in which
faith and credulity are one. But a passion
for beauty is common to both his natures.
He delights in festivals and pageants, through
which his imagination, remarkable beyond all
others for grace and color, expresses itself.
Let us witness some of the feasts which
became a part of the life of every Venetian.
Many of them are described by Da Canale,
that picturesque chronicler, clear of eye and
quaint of expression, who wrote about the
year 1275. This is his account of the way
in which the translation of St. Mark's body
to Venice was celebrated every year :
" On the vigil of Monsignor St. Mark there
comes by water a company of young men, and
when they have arrived at the Palace they
land and give their banners to little children,
and go two by two in front of the Church of
Monsignor St. Mark. And behind them come
trumpeters, and also youths bearing silver

VENETIAN LEGENDS AND PAGEANTS 41
plates laden with confections, and after these
come silver phials full of wine and gold and
silver cups borne by more youths; and then
come the priests chanting, clothed in pluvials
of gold samite. And they go one after another
to St. Mary who is called Formosa (the Beau
tiful), where they find ladies and damsels in
great number, and they give them confections
and wine to drink ; and to the prelates and
the clerics they give abundantly."
The ceremonies which Da Canale next de
scribes did not originate in honor of the Pa
tron Saint. In the earliest times it was the
custom for marriageable girls, each bringing
a little coffer containing her dower, to as
semble in the Church of St. Peter at Olivolo
on the second of February every year, and
thither went the young bachelors and chose
each his bride. The custom, reminding one of
the Asiatic traffic in female slaves, was doubt
less not so savage as it seems ; for probably
the young men and maidens had agreed be
forehand how they should pair, or their par
ents had done this for them, so that the festi
val really marked the formal betrothal. But
it happened, in 944, that while the brides were
in church, a band of Narentine pirates, row-

42 VENETIAN LEGENDS AND PAGEANTS
ing swiftly from ambush, landed at Olivolo,
rushed to the church, seized the young women
before help could arrive, and rowed off with
them at full speed. Not until reaching Caorle,
some forty miles away, did they stop. There,
as they were apportioning the damsels and
dowers, they were overtaken by a rescuing
party of Venetians, who slew the pirates and
brought home the brides.
For many centuries the anniversary of this
event was celebrated with increasing splendor.
The Guild of the Trunk-makers, who had
lent their boats to the rescuers, obtained as
a reward that the Doge should honor their
church, Santa Maria Formosa, with a visit on
the day of the festival. The curate of the
church offered him, in behalf of the guild,
oranges, muscatel, and two hats of gilded
straw. The substitution of twelve dolls,
dressed in bridal clothes and carried in state
in the procession, did not satisfy the people,
and twelve maids were accordingly chosen
each year to be the special Brides of St. Mark,
under the protection of the Doge. The festi
val, which originally coincided with the cele
bration of the translation of St. Mark's body,
came, by the addition of one ceremony after

VENETIAN LEGENDS AND PAGEANTS 43
another, to last a whole week, during which,
when the state functions were over, there fol
lowed regattas, dances, concerts, feasting, and
perhaps medieval mimes. Each ward, or even
each parish, had its own festivity. The Maries
were chosen by popular vote, and so the emu
lation in expense grew to be so excessive that
the government was obliged to restrict the
number of brides to four, to set a limit on
the cost of their apparel, and to raise by
special tax the sum needed for the week's
gala. Of military pageants we should have much
to say were we not restricting our survey to
those in which the pecuHar genius of the peo
ple and the State expressed itself. The depart
ure of the great fleet on some naval expedi
tion, when, after the Doge and his admirals
had heard mass at San Pietro, he received
from the hands of the Patriarch the gonfalon
of St. Mark, or the fleet's return, with many
prizes and prisoners and much spoil, were oc
casions which every Venetian had witnessed.
Sometimes, indeed, the Doge came not back,
and more than once but a remnant of the
fleet, shattered and vanquished, crept home
through the Lido channel : and then, instead

44 VENETIAN LEGENDS AND PAGEANTS
of rejoicing, there was wrath for those who
had dared to return alive and lamentation
for the dead. But more often the word was
victory, and the homing of the fleet meant
jubilation. The modern traveler finds hard to realize
the presence of horses in old Venice: yet
horses there were, and mules and asses, and
in considerable numbers. The members of
the Great Council used to come on horseback
to the meetings and to fasten the animals to
trees until the sitting was over. The bell
which rang to summon them was long known
as the Muletta, and Trottiera was the name
of their road. Stranger still, St. Mark's Place
saw many a tournament — as when, in 1272,
six young men of FriuH visited Venice and
challenged the Venetians to joust. Doge Tie-
polo caused lists to be staked out, and for
three days the tourney lasted, the young
knights of Venice testing their skill with the
Frulani, the Doge and his retinue watching
and applauding from the Piazzetta balcony of
the Ducal Palace, and crowds of citizens and
ladies filling the benches and windows and
loggie round about. A century later (1361)
Lorenzo Celsi, who had the finest stud in

VENETIAN LEGENDS AND PAGEANTS 45
Venice, was elected Doge, and when the Duke
of Austria paid him a state visit, Doge and
Duke and their attendants went mounted
through the city. The enclosed space outside
of the Church of the Mendicants long served
as an arena, near which seventy horses were
stabled for the jousters who used it. As the
population increased, the Great Council passed
ordinances to prevent riding through the
most frequented streets, the broadest of which
was all too narrow even for passers on foot.
But the gradual replacing of the old wooden
bridges by stone, with higher arches and steps
at either approach, caused the use of four-
footed beasts to be given up, except on the
outskirts of the city or on the lidi.
Out of the paying of tribute many minor
customs arose. In the earliest times, when
cash was hardly known, the tribute consisted
either of necessaries or of articles on which
fashion and cupidity set a high value. Thus
Istria sent every year one hundred jars of
wine in return for protection from the Slavic
pirates; and later, when the great Orseolo
extended the friendly protectorate of Venice
along the Dalmatian coast, the island of Arbe
promised to pay ten pounds of silk, or, failing

46 VENETIAN LEGENDS AND PAGEANTS
this, five pounds of purest gold; Veglia, fif
teen marten and thirty fox skins; Orsero,
forty marten skins; Pola, two thousand
pounds of oil for the Church of St. Mark. To
punish Ulric, the truculent Patriarch of Aqui
leia in the middle of the twelfth century, he
and his canons, and the lords of FriuH who
had abetted him, were required to come in
disgrace to Venice to beg for mercy, which was
granted on condition that they and their suc
cessors should send as their proxies twelve
hogs and twelve loaves every year. On Shrove
Thursday the multitude crowded into St.
Mark's Place to see the hogs killed and to
jeer at the memory of the Patriarch. In time
a bull was substituted for the swine, but not
until 1550 did the custom lapse.
In the earliest times the towns which
formed part of the Venetian commonwealth
contributed in kind to the maintenance of
the Doge. Livenza supplied twenty cart-loads
of wood, and Heraclea twenty-five cart-loads,
for every six farms within their limits; Equilo,
on the other hand, furnished a marten skin
and a bushel of pine-nuts. Until 1215 every
house in Chioggia sent the Doge a hen thrice
a year.

VENETIAN LEGENDS AND PAGEANTS 47
The guilds had each their special celebra
tion, accompanied by procession and festivity,
when they loved to outdo one another in dis
play of their work and wealth. Each church
observed its feast-day, on which the members
of the parish made merry. The boatmen of
different quarters of the city formed clubs
and rowed races; indeed, the annual regatta
between the Nicolotti and the CasteUani
became one of the shows of Venice. Many
ceremonies sprang from historic events. The
Venetian spirit poured itself out to make
every occasion beautiful, as sunrise gilds the
peaks and empurples the valleys, leaving
nothing unglorified.
But of aU the Venetian pageants the Doge
himself was the chief. Never elsewhere has
the head of the State kept such dignity and
magnificence as characterized the Dukes of
Venice for nearly a thousand years. The first
Doges were elected, at least in form, by popu
lar vote, but as time went on and the govern
ment fell more and more into the hands of
a sagacious and powerful oligarchy the elect
orate narrowed, until finally only forty-one
members of the Grand Council had the choos
ing, by an intricate process, of the Doge.

48 VENETIAN LEGENDS AND PAGEANTS
This in nowise diminished the splendor with
which each ruler was greeted by his subjects,
who, as they curtailed his power, increased
his pomp. Da Canale, the entertaining chron
icler who has told us so much, reports as an
eye-witness what occurred at the election of
Lorenzo Tiepolo in 1268.
When the Forty-one had come to an agree
ment the bells of St. Mark's were rung, and
from all parts of the city the people of Venice
flocked to the Piazza and the Church. The
forty-one electors mounted the balcony of the
Church, and one of the number addressed
the multitude and announced the name of the
new Doge. Thereupon they pressed round
him and bore him to the altar of St. Mark,
and having stripped his clothes from him
and put on his ducal robes, at that altar he
took the oath of office, and the gonfalon of
St. Mark, all gold, was given to him and he
received it. Amid great rejoicing, he went
out of the Church and ascended the staircase
of the Ducal Palace, where the chaplains
stood on the steps and sang the ducal lauds
in these words : " Christ conquers ! Christ
reigns ! Christ commands ! To our lord Lo
renzo Tiepolo, by God's grace illustrious Doge

VENETIAN LEGENDS AND PAGEANTS 49
of Venice, Dalmatia, and Croatia, and ruler
of a fourth part and a half of the whole
empire of Romania, salvation, honor, long
life, and victory ! St. Mark, help thou him ! "
Then the Doge went into the Palace and
entered on his office, subscribing to a formal
oath; after which he appeared at a loggia
and spoke very wisely to the people, and
they praised him above all others. The chap
lains then went to Sant' Agostino, where the
Dogaressa was, and sang before her also
the ducal lauds.
This informal celebration was followed by
elaborate festivities, in which all classes took
part. On land there was a procession of the
guilds, those groups of tradesmen, artisans,
and apprentices that had existed in Venice
from very early times, had grown rich and
skilful, and had developed each its internal
government. On this 24th of July, 1268, hav
ing put on their richest attire — each guild
has its distinctive garb — they take their
places in the great parade which winds
through the narrow streets to the Piazza and
the Palace.
First come the master smiths and their
apprentices with a gonfalon and with their

50 VENETIAN LEGENDS AND PAGEANTS
heads garlanded, while trumpeters play before
them ; next, the furriers, in rich mantles of
ermine and vair and other rare furs. They
are followed by the dressers of small skins,
clothed in samite and taffeta and in scarlet ;
the dressers of lambskins step next, singing
canzonets to the Doge ; after them, the weav
ers, troUing songs and snatches. And now,
says Da Canale,"the joy and the festivity begin
to increase," for here are the tailors, their ten
masters dressed in white with vermilion stars,
their coats and mantles lined with furs, and
all merrily singing. The next, crowned with
olive and bearing olive-branches, are the
woolen manufacturers, and after them the
makers of cotton cloth, in fustian. The mak
ers of quilts and jerkins have donned new
suits — white cloaks worked with fleur-de-lis
and each cloak with a hood — and the men
themselves wear garlands of pearls strung with
gold. The pageant grows more splendid —
for behold the cloth-of-gold workers, dressed
in that fabric themselves, and their workmen
in purple, with hoods of gold worked and dec
orated with pearls and gold on their heads.
The cordwainers, who follow, are equally re
splendent, and so are the mercers. Nor will

VENETIAN LEGENDS AND PAGEANTS 51
the cheesemongers be outshone, in their scar
let and purple apparel, trimmed with fur, and
their gold and pearl ornaments. The vendors
of wild-fowl and the fishmongers, arrayed in
vair, bear fine game and fish as an offering
to the Doge. And after them we see the
company of the barbers, two of whom, clad
in armor and mounted on richly caparisoned
horses, dub themselves knights-errant and
lead captive four damsels strangely garbed.
Escorted by their guild, they ride up the
Palace steps into the presence of the Doge,
and after salutation they announce that if
any of his court wish to do combat for the
damsels they stand ready to defend them.
But the Doge bids them welcome, assuring
them that no one shall dispute their prize ;
and so their little comedy ends. They have
scarcely passed on ere the glassworkers
advance, carrying decanters and bottles and
other rarest specimens of their skill. The
comb-makers, a merry crew, bring a great
cage filled with divers birds, and when they
open the door the birds fly out and away
over the heads of the multitude, to the de
light of the little children, who run after them.
Other guilds are still to follow, but our chron-

52 VENETIAN LEGENDS AND PAGEANTS
icier mentions only the goldsmiths, the most
magnificent of all. The masters of this guild
display very rich clothes, and gold and silver
ornaments, and jewels of great price — " sap
phires, emeralds, diamonds, topazes, jacinths,
amethysts, rubies, jaspers, carbuncles" —
the wealth of Ormuz and of Ind sparkles as
they file before us in the summer sun.
Each company is preceded by trumpeters
sounding on silver trumpets and by men
playing cymbals ; servants carry large silver
vials of wine and golden goblets ; and there
are captains, who see that the lines form
promptly and march in order, two by two.
And after each guild has greeted the Doge,
wishing him long life, victory, honor, and
salvation, it descends the ducal staircase and
goes to the palace in the Sant' Agostino
quarter to salute the Dogaressa.
But pageants address the eye and not the
ear. Feeble are words to conjure up such a
scene as this, so varied, so gorgeous, so joc
und, yet so stately ! Descriptions cloy. Hap
pily, whoever has visited Venice has fed his
eye on the paintings where these things still
glow. Gentile Bellini and Carpaccio worked
before the pageants had wholly lost their

VENETIAN LEGENDS AND PAGEANTS 53
medieval character ; while Veronese and
Tintoret, a century later, added to their
representations of the past the glory of the
present. So slowly did Venice change her
customs that the essential features of a fes
tival often persisted during many hundred
years. Although descriptions pall, we must take
at least one glimpse of that Venetian festival
which outshone and outlasted aU the rest —
the yearly wedding of the Repubhc and the
Adriatic on Ascension Day. The custom orig
inated as a reminder of the victorious naval
expedition of Orseolo the Great, who in the
year 1000 cleared the Dalmatian coast of
pirates and established the supremacy of
Venice on the sea. To mark that triumph,
the Doge and his retinue went in procession
through the Lido port to the open Adriatic,
and offered this supplication : " Grant, 0
Lord, that for us, and for all who sail thereon,
the sea may be calm and quiet ; this is our
prayer, Lord, hear us." After this the Doge
and his suite were aspersed, and the rest of
the water was poured into the sea, while the
priest chanted the words, " Purge me with
hyssop, and I shall be clean."

54 VENETIAN LEGENDS AND PAGEANTS
This ceremony, impressive for its simplicity,
grew to be impressive for its splendor. In
1177, when Pope Alexander III and the
Emperor Barbarossa met at Venice to settle,
as they hoped, the immemorial quarrel of the
Papacy and the Empire, they took part in
the celebration ; and then it was, apparently,
that the service was converted into an es
pousal. The Pope gave Doge Ziani an anointed
ring, which he dropped solemnly into the
Adriatic with the words, " Desponsamus te,
Mare," — "We wed thee, Sea, in sign of
our true and perpetual dominion."
From that time on the celebration of " La
Sensa," or the Marriage of the Adriatic on
Ascension Day, increased in stateliness, and
long after Venice had lost the sceptre of the
sea crowds of visitors came yearly from all
parts of the world to witness that rite, sym
bolic of her former supremacy. Travelers
and authors have vied with each other in
depicting the dazzling spectacle : the Bucen-
taur, the ducal galley, all gilded, with its
canopy of crimson velvet; the gold and
crimson gonfalon of St. Mark; the forty
long oars, each manned by four rowers ; the
ducal throne fixed on a great golden shell;

VENETIAN LEGENDS AND PAGEANTS 55
the Doge, venerable and grave, clad in superb
robes ; the Councilors, the Procurators, the
Senators, the Pregadi in scarlet or royal
purple; the Patriarch and his prelates in
their richest vestments ; the foreign ambas
sadors in their varied magnificence; the
multitudes of smaller galleys, barges, barks,
and gondolas, following in the wake of the
Bucentaur, each with its cargo of eager
men and women and astonished children ;
the unwonted stiUness of the journey out;
the solemnity of the marriage rite, when the
Doge, unattended, from the stern of his
barge drops the ring into the sea : then the
sudden taking up by ten thousand throats
of his words, " Desponsamus te, Mare";
the boundless vivacity, the acclamations, the
triumphal energy of the return to the city
— who has not in imagination witnessed
all this, framed by the matchless Venetian
architecture, and the opaline waters of the
Lagoon, and by the sky of pale sapphire and
sunbeams which arches above them ?
Dead, long ago, the last Doge of Venice ;
dead the gay multitude which last attended
him; the golden Bucentaur is dust; the
Ducal Palace, St. Mark's Church, nay,

56 VENETIAN LEGENDS AND PAGEANTS
Venice herself, are become but a three days'
wonder for modern tourists, who "glance,
and nod, and bustle by," a gallery for the es
thetic, a haunt to muse in for the thoughtful
few. So fades away the glory of the world !
" And what," asks the muser, before whom
the vision of this splendor has flashed, " what
does it signify ? Is it but the pomp, the un
rivaled pomp, and the vanity of a wicked
world? The colors have fed the eye, the
pageants have enchanted the imagination —
is that all ? " Ah, no ! Through those fleet
ing shows Venice embodied qualities which
no other State has had in like degree : she
revealed to the world the meaning of magni
ficence, she set the ages an example in dig
nity. We have heard much of the ceremonial
of Spain — but ceremonial is not magnificence ;
the mere description of the gorgeous costumes
of the Magyar nobles dazzle us — but cos
tume is not magnificence. Ceremonial may
be dull — the Spanish punctilio was stiff be
yond the verge of the ludicrous; that is not
dignity. We cannot associate magnificence
with either the Germans or the English. The
Prussians, at the utmost, can organize an
imposing mihtary review. The English have

VENETIAN LEGENDS AND PAGEANTS 57
never had the artistic sense, nor the taste,
which underlies magnificence ; they have
always taken their pleasure sadly ; and while
Englishmen may possess a noble carriage and
countenances of high-bred dignity, they do
not group well, but remain rigidly isolated,
too conscious of themselves to be wiUing to
blend in masses, which are the elements of
a great pageant. The French too have had
Httle conception of magnificence — assuredly
they have manifested no genius for it. They
still point to the Grand Monarque — that
paltry manikin, with his full-bottomed wig,
his padded calves, his red-heeled pumps —
and to his entourage of titled lackeys as their
highest type of dignity and magnificence ; or
they recall the display of the third Napo
leon, which was, after all, only tinsel and
milHnery, the stuff which theatrical pomps,
performed mechanically after much drill, are
made of.
But the Venetians were magnificent by
nature. This quality developed in them just
as a genius for music develops in other races,
and it expressed itself in pageants more and
more splendid as their wealth increased. A
dignity, likewise inborn, never forsook them.

58 VENETIAN LEGENDS AND PAGEANTS
The Spirit of Beauty, which was their pe
culiar dower, took great companies of men
and women and composed them into moving
pictures, as wonderful in their way as are the
enduring masterpieces which that same spirit
wrought on canvas, in mosaic, and in marble.
Every class — the noble, the religious, the
commercial, the artisan, the plebeian — had
its place in the pomps, and at the head of
them all, linked to all in this manifestation
of common interests, was the Doge.
That Beauty may be not merely the orna
ment but the very body of Power, this surely
is one thing Venice can teach us. We mod
erns command inexhaustible reservoirs of
Power, but of visible Beauty, how slight is
our understanding, how beggarly our pro
duct! We look out, for the most part, on
a sepia-tinted world; Venice bids us learn
the delight, not merely physical, which color
can bring. To be gorgeous, but not barbaric ;
magnificent, but not pompous ; dignified,
but not stiff — these are gifts which presup
pose character; nay, they demand character
in some respects of rarer fibre than that in
which reside many of the virtues which we
now magnify. Those gifts the Venetians had.

VENETIAN LEGENDS AND PAGEANTS 59
Venice proclaimed the joy of life — the
glow of health, the exhilaration of conquest,
the sweetness of prosperity, the self-reHance
and the cosmic trust which come with mas
tery. Was it not well that once in recorded
history one nation should dare to proclaim
that life on earth is passing good? There is
no danger that races or men will be long
allowed to forget the transitoriness of their
existence, or its horrors and failures and be
reavements. Fate sees to it that each genera
tion shaU witness, for a warning and a sign,
the coUapse of empire. Time is busy " turn
ing old glories into dreams."
" Restless is wealth, the nerves of power
Sink like a lute's in rain,
The Gods lend only for an hour,
And then take back again."
But to transmute wealth and power into
joy, to live grandly, as if the Gods had not
merely lent for an hour, but had given for
eternity, bespeak great character. Joy is so
much rarer than virtue ! so very rare among
the powerful and the very rich !
Remember too that the Venetians earned
their prosperity, earned it against unparaHeled
odds; they were brave, industrious, enter-

60 VENETIAN LEGENDS AND PAGEANTS
prising, prudent ; when blessings flowed in
upon them they rejoiced with a healthy ex
uberance. " There is nothing better for a
man than . . . that he should make his soul
enjoy good in his labor. This also I saw,
that it was from the hand of God." The
Venetians reaHzed that after a hard-won vic
tory the triumph is legitimate ; that God can
be worshiped as truly by accepting His gifts
and delighting in them as by renouncing
them with a monkish reluctance. No doubt,
prosperity is the severest test of character ; as
Venice learned when after many centuries
her magnificence had been softened into
luxury and voluptuousness, and her pageants,
though still superb, were shows to gratify
her pride rather than ceremonies born of her
strength and joy and gratitude. Nevertheless,
five hundred years elapsed between her rise
to greatness and the beginning of her decline,
and her waning was so gradual that for two
centuries more she seemed in outward majesty
almost undiminished.

MAZZINI'S CENTENARY

MAZZINI'S CENTENARY1
The wise instinct of the world has long since
admitted Joseph Mazzini into the company
of its great men. He would certainly be in
cluded, along with Cavour and Bismarck,
Lincoln and Emerson, in any group of half
a score representatives of the nineteenth
century. For forty years he embodied the
European Revolution — a monster to some,
a model or a martyr to others ; but as soon
as death removed him as a living menace,
his foes conceded his eminence. To-day, his
great tract, "The Duties of Man," is the
textbook in ethics in every Italian public
school. Time has done for him what it does
for all rebels — it has stript off the temporal
and left the permanent. And at last we see
that — unlike those rebels who combat a
special abuse, and who, when that abuse
falls, have no further significance — Mazzini
1 The Nation, June 22, 1905. An Italian translation of
this article, by the Hon. Ernesto Nathan, now Mayor of
Rome, appeared in the Nuova Antologia for July 1, 1907.

64 MAZZINI'S CENTENARY
belongs among the little band of world-bene
factors whose rebellion is rooted in the ever
lasting conflict between Good and Evil. Thus
there are two Mazzinis — one who worked
for his contemporaries, the other who worked
for posterity. In the case of no other man of
equal rank is it so necessary to distinguish
clearly between the two. This we can now do
without fear of misunderstanding.
Glance first at the temporal Mazzini. He
was born in Genoa, June 22, 1805. At six
teen, the sufferings of the victims of a futile
revolt burnt into his soul. The vision of free
dom, and of its responsibility, haunted him.
" I felt," he says, " that since we could, we
ought to struggle for freedom." Ten years
later he was imprisoned for many months,
not for any overt act, but simply because the
police had marked him as a " thinker." Dur
ing his confinement, he systematized the prin
ciples to which he consecrated his Hfe. He
came out of his Savona prison only to be ban
ished. At first from Marseilles and then from
Switzerland he directed Young Italy, the so
ciety which sprang up at his call to free the
Peninsula. He led an invasion into Savoy,
which collapsed almost without firing a gun

MAZZINI'S CENTENARY 65
(1833). He was ridiculed, accused of betrayal,
persecuted; and at last, at the instigation of
foreign governments, Switzerland drove him
out, to find refuge in London. There, in
almost beggarly condition, he carried on his
revolutionary propaganda, terrifying the Con
tinental cabinets, planning fruitless insurrec
tions, cheering the oppressed, and creating,
not in Italy only, but throughout Europe,
multitudes of disciples who pledged them
selves to his ideals.
He could never cancel the stigma which
his foes early branded on him of countenanc
ing assassination, nor did he escape the charge
of personal cowardice. As to the first, opin
ions still differ, and, in spite of his own avow
als and those of his intimates, probably they
always will; but the charge of cowardice,
based on his practice of sending his followers
on errands which proved deadly, may weU
be dismissed. He risked his own Hfe over and
over again on secret missions to Italy, and
no man who bore himself as Mazzini did dur
ing the perils of the Roman Republic in 1849,
lacked either fortitude or courage. Those
brief months of practical dictatorship tested
his abiHty to do, and although he inevitably

66 MAZZINI'S CENTENARY
failed, he showed both decision and foresight.
Thenceforward, he fell back on conspiracy,
only to be more and more discredited as his
plots at Mantua, at Milan, and at Genoa were
smothered in blood. When Garibaldi freed
the Two Sicilies, Mazzini hurried to Naples
and begged the hero to organize his conquest
on a Republican basis, but Garibaldi for
tunately followed his own intuitions, which
were usually much sounder than the reasons
he could give for them. So far as Italy was
concerned, Mazzini ceased to be an important
political factor after 1860, and, during the
last ten years of his life, he saw other men,
with new aims, turn aside the course of the
Revolutionary Party in Europe, of which he
had so long been the head. Nihilism, Anarch
ism, aggressive Socialism, the International,
were symptoms that — speaking broadly —
the Revolution had begun to pass from a
strictly political to an economic and industrial
stage. Mazzini himself took no satisfaction in
the independence and unity of Italy, because
he believed that the monarchy would vitiate
the good that had been achieved. To Daniel
Stern he wrote: "Little it matters to me
that Italy, a territory of so many square

MAZZINI'S CENTENARY 67
leagues, eats its corn and cabbages cheaper ;
little I care for Rome if a great European
initiative is not to issue from it. What I do
care for is that Italy shall be great and good,
moral and virtuous, that she comes to fulfil
a mission in the world." So to the end he re
mained officially a rebel ; but Victor Eman
uel's Government winked at his last visits
to Italy, where he died incognito at Pisa,
on March 10, 1872.
Stated thus briefly, Mazzini's active career
seems a failure. Externally no doubt it was.
Not one of his immediate purposes bore the
fruit he desired. At his death, his enemies
possessed the field from which they had
driven him. But, in a larger sense, he was
victorious. He equipped more regiments than
his adversaries knew for the unification of
Italy. The lifelong conspiracies in which
Mazzini engaged, and which sometimes
seemed to him, as they did to his contempo
raries, to be his chief business in life, now
turn out to belong to the transient part of him;
while his immense moral energy, his obedi
ence to ideals, and his almost unequaled
genius for bringing ideals within reach of the
masses, constitute his permanent greatness.

68 MAZZINI'S CENTENARY
The harm which he did through abortive up*
risings is patent, but the good can never be
measured, for it is impossible to follow the
course of his regenerative influence into the
myriads of hearts that he aroused. What
George Meredith said many years ago, and
Swinburne sang in his noblest poem, is liter
ally true :
" But this man found his mother dead and slain,
With fast-seal'd eyes,
And bade the dead rise up and live again,
And she did rise."
Until Mazzini founded Young Italy, con
spiracy had a character wholly political ; he
quickened it with moral aspirations. We
must remember that conspiracy was the only
means by which, after Waterloo, European
Liberals could make their desires known ; for
they had neither free speech nor free press
nor any voice in the government. The French
Revolution, to which the downtrodden masses
looked for an example, had magnified the
Rights of Man ; Mazzini preached the Duties
of Man. He purged patriotism of selfishness.
He taught that political liberty and independ
ence must be striven for, because through
them alone could every individual grow to

MAZZINI'S CENTENARY 69
his full stature and play a serviceable part in
society. But while Mazzini wisely recognized
that the individual is the corner-stone, he was
no concentric Individualist. He set before
him the ideal of "Collective Humanity" — a
world in which each nation, state, town, and
citizen should be striving for the common
welfare of the race, and all should exercise to
the full their special energies. He would have
neither Socialism, with its leveling and its
strait-jacket for every talent, nor Anarchism
with its insatiate selfishness. Into the warfare
between Labor and Capital he projected moral
considerations. That conflict will never be
settled, he held, by any arrangement patched
up by economists. Wherever two human be
ings meet, no matter in what relation, there
conscience joins them; and you cannot, by
caUing them employer and employee, settle
their grievances by the economic law of
supply and demand instead of by justice and
human sympathy and righteousness.
It would be impossible to exaggerate what
Mazzini's religious awakening meant to Italy,
where the Church had long since ceased to
have any hold on the intelligent classes, and
where it ruled the peasantry through ignor-

70 MAZZINI'S CENTENARY
ance and superstition. At most, the Church
operated an apparatus of ritual, which had
little to do with either true piety or noble
conduct. Mazzini made his appeal directly to
the individual soul. He showed the moral
issue of every act, public and private. With
terrible sincerity, he brought the institutions,
practices, customs, and aims of the age to a
Day of Judgment where Duty judged them.
Duty and FeUowship — those are the words
oftenest on his lips, the ideals whose beauty
and majesty he celebrated throughout his
life. " The earth is our workshop," he wrote;
" we may not curse it, we must hallow it."
And again : " God will not ask us, * What
hast thou done for thine own soul?' but
' What hast thou done for the souls of others
— the sister-souls I gave thee ? '
He addresses his message not to Italians
only, but to men and women everywhere. It
is as plain now that Mazzini was the greatest
individual moral force in Europe during the
nineteenth century, as that the world has
scarcely begun to draw from him the bene
fits which he has to bestow. As long as he
lived and was spending his energy on special
enterprises, he seemed a partisan, a fanatic,

MAZZINI'S CENTENARY 71
an incendiary. His enemies thought that the
failure of his concrete experiments discred
ited his principles. Now the mortal part of
him has dropped away, and through those
principles he will help to shape the new gen
erations. He lives not so much by his speci
fic teachings in politics, in social and indus
trial reform, in art, in literature, and in
reHgion, as by the spirit in which he taught
and by his power to stimulate and to spir
itualize. We need only to compare Mazzini with his
contemporaries in the Party of Revolution in
order to see how he surpasses them in signi
ficance to-day. Ledru-RoUin, Schoelcher,
Louis Blanc, are scarcely more than names
for our generation ; Victor Hugo, the subHme
rhapsodist, the inexhaustible improviser, with
his colossal vanity and his pageant of rhetoric,
seems now, even in his sincerest utterances, to
be declaring the glory not of God, but of
Victor Hugo by whose grace God reigns;
the grave, high-minded Herzen worked chiefly
to cure Russia's malady; Kossuth, with his
magical eloquence and fiery courage, had
no general message ; Lasalle was fascinating,
but mankind is too healthy to date a new era

72 MAZZINI'S CENTENARY
in its progress from a man who was killed in
a duel over a woman ; Marx, whose doctrines
have had the widest vogue during the past
thirty years, is essentially a materialist, a
ponderous German pedant, whose remedies,
if they could take effect to-morrow, would
leave unsolved the fundamental human pro
blems ; even Lamennais, impassioned and
sympathetic, touched but an arc of Mazzini's
circle. We must go back to Dante to find an Ital
ian who had, like Mazzini, the combination of
vivid practical intellect with a highly sens
itive, even mystical, spirituality. Dante, too,
plunged into pohtical affairs and would have
reformed the abuses of his time ; he, too,
conspired, was banished, seemed beaten. Be
tween him and Mazzini came Savonarola, akin
to them in his fierce onslaught on iniquity,
and in his apparent failure ; but compared
with them he is circumscribed in genius and
local in scope. As Dante spoke for the medi
eval world, so Mazzini is thus far Europe's
most authentic spokesman of the ideals and
hopes of our new epoch. Had he not been
a prophet, he might easily have taken a very
high place in literature. As it is, he has left

MAZZINI'S CENTENARY 73
some of the profoundest literary criticism,
besides political and ethical treatises of high
rank, and an extraordinary volume of Hving
correspondence. The beauty of Mazzini's private life rein
forces aU his teachings. The world, let it be
never so hostile, cannot resist the argument
of self-sacrifice. The lapse of time sanctifies
his forty years of exile — the poor lodgings,
the unstinted helpfulness, the sympathy with
the joys and griefs of all with whom he had
to do. He renounced home, family, even
marriage, for the sake of the apostolate to
which he dedicated himself. He bore up
against all defeats, and conquered the de
sperate doubt which, in moments of reaction,
rose to tempt him. One remembers his
bringing up the coal for his feeble landlady,
his sharing half his small income with strang
ers, his night school for the Italian boot
blacks and organ-grinders in London, his
attack on the " white-slave traffic." One re
members, too, his rare capacity for friendship
— witness the sweetness and delicacy of
those letters of his to Jane Carlyle in one
of her fits of wifely jealousy; witness also the
beautiful message of consolation he sent when

74 MAZZINI'S CENTENARY
Saffi's mother died. No one, it seems, could
escape the spell of his presence — the spell
which he still imparts through his life and
writings to those who never saw him. Some
time ago I urged the person who, I believe,
is best qualified, to give us the adequate bio
graphy of Mazzini for which the world still
waits, and the reply came to me, " I cannot
— I revere him too much !" That feeling of
reverence thrills every one who penetrates to
the heart of Mazzini's Hfe-work.
" Dark with strife,
Like heaven's own sun that storming clouds bedim,
Was all his life.
" Life and the clouds are vanish'd; hate and fear
Have had their span
Of time to hurt, and are not: He is here,
The sunlike man."

DANTE IN AMERICA

DANTE IN AMERICA1
No analysis of American character can be
trusted which does not specify, among other
traits, a large endowment of idealism. Your
genuine Yankee is practical, and few have
surpassed him in grappling with the concrete
difficulties of life or in material prosperity ;
but he differs from others who have got on
in the world — from the Dutch, for instance,
or from the EngHsh — in remaining at heart
an idealist. The more you see of the English,
the more you are incHned to look on Shake
speare as un-Enghsh, because he is idealist
and uninsular; but Emerson, the supreme
modern idealist, was the representative Ameri
can, as Victor Hugo and Ernest Renan were
the representatives of the two chief types of
modern Frenchmen. This Yankee idealism
often hibernates, and sometimes it volatilizes
in pursuit of fads ; but when the great issues
call, it responds, and it transforms in the
twinkling of an eye the myriads who seem
1 Atlantic Monthly, June, 1902.

78 DANTE IN AMERICA
ordinarily bent wholly on money-getting, or
on comfort, into the hosts of the Lord, re
solved to sacrifice everything for a righteous
principle. Yesterday, you saw only salesmen
at their counters, merchants at the exchange,
bankers planning audacious enterprises, farm
ers haggling with the country storekeeper
over their quarterly barter : to-day, they are
all volunteering in a cause on which the wel
fare of the race depends. Strangers, who
happen to visit us at a time when our mate
rial side is uppermost, fall into wonderful
misconceptions ; and even our politicians,
when they reckon too confidently on the unin
terrupted sway of our " practical " qualities,
are often swept down by an outburst of ideal
ism. To this quality, among other influences,
we may trace the singular hold which Dante
has had during the past sixty years on the
foremost Americans. The number of his
readers here at any one time is small, but it is
choice. Out of the handful have sprung Long
fellow, Lowell, and Norton, each of whom
has contributed a work of capital importance
in the Dantean field; nor should George
Ticknor, the earliest distinguished American

DANTE IN AMERICA 79
expounder of Dante, or Dr. T. W. Parsons,
who wrote one sterling poem on Dante and
an incomplete translation of the epic, be for
gotten. Contrast their achievement with the
barrenness of the literary product of classical
scholarship in America. Until the last genera
tion our higher education was based on Latin
and Greek, yet from among the throng of
adepts in the classics, and from the larger
throng who were driven through them on
the way to culture, not one has produced a
first-rate translation of Homer or the Greek
dramatists, nor of Virgil or Lucretius ; and
nobody here has written on any of these such
an essay as Lowell wrote on Dante, a piece of
genuine Hterature and an addition to literary
criticism. The names of our few Latinists and
Grecians known outside of the narrow circle
of their specialties are those of men who
have compiled grammars and revised texts
worthy of very great respect, but having no
more to do with literature than the study of
the structure of the larynx has to do with
oratory. And even our best classical special
ists, with perhaps two or three exceptions,
rank below the Germans. Not long ago one
American professor told me with mingled awe

80 DANTE IN AMERICA
and exultation that Curtius had once referred
approvingly to an emendation of an obscure
Greek text suggested by another American
professor! Very good ; but how many days
go by in any college or university in the
world where Greek philology is studied that
Curtius himself is not still cited?
Thus it is that although our classical
scholars are many and our Dante scholars
few, the literary achievement of the classicists
has been insignificant, while that of the
Danteans has been relatively large. Is this
because, let the classicists strive as hard as
they will, they can never so purge themselves
of the antipagan legacy bequeathed by Puri
tanism as to become really classical in spirit?
Or is it because the pedant, who struggles
for mastery (and usually conquers) in every
teacher, instinctively fastens on those portions
of Latin and Greek which have always been
the favorite victuals of pedantry ? Whatever
the explanation, the fact remains that Dante
has inspired works which in any survey of
American literature during the past fifty years
could not be overlooked; and it should be
added that such books as Dr. Fay's and Pro
fessor Sheldon's concordances, Mr. Koch's

DANTE IN AMERICA 81
" BibHography," and Latham's edition of
Dante's " Letters," not to mention articles on
special points, bear equally high testimony to
American philological scholarship.
Dante's idealism, with its vivid specific il
lustrations, appeals strongly to the highest
type of American idealist. To the French, he
has meant Httle, because they are not idealists.
A race which has never really persuaded it
self of the supremacy of the moral law — a
race which expressed its characteristic views
of life through Montaigne in the sixteenth
century, through Mohere in the seventeenth,
through Voltaire in the eighteenth, and
through Renan in the nineteenth — could
not possibly find Dante's moral intensity
congenial. The French think that they have
exhausted him when they have turned over
Dore's drawings of the Hell.
But let us not generaHze farther. Dante's
treasures are so varied that men who differ
most widely among themselves are his ad
mirers. Minds as far apart as Gladstone and
Matthew Arnold called him master ; dilettanti
like Rossetti and Pater — (Pater, who de
clared Shadwell's sing-song verse the best
EngHsh equivalent for Dante's terza rima !)

82 DANTE IN AMERICA
— sought Dante as if he were a dilettante ;
and so one might go on to enumerate the
diversified company of those who would agree
only in their admiration of Dante's genius.
But the almost simultaneous publication of
the Rev. Charles Allen Dinsmore's study,
" The Teachings of Dante,"1 and of Professor
Charles Eliot Norton's revised translation of
" The Divine Comedy," 2 is a sufficient ex
ample of this. For in most matters, certainly
in the forms in which most of the deepest con
cerns of life are expressed, Mr. Dinsmore and
Mr. Norton would evidently not coincide, but
in their ideaHsm and in their moral earnest
ness the orthodox minister and the open-
minded agnostic are akin.
Mr. Dinsmore's book is a surprise, because
it suddenly springs up and proves its right to
exist in a field which seemed already over
crowded. One would have said that for the
average English reader Symonds's handbook,
Maria Rossetti's " Shadow of Dante," and
Mr. Edmund Gardner's recent marvelously
1 The Teachings of Dante. By Charles Allen Dinsmore.
Boston and New York : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1901.
2 The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Translated by
Charles Eliot Norton. Riverside Edition, 3 vols. Boston
and New York : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1902.

DANTE IN AMERICA 83
compact primer would suffice ; but one may
have these and other manuals and still find
Mr. Dinsmore's book of great value. Interest
ing it certainly is. Mr. Dinsmore differs from
Symonds, Maria Rossetti, and Mr. Gardner
in being interpretative rather than descriptive.
They are intent on historical, biographical,
and Hterary elucidation, and on disentangling
the skein of allegory ; he is concerned with
the upshot of it aU, with Dante's message.
The broad interpretation he gives of
Dante's view of sin and redemption is un
usually fresh because he approaches " The
Divine Comedy " as a Calvinist. The depth
of his criticism can best be shown in two or
three brief quotations. " Our modern ortho
dox" (that is, Presbyterian) "view," he says,
"beginning with faith, emphasizes the re
demptive grace of God, and insists that man
is saved, not by what he does for himself,
but by what God does for him and with
him. . . . We measure progress by our deep
ening consciousness that our lives are 'hid
with Christ in God,' and out of this sense of
intimate relationship grow all Christian joy
and peace and hope. Coming to Dante from
the atmosphere of the modern pulpit, we are

84 DANTE IN AMERICA
surprised at the utter absence of this feeling
of the union of the soul with God during the
process of salvation. . . . Another character
istic continually manifests itself. One cannot
fail to note how conspicuously Christ is ab
sent from this mighty drama of salvation.
His work of atonement is assumed, his deity
is fully recognized, but he himself is rather
a celestial glory in the background than a per
vasive presence on the scene of action. In
Dante there is not the faintest intimation of
the thought, so prominent in these days, that
Christ is Christianity. His is distinctively a
gospel of a system, ours of a person. . . . He
differs from nearly all preeminent preachers
of righteousness in his starting-point. He
begins with man, they with God."
These extracts will suffice to show that
Mr. Dinsmore goes to the very foundations ;
but only a reading of the book itself can give
an idea of the ease and vigor and attractive
ness with which he discusses his great themes.
He is evidently a theologian; but above the
intellectual pleasure which theological dis
putation brings him, he no less evidently sets
practical religion, the application of doctrine
to conduct. As he reads with his own eyes,

DANTE IN AMERICA 85
and thinks with his own brain, his criticism
has an unacademic freshness which is like
a cool breeze in the desert. Books with him
are not mere topics for idle conversation, but
vital facts, compounded of good and evil, to
be used or shunned by the soul which has
dedicated itself to righteousness.
At the outset, a casual reader might be mis
led, by Mr. Dinsmore's many admiring refer
ences to Jonathan Edwards, into expecting
criticism of only parochial range; and, in
deed, it is a mistake to call Edwards " our
Puritan Dante." Edwards is now remem
bered chiefly for having mistaken a demon
for God, and for describing the everlasting
torments of hell with such terrific vividness
that he has filled far more insane asylums on
earth than seats of the blest in heaven. It is
time that posterity, which has repudiated his
abominable teachings, should let his name
sink into oblivion. Herod has been execrated
for causing the slaughter of a few hundred
innocent babes; but Edwards devoted his
talent to convincing the world that an omni
potent monster has gone on creating myriads
of millions of human creatures, of whom
hardly one in every thousand is " saved,"

86 DANTE IN AMERICA
and he calls this monster who had not He
rod's excuse, " God," that is, Good. Let us
have done with Edwards, and cease to im
agine that he is in any sense a Dante.
But in his citation of modern authors, as
in his references to the Bible and the classics,
Mr. Dinsmore is often very striking : as when
he points out that Vassall Morton, the hero
of Francis Parkman's only novel, agrees with
Dante in figuring " the depth of wretchedness
as the bondage of a quagmire." In reading
his chapter on " Purgatory in Literature," in
which he concludes that the methods of ex
piation described by Hawthorne in " The
Scarlet Letter " and by Tennyson in Guine
vere, are " Dantean rather than Christian,"
you recognize a literary critic of independent
judgment, just as, in the following passages,
you perceive that he has converted certain
large modern philosophic ideas into terms of
literary criticism.
After stating that Dante is the greatest of
all champions of the freedom of the will, in
contrast with Shakespeare, who, in Hamlet,
in Macbeth, in Othello, virtually " declares
that man but half-controls his fate," Mr.
Dinsmore continues : " The leading Greek

DANTE IN AMERICA 87
dramas still more impressively interpret man
as a grain of wheat between the upper and
nether millstones of adverse forces. The
characters appear to be free, but if one
looks deeper down, he perceives that they
are the representatives of vast world pow
ers, while the tragedy is the suffering of
the individual as the two malign energies
crush against each other. The classic trag
edy is commonly constructed on the essen
tial antagonism between the family and the
state. The necessity of such collision is no
longer apparent to us, and we have changed
the name of the colossal powers that make
sport of human Hfe. For family and state
we read heredity and environment, — task
masters as exacting and irresistible, which
allow even less room for the freedom of the
individual will."
Such passages as these should convince
readers who are in earnest that Mr. Dins
more has written a book for them ; lovers of
Dante have already welcomed him as a con
genial colleague. Merely as a running com
mentary on Dante's life and the chief cur
rents of " The Divine Comedy," his book
may be freely recommended ; while for its

88 DANTE IN AMERICA
special qualities, to some of which I have
briefly alluded, it deserves to be weighed by
all students in this field.
Ten years have passed since Professor Nor
ton first pubhshed his translation of " The
Divine Comedy." These years have tested
the work and left no doubt that it is the best
in English ; they have also popularized the
conviction that prose, and not poetry, is the
better medium for the translator to use. Any
body who can read a great poem in the orig
inal naturally desires to have the form which
stamps it as poetry reproduced in a transla
tion ; but when he makes the experiment, he
will find, in the case of two languages as dis
similar in their prosody as are English and
Italian, that he must be content with a form
which does not at all correspond to the orig
inal. In spite of many attempts, our poets,
writing spontaneously in EngHsh, have never
succeeded in naturalizing the Italian terza
rima : Shelley came nearest, in that remark
able fragment, " The Triumph of Life " ;
but no ear accustomed to Dante can get
equal satisfaction, or satisfaction of the same
sort, from that as from the Italian ; and no
ear trained to English verse would mistake

DANTE IN AMERICA 89
SheUey's terza rima for native, in the way
in which the ottava rima in Byron's " Beppo "
and " Don Juan " is native.
An equivalent metrical form for the terza
rima of " The Divine Comedy " being out of
the question in English, what shall a trans
lator bent on a metrical version do ? If wise,
like Longfellow, he will prefer blank verse ;
if foolish, or dilettante, like Mr. Lancelot
ShadweU, he will choose Marvell's "Hora
tian Ode " as his pattern. Before our age of
realism, which insists on the closest fidelity
to fact, a translator might candidly announce
that he proposed to put as much of the for
eign poem into a genuine English metre as
he could, regardless of metrical correspond
ence. Pope practically said this when he
turned Homer's hexameters into heroic coup
lets ; and, in the realm of painting, the old
masters did this when they clothed Christ
and his apostles in contemporary Renais
sance garments, and were untroubled by the
anachronism. Pope's poem possesses many
excellences, but they are due to Pope's gen
ius working in a medium over which it had
absolute mastery, and not to any close re
semblance to Homer ; but to-day, when we

90 DANTE IN AMERICA
wish to know what Homer, and not Pope,
actually says, it does not satisfy us.
And so we are thrown back to a prose
translation as the vehicle which can convey
the substance of Homer's epic or of Dante's,
and convey it without interposing an Eng
lish metrical form which no more represents
that of the original than a cornet can repre
sent a full orchestra. There is, of course,
another medium, the so-called " poetic prose,"
a sort of tertium quid, of which the less we
say the better. " Sir," quoth Dr. Johnson,
referring to Macpherson's " Ossian," the
most celebrated specimen of poetic prose
ever perpetrated in English, " Sir, a man
might write such stuff forever, if he would
abandon his mind to it." Persons who de
light in it have certainly never felt the
rhythm which belongs as structurally to all
good prose as to poetry ; they, the fatuous
ones, would paint the lily and throw a per
fume on the violet. In vain do you tell them
that, though walking and dancing have each
their proper grace, to try to combine the two
produces a ridiculous caper. But in literature,
as in life, a pet is not the less fondled for
being a mongrel.

DANTE IN AMERICA 91
Accepting thoroughbred prose, therefore,
as the proper medium for translating " The
Divine Comedy," the best translation will be
that which gives in the best English the
exact meaning of the original. It will be as
truthful as a "crib," but it will have also
those Hterary qualities which we look for in
our racy prose. That such a happy combina
tion could be hit upon, Dr. John Carlyle
showed more than fifty years ago. His ver
sion was so good that had it covered the
three canticles, instead of the first only, Mr.
Norton has said that he would not have un
dertaken his translation. Mr. Norton has the
obvious advantage over Dr. Carlyle in com
ing half a century later, when many obscur
ities due to imperfect text have been cleared
up, when the minute details of Florentine
and Italian history in Dante's time have been
laid bare, and the few plain facts in Dante's
own career have been separated from much
fiction. But Mr. Norton's superiority has a
still deeper cause than the wider information
which is now accessible to every reader of
Dante : it rests not merely on more know
ledge, but on a more intimate sympathy.
Dante has had many devotees, but among

92 DANTE IN AMERICA
them all none has surpassed Mr. Norton in
a union of qualifications for understanding
his spirit, and for communicating it to others.
Add to this a command of English equal to
every need, — English so transparent that it
allows the meaning of the original to shine
through without taking the slightest tinge
from the translator's personality, — and you
have the ideal translator.
It would be easy to demonstrate by paral
lel passages that Mr. Norton's version excels
both in accuracy and in English style that of
Dr. Carlyle, his only serious competitor in the
first canticle, and those of Mr. A. J. Butler,
Mr. Dugdale, and others, in the second and
third ; but such a method could be conclusive
only if there were space here to give extracts
sufficiently long and varied to be fairly repre
sentative. A few test passages might satisfy
the expert ; but any doubter who will read
in succession the several versions of a single
canto cannot fail, if he have an ear for Eng
lish prose, to pronounce Mr. Norton's the
best. And if he then compare the English
line by line and word by word with the orig
inal, he will find that Mr. Norton interprets
most closely Dante's thought.

DANTE IN AMERICA 93
This new edition is almost a new work, so
carefully has Mr. Norton scrutinized every
word and substituted the better for what was
good before. This results, in some cases, in
the adoption of a different interpretation.
Thus in Francesca da Rimini's story the lines
" Per piu flate gli occhi ci sospinse
Quella lettura, e scolorocci il viso "
become "Many times that reading urged our
eyes, and took the color from our faces," in
stead of the earlier, "Many times that reading
made us lift our eyes, and took the color from
our faces." John Carlyle has it, " Several times
that reading urged our eyes to meet, and
changed the color of our faces." Mr. Butler,
who shows a tendency to paraphrase, says,
"Many times did that reading impel our
eyes, and change the hue of our visages."
Which did Dante mean? That the reading so
absorbed Francesca and her lover that it urged
them to return to it several times, or that
the amorous story caused them more than
once to raise their eyes and look at each
other, and to change color as they thus dis
covered their mutual passion? The reader
may choose ; I cite the passage to show how
through what seems a slight verbal emenda-

94 DANTE IN AMERICA
tion the new edition sometimes differs widely
from the old.
More often the changes have apparently
been inspired by the wish to make the Eng
lish read more smoothly. Take, for instance,
the opening of the twenty-sixth canto of Hell :
"Rejoice, Florence, since thou art so great
that over sea and land thou beatest thy wings,
and thy name is spread through Hell. Among
the thieves I found five such, thy citizens,
whereat shame comes to me, and thou unto
great honor risest not thereby." So reads the
earlier version ; the latter runs thus : " Re
joice, Florence, since thou art so great that
thou beatest thy wings over sea and land,
and thy name is spread through Hell ! Among
the thieves I found five such, thy citizens,
whereat shame comes to me, and thou dost
not mount unto great honor thereby." The
ear acknowledges at once the superiority of
the latter version. And so from the first page
to the last, there are few lines which do not
bear witness to the ten years' polishing
which Mr. Norton has bestowed on this edi
tion. He has treated word and phrase and
sentence as a jeweler treats his gems. Any
body who compares the two versions will learn

DANTE IN AMERICA 95
how a mind of the most delicate critical
sensitiveness works, — how patiently, how
reasonably ; now cautious, now trusting boldly
to imagination. Here we see taste in action.
This new version not only supersedes the
old in the text, but also in the notes, which
are at least trebled in number, though still
brief, pertinent, and uncontroversial. With
these volumes a person reading only English
can get an intimate knowledge of the sub
stance of "The Divine Comedy" — yes, and
more than the substance — and an explana
tion of all the really important difficulties.
If any passages remain dark, it is because
they are dark in the original, and the trans
lator does not believe in substituting for
Dante's words an explanatory paraphrase.
We wish that it had been possible to reprint
as a general introduction the essay on Dante
which Mr. Norton prepared for Warner's
Library a few years ago ; for nowhere else in
the same compass — not even in Lowell's
essay — can the novice and the expert alike
find so precious a survey of Dante and his
works. Next to writing a classic, the best service
which a man of letters can render is to trans-

96 DANTE IN AMERICA
late a classic so that it shall Hve in a new
language as if it were a native. This Mr.
Norton has done, and those of us who take
the highest view of literature must feel grate
ful to him for this final revision : an artist less
conscientious than he would have been satis
fied with his earlier achievement. Now Dante
lives in English, and it may well turn out
that this translation shall stand as the chief
literary product in America during the past
twenty years. Our fiction varies with the
seasons, nay, with the months and weeks:
who recalls now the title of the novel which
last June or July a dozen of our best-known
critics declared would be read as long as the
English language lasts? I wonder that the
older novelists — Mr. HoweUs, for instance —
do not republish under new names their
earlier works; would anybody know? Some
of our critics expound literature according to
the social position of authors, or, following
Pater, books are to them like different kinds
of candy, and the business of the critic is
to describe the flavor of each as it glides
over the palate. Our poets — but let us re
spect their incognito. Amid such conditions,
common to periods of reaction, it must be

DANTE IN AMERICA 97
beneficial to have attention once again
centred on Dante, who is a sure antidote to
persiflage and dilettanteism, and to the wor
ship of the things which perish, and who, of
all poets, best teaches how man makes himself
eternal. To Mr. Norton let us apply Sainte-
Beuve's shining phrase, "La belle destinee
de ne pouvoir plus mourir, sinon avec un
immortel!"

GIORDANO BRUNO'S "EXPULSION
OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT"

GIORDANO BRUNO'S "EXPULSION
OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT"1
Among the pioneers of human thought whose
memories our time has rescued from unmer
ited oblivion, Giordano Bruno stands con
spicuous. Born in 1548, he was burned by
order of the Inquisition in 1600. Coming at
the period when Protestantism had finally es
tablished itself in northern Europe, and when
Catholicism, unable to crush it out, had, at
the Council of Trent, decreed " no compro
mise," Bruno treated with equal scorn the up
holders of both the old and the new religion.
By temperament, he could not conform. He
saw too clearly the insufficiency and contra
dictions in any orthodox creed, and he could
not refrain from saying so. He was one of
those rare beings who, in the presence of the
universe, find all classification, aU limiting
1 From The New World, September, 1894. For bio
graphical study of Giordano Bruno, I may refer the reader
to my volume, " Throne-Makers," in which is reprinted my
essay from The Atlantic Monthly, March, 1890.

102 EXPULSION OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT
definitions, intolerably inadequate ; he was
a heretic, a seeker after truth, whose daring
exploration blazed the way for the build
ers of a wider orthodoxy. As much by what
he shatters as by what he suggests must
we value him, — by the penetration of his
separate thoughts, rather than by the per
manent applicabiHty of his whole system of
thought. The most popular, if not the most import
ant of Bruno's Italian writings is his " Ex
pulsion of the Beast Triumphant," — a vast,
strange work, which comes to us swaddled
in the rhetorical and scholastic garb of the
sixteenth century, but which still reveals
a mighty heart, and a soul in which brood
deep thoughts concerning the destiny of man,
the order of the universe, and the nature of
God. No satire more powerful — not even
that of Rabelais — was written during the
Renaissance. Under a thin disguise of alle
gory — put on to allow him to say what, if
said nakedly, would have brought him the
sooner to the stake — Bruno exposes the in
adequacy of all anthropomorphic religion,
whether Christian or Pagan, Hebrew or
Mahometan. Outwardly he seems to be ridi-

EXPULSION OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT 103
culing the exploded polytheism of classic
Greece and Rome; inwardly, he aims at
overthrowing the worship of any god made
in the likeness of man, and at substituting
for such a personal deity the reign of ethical
truth, impersonal and everlasting. As the
mass of mankind are still at the anthropo
morphic stage in reHgion, Bruno's " Expul
sion of the Beast Triumphant " has a direct
application to-day, and is not merely one
of those products of an outgrown period to
be read, if read at all, for their antiquarian
interest. I propose, therefore, to present as
briefly as possible Bruno's satire ; but while
endeavoring to make it readily intelfigible
to a modern reader, as an exact translation
could not be, I shall guard against import
ing into his thoughts modern connotations
which do not belong there, and from cum
bering this paraphrase with criticism of my
own. Bruno spent some time in England about
1580, and he dedicates his work to Sir
Philip Sidney, " of truly heroic disposition."
In this dedication he states that Jove, " who
represents each one of us," and also typifies
the Supreme Being as then worshiped, after

104 EXPULSION OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT
a long reign of sensuaHty and unreason, be
comes suddenly aware that he is growing old,
and that Fate, to whom he also is subject,
will dethrone him and his Olympian com
rades, and will set up worthier deities in
their stead. Smitten by this premonition of
decay, Jove resolves to make what repara
tion he can by expelhng from heaven the
evidences of lust and misrule and folly, and
to replace them by the virtues, too long neg
lected. The description of this reform is given
in three dialogues, in which Sofia, or Wisdom,
reports to Saulino, a philosopher, the news
as it is brought to her by Mercury.
Wisdom at first lays down one of Bruno's
radical principles, " that the beginning, mid
dle, and end — the birth, growth, and perfec
tion — of all we see is by contraries, through
contraries, in contraries, to contraries," —
change and varieties being the laws of life,
the sources of pleasure, the necessary condi
tions of development. Latterly, Jove himself
has waked up to this truth. He will have
no more of those lascivious metamorphoses
into swans, or eagles, or satyrs ; Vulcan shall
close his stithy on holy days ; Bacchus and his
crew shall confine their jollity to the Carn^

EXPULSION OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT 105
val season ; Cupid is forbidden to wander
about in the presence of men, heroes, and
gods, without his breeches, as is his custom,
and he is enjoined no longer to offend the
eyesight of the heavenly company by show
ing his nakedness on the Milky Way or in
the Olympian Senate, but for the future to
go clothed — at least from the waist down
wards. Ganymede, and Hyacinth the lover of
Apollo, and all the other young persons
of doubtful morals have fallen into disfavor.
The day before yesterday, the anniversary of
the victory of the Gods over the Giants, all
this came about. When Venus approached
the loud-thundering Father, to caress him,
she was rebuked by him. "It is no time
for caresses," said he; "you imagine that
once young means always young; whereas,
age steals upon us, too. I am become Hke
iEsop's old lion whom the ass kicks with im
punity, and the monkey insults with grimaces.
There, where I had oracles most noble, and
temples and altars, now, — these being over
thrown and most unworthily profaned, — in
their place they have set up shrines and
statues to certain ones whom I am ashamed
to name, because they are worse than our

106 EXPULSION OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT
satyrs and fauns and other half-beasts, nay,
viler than the Egyptian crocodiles. To our
nostrils comes no longer the smoke of roast
ing done in our service on the altar ; and if,
now and then, we desire to smell it, we must
visit our kitchens, Hke pastry-cook gods. Be
hold how my body dries, and humors seethe
in my brain ; my joints stiffen and my teeth
drop; my flesh turns golden, and my locks
turn silvery; my eyelids are swollen, and my
vision contracts ; my wind grows feeble, and
my cough increases. You see, therefore, dear
sister, how the traitor, Time, masters us —
how we are all subject to mutation ; and
what most afflicts us is, that we have neither
certitude nor hope of recovering that very
estate in which we were once. Only Truth,
with absolute Virtue, is immortal ; and though
sometimes she falls or is submerged, neces
sarily, at the appointed hour, she rises, her
handmaiden Wisdom stretching her arm to
her." So Jove speaks to Venus, instead of
welcoming her kisses, or joining her in the
dance; and immediately after dinner, he sum
mons all the Gods and Goddesses to a council.
Momus, God of mockery and satire, objects

EXPULSION OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT 107
that the time is unpropitious, and hints that
the Great Father has drunk too freely of
nectar, which makes some merry and some
melancholy. But Jove heeds not the banter,
and he announces immediately that matters
of such gravity await decision that the cus
tomary after-dinner revels must be post
poned. It will be better to hear and discuss
the sad news, having eaten, than on an empty
stomach. Then he attacks the business boldly.
"To-day," he says, "we celebrate our victory
over the Giants, yet by the very mice of the
Earth are we despised and abused ; and with
reason, because the firmament itself bears
witness to our misdeeds. Why is the Dolphin,
joined on the north by Capricorn, master of
fifteen stars? He is there, so that all the world
may contemplate the assumption of him who
was a good broker, not to say pander, between
Neptune and Amphitrite. For what reason
does Sagittarius usurp one-and-thirty stars ?
Because he was the son of Euschemia, nurse
of the Muses. Why is Orion, all armed for
single combat, with wide-stretched arms,
studded with thirty-eight stars, in the eastern
latitude near Taurus? He stands there simply
by Neptune's caprice. . . . Behold, 0 Gods,

108 EXPULSION OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT
our works ! behold our egregious handiwork,
with which we make ourselves honored in
heaven ! You see what fine productions, not
much unlike those which children are wont
to make, when, striving to imitate the works
of their elders, they build with clay, dough,
twigs, sticks, and straws. Do you think we
shall not be called to account for all this?
Errors, due to frailty or to injudicious levity,
can be suffered and easily condoned: but
what mercy, what pity shall be shown to
errors which are committed by those who,
appointed presidents of justice, contribute
by their most criminal faults even greater
errors in honoring, rewarding, and exalting
in heaven crimes and criminals together? I
confess my sins, 0 Gods; mine and yours
cannot be hidden. Let us provide, therefore,
for our future; because, although Fate has
not granted that we should not fall, yet it
has granted that we may rise. Let us be
converted to Justice, in departing from which
we departed from ourselves, so that, being
no longer Gods, we are no longer ourselves.
And first of all let us reform ourselves in
heaven, which, intellectually, is within us,
and then in the sensible world which presents

EXPULSION OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT 109
itself corporeally to our eyes. If we would
alter our condition, let us change our
manners ! Let us purify the inner affection,
and the outward reformation will be easy ! I
perceive that you desire to do this : three days
hence we wiU meet again and confer upon
the speedy cleansing of our celestial abodes."
At the appointed time the Gods reconvene.
The examination begins with the northern
part of the firmament. "What disposition
will you make of the Bear?" asks Jove.
Momus replies that the Gods have long been
disgusted that the most illustrious position
should be occupied by that beast, and that
the star to which aU sailors in earth and all
contemplators in heaven look for guidance
should be placed in her tail, to satisfy one of
J uno's whims ; because Nature, which proba
bly is better informed than Juno, has denied
a tail to bears. Therefore let the creature be
removed. "Away with it, whithersoever you
please," says Jove, "either to the bearish
EngHsh or to the Orsini or Cesarini of Rome
— for she enjoys a city life." "Let her be
shut up in the cloisters at Berne," pleads
Juno. "Anywhere she chooses," Jove con
tinues, " so long as she vacates that most

110 EXPULSION OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT
eminent seat, which I desire Truth to occupy
henceforth." "But what shall we do with
the Great Bear?" Momus asks. "As she is
old, let her go as chaperon to the little one,
and take care that she doesn't corrupt her."
" How shall we dispose of the Dragon ? " says
Mars. " Oh, he 's a useless beast ! " exclaims
Momus; "we'H send him to Ireland, or to
one of the Orcades, to pasture." In place of
the Dragon, Jove decrees that Prudence shall
sit. Then they dispatch Cepheus, and sum
mon Wisdom to succeed him.
Jove next decides that Law shaU occupy
the seat from which they dismiss Arctophy-
lax, that the Northern Crown shaU remain
till some invincible hero shall deserve it by
bringing peace to afflicted Europe. " To ef
fect that 't were enough," quoth Momus, " to
put an end to that cowardly sect of pedants
who, without weU-doing, according to law
divine and natural, esteem themselves and
wish to be esteemed worshipers pleasing to
the Gods. They say that to do good is good,
to do wrong is bad ; but no matter how much
good one may do, or how much evil one may
not do, that one does not so become worthy
and pleasing in the sight of the Gods but by

EXPULSION OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT 111
hoping and believing according to their cat
echism. The worst is, that they defame us,
saying that this is an institution of the Gods,
and with this they blame deeds and fruits,
even dubbing them defects and vices. They
heed not righteous acts. Further, whilst they
pretend that their whole care is concerning
things invisible, which neither they nor any
one else ever understood, they say that to
acquire that knowledge only Destiny suffices,
— Destiny which is inscrutable, — by means
of certain favors and fantasies, on which the
Gods especially feed."
" Then," says Mercury, "since there is not
freedom of choice, those who are predestined
to regard good works as unnecessary ought
not to be wroth with those who are pre
destined to assert that good works are as
necessary as faith." " All who have natural
judgment," says Apollo, " judge the laws
to be good because they have for their ob
ject practice, and those are best which give
occasion to the best practice. Some laws are
accorded by us, some are framed by men, for
the convenience of human Hfe; and since
some men never see the fruit of their merits
in this life, there is promised them the good

112 EXPULSION OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT
and evil, the reward and punishment, of an
other life, according to their works. Of aH
who believe and teach otherwise, these alone
deserve to be driven from heaven and earth,
and to be exterminated as the plague of the
world, not more worthy of mercy than are
wolves, bears, and serpents." Saturn main
tains that this idle race, who rely for salva
tion upon faith instead of virtuous acts,
should, after their death, inhabit the bodies
of swine, or of oysters, for many hundred
years; but Mercury replies, that in justice
the punishment of idleness should be toil.
" Therefore it will be better that they be
come asses, whereby they may keep their
ignorance and be cut off from idleness, and
in reward for continuous work have scanty
hay and straw for food, and many a cudgeling
for guerdon." All the Gods approve ; Jove
consents, adding that this particular crown
shall be replaced by an ideal crown from
which infinite others shall proceed, and that
the ideal sword be joined with it. By which
Jove means universal judgment.
Momus now points to Hercules, and asks
Jove, " What shall we do with that bastard
of yours ? " Thereupon Jove feels compas-

EXPULSION OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT 113
sion for the hero, who, he says, is not blame-
able for his origin, and who bore himself
nobly upon earth. Chance made him human ;
by his own deeds he approved himself a
worthy son of Jove ; still, although no excep
tion can be made in his favor, when he
returns to earth he shall have honor and
reputation not less than if he remained in
heaven. " I ordain that he be a sort of ter
restrial god." " So be it ! " exclaim many of
the Gods. " Many new monsters have arisen
down there," continues Jove ; " let him abol
ish them ! "
When Wisdom had reached this point in
her narration she beheld Mercury approach
ing; so she bade Saulino fareweU till the
morrow, and turned to greet the celestial
messenger. He told her that he could not
long delay, on an errand to earth. "What
business have you there?" asked Wisdom.
" Jove has commanded," Mercury explains,
" that to-day at noon two melons among the
others in Franzino's melon patch become
perfectly ripe, but that they be not picked
until three days hence, when they won't be
good to eat. He wills further that Albenzio's
wife Nasta, while crimping her forehead

114 EXPULSION OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT
curls, shall, from having heated the iron too
hot, burn fifty-seven hairs, but not her head,
and that this time she shall not swear when
she smells the singeing, but bear it patiently.
Further, that at fifteen minutes past twelve,
by a movement of the tongue, which she
shall have rubbed over her palate for the
fourth time, Fiurulo's old woman shall lose
her third molar tooth on her right-hand
under jaw, that it shall drop without bleed
ing or pain, because it has reached the end
of its aching, which has lasted just seventeen
annual lunar revolutions. Also, that of seven
moles which started four days ago from the
bowels of the earth, taking different roads
upward, two shall come to the surface at the
same time, one at exactly noon, another
fifteen minutes and nineteen seconds later;
distant from each other three paces one foot
and half an inch, in the garden of Anton
Fainano ; the time and place of the others will
be decreed hereafter."
Wisdom was surprised at this list of special
providences. She wished to know how Mer
cury would have time to accomplish not only
these but innumerable others ; so he explained
to her the relation of the infinite to the finite.

EXPULSION OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT 115
Jove is not, as some philosophers presume,
overburdened with cares. He " does all with
out occupation, solicitude, and hindrance, be
cause he has numberless species and infinite
individuals ; he foresees, in issuing his com
mand, and having issued his command, —
not in a certain successive order, but in a
twinkling and simultaneously, and he does not
operate by efficient causes one by one, with
many actions, and by these actions come to
infinite acts ; but the whole past, present, and
future he creates with one act, simple and
single. Unity is in infinite number, and infin
ite number in unity. Where there is not unity
there is no number, finite or infinite ; where
there is number there must be unity. There
fore, he who, not accidentally (like some par
ticular intellects), but essentially (Hke the
Universal Intelligence), comprehends unity,
comprehends the unit and number, finite and
infinite, the end and term of all ; and he can
do all, not only in the universal, but in the
particular besides. And this I am constrained
to reveal to you," Mercury added, "lest,
through the many afflictions by which you
are perturbed, you be too easily lured to
ponder not too piously the government of the

116 EXPULSION OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT
Gods: a government which, at the end of
ends, is just and sacrosanct, although things
may appear, as you see, very confused. Do
not suppose that anything in the universe is
trivial; every meanest thing is most important
in the order of the whole and of the universe ;
for the great things are composed of the
small, and the small of the least, and these
of individuals and minims. Divine cognition
does not resemble ours, which follows after
things; but it precedes things, and is in all
of them, so that, if it were not found in them,
there would be neither primary nor secondary
causes." Upon this, after a few parting
words, Mercury sets forth on his mission.
Wisdom opens her second dialogue with
Saulino, by stating in very noble language
why Truth is entitled to the most eminent
post in heaven. " Truth is that entity which
is inferior to none other: because, if you
would imagine anything before Truth, you
must suppose it to be other than Truth;
therefore it cannot be true, and must be false,
nothing, non-existent. Nor can anything be
after Truth; because if it comes after, it
must come without her. So Truth is before
all things, with all things, and after all things.

EXPULSION OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT 117
She is ideal, natural, and rational; meta
physical, physical, and logical. But truly this
Truth which you perceive by the senses, and
are able to understand by the height of your
intellect, is not the supreme and primal Truth,
but a certain figure and image and splendor
of that which is superior to Jove, the fre
quent theme of our discourse and the subject
of our metaphors."
" Most worthily ! " exclaims Saulino : " be
cause Truth is the most sincere, the most
divine cause of all: nay, the divinity and
sincerity, the goodness and beauty of all
things, is Truth, which neither through vio
lence is taken away, nor through antiquity
becomes corrupt, nor through veiling is di
minished, nor through communication is dis
sipated ; for the sense does not confound her,
nor time set wrinkles on her face, nor space
hide her, nor night interrupt her, nor darkness
conceal her; but, by being more and more
assailed, more and more she revives and
grows; without defender and protector she
defends herself, and therefore she loves the
fellowship of the few and wise, she hates
the multitude, she reveals herself to those
only who seek her for herself, and will not

118 EXPULSION OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT
be declared to those who do not humbly
lay themselves bare before her, nor to those
who with fraud approach her ; and therefore
she dweUs most lofty, where all look and few
see." Wisdom next describes Prudence, who has
a twofold nature, being called Providence, in
so far as she influences and abides in superior
principles, and Prudence, in so far as she
operates through us. Wisdom, also, is a twin
— the one supra-celestial and ultra-mundane,
light and eye ; the other, earthly and inferior,
but a participant in Truth ; not the sun, — but
the earth, the moon, and the star which shines
by his light. The former is invisible, incom
prehensible, indescribable, above, within, and
beyond everything; the latter is personified
in heaven, illustrated by men of genius, com
municated by words, set forth by the arts,
burnished by discussions, outlined by writ
ings. Woe to those who do not seek her for
herself, or for the supreme virtue and love
of the Deity, who transcends every Jove and
every heaven, but in order to sell her for
money, or honors, or other kind of gain ; or
not so much because they desire to learn, as
because they wish to be deemed learned; or

EXPULSION OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT 119
to detract and wrangle. Those who seek her
to edify themselves are prudent ; the others,
who study her to edify their neighbors, are
humane; those who seek her absolutely are
curious; thos^e who inquire out of love for
the supreme and prime verity are wise, and
consequently happy. "But why," asks Sau
lino, "is there so great a diversity among
those who possess Wisdom? Why do some
who possess most seem least edified?"
" Whence does it happen," Wisdom replies,
"that the sun does not warm all those it
shines upon, and that sometimes it heats those
least on whom it shines brightest ? "
They then discuss Law, to whom Jove has
assigned a position near Truth, Prudence,
and Wisdom. Law can encounter indignity
only when she follows one of two paths, " of
which one is that of Iniquity, commanding
and proposing unjust things, the other is
that of Difficulty, commanding and propos
ing impossible things, which are also unjust ;
because there are two hands by which Laws
can enforce every statute : Justice is one,
Possibility the other ; and of these, one mod
erates the other, since, although many things
are possible which are not just, nothing is

120 EXPULSION OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT
just which is not possible. So no law ought
to be accepted which is not conformable to
the practice of the human race." Next by
implication Bruno, speaking through Saulino,
condemns celibacy, as an unnatural and ar
bitrary law, imposed by the Church of Rome
upon its clergy.
From Law, Wisdom passes on to Justice,
upon whom Jove has enjoined the defense
and care of the true law, and the destruction
of the iniquitous and false, bidding her fur
ther to kindle, as far as she can, in human
breasts the appetite for glory, because this is
that sole and most efficacious incentive which
is wont to impel men, and to heat them for
those heroic deeds which increase, preserve,
and fortify the commonwealth. " But," Sau
lino objects, " those of the counterfeit relig
ion call all these glories vain; saying that we
must glory in I know not what cabalistic
tragedy." "Never believe," Wisdom replies,
" that the Gods in any way take interest in
those things in which no man is interested ;
for the Gods heed only that by which they
may aid men ; they are moved, and angered,
by no word, deed, or thought of theirs, ex
cept in so far as it may lessen that respect by

EXPULSION OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT 121
which republics endure. The Gods would
not be Gods, if they took pleasure or dis
pleasure, sadness or joy, from anything men
say or do. So that it is an unworthy, stupid,
profane, and blameworthy thing to suppose
that the Gods desire the reverence, fear, love,
worship, and respect of men, for any other
good end and usefulness, save of men them
selves ; because, being most glorious in them
selves, and incapable of having their glory
augmented from without, they have made the
laws not so much for receiving glory as for
communicating glory to men. Jove wills that,
comparatively, the greatest errors are those
which harm the commonwealth ; the lesser,
those which harm our neighbors ; the least,
those which happen between two persons ; and
he judges as nothing that fault which works
no bad example or bad effect, but springs from
an accidental impulse in the temperament of
the individual. He approves penitence, but
not equally with innocence ; he approves
faith, but not equally with doing ; so of con
fession, in respect to correcting and abstain
ing; he does not decree that a man who vainly
tames his body shall sit next to one who
bridles his spirit; he does not distinguish

122 EXPULSION OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT
customs and religion so much by variety of
gowns and differences of garb as by the
good and more good habits of virtue and
discipline ; he praises less one who may have
healed a vile and worthless cripple, who is
worth Httle or nothing more being healed,
than another who may have freed his country,
or reformed a disturbed mind. Dear to the
Gods are they who employ the perfection of
their own and other minds, who serve the
community, and who expressly attend to acts
of magnanimity, justice, and mercy."
Saulino next inquires if Jove has issued
a special decree against the temerity of those
grammarians [Protestants] who now increase
in Europe. " Observe," replies Wisdom,
"whether, whilst they say they wish to
reform the deformed religions and laws, they
do not spoil all the good there is in them,
and confirm and lift to the stars all that is
perverse and vain. Do they bring other
fruits, except of breaking up assemblies ; dis
sipating concords ; dissolving unions ; making
sons to rebel against their fathers, servants
against their masters, subjects against their
superiors ; sowing schisms between people
and people, race and race, comrade and com-

EXPULSION OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT 123
rade, brother and brother ; and splitting up
families, cities, republics, and kingdoms ? Do
they, whilst they greet with peace, bring
wherever they enter the knife of division?
Whilst they declare themselves the ministers
of one who raises the dead and heals the
infirm, is it not they who, beyond all others
whom earth feeds, wound the healthy and
butcher the living, not so much with fire and
sword as with their baleful tongue? They
talk of peace and concord, — they, among
a thousand of whom you will not find one
who has not framed a catechism of his own !
and who does not destroy to-day what he
wrote yesterday ! " " We shall soon see," says
Saulino, sarcastically, "how dexterous these
fellows are in acquiring an eU of earth, who
are so effusive and prodigal in bestowing the
kingdoms of the heavens ! "
When the Gods next met, Gods Riches and
Poverty were heard. Then Fortune came
arrogantly forward. It would be pusillani
mous for her to keep silence, she said, after
Riches and Poverty had spoken boldly. "I
am that Goddess divine and exceUent, as
much desired as sought, and held so dear,
instead of whom Jove most frequently is

124 EXPULSION OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT
thanked. Riches proceed from my open hand,
but if I close my palms, all the world weeps,
and cities, kingdoms, empires are turned up
side down. How often, too, have I control
over Reason, Truth, Justice, and other Gods ! "
Momus objected to all this, and much more,
that the other Gods claimed a seat in heaven on
the plea of good deeds, whereas Fortune ad
mitted to having wrought evil. "Although
that were true," said she, " it was not evil ;
because when Fate determines, it is well done,
and were my nature venomous Hke that of the
viper, it would not be my fault, but Nature's.
Besides, nothing is absolutely bad; because
the viper is not deadly and poisonous to the
viper, nor the lion to the lion, dragon to
dragon, bear to bear ; but each thing is bad
in respect to some other, just as you, virtu
ous Gods, are evil towards the vicious. There
fore, I, — Fortune, — though I seem evil to
wards some, am divining good to others.
How many excellent philosophers, such as
Empedocles and Epicurus, attribute more to
me than to Jove himself ! "
She defended her cause stoutly, and when
Minerva taunted her with blindness, she re-
pHed that she had a good ear and intellect,

EXPULSION OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT 125
nevertheless ; and that, after all, eyes are not
the most necessary organs. Were not Demo-
critus, and Tiresias, and Homer, and many,
many others, illustrious by their wisdom or
virtue, blind ? " Blindness robs me of nothing,
absolutely nothing, needed for the perfection
of my being," she continued. "Eyes are made
to distinguish and know differences, — I will
not stop to show how often judges are de
ceived by them, — but I am Justice itself, I
need not distinguish; but, as all things are
really one substance, so it is my duty to place
all in a certain equahty, to esteem all ahke, and
to be not more prompt in beholding or calling
one than another, and not more disposed
to regale one than another, or more inclined
towards the nearest than towards the distant.
I see not mitres, togas, crowns, arts, geniuses ;
I perceive not merits and demerits ; they are
accidents, not essences. So, I am perfectly fair.
I put all in an urn, shake them up, and the
hazard to him who gets it ! and who gets the
good, well for him — and who gets the bad,
iU for him. True, they complain bitterly of
the hand which draws those unequal lots, but,
0 Gods, that comes from your inequality, in
iquity, and injustice. Yours is the fault ; yours

126 EXPULSION OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT
be the blame, because Wisdom does not com
municate herself to all in equal measure;
Temperance dwells in few; Goodness gives
her largess unequaUy; Truth shows herself
to very few. Thus you other good deities
are niggardly and most partial, causing the
very inequalities you charge me with. Prud
ence throws but three names into the urn ;
Truth barely one, or none ; yet you expect
me, who am impartial, to choose one of those
sooner than one of 900,000 others. Do you
make all men equal in virtue and under
standing, and then I shaU draw none but
good lots, and reward none but the worthy."
" Nevertheless," Momus argued, " you would
still be unjust: because, although everybody
might be worthy of a duchy, let us say, you
would make only one a duke ! " Fortune,
smiling, answered: "You talk of what I
would be, not of what I am : let us deal with
facts, and not with suppositions. You admit
that I am just, but would be unjust; you,
Gods, are unjust, and would be just. As for
that duchy, it would be plainly impossible
for all to have it, — the impossible regards
neither justice nor injustice; but it is pos
sible that all should have an equal chance to

EXPULSION OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT 127
win it, and that I would impartially give
them." "Fortune has argued right cleverly," quoth
Jove, " and well deserves a seat in heaven !
But since she is in all concerns, she shall not
be restricted to a single abode, neither here
nor on earth. Let the habitations of the others
be open to her ; since all obeys the destiny
of mutation, all passes through the urn,
through the revolution, and through the
hand of your Excellency."
After this decision, with which none of the
Gods quarreled, Jove assigned Hercules's seat
to Strength. Then in place of the Lyre,
Memory, and the Nine Muses — Arithmetic,
Geometry, Music, Logic, Poesy, Astrology,
Physic, Metaphysic, and Ethic — were estab
lished. Next, Perseus had honorable dismissal,
being commanded to return to Earth and
slay the new Gorgons there. Instead of him,
Diligence (or Industry) occupied the shining
constellation. "Overcome all things, even
thyself!" said Jove; "toil, but without
knowing that thou toilest ! The highest per
fection is not to feel weariness and pain when
we are enduring weariness and pain. Up then !
if thou be a virtue, busy not thyself with base

128 EXPULSION OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT
thing's, nor with frivolous, nor with vain
things ! Difficulty shall flee thee. Thou shalt
drive off misfortune, and seize fortune by the
forelock ! Vigilance be thy sentinel, to guard
thee against foolish undertakings, to warn
thee that it is more grievous to have used
thine arms in vain than with hands full to
have carried stones." Diligence accepted her
mission nobly, exclaiming : " Why do we idle
and sleep in life, when we must, alas ! idle so
much and sleep so long in death ? For even
though we expect another Hfe, or other mode
of being ourselves, it will not be this same
life of ours : for this passes away forever, and
hopes for no return. Hope, why dost thou
not spur me ; why dost thou not incite me ?
Come, bid me to await a happy result from
difficulties, if I be not too hasty, or cease
from my work too soon ; do not allow me to
promise myself rewards for as long as I may
live, but for as long as I shall live nobly ! "
Mercury now appears, saying that he was
sent by Jove to repair the destruction
wrought by Discord in the Parthenopean
Kingdom. Boundless Avarice, which works
under the pretext of wishing to maintain re
ligion, was the cause. As a remedy she

EXPULSION OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT 129
" would increase the punishment of the de
linquents, so that many innocents suffer the
same penalty as one criminal ; and thus the
prince grows fatter and fatter." Wisdom
says: " 'Tis natural that sheep, which have
a wolf for governor, should be punished by
being devoured by him " ; and Mercury re
pHes, " But it is doubtful whether some
times merely his great hunger and gluttony
do not make them culpable. And it is against
every law that through the fault of their
father, the lambs and their mother should
be punished." Wisdom continues : " Verily,
I have never found such a judgment, except
among savage barbarians ; I think it was first
discovered among the Jews, for they are a
race so pestilent, leprous, and generaUy so
pernicious, that they deserve to be blotted
out rather than born."
Betimes next morning, Wisdom continues
her dialogue with Saulino, saying that Dili
gence had scarcely finished, and was moving
toward the place quitted by Perseus, when
Idleness insisted on being heard. Jove then
decreed that Idleness should never be pleas
urable and honored, except as a change from
Toil, or as giving Diligence the opportunity

130 EXPULSION OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT
to meditate fresh achievements. " I depute
you to be master of old age, whose eyes you
shall often turn backward, and if she have
not left worthy traces, you shall cause her to
be uneasy and sad, and to dread the coming
judgment and the impending season, which
lead to the inexorable tribunal of Rhada-
manthus ; and thus she shall feel the horrors
of death, before death comes." So Idleness
was dispatched.
" We must dispose of the other seats more
rapidly," quoth Saturn, "for the evening
approaches." Most of the Gods showed their
approval by a nod, and the proceedings were
more active. I must pass over much, but you
must hear what Jove said about Germany.
"It is the dear delightful country," said he,
" where sauce-pans are shields, pots and ket
tles are helmets, bones sheathed in salt meat
are swords, tumblers, jugs, and goblets are
trumpets, kegs and barrels are drums, the
drinking-table is the battle-field ; where wine-
cellars, dramshops, and taverns are the fort
resses, bulwarks, castles, and bastions. The
people there have generally eye-troubles, and
drink incomparably more than they eat.
Nevertheless, I send the Eagle to Germany,

EXPULSION OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT 131
and in place of him here stabHsh Magnanim
ity, Magnificence, and Generosity."
In place of Pegasus, Jove summoned Divine
Rapture and Prophecy ; for Andromeda, he
substituted Hope, " that most holy buckler of
the human heart, that divine corner-stone
of all the edifices of goodness, that most
stanch shelter to Truth " ; the Triangle he
caused to give way to Good Faith and Sin
cerity. " Behold," said Minerva, " to what a
pass the world is reduced, where it has be
come a habit and proverb, that to reign one
must not keep faith, and that it is right to
deceive him who deceives." "I decree that
this be not lawful," said Jove sternly,
"although it be the law of some beastly and
barbarous Jew or Saracen [Bruno means
the Jesuits], and not of a civilized and
heroic Greek or Roman, that sometimes and
with some persons, merely for selfish conven
ience, it is proper to keep faith, making her
the minister of tyranny and treachery."
Saulino interrupts to say, "There is not,
Wisdom, an offense more infamous, rascally,
and unworthy of pity, than this which is
done to one man by another, because one has
trusted the other and been deceived by him ! "

132 EXPULSION OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT
Wisdom continues : The Gods next took
counsel concerning the Ram, whom Jove
relegated to England, where his breed is so
handsome, white, and fat ; the Bull was
allowed to follow him, unless he preferred to
dwell in Turin. In their place came Emula
tion and Zeal. Over Capricorn there was much
discussion. Momus declared that he had led
the Egyptians to honor the living images of
beasts. "That seems not a crime to me,"
Jove replied, " because animals and plants
are the living effects of Nature, who is, as
you ought to know, nothing else than God
in things. Nevertheless, divers living things
represent divers Gods and Powers ; because,
besides absolute existence, which they have,
they share the existence communicated to all
things, according to their measure and capac
ity. Hence all is God, though not totaUy,
but he is in all things more or less. There
fore you will find Mars more efficaciously in
some natural substance — as in the viper,
or scorpion, or onion — than in any sort
of picture or statue. Thus let the crocus,
the narcissus, the heliotrope, the cock, the
Hon, remind you of the Sun ; thus should
all things reveal to you in some degree

EXPULSION OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT 133
some of the Gods." " That is true," Momus
added. " But this I deplore, that some
senseless and stupid idolaters seek for the
divinity, of which they have no concep
tion, in the carcases of dead, inanimate
things" [CathoHc worship of relics]. "Let
that not irritate you," said Iris, " because
Fate has appointed the sequence of darkness
and light." " But the evil is," repHed Momus,
" that they hold it for sure that they stand
in the light." " Oh, darkness would not be
darkness, if they recognized it as such," said
Iris. "That worship of the Egyptians was
not a mere empty ceremony : it enabled them,
by reason of profound magic, to pass through
certain natural objects in which the Deity
was latent in some measure and to commun
icate with the Gods. Hence, for victory they
poured their libations to Jove the Magnani
mous, as represented in the eagle; for prud
ence in their affairs, they sacrificed to Jove
the Sagacious, as represented in the serpent,
and so on."
Saulino objects that Jove was never named
in Egyptian worship, and came long after
wards among the Greeks, but Wisdom an
swers, " Let not the Greek name bother you ;

134 EXPULSION OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT
because I speak according to the most general
custom, and because even among the Greeks
the names are fictitious ; for all know that
Jove was a Cretan king, a mortal man, whose
body, like aU other men's, rotted or was
burned. Venus was a mortal woman, beyond
telling beautiful, and Queen of Cyprus. The
same applies to all the other Gods who are
known as men."
Saulino inquiring, "How, then, were they
invoked and adored?" Wisdom says: "I will
tell you. Men did not adore Jove as if he
were the Deity, but they adored the Deity
as it was revealed in Jove : because, seeing
a man in whom majesty, justice, and magna
nimity shone forth, they beheved that a mag
nanimous, just, and benign god dwelt in him,
and they ordered and put in practice that
such a god, or the Deity, by as much as he
thus communicated himself, should be called
Jove. So you see that crocodiles, cocks, and
onions were never worshiped, but the Gods
and the Deity in them. And though we ap
prehend the Deity piecemeal, in divers objects
and creatures, yet is it one : as it diffuses and
communicates itself in innumerable modes, so
it has innumerable names, each mode to be

EXPULSION OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT 135
sought in appropriate fashion, with innumer
able rites, because from the Deity we derive
countless kinds of grace. In order to this are
needed that wisdom and judgment, that art,
industry, and use of intellectual light, which
from time to time is more or less shed upon
Earth; we call this magic, which when it
touches supernatural principles is divine ;
and when it concerns the contemplation of
Nature, and the scrutiny of her secrets, is
natural, and is called intermediary and math
ematical; and when it studies the motives
and acts of the soul — the horizon of the
corporeal and spiritual — it is spiritual and
intellectual." Saulino asks : " Then the end of all is that
all Deity springs from one Source : the several
Gods are but emanations from that, as mirrors
reflect the primal Hght of the Sun?" and
Wisdom responds : " That is true. So that
God, as absolute, deals not with us, excepting
in so much as he communicates himself to
the processes of Nature, and is more intimate
in them than Nature is herself ; therefore,
if he is not very Nature, he is certainly the
nature of Nature; and the soul of the Soul
of the World, if he is not that Soul itself.

136 EXPULSION OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT
Do you not recall the lament of Hermes
Trismegistus? 'Our land of Egypt,' he said,
' is the temple of the world ! But, alas ! the
time will come when Egypt shall seem to have
vainly been the reHgious worshiper of the
Divinity ; but the Divinity, migrating back
to heaven, shaU leave Egypt deserted, and
this holy place will remain widowed of every
religion, from being bereft of the presence of
the Gods; wherefore there will succeed a
strange and barbarous people, without reHg
ion, piety, law, or any cult ! 0 Egypt, Egypt,
of thy religions there shall be heard only
the fables, incredible even to the generations
hereafter, to whom there will be none to nar
rate thy pious achievements, except the letters
graven in stones, which speak not to Gods
and men, — for these wiU be dead, and the
Divinity translated to heaven, — but to Scyth
ians and Indians, and others of like savage
nature ! Darkness shall overpower the Hght,
death shall be deemed more useful than life,
none shall lift his eyes to heaven, the religious
man shall be held insane, the impious shall
be adjudged prudent, the wrathful strong,
the most wicked good ! Only pernicious angels
shall remain, who, mingling with men, shall

EXPULSION OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT 137
force them, wretched ones ! to dare every
crime as if it were justice, giving cause to
wars, rapine, fraud, and all other things con
trary to the soul and natural justice ; and
this shall be the old age, and the disorder,
and the irreligion of the world. But doubt
not ; since God, the lord and father, governor
of the world, shall by water or by fire, by ills
or by pestilence, put an end to this stain,
calling back the pure and ancient counten
ance.' "
" But I have digressed too far. After
longer conference, Jove assigned to Con
templation the post of Capricorn. Aquarius
was succeeded by Temperance, and the
Whale, who served as galley, coach, or taber
nacle to Jonah, by TranquiUity of Mind.
Then they reached Orion. 'Let me dispose
of him,' cried Momus. ' He 's a rare fellow ;
for he can work miracles, and walk on the
waves of the sea without sinking in, or wetting
his feet. Let us send him among men, and
let him make them believe all that he will —
that white is black ; that human inteUigence,
where it seems to see clearest, is blind; that
the law of Nature is ribald ; that Nature and
God are opposed; that the Divinity is a good

138 EXPULSION OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT
mother to all the Greeks, and a cruel step-
dame to all other nations, and that no one
can become pleasing to the Gods except by
becoming Grecianized ; because the biggest
rascal in Greece, being a member of the chosen
people of the Gods, is incomparably better
than the most just and magnanimous Roman,
or citizen of any other land. And he will
persuade them that philosophy and aU con
templation, and all magic, which might make
them like to us Gods, are nothing but follies ;
that every heroic act is nothing more than
baseness, and that ignorance is the fairest
science in the world, because it is acquired
without fatigue, and does not subject the soul
to melancholy. But beware, O Gods, lest he,
having caught the prey, keep it for himself,
saying that great Jove is not Jove, but that
Orion is Jove, and the Gods are only chimeras
and fantasies.' Minerva did not beHeve that
any impostor could bring Jove into disrepute;
then the Thunderer decreed that Orion should
be dispatched to Earth, but that he should be
deprived of his power of working miracles
and similar sleights, which serve no purpose.
Afterwards, with little debate, they rid heaven
of the Hare, the Cup, the Hound, and the

EXPULSION OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT 139
remaining unworthinesses, and Jove declared
that the crown should be bestowed upon
Henry III of France, who loves peace and
preserves his people, so far as he can, in tran
quillity and devotion. Then, evening being
come, the whole company of the Gods ad
journed to supper, satisfied in their work,
and Jove commanded that the Southern Fish
be immediately cooked au gratin, for their
delectation." Even so slight a summary as this of "The
Expulsion of the Beast Triumphant " shows
how modern, how contemporaneous, Bruno
was in his attitude towards many of the deep
est problems of Hfe. Like Spinoza, he was
a " God-intoxicated man," and he felt — what
many say but do not feel — the sublimity of
being endowed with existence in an infinite
and eternal universe. By his sense of the con
tinuity and progressive development of the
human race, by his application of the com
parative method to various religions, by his
rejection of the miraculous, above all, by his
recognition that the various ideals which men
at different times have worshiped as God
have been but the personification of certain

140 EXPULSION OF THE BEAST TRIUMPHANT
human qualities, or of qualities animal rather
than human, Giordano Bruno was so far in
advance of his age as to be, in these respects,
level with our own. From the heaven depicted
in many of our creeds he would soon find
many beasts to be expelled.

COUNTESS MARTINENGO
CESARESCO

COUNTESS MARTINENGO
CESARESCO1
When women take so readily to novel-writ
ing, in which the fortune and psychology
of imaginary persons are their subject, why
have they so Httle desire, or power, to por
tray the characters, motives, and acts of real
men and women ? Why have they achieved
so little, so regrettably little, as historians or
as biographers. This question recurred to me
again and again in reading the recent vol
ume of " Lombard Studies," 2 by Countess
Evelyn Martinengo Cesaresco, the only Hv
ing English woman of letters, so far as I am
aware, who has succeeded as a writer both of
biography and of essays. So little has been
made public about the career of this remark
able woman, whose position among her liter
ary contemporaries is now assured, that an
outhne of it may be welcome.
Evelyn Carrington was born in 1852, her
father being the Very Reverend Henry Car-
1 The Nation, January 15, 1903.
* Lombard Studies (London : T. Fisher Unwin, 1902).

144 COUNTESS MARTINENGO CESARESCO
rington, Dean of Booking, Braintree, and her
mother, Juanita, daughter of Captain Hasel-
dene Lyall, of the Royal Navy. The Car-
ringtons are an old English family, tracing
back to Norman origins : the Lyalls are Scotch,
the Red Comyn, Bruce's rival, being among
their forerunners, and the Napiers among
their recent kindred. More important than
remote inheritance, however, is the fact that
Dean Carrington's mother was Pauline Belli,
whose father, Giovanni Belli, served as sec
retary to Warren Hastings in India and
there became acquainted with Sir Edmund
Carrington, the first Chief Justice of Ceylon.
Pauline Belli and her two sisters — one of
whom married Dr. Howley, subsequently
Archbishop of Canterbury — were great
London beauties in their day, and Pauline's
portrait by Lawrence will convince whoever
sees it in the South Kensington Museum
that she deserved her reputation. When we
add that the BelH had intermarried with the
Spanish Bivars, descendants of the Cid, be
lievers in heredity will find no difficulty in
proving that Evelyn Carrington, with such
a mixture of ancestry, was predestined to be
a cosmopolite.

COUNTESS MARTINENGO CESARESCO 145
An accident in childhood, however, seems
to have been more directly responsible for
her development. When she was seven years
old she suffered from a sunstroke, which for
tunately saved her from being put through
the conventional education of English gen
tlemen's daughters. Consecutive study was
forbidden ; she spent much time out of doors,
and had many and strange pets — her fond
ness for animals, as appears in many places
in her works, being almost as strong as her
love of the chief human concerns. She had
a nook to herself in her father's study,
and there she browsed at will — no doubt
more under his direction than she imagined.
Shakespeare she spelled out for herself.
This training, prolonged through childhood
and youth, seems shockingly desultory to
the devotees of routine pedagogy; but in
her case it was marvelously successful. By
the time she grew up, she knew far more
of English Hterature than most young
women, and she had, besides, command of
French, German, Italian, Latin, and Greek,
using them with the true scholar's ease. Her
best teaching came from her father, a man
of wide learning, who has made, but not

146 COUNTESS MARTINENGO CESARESCO
printed, a metrical version of the Greek dra
matists, and whose published translations —
Victor Hugo's "Poems," and "An Antho
logy of French Poetry" — show a perfect
knowledge of French and unusual metrical
facility. Besides book learning, the daughter got
from her father an intense enthusiasm for the
ideals of liberty — those ideals which thrilled
every generous heart in the fifties and sixties
but which have been temporarily eclipsed
through the dominance of Germany, with its
inveterate love of despotism, its worship of
force and of bureaucracy. From infancy she
had heard especiaUy of the ItaUan struggle
for independence, a struggle then nearly
achieved, which glowed with romance and
heroism, and was the work of a wonderfuUy
picturesque group of statesmen and soldiers
leading millions of their responsive country
men to national life. Cavour had but lately
died. Garibaldi, a world-hero fresh from the
glorious redemption of Sicily, was the idol of
the multitude and the terror of ministries.
Victor Emanuel, Mazzini, Ricasoli, Minghetti,
and the great throng of patriots of the second
magnitude, were in full vigor.

COUNTESS MARTINENGO CESARESCO 147
" Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven! "
For Evelyn Carrington, with her Italian
antecedents and liberty-loving spirit, the Ital
ian cause and its heroes had an irresistible
fascination. It is said that with her first pin-
money she bought a photograph of Garibaldi,
and it is certain that her earliest printed work,
written while she was stiU a girl, was " La
Famiglia CairoH,"an account in Italian of the
Cairoli brothers, of whom all fought for Italy,
several died in battle, and one, Benedetto,
survived to be Prime Minister and to receive
the dagger thrust which the assassin Passa-
nante aimed at King Humbert in November,
1878. Of this first venture, Countess Cesar-
esco wrote in the Academy (of June 11,
1898), shortly after Gladstone's death :
"My mother and I were at Venice . . .
at the Grand Hotel and Mr. Gladstone was
staying at the same. My mother had often
met him in her youth, when both were the
guests of Mrs. Gaskell at Thornes House,
and it thus came about that she presented
him with a copy of 'La Famiglia Cairoli.'
I shall always remember how, with the par
ticular art of giving pleasure which he pos-

148 COUNTESS MARTINENGO CESARESCO
sessed in so eminent a degree, he seated
himself afterwards in the middle of the salle
de lecture, where the young author could
not help seeing him, and spent about an
hour in reading the little work, apparently
with extreme attention. It was a trait which
exactly revealed the man."
In 1882, at Rome, Miss Carrington mar
ried Count Eugenio Martinengo Cesaresco,
a Lombard noble, whose family for a thou
sand years has been eminent among the
Lombard nobility. " Wherever there was
fighting going on, you might be sure to
meet a Martinengo. The Lombard plains
were not more familiar with the name than
were the isles of Greece. Again and again
it appears in the struggle of Europe with
Asia, which was gallantly sustained from
rock to rock by small handfuls of men to
whom Christendom gave prayers, tears, and
abandonment." One of these Martinenghi,
Luigi, commanded the artillery in the siege
of Famagosta against the Turks, and was
hacked to death when, after a resistance of
two years and five months, the Muslim took
the city. The Count's father headed the
insurrection of the Brescians when in 1848

COUNTESS MARTINENGO CESARESCO 149
they threw off the Austrian yoke ; and in
the foUowing year, when they made their
magnificent ten days' stand against over
whelming odds, he was the last to sheathe
his sword.
The Count and Countess settled in one of
the old Martinengo palaces at Salb, which
has ever since been their home. The town
of Sal6 nestles on the western bank of Lake
Garda, where the lake is broadest and the
last spurs of the Alps begin to melt into the
Lombard plain. The palace itself, a large,
rambling brick structure, comes by right by
its fortress-like air, as it has withstood more
than one bombardment ; but when it was
built, and for more than two centuries there
after, it was the most famous pleasure palace
in northern Italy. Lady Mary Wortley Mon
tagu said of it that even in her time the King
of France had nothing so fine, and that it
was much larger than the royal palaces of
Naples, Germany, or England. The view
from it is superb. The hUls among which
the battle of Solferino was fought bound the
southern horizon. From a little height one
sees the promontory of Sermione, " Catullus's
all but island," castle-crowned, jutting into

150 COUNTESS MARTINENGO CESARESCO
the lake. And not far above Salo, as you go
northward, the banks become precipitous,
and for many miles your steamer skirts a
succession of Gibraltars, each higher and
more massive than Gib itself. Of the beauty
and grandeur of Lake Garda, no one has
written so well as Countess Cesaresco in her
essay " Benacus, the Poet's Lake," and she
has told the story of the old palace, and of
some of the most striking of the Martinenghi,
in her " Memorials of a Lombard House." To
one of the occupants of the palace — Vittoria
Accoramboni, the maHgned heroine of John
Webster's The White Devil — she has de
voted a special article. I say "maligned"
because, from the best evidence now obtain
able, it seems improbable that the beautiful
Vittoria was guilty of those crimes which
Webster made the substance of his tremend
ous tragedy.
It is evident that Countess Cesaresco
plunged heart and soul into her new life.
She sought eagerly to know the condition of
all classes of the people among whom she
was thrown, and she found, as others have
found, an inexhaustible charm in the Italian
nature. She traveled much, visiting every

COUNTESS MARTINENGO CESARESCO 151
part of the peninsula, with trips to Sicily,
Sardinia, and Corsica, and longer tours to the
Levant and Western Europe. Her intercourse
with England was uninterrupted, her journeys
home frequent. Thus she kept abreast of the
contemporary history and literature, not only
of her adopted country, but of England, and
the larger interests there; and she studied
with insatiable curiosity in many fields.
It was in 1886 that she issued her first
mature book, "Essays in the Study of Folk-
Songs, " a model of the way in which a vast
store of various information can be presented
with unfailing vivacity. The Countess speaks
as a specialist, but with so much charm that
she can hardly faU to attract any cultivated
reader. As her book was printed by an ob
scure London pubHsher, it had, I suppose,
no wide circulation; but more than one copy
fell into the hands of discriminating readers.
Among these was the late Prof. Francis J.
Child, who praised it highly, both for its
excellence as a contribution to the study in
which he was master and for its Hterary
merits. His praise makes others' superfluous.
In 1890 appeared her " Italian Characters
in the Epoch of Unification," in which, as

152 COUNTESS MARTINENGO CESARESCO
Mr. Gladstone remarked, she wrote like a
" practised biographer." The book contains
sketches of Ricasoli, Settembrini, Giuseppe
Martinengo, Manin, the Poerios, Constance
d'Azegho, Mameli, Ugo Bassi, Nino Bixio,
and the CairoHs, — a group of sufficiently
dissimilar persons to test the skiU of any
painter. Several of these personages she in
troduced for the first time to English read
ers ; into all of them she breathed the
breath of life. Her portraits of Ricasoli, the
Tuscan Puritan, with his passion for integ
rity and his beautiful devotion to his daugh
ter ; of Marchioness d'Azegho, the Pied
montese grande dame, witty, far-seeing, full
of sense, patriotic ; of Mameli, the boy poet,
dying in defending Rome ; of Bassi, the
patriot priest, whom the Austrians shot like
a malefactor; of the wise and unselfish and
enduring Manin, — these are some of the
faces in her gallery which one does not
forget. In her method the Countess reminds you
of Plutarch ; for, instead of a chronological
narrative, she picks and chooses, giving you
the vital facts, letting you see her subject
at a critical moment or in his characteristic

COUNTESS MARTINENGO CESARESCO 153
actions, preferring an anecdote to a date,
leaving on you such an impression of genu
ineness as the high creations of the artist
leave. The essays disclose their writer's very
wide sympathy; they abound also in keen
criticism of men and politics. She has at
her command an unusual reserve of irony.
She is enthusiastic, partisan if you will, be
cause she would not condescend to waste
her time describing characters for whom she
felt no enthusiasm. The book is almost
invaluable for the student of the Italian
Regeneration, because, although only Count
Martinengo's features were drawn from life,
the writer had access to many unprinted
sources, and, above aU, she had the unwrit
ten recollections of many of the companions
of her heroes, with which to vivify or chasten
her own impression.
Her next book, " The Liberation of Italy,
1815-1870," printed in 1894, is a popular
account of the unification of Italy, and it
is still the best short history of the period.
Had its author produced nothing else, this
would have distinguished her as possessing
a rare combination of literary charm and
historical insight. It would also have placed

154 COUNTESS MARTINENGO CESARESCO
her in the company of two other EngHsh
women who have done Italy a great service
in interpreting Italy to English readers. One
of these, Jessie White, wife of Garibaldi's
lieutenant, Alberto Mario, took part in the
events of forty years ago, has written the
Hves of Bertani, Garibaldi, and Mazzini, and
long served as correspondent of the Nation
and of English journals. The other, Linda
White, wife of Pasquale ViUari, the dean
of Italian historians, has translated her hus
band's principal works. It would seem that
in some English natures there is an affinity
which lets them into the secret of Italy.
Countess Cesaresco's "Liberation of Italy"
may lack the highest constructive historical
qualities, but it has the highest moral quahty
in a history — justice. To each of the great
factors in the result — to Victor Emanuel and
Cavour, to Mazzini and Garibaldi — it allots
fair praise. And there are in it divinations
like this, which outvalue many pages of or
dinary historical writing: "The Italians are
not a mystical people, but they have always
followed mystical leaders."
But her short history proved to be the
stepping-stone to a book of far higher excel-

COUNTESS MARTINENGO CESARESCO 165
lence — to her life of Cavour in the "Foreign
Statesmen Series," which has not, to my
knowledge, a superior in English. How good
it is will be apparent to any one who cares to
compare it with Freeman's " William the Con
queror," or Creighton's " Wolsey," or Mr.
Frederic Harrison's " William the Silent," all
of which have a similar range. Countess
Cesaresco, in her " Cavour," has mastered the
art of presentation, and attained to a sym
metry, rather French than English, beyond
the reach of any of these. And although
her little book is all pith, it has that ease,
that absence of laboriousness, by which real
achievements in art are recognized. She has
not only created literature, she has made a
fine portrait of the great statesman who ranks
with Napoleon and Bismarck in European
history in the nineteenth century. She has
succeeded in unfolding Cavour the man and
Cavour the statesman, and in defining the
scope of his influence in the political evolu
tion of his time. Those best acquainted with
the subject will best understand how many
books went to the distilling of this short
biography. Every sentence in it tells. It is
the best brief Hfe in English of a dynamic

156 COUNTESS MARTINENGO CESARESCO
statesman, as Mr. John Morley's "Burke" is
the best brief life of a philosophical states
man. The "Cavour " was published in 1898, and
in the autumn of 1902 appeared Countess
Cesaresco's fifth volume, " Lombard Studies,"
a collection of essays, on many themes. She
describes Lake Garda, the Franciacorta, Ri
mini, and Lake Iseo ; she tells the story of
the Martinenghi ; she reviews Arthur Young's
" North Italian Journey " ; she brings together
in a single paper aU the known facts about
Vittoria Accoramboni ; she treats of Lom
bard agriculture ; she criticises the popular
stage, and gives in epitome the annals of La
Scala Theatre. A varied programme, surely ;
but it is the method, and not the variety, that
counts. One perceives that many of these
are essays of high literary quality, not writ
ten to order, but for the love of it — in which
experience, travel, observation, culture over
flow for our delight. At their best they re
semble, as literary essays should, the best
conversation. They are now sprightly, now
serious; they do not insist too brusquely
even in enforcing an argument ; but in them
a bit of landscape, reminiscence, a literary

COUNTESS MARTINENGO CESARESCO 157
or historical aUusion, is introduced naturally,
by the way, and then dismissed. If you have
caught the point, good — if not, the conver
sation moves swiftly on into other channels,
for there is no stopping to explain.
Take a single example: Speaking of the
many modern plays based on the story of
Francesca and Paolo, Countess Cesaresco
says: "Of the first in the field, Silvio Pellico,
Foscolo said severely that the young man
would have done better to leave Dante alone.
It is very likely that from his classical stand
point he would have passed the same judg
ment on Leigh Hunt, Stephen Phillips,
Gabriele d'Annunzio, and Marion Crawford.
But, perhaps, Dante himself would not have
complained. At any rate, his is the triumph,
for there is one moment in the five plays at
which the audience is lifted into an emotional
seventh heaven nowhere else approached ; the
moment when each author introduces Dante's
words and Dante's scene of the reading of
the fatal book ! Whatever else fails, that never
does." The artist's touch, unmistakable in this
passage, characterizes the entire volume. The

158 COUNTESS MARTINENGO CESARESCO
essays have, moreover, a very strong personal
coloring. They are not abstract, or theoreti
cal, but the concrete opinions, emotions, pre
ferences of precisely the Countess Cesaresco,
and no other. The "Cavour" was objective,
almost classic in its terseness; but these essays
are subjective, as they should be, and reveal
to us a strong and rare personality. The keen
and inquisitive mind, hungry for knowledge
of every kind, has its counterpart in capacity
for high emotion. The revelation of individu
ality delights us; we are drawn from the book
to its author.
Such, told very briefly, has been Countess
Cesaresco's achievement. Although it is too
soon to pass a final judgment on it, we already
mark its versatility, its vitality, its charm,
and its excellence, in fields where women
have too seldom competed successfully with
men.

LEOPARDPS HOME

LEOPARDPS HOME1
As the nineteenth century falls into sflence,
we distinguish at least two Italian voices, of
very different notes, that have gone forth
from it into many lands, and seem likely
to be listened to by a long posterity. One
voice, Manzoni's, speaks a clear, wholesome
message, abounding in wit, in love of the ele
mental human lot, in piety ; the other voice,
Leopardi' s, sounds all the stops of despair,
passing from pity to scorn, and from scorn
to bitterness, but always beautiful, like the
song of a hermit thrush. And the world,
obeying an instinct which lies deep in the
heart of man, has come to pay more atten
tion to Leopardi than to Manzoni ; for the
genial author of the " Promessi Sposi " and
of the Catholic hymns furnishes delight, per
haps even consolation, but he does not answer,
at least for our doubting, inquisitive genera
tion, questions which every serious man must
some time confront. To submit reason to
1 The Nation, June 20, 1895.

162 LEOPARDI'S HOME
dogma, to the dogma formulated by St.
Thomas and encrusted with the superstitions
of the subsequent six hundred years — to
deny science — to close one's eyes to the
amazing contradictions of our existence —
all this has become for honest thinkers well-
nigh impossible, so that, when they seek en
lightenment, they naturaUy do not turn to
Manzoni. His great achievement lay not in
his philosophy, but in his pictures of the life
round him, and we may enjoy his romance,
as we enjoy any other beautiful work of art,
without quarrehng with him for not making
it philosophic. Fiction has become so sodden
with social, political, religious, medical, or
other propaganda that we can reverence
Manzoni all the more in that he refused to
palm off in his novel an ill-disguised tract.
But it is because Leopardi, whether in his
poetry or in his prose — and in both he was
a master — spoke out the doubt which con
sumed him, that his works have traveled into
many lands, and that he is held as the repre
sentative of that pessimism with which so
much of the thought of our age is saturated.
He at least gave one answer to the problem
of life — a grim and terrible answer, yet one

LEOPARDI'S HOME 163
which, for reasons not here to be discussed,
has been prevalent in these later decades.
The caprice and injustice of destiny, the
overwhelming realization of evil, the perpe
tuity of sin and pain — in a word, the appar
ent impossibility of reconcfling the individual
with the universe — left him but one solu
tion, the preferabUity of annihilation. We
think of another soul, Spinoza, equally im
pressed by this immense discrepancy between
the individual and the infinite, and remem
bering Spinoza's ecstasy at being a mere
atom of infinity, we understand how tem
perament — that very fate against which
Leopardi inveighed and which to Spinoza
was God — determines our view of life. Leo
pardi was no whiner, and therefore it is that
now, nearly sixty years after his death, new
books about him appear every season, and
whatever concerned his personality has been
carefuUy gleaned. His voice, intensified by
rare genius, is the voice of those that suffer,
or faU, or despair, a voice akin to that of
Ecclesiastes, who summed up the pessimism
of the Hebrews. And just as sorrow or pain
enters sooner or later into the experience of
every one, so at some time, or by some con-

164 LEOPARDI'S HOME
tact, Leopardi appeals most intimately to
many hearts. For even whUe the healthy soul
knows that fortitude and resignation are in
dispensable, it cannot always forbear grief,
it cannot always stifle the sigh of anguish.
But for those who never have taken Leo
pardi thus seriously, his remarkable career,
almost without paraUel in literature, would
more than justify a pilgrimage to his home.
Born in 1798, of a noble family, at eleven
years of age he had outstripped the utmost
learning that the priests of Recanati could
give him; at fourteen he had read the entire
body of patristic literature in Latin and
Greek ; he learned Hebrew, German, French,
English, and Spanish by himself; at twenty-
one he had achieved more in lyric poetry than
any Italian since Petrarch ; and thenceforward
by the discerning few he was appreciated. But
their recognition brought him little solace and
no money, so that to the end of his grievous
life — he died in 1837 — he hardly subsisted
on the scanty stipend given him by his father,
eked out by the irregular sums he earned by
hack-work from the booksellers, and by the
bounty of one or two friends. Poverty has so
often been the comrade of genius that we

LEOPARDI'S HOME 165
should not lay stress on it in Leopardi's case
were it not an indication of family relations
which go far to explain his abhorrence of Re
canati. Leopardi's father, Count Monaldo,
was rich, as wealth was measured by the
nobles on the Adriatic coast, and yet he
aUowed his son only twelve scudi or dollars
a month, although that son was an invalid,
diseased in the nerves and spine, requiring
every comfort to make his physical existence
barely tolerable. Count Monaldo's niggardH-
ness has been much debated, but I have yet
to find proof that it sprang from want of
affection for his son ; it seems more probable,
on the contrary, that, being quite unable to
understand Giacomo's genius, and dreading
his anti-clerical opinions, the father wished
to force Giacomo to stay at home, where his
heresies could be smothered. Certainly the
plea that the Count could afford no more than
a beggar's portion will not persuade any one
who has seen the Leopardi palace at Recanati.
On the other hand, the poet's invectives
against his surroundings must be taken with
much reserve. That he had no congenial com
panionship at Recanati is undeniable, but that
the place itself or the neighboring country

166 LEOPARDI'S HOME
would suffice to explain his pessimism will be
argued only by those who, like Taine, try to
explain every genius by the acre it happens
to be tethered in. As well pretend that Shake
speare drew Hamlet's pessimism from War
wickshire, as that the beautiful country
around Recanati caused Leopardi's pessimism.
And as for lack of intellectual companionship,
was Burns, then, so fortunate in Ayrshire, or
Carlyle at Ecclefechan? No; seek Leopardi's
secret — if what is so patent can be caUed
a secret — in his diseased nerves and spine, in
the restless, insatiable mind unsupported by
an adequate physique ! Nature is as beautiful
on the hills he haunted as she ever was in
Arcady. From Ancona a slow train takes you in less
than an hour to the village of Porto Recanati,
on the very margin of the Adriatic. Thence,
by an excellent high-road, you drive in an
hour to Recanati itself, which is built along
a high ridge, and looks most picturesque with
its old walls and towers and vast communal
palace. The road winds among very fertUe
farms, every inch of which is cultivated. The
backs of the curving hiUs are now deep with
grass or wheat ; in the lower fields the grain

LEOPARDI'S HOME 167
is almost ripe, and endless processions of mul
berry-trees, trained in goblet shape, are fes
tooned with vines. Innumerable flowers grow
along the wayside; the road itself is bounded
by hedges of white hawthorn, just blossom
ing; the farmers' houses are overrun with
wistaria, or decked with little plots of purple
iris. The peasants seem well-to-do, working,
men and women together, in the vineyards.
Some of the women still wear the traditional
peasants' costumes, and the ox-carts, drawn
by white oxen, have pictures or flowers or
religious emblems painted on them. There is
nothing in all this to suggest the approach to
the shrine of pessimism.
The town, which we enter from the east,
has narrow streets and, except the communal
palace, no noteworthy buUdings. In the chief
square there is an admirable marble statue of
Leopardi, by Panichi ; it shows the large, in
teUectual head, the deep-set eyes, the pinched
cheeks, and pained expression common to his
later portraits. Eighty years ago, in these
very streets, his fellows jeered at him. Five
minutes distant from the square, near the
western wall, is the Leopardi palace, a large,
rambling brick structure. Beyond the en-

168 LEOPARDI'S HOME
trance, instead of the customary courtyard,
there is a marble " atrium and peristyle," —
completed, as a tablet informs us, by Count
Monaldo for the admiration of posterity in
1798, the year of Giacomo's birth, — and
thence flights of marble steps lead to the
second story. The whole produces the effect
of old-fashioned elegance tempered by a tend
ency towards the sepulchral.
The footman of the present Count unlocks
the door leading to the Leopardi library,
which consists of five rooms, connected by a
corridor along the eastern side of the house,
which gives it the appearance of a series of
vast alcoves rather than of separate rooms.
The walls from floor to ceiling are filled with
books — 27,000 in all — the larger part bound
in veUum, and arranged according to topics.
The chief hall contains cabinets with many
of the poet's manuscripts and other memen
toes of him. There is also a cabinet of
medals, bric-a-brac, and antiques, formed by
his father, and his father's study. In these
quarters, certainly not to be equaled in many
private houses anywhere, young Leopardi
grew up. The number of boys of genius who
have had nearly 30,000 books under their

LEOPARDI'S HOME 169
father's roof to browse among at will must
be exceedingly small, so that on this score
Leopardi was not to be pitied — unless, in
deed, we are to pity those into whose hands
fortune places the means of their undoing.
That Leopardi could ever have been robust
was impossible, but that he speedily wrecked
his fraU physique by over-study is also un
questioned ; and in this rich library the means
of wrecking himself were close at hand.
The windows of the rooms look towards
the east, but the view is cut off by a row of
bare, ugly houses, in one of which dwelt the
coachman's pretty daughter, of whom he
wrote under the name of " Nerina." He used
to go out but seldom, an old servant who
remembers him told us, and then he went
alone. But even a short walk would bring
him to one of the many points whence he
got the views which he has described. If he
looked eastward, he saw rolling hills and rich
valleys, and the Adriatic beyond; a Httle to
the north, three miles away, he saw the dome
of the shrine of Loreto, and then Castel-
fidardo, Osimo, and half a dozen other hUl
cities ; westward, across great gulfs of green,
he saw the Apennines. How easily the disci-

170 LEOPARDI'S HOME
pies of Buckle could find here the environment
to account for a joyous poet !
But most interesting, after the sight of
Leopardi's home itself, is that cabinet which
holds his manuscripts, all neatly written, only
the poems showing frequent emendations.
Here is a large copy-book entitled " The
Philosophic Essays of Giacomo Leopardi,"
and dated 1809, when he was eleven years
old, and another, " The History of Astro
nomy," with the date 1813. In his case such
titles were not vain, for there has probably
been no other juvenile mind, except Mill's,
which worked with the accuracy and vigor
of the best-trained mature intellects at an
age when most boys are, fortunately, still
playing at leap-frog. We know how near
MU1 came to disasters in both physical and
mental health, and how long it took him,
through a life of intellectual action, to throw
off the gloom which that early abnormal
strain fixed upon him ; but Leopardi had no
companionship to draw him out of himself,
no great movement into which he could
throw himself, and, worst of all, no constitu
tion to endure the immense labors he engaged
in. Towards the end of his life he protested

LEOPARDI'S HOME 171
that disease had had nothing to do with
the pessimistic principles he professed; but
psychologists to-day, famihar with neurotic
conditions, will not heed his protest. They
wUl wonder that a mind so tormented pre
served to the last its remarkable powers rather
than that its thoughts took the tinge of his
suffering. The final biography of Leopardi is still
lacking, but it is safe to say that it cannot be
written by one who has not seen Leopardi's
home. As your rickety carriage drives down
the steep hUl towards Castelfidardo, passing
rich crops and innumerable wild flowers on
either side, and you think of the palace and
vast Hbrary, you will feel how personality
lords it over environment. You will feel, too,
that Leopardi's career, irrespective of his
doctrines, gives no comfort to those easy
optimists who blink facts. Prometheus on
the rock, Laocoon in the toils — you have
their modern instance in Leopardi. "Great
men, great nations," says Emerson, "per
ceive the terror of life " ; a life like Leo
pardi's is not to be confuted, but to be under
stood, before its example of terror can be
bravely faced.

THE ELECTION OF A POPE

THE ELECTION OF A POPE1
When the death of the reigning Pope draws
near, the Cardinal Secretary of State informs
the Dean of the Sacred College, who sum
mons his coUeagues to the residence of the
dying man ; the Cardinal Vicar issues or
ders that prayers be offered in the Roman
churches ; the Cardinal Penitentiary attends
the bedside of the Pope, to whom the sa
cristan of the Pope's chapel administers ex
treme unction. As soon as may be after
death has occurred, the body must be form
ally recognized by the Cardinal Camerlingo,
who, in obedience to an ancient custom,
first knocks thrice on the door of the bed
chamber. Getting no answer, he enters, and
taps thrice with a silver mallet on the dead
man's forehead, and thrice calls him by
name. No response coming, the CamerHngo
declares that the Pope is dead. Thenceforth
the Camerlingo is the most important of the
cardinals, having charge of the preparations
1 The Century, May, 1896.

176 THE ELECTION OF A POPE
for the conclave, of the government of the
Palace, and of the transactions with the
representatives of foreign powers, to whom
he officially announces the Pope's death ;
the Papal Guard of Swiss halberdiers at
tends him when he goes out; his arms are
stamped on the medal of the Vacant See;
he takes an inventory of the property in
the Palace, and affixes seals to the dead
pontiff's papers. But in order to prevent him
from overstepping his authority the Sacred
CoUege appoints three cardinals, — a bishop,
a priest, and a deacon, — who are called the
Heads of the Orders, and whose business it
is to overlook his acts. They serve for three
days, being replaced by others chosen in ro
tation. Meanwhile the great bell of the Capitol,
the so-called " Paterine," has tolled the news
to the citizens in Rome. Formerly this was
the signal for unlocking the jails and for
unrestrained disorders. Brokers used to set
up booths where pools, as at a horse-race,
were sold on the probable next Pope, enor
mous sums being squandered in this species
of gambling : more recently that scandal has
been less open. Every one is on tiptoe with

THE ELECTION OF A POPE 177
excitement ; churchmen as weU as laymen
display an eagerness out of tune with the
grief in which the Church is officiaUy de
clared to be plunged.
For during the novendial, or nine days
succeeding the Pope's death, the celebration
of his obsequies and the mourning for his
loss are supposed to absorb universal atten
tion. His body must first be embalmed and
then attired in funeral apparel. When masses
have been said over it in the presence of the
cardinals, it is removed to St. Peter's, where,
on a magnificent catafalque, it lies in state.
Finally, on the ninth day, the pubhc funeral
— one of the great pageants of the world —
takes place, after which the body is coffined
and laid away in the temporary receiving-
tomb, to rest there until, when the next
Pope dies, it is lowered into the crypt of St.
Peter's, or sent elsewhere for burial.
Needless to say, the funeral ceremonies
of the novendial cause no abatement in the
preparation for the conclave. The day after
the Pope dies, as many cardinals as happen
to be in Rome meet to confer. The oldest
of their number, the Dean of the CoUege,
presides ; they swear to preserve the ut-

178 THE ELECTION OF A POPE
most secrecy concerning all their proceed
ings; they renew their oaths of allegiance
to the Holy See, binding themselves to de
fend and guard the rights, prerogatives, and
temporal possessions of the Church " up to
the effusion of blood " ; then they discuss
questions of immediate urgency, Hsten to
the reading of the laws governing the elec
tion, and hear the Camerlingo's report of
his business. The congregation re-assembles
each day, its numbers being constantly in
creased by the arrival of cardinals from a
distance. So soon as the last ceremonies for the
dead Pope have been performed in St. Pe
ter's, all is ready for the conclave to begin.
As its sessions must be held, if possible,
where the late Pope died, the Quirinal Pal
ace was usually chosen ; but the conclave of
1878 sat in the Vatican, where Pius IX
died. To preserve an appearance of secrecy,
the quarters occupied by the cardinals are
isolated from the rest of the buUding and
from the outer world by the walling up
of every door and window and aperture.
Each cardinal has a separate room, which
he draws by lot and may not exchange ; he

THE ELECTION OF A POPE 179
is also accompanied by two conclavists, or
attendants, who may be ecclesiastics or lay
men, provided they have been attached to
the household for half a year previous. But
these are only a part of the personnel of a
conclave, which has a master of ceremonies,
a secretary, a confessor, a physician, barb
ers, carpenters, masons, and serving-men —
in all some two hundred and fifty souls.
In St. Peter's, or other church, the cardi
nals gather. Their dean celebrates the mass
of the Holy Ghost, after which an eminent
prelate preaches a sermon admonishing them
to set aside every personal consideration, and
with all diligence to give the bereaved church
a new shepherd. Then according to prescrip
tion the master of ceremonies takes the papal
cross, and marches, followed by tbe cardinals
in the order of their rank — first the bishops,
next the priests, and last the deacons, all in
violet capes. Their attendants precede them,
followed immediately by the papal choir
singing the hymn " Veni, Creator Spiritus."
The prelates follow behind the cardinals.
Thus in procession they enter the conclave,
and having reached the chapel, the Cardinal
Dean at the altar recites the prayer "Deus

180 THE ELECTION OF A POPE
qui cordafidelium," after which the cardinals
read the ordinances on the election of a pope
and swear to uphold them; then they retire
to their rooms, where they hold a general
levee. Not until three hours after sunset, at
the third ringing of a beU, are they left to
themselves. A great throng of spectators and friends
escorts the procession into the palace. " Hither
hie all the ambassadors and envoys and polit
ical agents in Rome, to snatch the last oppor
tunity afforded for unrestricted conference, to
give the last stroke to eager appeals of soft
persuasion or deterring menace, the last touch
to cunning combination, and particularly to
deposit in the hands of an intimate confeder
ate the knowledge of those whose nomination
their courts will absolutely not brook."
At the third ringing of the beU the master
of ceremonies cries, "Extra omnes!" "All
out ! " Yet there are stiU laggards, who go
only after vigorous persuasion. The last hav
ing departed, the Cardinal Camerlingo and
his three colleagues lock the great door and
draw the bolts on the inside, while the
Prince Marshal, an officer who has for cen
turies been either a Colonna or a Chigi, turns

THE ELECTION OF A POPE 181
the keys on the outside. Thenceforth the
conclave has no ostensible communication
with the world. There are, however, two
cylindrical dumb-waiters, or wheel-boxes,
through which food and other necessaries
can be passed ; and standing at one of these,
the ambassador of a Catholic power delivers
a final exhortation to the cardinals Hstening
within. In 1829 it fell to Chateaubriand, in
1846 to Pellegrino Rossi, to give the Sacred
College this lecture. When they have dis
persed to their ceUs for the night, the Cam
erlingo, lighted by men with torches, has to
inspect the vast quarters, peering into each
dark corner, looking under beds and into
closets, to make sure that no unauthorized
person is hidden there. Then, except for the
whispered conferences of wakeful election
eers, the conclave sleeps.
On the morrow the balloting begins. Be
fore describing that, however, let us see how
the cardinals and their escort live during
their seclusion. Formerly each cardinal had
his food sent from his palace, and it was one
of the features of this occasion for the car-
dinalitial lackeys, the so-called dapifers, to
pass daUy with large hampers through the

182 THE ELECTION OF A POPE
streets of Rome. A prelate specially ap
pointed received these hampers at the wheel-
boxes, and it was his duty, before allowing
the food to go farther, to search every mor
sel of it for concealed letters. The oath of
secrecy, fortified by menace of dire penalties
to those who break it, has never constrained
either the cardinals or their attendants or
their friends in the city. It has simply sharp
ened the wits of would-be communicators to
discover safe means of sending messages.
Many an important missive, secreted in the
belly of a capon or in the heart of an orange,
or pasted under the label of a bottle of wine,
has reached its destination in spite of the
vigilance of the bishop inspector of viands ;
and answers have been slipped back through
crevices in the plastered walls, or tossed out
of the window in hollow coins. Thus from
day to day certain members of the conclave
and their associates outside exchange coun
sel ; and it has happened, as in 1831, when
Gregory XVI was elected, that news from
abroad has precipitated an election. When
secrecy is violated in this way whUe the de
cision is still pending, we need not be sur
prised that the history of the proceedings, in

THE ELECTION OF A POPE 183
their minutest details, is subsequently pub
lished by those who take part in them. The
best account of the conclave of 1800, for
instance, was written by Cardinal Consalvi,
who acted as its secretary.
At the conclave of 1878, which sat in the
Vatican, the food was not sent in but was
prepared in a common kitchen, whence it
was carried to the cells by the servants
of the respective cardinals. Gregory X, in
1271, with a view to hasten the election by
making the electors as uncomfortable as pos
sible, provided that during the first five days
the ration at each meal should consist of a
single dish, after which only bread, wine, and
water should be aUowed. But this ascetic
rule was not observed. Latterly cardinals have
eaten what they pleased. Their ordinary fare
consists of coffee or chocolate and roUs in
the morning ; soup, two dishes of meat, with
vegetables, wine, and dessert at the noontide
dinner and again at supper. The conclavists
usually eat with their patrons ; the servants
and artisans mess together near the kitchen,
and they grumble at their fare as loudly as
college students at commons.
About ten o'clock in the forenoon the

184 THE ELECTION OF A POPE
cardinals, having heard early mass and taken
communion, assemble in the chapel, — the
Pauline Chapel when the conclave met in
the Quirinal, the Sistine when in the Vat
ican, — which has been arranged as a vot
ing-place. A green carpet covers the floor,
and round the walls are ranged as many
chairs, or thrones, as there are cardinals.
Over each throne is suspended a baldachin,
hung with purple if the cardinal was created
by the Pope just dead, and with green if he
dates from an earlier pope. Before each
seat is a table, with cloth of corresponding
color, and paper, ink, pens, pencils, and the
list of the Sacred College. In the middle of
the chapel a large table bears two gilded
vases : into one, chalice-shaped, with a hd,
the ballots are cast ; in the other, pyx-shaped,
they are placed when they have been counted.
The ebony box with lock and key beside
them is used for getting the votes of those
cardinals whom illness detains in their cells.
Three gilt plates, other lists, inkstands, and
a box of Httle baUs for checking the names
of the voters, complete the furnishings of the
table, at which are set three stools for the
scrutators.

THE ELECTION OF A POPE 185
In one corner of the chapel, near the Door
of the Sovereign (if we suppose the conclaves
to be in the Sistine Chapel), a long stovepipe
leads up from a small stove to a window. To
the right of the entrance a wooden booth in
closes the water-closets. Farther on, another
booth serves as a buffet, where the cardinals
can refresh themselves with wine and bis
cuits. Near this are two chests, in which are
kept three sets of pontifical garments, of
large, medium, and small size.
Having come to order at the request of
the Dean, if the formality of recognizing the
cardinals be dispensed with, — and in so
smaU a body it is hardly necessary, because
no impostor could hope successfully to palm
himself off as a cardinal, — the first business
is to choose three scrutators, one from each
order, to count the ballots, and three infer-
mieri, who coUect the votes of the sick. The
canons define three kinds of election: by
inspiration, by compromise, and by ballot.
Election by inspiration takes place when "all
the cardinals, as if by inspiration of the
Holy Ghost, proclaim one candidate as pon
tiff unanimously and viva voce." A single
dissenting voice vitiates this method, which,

186 THE ELECTION OF A POPE
we may remark, has perhaps never been car
ried out in Hteral conformity to rule, al
though several popes, after more or less wire
pulling, have been chosen by acclamation.
Election by compromise has sometimes
been resorted to, after a long deadlock, by
the appointment of a committee consisting
of representatives of the various rival fac
tions. The conclave merely ratifies the can
didate nominated by the committee.
But election by baUot is the ordinary
method. The ballots, when open, are about
four inches long and three broad. In the
first or upper section the cardinal writes his
name ; in the middle, the name of the candi
date whom he proposes ; in the lower section,
some motto from the Scriptures. When he
folds the sheet his name, being inside, is
covered by the lower section, and only the
candidate's name or the seal comes upper
most. To guard against the ballot's opening
he seals it with a seal he has chosen, but it
must not be one which the scrutators might
recognize. Going to the central table, he de
posits the ballot in the chalice, repeating at
the same time this formula : " Testor Christ
um dominum qui me judicaturus est, me

THE ELECTION OF A POPE 187
eligere quem secundum Deum judico elegi
debere et quod idem in accessu praestabo."
When every one has voted, and the infer-
mieri have brought the baUots of the sick
members, the first scrutator takes each ballot
from the chaHce, and opening it (but only
so far as to read the motto), hands it to the
second, who, having entered the vote oppo
site the candidate's name on the list, passes
it to the third, who reads it aloud. During
this process the other cardinals keep the tally
on the duphcate lists which each of them
has before him. At the conclusion all the
baUots are taken to the stove and burned,
the smoke from the chimney being a signal
which multitudes outside the palace await.
According to common belief, when no smoke
appears at the usual time it is a sign that
the Pope has been elected. The last ballots
are burned like the rest, however, the differ
ence in the volume of smoke being due to
the fact that as no straw is used at the last
burning there is very little smoke.
There being no election, the cardinals now
return to their quarters for dinner, after which
at three o'clock or a little later, they reas
semble for another ballot. This differs from

188 THE ELECTION OF A POPE
the morning one in that the cardinals, instead
of voting for their favorite candidates, vote
for their second choice. The process is called
"acceding," and seems devised for breaking
a deadlock. Each must vote for some one who
has received support at the morning trial;
but if none of these suit him, being pro
hibited from again casting for his favorite,
he may simply vote for " nobody." Thus it
might happen that the pope chosen in the
accessus, or acceding, was a candidate whom
very few or none of the cardinals would select
on their first choice. As a matter of fact,
however, not many popes have owed their
election to the accessus, in which the cardinals
generally throw random votes for candidates
who have little chance of success.
Such is the daily routine of the conclave,
it being rare that more than two ballots a day
are taken, until some candidate receives the
requisite two-thirds vote of the members
present. At the largest recorded conclave,
that of 1878, sixty-one cardinals were present ;
the conclave of 1800, held in the Church of
San Giorgio Maggiore at Venice, when the
Papacy was in exile, counted only thirty-
five. The duration of a conclave depends

THE ELECTION OF A POPE 189
on many considerations — personal ambition,
political intrigues, and factional jealousies.
That of 1800 lasted one hundred and four
days, that of 1878 only three days. It may
be well to remark here that the canon law
does not prescribe that the Pope must be a
cardinal, or even a cleric. Nevertheless, since
the election of Urban VI in 1378 the suc
cessful candidates have been members of the
Sacred College, although as late as 1758 a
non-cardinal was voted for several times. At
least two laymen — John XIX (1024) and
Adrian V (1276) — were elected to the Papal
throne, and there is to-day nothing to pre
vent laymen from being created cardinals,
although they are not entitled to vote in the
conclave unless they can produce a special
permit from the late Pope. Up to the meeting
of the conclave of 1823, Cardinal Albani had
never taken orders, and there is still some
doubt as to whether he did so then.
The official routine of the conclave, which
consists in the celebration of the mass and
the morning and afternoon baUots, represents
only a small part of its activity. Long before
politics, through the extension of constitu
tional government, became a trade in other

190 THE ELECTION OF A POPE
countries, the princes of the Roman hierarchy
were masters of political strategy. The pre
ponderance of Italian cardinals practically
limits the number of aspirants to the Papal
office to about forty. Among these perhaps
half are tacitly ruled out as unavailable. A
candidate, to be " popeable," as the phrase
is, must have a happy combination of qual
ifications, among which mediocrity sometimes
counts for much. Age also is an advantage,
because old popes make frequent conclaves,
which gives unsuccessful candidates another
chance. With Pius IX supposed mediocrity
seems to have overcome the objection of
comparative youth, he being fifty-four at his
election; but Leo XIII, who was sixty-eight
and apparently frail, outlived all of his com
petitors. Leo XIII's election also broke the
tradition that the Cardinal Camerlingo will
not find favor with his colleagues, who cher
ish a similar hostility to the Cardinal Secre
tary of State. The Camerlingo and the Sec
retary of State, being the chief executive
officers, have more occasion than any others
to render themselves unpopular. They are
regarded, besides, as the special beneficiaries
of the late Pope, and on the theory that turn

THE ELECTION OF A POPE 191
about is fair play, the Sacred College usually
prefers, by ignoring them, to give a different
faction its share of offices and powers. The
Romans have a proverb, "No one can be pope
twice," which sums up the disappointment of
many secretaries who aspired to the higher
office, and were beaten.
Day and night, therefore, whUe the conclave
lasts, it is the scene of conferences. Faction
quietly measures forces with faction ; neutrals
of the "flying squadron," uncommitted to
any candidate, are eagerly soHcited by all.
Rumors and innuendoes do equal service with
arguments. If a faction has reason to expect
that one of the powers will veto its candidate,
it first puts forward a sham candidate to draw
the veto ; that done, it can safely work for the
election of its favorite. Sometimes still more
disingenuous ruses are resorted to. When it
became evident in the conclave of 1799-1800
that Cardinal Bellisomi would be chosen on
the next ballot, Cardinal Herzan, by intimat
ing that the choice might be distasteful to
Austria, actually persuaded Bellisomi's sup
porters to postpone the final vote for a fort
night, until a messenger could be sent to
Vienna and return. Whether the messenger

192 THE ELECTION OF A POPE
ever came back is not reported; but it mat
tered not, for the delay sufficed to ruin Bel
lisomi's chances. In 1823 a candidate who
had almost reached the goal was defeated by
the rumor that he had once drunk chocolate
on a fast day. In 1829 Cardinal Castiglione
had thirty-five votes, more than the required
number, but it was announced that one vote
was lacking from the total, which vitiated the
ballot. Suspicion feU on two scrutators, one
of whom is supposed to have hidden the miss
ing vote in his sleeve. The next day, how
ever, Castiglione was chosen by an increased
majority. These instances, which might be
indefinitely augmented from the testimony
of those who took part in and left records of
conclaves, wUl show that cardinals, whatever
they may profess, do not rely whoUy on divine
guidance in their selection of a pope.
At last, however, the final ballot is reached,
and the scrutators proclaim that, two thirds
of the votes having been cast for one cardinal,
he is elected. If he has only the required
number of votes, they open the baUots to
make sure that he did not vote for himself, a
precaution rarely taken, because nearly always
the outcome of the decisive ballot is foreseen,

THE ELECTION OF A POPE 193
and there is a stampede to the candidate who
has been agreed upon. As soon as he an
nounces his acceptance of the triple crown,
all the other cardinals lower the baldachins
over their thrones, and conduct him to the
altar. Papal robes are brought, and when he
has been dressed in garments that fit him,
the Sacred College performs the first act of
adoration, or homage, to the new sovereign.
MeanwhUe the news has spread from the
chapel to the other parts of the palace. The
masons tear down the plaster waU before
one of the balconies, from which the head
Cardinal Deacon proclaims the election to the
expectant throngs beneath, saying substan
tially, for example, " We have a Pope, Cardi
nal Pecci, who has taken the name Leo XIII."
When Pius IX was elected, he himself came
to the balcony and blessed the people.
In due time other ceremonies, prescribed
by canon or custom, are observed. The second
act of adoration takes place in the Sistine
Chapel. Then the pontiff is borne into St.
Peter's on the papal litter, attendants wav
ing huge fans of white peacocks' feathers
beside him, and the cardinals and prelates
foUow in procession. Reaching the high altar,

194 THE ELECTION OF A POPE
he sits on a cushion placed upon it, and while
the Te Deum is chanted the cardinals go
through the third act of adoration, kissing his
hand and foot, and being embraced by him
in return, after which he bestows the papal
benediction on the multitudes in the vast
basihca. The coronation — the final pageant, and
the most gorgeous of all — is celebrated a few
days later. It begins in the atrium of St.
Peter's, where the Pope, seated on a throne,
receives the homage of the archpriest and
clergy of the basUica. Thence he is borne in
procession through the church to St. Greg
ory's Chapel, where he is attired in the pon
tifical robes of state. As he comes out, a master
of ceremonies stops him and, kneeling, holds
before him a sUver wand tipped with tow,
which a cleric lights. As the tow burns, the
master of ceremonies sings, " Sancte Pater,
sic transit gloria mundi." After a second
burning of tow, which symbolizes the evan
escence of even papal pomp, the Pope pro
ceeds to the high altar to receive the pallium.
Mass is celebrated, during which the general
clergy do homage; that concluded, the Pope
is borne to the balcony which overlooks the

THE ELECTION OF A POPE 195
square of St. Peter's, and there, in the pre
sence of tens of thousands of spectators, the
mitre having been taken off, the triple crown
is placed on his head by the second Cardinal
Deacon. "Receive the tiara adorned with
three crowns, " — thus runs the ancient for
mula, — "and know that thou art the father
of princes and kings, the rector of the globe,
the vicar on earth of our Saviour Jesus Christ,
to whom is honor and glory, world without
end." The Pope then gives his benediction,
"urbi et orbi," the multitude applauds, and
the pageant ends.1
1 The proceedings as described above correspond to the
canons, and to practices at most of the conclaves in the 19th
century. There have been, of course, slight variations. In
the conclave of 1903 Cardinal RampoUa was excluded by
the veto of Austria. Pius X, the Pope elected in his stead,
is reported to have ruled that the veto will not be permitted
in future conclaves.

THIRTY YEARS OF ITALIAN
PROGRESS

THIRTY YEARS OF ITALIAN
PROGRESS 1
I first saw Rome in the spring of 1877,
after I had already spent the larger part of
two years in Tuscany and Naples. Return
ing to the Eternal City in the spring of 1903
— with many intervening visits behind me —
I was struck by a new spirit in the air, a
more hopeful tone, a feehng that an era of
true prosperity Hes just ahead. About no
other country have foreigners written so
much ; yet of none have they in general so
little intimate knowledge. Month after month
and year after year they draw up their in
dictments against a whole people ; they rail
against the corruption, the poverty, the in
competence, the incapacity ; they prophesy
glibly enough the destruction of the king
dom ; they restore the temporal Pope, or split
up the Peninsula into half a dozen feeble
confederate States, with the ease with which
chUdren blow soap-bubbles. Italy is the para-
1 The World's Work, New York, September, 1903.

200 THIRTY YEARS OF ITALIAN PROGRESS
dise of foreign pessimists, the Cockayne of
political prophets.
Her defects are so open, her sins so salient,
that everybody can diagnose them ; they may
be the same defects, the same sins, which
abound in the foreigner's own country, but
he is so used to seeing them there that he
would never think of asserting that they
must hurry his country to destruction. At
home he knows what other forces are at work
to stem the evil, if not to extirpate it ; but
in Italy he sees only the evil, and conse
quently consigns that beloved land to perdi
tion. What Italy has achieved since she be
came a kingdom is so commonly overlooked
that it will be novel, at least, to state briefly
here some of the progress made, for it is
this positive achievement, overlooked by the
pessimists, among whom are to be reckoned
many Italians themselves, which explains why
Italy has not collapsed at any one of the score
of crises when the gloomy foreboders pre
dicted that collapse was inevitable.
To all the nations of the West the nine
teenth century set two tasks — the establish
ment of political liberty through the adoption
of some form of representative government,

THIRTY YEARS OF ITALIAN PROGRESS 201
and the creation of an economic system based
upon modern methods of production and
transportation. These the common tasks;
but as Italy down to 1860 was not a nation
at aU, she had to secure independence and
union before she could take her place among
the nations and join in their competition of
modern civilization.
Her pohtical regeneration began in Pied
mont about 1850. Piedmont had the advant
age over the other Italian States of being
independent, and as she never shared in the
glories of the Renaissance, so she had escaped
the enervation which foUowed upon them.
Her people were thrifty, matter-of-fact, bluff,
backward in many things, but backward from
slowness of growth, not from exhaustion. In
ten years the little country, under the master
ful guidance of Cavour, was wonderfully
transformed. It proved its ability for parlia
mentary government; it leaped forward in
industry, in commerce, in improved methods
of agriculture ; it organized a well-disciplined
army and a small navy; it introduced a mod
ern judiciary, abolished ecclesiastical and class
privileges, constructed raUways and tele
graphs, proclaimed freedom of speech and of

202 THIRTY YEARS OF ITALIAN PROGRESS
press, and provided for popular education.
Probably nowhere else in the world has a
community emerged so rapidly from medieval
into modern conditions: and the transforma
tion was not only swift but solid.
When, however, Lombardy and the
Marches, Tuscany and Naples, suddenly freed
from their tyrants, joined Piedmont to form
the Kingdom of Italy, the task was greatly
complicated. Not one of these States had had
any experience in self-government : they had
lived under different systems of law, of trade,
of agriculture, of education. While Tuscany
had enjoyed a mild despotism, Naples had
been brutalized by seventy years of the worst
of all Bourbon governments. In Lombardy
the Austrians had protected the tradesman or
farmer by fairly just laws so long as he did
not meddle with politics ; in the States of the
Church, where there were not idleness and
beggary, there was economic chaos. In the
South, the feudal regime still survived, al
though it had been officially aboHshed by the
French. To these clashing conditions must
be added the subtler but not less vital antagon
isms rooted in local or family jealousies, and
the plotting of the ousted despots, of Austrian,

THIRTY YEARS OF ITALIAN PROGRESS 203
Pope, and Bourbon — to recover their ground,
by intrigue if they could, and, failing therein,
to stir up dissensions to paralyze the high
purposes of the new kingdom.
UntU unity and independence were won,
the force of these difficulties could not be
computed ; and, indeed, during the struggle
itself a great wave of patriotism swept every
thing before it. Borne along by that wave,
men of the North, men of the Centre, and
men of the South felt themselves all to be
Italians and brothers, and were justified in
believing that everything was possible to a
cause of which Cavour was the head and Gari
baldi the heart. But after the enthusiasm of
war came the sober demands of peace; upon
the swift, brilHant years of heroism followed
the slow, toilsome, economic decades. Twenty-
one mUlions of Italians had suddenly, by a
magnificent exertion, raised themselves out of
political servitude, but that feat could not
of itself qualify them to Hve successfully their
new political life of freedom, any more than
it could fit them to run without apprentice
ship the locomotives, telegraphs, and thousand
other machines of the new economic era.
The immediate duty of Victor Emmanuel's

204 THIRTY YEARS OF ITALIAN PROGRESS
government, therefore, was to put into opera
tion uniform laws ; to secure a uniform fiscal
and pohtical administration; to open schools
of uniform grades, leading up to universities ;
to make the Sicilian and the Venetian, the
Piedmontese and the Romagnole, who had
for centuries been swayed by an intensely
local patriotism, feel that Italy, and not their
town or province, was henceforth their true
country. In other words, having achieved
unity from outside, there must now be buUt
up the deeper, essential unity from within.
How hard this is in the face of conflicting
material or class interests we Americans
learned when our own Union was in jeopardy ;
yet the difference of conditions between our
North and South was scarcely greater than
that between Lombardy and Calabria forty
years ago.
Nevertheless, ItaHan unity is unquestion
ably stronger to-day than it was ten years ago.
The internal blending has gone on toward
the point of fusion, although new causes of
local antipathy have sprung up. The North,
with its better- educated people, under the
stimulus of capital and favorable conditions
of production and distribution, has become

THIRTY YEARS OF ITALIAN PROGRESS 205
overwhelmingly industrial; the South, stiU
checked by poverty, ignorance, and invet
erate economic abuses, which it can slough
off only too slowly, remains almost exclus
ively agricultural. As a result, one section
regards the other too much as an enemy.
The Southerner grumbles that he is taxed
proportionately more heavily than the North
erner, and given less in return ; and this is
true, for, just as in the United States, the
protected manufacturer at the North enjoys
government bounties in the form of tariffs
which do not benefit his agricultural brother
in the South. In Italy, however, it is less
easy than in the United States to persuade
the victim of protection that he is being en
riched by it.
This clash of interests, with the fiscal in
equalities springing from it, naturally causes
sectional resentments ; but were Italy as
sailed from abroad, or were she threatened
from the inside, the Northerner and the
Southerner would leap to her defense. For
eigners make a huge mistake when they in
fer that sectional bickerings, or even sharp
criticism and mutual recriminations, imply
national weakness in Italy. There are kin-

206 THIRTY YEARS OF ITALIAN PROGRESS
dred the strength of whose famUy spirit is
best measured by the vigor with which each
member expresses his individual opinions.
Whatever sectional or class antagonism
may have been created by the spread of
industrialism is not peculiar to Italy. The
rapid manufacturing expansion of the North
proves that the Italians can avaU themselves
not less successfully than other nations of
the modern industrial agents ; and they have
done this against a tremendous handicap,
for Italy lacks the two indispensable ele
ments, iron and coal, which she has to pur
chase abroad. If we turn to the latest vol
ume of statistics, we find that in Italy —
including Sicily and Sardinia — there are
nearly 18,000 kilometres of railways, besides
3500 kUometres of mechanical tramways ;
about 50,000 kilometres of telegraphs ; more
than 400 steamships and 5700 saUing vessels,
of a total net tonnage of nearly 1,000,000
tons ; that she spends every year about
$38,600,000 on coal ; that her native in
dustrial companies have $289,500,000 of
paid-up capital, while foreign companies
have about half that amount ; that her pro
gress in applied electricity has been very

THIRTY YEARS OF ITALIAN PROGRESS 207
rapid, — in three years, from 1896 to 1899,
her production of electrical horse-power
increased from 50,000 to 100,000 ; that in
1900 the cotton industry product was valued
at $58,000,000 ; that her chemical product
doubled between 1893 and 1899, when it
reached $10,000,000 ; that the output of
her paper-mills has doubled in fifteen years.
These are figures which stand for facts —
they cannot be gainsaid ; they invariably
escape the notice of the foreign and native
writers of jeremiads on Italy. In forty
years the population, after deducting a large
number of emigrants (probably 4,000,000
now live outside of Italy), has risen from
25,000,000 to 33,000,000 souls, or about
one third ; meanwhile, the value of her an
nual products has quadrupled, if they have
not quintupled, — exactness is impossible,
owing to the imperfect records kept in the
bureaus of the Old Regime.
If this comparison does not betoken pro
sperity, at least it indicates that the Italians
have readily adapted themselves to our in
dustrial era. They started nearly one hun
dred years behind England and sixty years
behind France ; they lacked capital ; they

208 THIRTY YEARS OF ITALIAN PROGRESS
lacked something more important — enter
prise ; the inertia of tradition weighed on
their industries as it still weighs on their
agriculture ; and over all spread a political
palsy. A single generation of Free Italy has
wrought these immense changes.
And yet the stranger, bhnd to these evi
dences of progress, sees only the poverty,
which he thinks is universal, helpless, incur
able. But if you know Italy, you know that
the areas of poverty vary greatly in extent.
At Turin, for instance, you rarely see a beg
gar, whereas some quarters of Naples seem
to have no other inhabitants. Wages of farm
laborers and of mill-hands are often desper
ately low, and employment, especiaUy for the
agriculturists, is not steady. In certain re
gions and seasons a farm laborer can earn
barely fifteen cents a day, and he regards
twice that sum as large pay anywhere ; but
we must remember that he can buy the neces
saries of life very cheaply. Actual starvation
overtakes those districts which rely on a sin
gle crop, if that crop fails. Misery is en
demic in more than one ill-favored locality.
To escape these evils, the peasants emigrate
in myriads, while other myriads flock to

THIRTY YEARS OF ITALIAN PROGRESS 209
the cities to sweU the ranks of the sub
merged. Again, these phenomena are not pecuHar
to Italy : they are the grim facts which con
front modern civilization. The cardinal social
achievement of the nineteenth century was
the discovery of the slum. Before that, the
slum had been taken for granted — accepted
as a necessary evU — from the earhest times.
Charitable institutions had, of course, ex
isted, and paupers had had their dole of soup
and bread, with an occasional penny, but it
no more occurred to even the benevolent to
stamp out pauperism than it shocked them
to keep slaves. In Italy, under the Old Regime
the slum itself was almost a privileged insti
tution. The States of the Church swarmed
with beggars, to whom Pius IX showed spe
cial indulgence ; how, indeed, could a Church
which encouraged the Mendicant Orders,
sodden in idleness and carnality, effectively re
prove untonsured mendicants ? The Neapol
itan Bourbons actually based their throne on
the slums : the league between Ferdinand I
or his grandson, Bomba, and the lazzaroni
of Naples was so close that, thanks to it, the
King more than once stifled the efforts of the

210 THIRTY YEARS OF ITALIAN PROGRESS
decent minority ; and when Victor Emmanuel
entered Naples in 1860 he found 90,000 pro
fessed lazzaroni — criminals of every grade,
from the most brutal assassin to the sneak-
thief, idler, drunkard, low debauchee, tramp
— who avowedly had no honest employ
ment. How stands the matter to-day? Italy has
declared war on the slum. The worst parts
of Naples have been demolished; new broad
streets bring light and pure air into what
were lately the most unhealthful wards of
Rome; that reeking sty, the Florentine Mer
cato Vecchio and its neighborhood, is an
o^pen piazza; the blocks of squalid buildings
which crowded the Duomo at Milan have
been swept away to make room for one of
the noblest squares in Europe. At each of
these improvements the voice of the sickly
esthetes was raised — "Vandalism!" they
murmured. " The Roman Ghetto was so
picturesque ! " " The Old Market at Florence
had such delightful medieval associations ! "
To these sentimentalists the Hfe, health, and
morals of the living citizens of Rome or Na
ples or Florence are nothing. What, indeed,
could improved drainage or lowered death-

THIRTY YEARS OF ITALIAN PROGRESS 211
rate mean to foreigners in pursuit of what
they mistake for cultural emotions ?
In every city and in almost every town of
Italy this beneficent " vandalism " has been
carried forward. Naples has now one of the
finest water-supplies in the world ; Rome,
which was so miasmatic that during the
last year of the Papal Government the Ecu
menical Council dreaded to sit there on the
approach of warm weather, is now a salubri
ous abode. Sanitation has been pushed not
only in the cities, but in the country also,
where immense tracts of malarious or unpro
ductive land have been reclaimed.
This war against poverty has been waged
on the material side by substituting hygienic
for disease-breeding conditions; on the intel
lectual and moral side it has been waged by
education. The Old Regime and the Church
hated schools, and very naturally, since their
grip on the masses depended on keeping
them in ignorance. Fifty years ago Italian
peasants and servants were almost wholly
illiterate. The New Regime has reduced
Uliteracy until now less than a third of the
adult males and one half of the adult females
are illiterate. The proportion varies from five

212 THIRTY YEARS OF ITALIAN PROGRESS
per cent in Turin to ninety per cent in Cala
bria. Piedmont makes a better showing than
Pennsylvania in education, for in 1900, out
of 1,330,000 Pennsylvanians of voting age,
140,000 were illiterate. Unfortunately, com
pulsion cannot be carried everywhere into
practice, because poverty prevents many child
ren from attending even the pubhc schools.
Thus is Italy using education, the master
weapon, against error, ignorance, and crime.
She has placed in every commune, in every
hamlet, a school, and although the number of
her illiterate is large, she has already made
immense progress. To cite only two symp
toms : first, the number of homicides fell
from 5418 in 1880 to 3749 in 1898, a fig
ure which will compare favorably with the
estimated 10,000 violent deaths a year in
the United States ; secondly, the percentage
of illegitimate births has fallen from 7.35 in
1881 to 6.14 in 1889. Illegitimacy is still
most common in Romagna, Latium, and
Umbria (reaching 142 per 1000 births in
Umbria), the former States of the Church :
a significant fact.
The kingdom is well provided with savings
institutions, public and private, which have

THIRTY YEARS OF ITALIAN PROGRESS 213
deposits to the value of 2,500,000,000 lire, or
$500,000,000, an amount which, considering
the resources of the country, ought to cheer
even the pessimists. As we come to know
better the social and economic conditions of
our own country, we get over the pleasant
assumption that Americans and British are
all prosperous — a fallacy perhaps due to the
fact that until lately the acquaintance of
social philosophers was limited to the well-
to-do. In the United States, for instance,
there are now milhons of persons whose out
look can hardly be brighter than that of the
least prosperous Italians. The "poor white
trash " of our South can be matched against
the most backward South Italians ; the dere
lict medievals of Kentucky and Tennessee
are the counterpart of the brigands of the
Abruzzi and of the Sardinian mountaineers.
Nor are the British Isles an exception. Less
than sixty years ago 1,000,000 Irish died of
famine while luxury went on unabated in
England ; and only last year (1902) an eco
nomic census of York showed that 23,000
out of the 70,000 inhabitants of that typical
fairly prosperous EngHsh town live habitu-
aUy below the starvation-line.

214 THIRTY YEARS OF ITALIAN PROGRESS
Instead of holding up our hands in horror
at the poverty and Uliteracy of Italy, we
should inquire whether the poverty is greater,
the illiteracy more widespread than in 1860 :
and to these questions there can be but one
answer. Moreover, to the Kingdom of Italy
belongs the credit for this stupendous pro
gress: had the Bourbons ruled in Naples, the
Pope in Rome, the Grand Duke in Tuscany,
during the past forty years, there would
have been no such modernizing. So far as
concerns economic and educational require
ments, we must conclude that United Italy
has proved herself fit for the new era.
Look now at her political growth. We see
many blunders, much incapacity, much posi
tive corruption. Recent historians almost
unanimously agree in unfolding crisis after
crisis, each of which seemed certain to wreck
the newly launched monarchy. Just recaU a
few of these crises : Garibaldi's crazy expedi
tion, connived at by Rattazzi, and ending in
the distressing conflict at Aspromonte in
1862; the September Convention in 1864;
the publication, also in 1864, of the " Sylla
bus," by which Pius IX hoped to inflame
the Catholic world against Italy ; Garibaldi's

THIRTY YEARS OF ITALIAN PROGRESS 215
second imprudence, ending at Mentana, in
1867 ; the adoption by the Pope of an irre-
concUable attitude after the liberation of
Rome in 1870 ; hard times and prospective
bankruptcy, 1873-75; the death of Victor
Emmanuel, testing the dynastic principle,
January, 1878 ; the death of Pius IX, which
the Papalists hoped would render acute the
question of the Temporal Power, February,
1878 ; the Irredentist riots in 1878 ; popular
indignation over the French occupation of
Tunis in 1881 ; the disaster at DogaH — the
first retribution for the Abyssinian folly — in
1888 ; the commercial rupture with France,
leading to great distress throughout Italy,
1889; the recrudescence of Papal hostility,
1887-89 ; the Roman Bank scandals, reveal
ing peculation on an immense scale, and in
volving many prominent public men, 1893;
distress, riots, and martial law in Sicily,
1893-95 ; the rout of the Italian army at
Adua, and collapse of Italy's Abyssinian
folly, 1896 ; the bread riots, culminating in
bloodshed at Milan in 1898 ; the assassina
tion of King Humbert, again testing the
strength of the monarchy, July 29, 1900.
Here are a few items — the list might be

216 THIRTY YEARS OF ITALIAN PROGRESS
greatly lengthened — which enemies of Italy,
and doubtless many among her friends, have
cited to prove that the kingdom could not
endure. And even in addition to these spe
cific symptoms, there were to be overcome
the sleepless intrigues of the Vatican, the
incompetence of legislators, the propaganda
of Republican and Socialist partisans, the
tenacious Past, the limited financial resources.
Nevertheless, 1903 saw the nation stronger
than she was in 1893, or in 1883, or in 1873.
The voyage has always been stormy, some
times desperate, but Italy has weathered
every gale, and she forges ahead to-day better
manned and equipped than for a long time
past. Is it not a queer sort of logic which
concludes that a ship which has outlived so
many perils was unseaworthy from the start ?
Many of the evident mistakes of the last
thirty years can fairly be charged to lack of
parliamentary experience. The masses were
uneducated, and generations of Papal and
Absolutist misrule had corrupted the general
character of the people. Under the Old
Regime there could be no citizens : the rela
tions between the oppressed subject and the
despotic ruler, far from fostering those civic

THIRTY YEARS OF ITALIAN PROGRESS 217
qualities which we look for in freemen, trained
instead the baser instincts — cringing hypo
crisy, cowardice toward those above, greed
and cruelty and arrogance toward those below.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the
Itahan Parhament has often failed to solve
the great problems set for it ; nor that the
type of public man who has come to the front
has often been the astute politician, the
intriguer, the demagogue, the boss. Since
Cavour died, Italy has had no statesman of
transcendent power; but in Ricasoli, Min-
ghetti, Sella, Lanza, and other survivors of the
heroic epoch, she had leaders of stainless in
tegrity, who were true patriots. That the new
generation should breed politicians and not
statesmen seems inevitable. Italy was made
— the day for heroic sacrifices was past ; the
day of immense spending had come — of
honest spending, to lift the new kingdom up
to the modern plane ; of injudicious spend
ing, on public works before they were needed;
of dishonest spending, to enrich corrupt
politicians and their gang. Our Whisky Ring,
Credit MobUier Ring, Star Route Robbers,
Sugar Ring Senators, and other rascals have
had their counterparts in Italy, and in Italy,

218 THIRTY YEARS OF ITALIAN PROGRESS
as in the United States, they have generally
gone unpunished. This grave blot cannot
therefore be charged to the ItaHans alone,
nor can it be used as evidence of their unfit
ness for self-government. It is the curse of
the age: it has blackened modern France; it
has smutched England.
So it will not do to single Italy out as
a failure in parliamentary government on the
ground that her pubhc men have been cor
rupt or incompetent. The effects of their
corruption or incompetence have been more
apparent because she is weaker than France,
or England, or the United States, countries
which, like strong men, can stand dissipation
which would kUl a weakling. But her com
parative weakness has been also a safeguard :
for it has registered almost immediately a
warning after each excess. Her worst foUy —
the chase for a colonial empire in Eritrea and
Abyssinia — began at once to plague her: in
1886 Nemesis smote her at Dogali ; in 1896,
after Adua, she heeded the warning. "The
Abyssinian campaign gave us our colonial
anti-toxin treatment," a keen Italian financier
said to me ; " it was costly and made us very
sick, but it cured us."

THIRTY YEARS OF ITALIAN PROGRESS 219
The over-taxation of Italy is so common
a theme that I need not enlarge upon it. Her
public debt averages about $80 per capita —
nearly as much as the French, although in
paying capacity France far outranks her.
Even so, for this sum Italy has provided her
self in three decades with the outfit of modern
civUization. Her neighbors, richer to start
with, have had from fifty to one hundred
years in which to get theirs. This sum repre
sents, further, the debts of the old govern
ments, which she swallowed up, and the cost
of her wars of Hberation in 1859, 1860, and
1866. Free government, even when most
economically administered, costs more than
despotic, and thus far it has nowhere been
economical. Conceding all that pessimists
urge against the financial errors of Italy, we
need not, on that account, despair of her
future. If financial errors alone could ruin
a nation, the United States would have long
since perished.
Pohtical education has not kept pace with
the needs of the country, and centralization,
which tends everywhere to preserve the form
but vitiate the essence of representative
government, has been partly responsible for

220 THIRTY YEARS OF ITALIAN PROGRESS
this backwardness. But centralization could
not be dispensed with in the early years,
when the planting and nurture of uniform
national ideals transcended all other needs.
In like manner, the army has been less harm
ful in Italy than elsewhere. It has served
to unite the various provinces not only by
making their conscripts recognize the Italian
flag as supreme, but also by mixing the vari
ous elements. It has taught mUlions to read
and write. It has given the Italians, who had
been mercenaries or the defenseless subjects
of unspeakable tyrants, a requisite sense of
personal and national honor, and of devotion
to duty. Finally, it has bred discipline in a
race which had grown slack and shiftless.
We have thus far considered some of the
obstacles — social, economical, and educa
tional — against which the Kingdom of Italy
has had to contend in its struggle toward
a sound national existence ; we must now, be
fore concluding, glance at her active political
enemies. She has never had anything to fear
from the dispossessed Bourbon pretenders,
whose following in Naples and the Duchies is
as dead as that of the Stuarts in England,
but untU a few years ago her peace was en-

THIRTY YEARS OF ITALIAN PROGRESS 221
dangered by Republican agitators. They did
not wish to shatter her unity, but they
thought that by establishing a republic they
could cure the ills which they charged to the
Monarchy, and so hasten the coming of the
Mazzinian Utopia. Their propaganda, vigor
ous in the seventies and at times threatening
in the eighties, has petered out — partly for
lack of leaders; partly because the horse-sense
of the vast majority of the Italians shows
them that the Monarchy is the principle on
which they can best agree now, whatever may
be their preferences for the future; and
partly because the Socialists have come for
ward to preach that through Socialism and
not through the Republic the desired reforms
must be sought.
The Socialists, who number some of the
best educated as well as the most earnest
Italians, seem to hold almost the balance of
power, and they have probably not reached
their fuU strength. Some of their demands
have already been granted in other countries ;
only their extremists hint at abolishing the
Monarchy. With proper guidance, they must
do a great good in urging on social and
economic improvements. They are dangerous

222 THIRTY YEARS OF ITALIAN PROGRESS
in so far as they kindle class hatred or teach
the discontented that the causes of their dis
content can be removed by summarily sweep
ing away the army, or the Monarchy, or
individual ownership of land, or industrial
competition. Their true mission in Italy is
education, not revolution : for no revolution
that they might achieve would last, unless
the people were educated to live up (or down)
to it. They have perforce resorted to political
methods; they have made unholy alliances —
witness their tacit league with the Clericals in
1898 — which will come back to plague
them; and they have not always seemed to
work disinterestedly; but among them com
paratively few believe in violent means, and
still fewer plot against Italian unity.
The rise of Socialism everywhere betokens
that our modern world is seeking to readjust
itself on economic instead of on political
lines. This readjustment will certainly not
be similar in all countries. In despotic Ger
many, for instance, Socialism is the great
protest against militarism and autocratic
megalomania ; in the United States it antago
nizes trusts ; in Italy it has a broader fulcrum
of poverty for its lever, but less intelligence

THIRTY YEARS OF ITALIAN PROGRESS 223
and a greater diversity of conditions, and
therefore of needs, to work with. Evidently,
in all these respects, Italy has not been the
exception which she is usually painted. She
has had economic and agrarian problems —
offset Sicily, for instance, against Ireland;
she has tackled the slum; she has spent
wastefully; she has bred dishonest politi
cians, and she has now to reckon with Social
ism — just as her neighbors have.
But in addition to the common burden of
the age, Italy has had to bear her special
cross — the sleepless, unscrupulous, far-reach
ing enmity of the Vatican. She has had to
hear French and American Catholics threaten
to deprive her of her capital, although they
would be quick to resent the agitation of
Germans or British to hand over Paris or
Washington to a foreign hierarch. The
strongest proof of the stability of United
Italy is the fact that for thirty years she has
permitted her arch-enemy to occupy Rome.
I venture to think that no other nation would
have done this. How long would Prussia
tolerate in Berhn a foreign court of similar
nature, working day and night to overthrow
the Prussian Kingdom? Can one suppose

224 THIRTY YEARS OF ITALIAN PROGRESS
that the English, who used to go into hysterics
whenever the late Doctor Pusey added half
an inch to the width of his hat-brim, would
have suffered the Pope himself to dwell in
London and to carry on with France and the
other CathoHc powers intrigues for the re
storation of Popery and the Stuarts in Great
Britain ? Or should we Americans hold hands
off from conspirators, lay or clerical, who
avowedly plotted at Washington to destroy
the Repubhc? Yet Italy has forborne so ad
mirably, as if it were a matter of course, that
the world has hardly given her credit for it.
She has suffered vicariously for the rest of
Christendom. The French Catholics, who
would not tolerate the Pope for their secular
prince, insist that the Romans and Italians,
who repudiate his kingship, shall submit to
it. The Irish Catholics paid little heed when
Leo, to propitiate the EngHsh Government,
bade them abandon their patriotic campaign ;
yet they would inflict his rule on Rome.
That Home Rule should be worth dying for
in Ireland, but must be tabooed in Rome, is
a thoroughbred Irish bull. Every Papahst
speaks proudly of the achievements of Leo;
but in so doing he gives the lie to the Papal

THIRTY YEARS OF ITALIAN PROGRESS 225
contention that without the Temporal Power
the Pope cannot perform his functions.
EquaUy specious is the claim that unless the
Pope is King at Rome, foreign Catholics
may suspect that his pohcy is adopted under
pressure from the Italian Government — as if
France, Spain, and Austria had not for cen
turies exercised in the Conclave the right of
vetoing any cardinal they disliked, who ap
peared as a candidate for the tiara ; and as if,
out of the seventy members of the Cardinals'
College, a safe majority were not always
Italian, to make certain the election of an
Itahan pope.
Simply by non-interference Italy has de
monstrated the speciousness of aU the Papal
claims. She has been able to do this because
she has no illusions about the Church-
Papacy. She never confounds the reHgious
with the secular. She has no fanaticism, no
rancor. She knows, moreover, that the Papal-
ists are playing a great game of bluff ; she is
rather amused than otherwise that foreigners
should be taken in by it. If some Papal
organ laments the good old times when
everybody was happy and prosperous under
the Pope's rule, the Italian smiles much as

226 THIRTY YEARS OF ITALIAN PROGRESS
Mr. Low or Mr. Jerome may smile when a
Tammany organ tearfully regrets the Golden
Age of virtue and prosperity when Richard
Croker was the boss of New York City.
The countrymen of MachiaveUi are too old
in worldly wisdom to grow hot over per
fectly obvious pohtical tricks. So long as the
Pope, by playing prisoner, can reap mUlions
of dollars a year, they are generous enough
to admit that he would be a fool not to do so.
In France, the Clericals actuaUy seU to the
superstitious peasants blades of the straw
" which the Holy Father has to sleep on in
his dungeon." " Che vuole?" the Italian
asks with a shrug. "How can you expect
them to tell the truth when lying is so lucra
tive?" How desperate the Vatican has become
appeared in the league of Clericals with the
Sociahsts, and more recently, in the Pope's
rapprochement with Prussia — Protestant
Prussia — to compensate for the loss of
prestige in France. As we hve in a period
of reaction, it is but natural that the Vatican
and Prussia, the two strongholds of medi
evalism, should at last clasp hands. So, in the
reaction after Waterloo, the Vatican clung

THIRTY YEARS OF ITALIAN PROGRESS 227
to Austria. Furthermore, it is a great mis
take to suppose that all Italian ecclesiastics
are anti-national ; many of them are intensely
patriotic, Hberal even, and they would never
consent to see the nation broken up. The
pretense that a great body of Catholics does
not vote deceives nobody ; because it is
known that nearly the same number of votes
are cast in municipal elections, in which the
Catholics are allowed by the Pope to take
part, and in the parliamentary elections, from
which the Pope tries to exclude them. There
fore, either the Catholic voters number less
than five per cent, or they vote against the
Pope's order: whichever alternative we take,
the claim of the Papalists, that if they all
went to the poUs they would control the
country, is absurd.
As a menace to Italian unity, the question
of the restoration of the Pope's temporal
power has dwindled almost to nothing. No
foreign governments are likely to engage in
an enterprise which would impugn their own
legitimacy ; for Leo XIII has repeatedly con
demned the modern heresy that governments
derive their authority from the consent of
the governed instead of from Papal sanction.

228 THIRTY YEARS OF ITALIAN PROGRESS
This bigotry, of course, outlaws every gov
ernment in Christendom — for even the King
of Spain does not acknowledge the Pope as
his political over-lord.
I have touched on the material and polit
ical progress of the kingdom : it would be
pleasant to record Italy's attainments in
science, literature, and the arts ; to speak of
Carducci, the only original poet in Europe
since Victor Hugo died; of Fogazzaro, and
Verga, and De Amicis, conspicuous in fic
tion ; of Lombroso, Morselli, and Ferri, in
psychology ; of Villari, in history ; of Com-
paretti and D' Ancona, in scholarship ; of
Ferrari, in sculpture ; of Morelli, in the criti
cism of art; of Marconi, in invention. The
generation has been "practical " in Italy,
just as it has been here; and yet these names
attest that she has not lagged behind her
neighbors in the higher pursuits.
Thus the nation, in spite of its local dis
cords and failures, and of the disillusionment
as to the speedy regeneration of society
which has spread over Europe and America
in the last twenty years, has become really
united. In Rome, monuments to Cavour and
Garibaldi have already been raised, and those

THIRTY YEARS OF ITALIAN PROGRESS 229
to Victor Emmanuel and Mazzini are well ad
vanced. A statue to Giordano Bruno rises
on the very spot where he was burned by the
Jesuits three hundred years ago. " The only
tradition we have had since 1870," said to
me a person who could speak with the high
est authority, "is toleration. The King is at
the Quirinal, the Pope at the Vatican ; the
Minister of War is a Jew ; members of each
church may worship undisturbed in Rome."
Nothing can illustrate better than this tolera
tion the spirit of the new Italy. And her new
King — a man of sound education, firm wUl,
clear judgment, and high sense of duty —
must be an important factor in her future
progress. Judged by the difficulties she has
overcome, the transformation of Italy has
been relatively greater than that of any other
modern nation. On this fact her weU-wishers
base their hopes.

LUIGI CHIALA

LUIGI CHIALA1
Senator Luigi Chiala died in Rome on
AprU 27, 1904, a little more than seventy
years old. He occupied a unique place among
Itahan historical writers; indeed, no other
country in this generation has produced his
counterpart. He wrote no formal history, but
he edited the letters of the chief makers of
modern Italian history in such wise that his
works are indispensable, an integral part of
the great chronicle of the Risorgimento. As
long as the story of Italian independence is
remembered, Chiala's commentaries on Cavour
and La Marmora and their contemporaries
are certain to be read. He was born at Ivrea
in the Val d'Aosta on January 29, 1834 ;
studied at the University of Turin; volun
teered in the disastrous campaign of 1849 ;
and then devoted himself to journalism. His
ability soon attracted the notice of Cavour,
and among his earliest works was " Une Page
d'Histoire du Gouvernement Representatif
i The Nation, June 2, 1904 ; vol. 78, no. 2031.

234 LUIGI CHIALA
en Piemont," a revelation of the steps
which led up to the famous coahtion of Ca
vour and Rattazzi in 1852. This treatise was
so evidently written by some one on the in
side that many readers persisted in attribut
ing it to Cavour. The coalition, or connubio,
between the rival leaders had been brought
about by their common friend, Michelangelo
Castelli, one of those most efficient men who
hold a relatively inconspicuous place in the
public eye, but are the intimates to whom
rulers and ministers turn for frank counsel.
With him Chiala early formed a friendship
which lasted till Castelli's death in 1875.
During the fifties, Chiala at the age of
twenty founded and edited the Rivista Con-
temporanea, a monthly magazine pubhshed
at Turin, which served as the mouthpiece for
the men of progress and patriotism who were
transforming little Piedmont into a modern,
liberal, and strong state. When Cavour
wished to prepare pubhc opinion for the
death-grapple with Austria, he suggested to
Chiala the main points of another tract, " La
Maison de Savoie et la Maison d'Autriche."
The facile publicist volunteered for the
war of 1859, serving in the Fourth Regiment

LUIGI CHIALA 235
of Grenadiers ; he saw the brief campaign of
1860, and remained in the army. In 1862
he founded Italia Militare, the principal
mUitary journal of Italy, which he conducted
for four years. During the war of 1866 he
was attached to the General Staff, and subse
quently he was secretary of its chief, General
Govone. The alliance with Prussia, entered
into doubtingly by General La Marmora,
the then prime minister, and the defeat at
Custozza, drew down on La Marmora an
avalanche of hostile criticism. The young
staff officer could not endure to see the gen
eral, whose confidence he had long enjoyed,
calumniated, and, having requested to be
placed on the reserve list, so as to free his
pen, he wrote in quick succession " Le Gene
ral La Marmora et 1' Alliance Prussienne"
and "La PoHtica Italiana e l'Amministra-
zione deUa Guerra dal 1861 al 1866." In
the former he justified the premier's accept
ance of Bismarck's overtures ; in the latter he
set forth the policy which Italy had pursued
after Cavour's death, and defended the War
Office against the charge of incompetency
and neglect.
In 1870 he resumed active service on the

236 LUIGI CHIALA
General Staff, with the rank of captain, and
was appointed editor of the Rivista Militare,
an army monthly, which he made flourish.
In addition to his editorial work, he pro
duced an elaborate monograph on the events
of 1866, and after La Marmora's death (in
January, 1878) he wrote a memorial which
had a wide circulation and added 12,000 lire
to the fund for the General's monument. But
the chivalrous Captain Chiala had already
fallen into official disgrace by printing, in a
commemoration of Victor Emmanuel II, one
of the King's letters to Baron Ricasoli — an
act which Chiala's superiors in the War De
partment construed as insubordination. He
was arrested and imprisoned at Civitavecchia ;
but fortunately he had spent only fifty days
in that cheerless fortress when the adminis
tration changed hands, and Cairoh, the new
prime minister, at once ordered his release.
Chiala lost no time in resigning from the
army for good.
To this episode we probably owe his mon
umental work, the six volumes of Cavour's
Letters, the first volume of which, appearing
in 1882, introduced Captain Chiala's name
to students of modern European history in

LUIGI CHIALA 237
all parts of the world. He found in Signor
Luigi Roux of Turin an energetic publisher,
who made a specialty of bringing out import
ant works on the Risorgimento. Elected
from Turin to the Chamber of Deputies in
1882, Captain Chiala sat among the mem
bers of the Historic Right until 1892, when
he was created a Senator by King Humbert.
His edition of Cavour consumed nearly ten
years. It was followed by Castelli's " Letters
and Memoirs " ; by three volumes of selections,
with elucidation, from the editorial leaders
of Giacomo Dina, a journalist, who, for thirty
years, stood at the head of the Italian Lib
eral press ; by a volume on the " First Expe
dition to Massaua " ; by three volumes of
"Pages of Contemporary History" ; and by
" A Little More Light on the Events of 1866,"
the last work being issued in 1903. Besides
these many books, there are others which
deserve mention : " Confidenze Politiche di
due Uomini dabbene" (that is, Massimo
D'Azegho and Giacinto Collegno) ; " L' Alle-
anza di Crimea "; and " La Politica Segreta
di Napoleone III e di Cavour in Italia ed
in Ungheria." He had still another work in
preparation at the time of his death.

238 LUIGI CHIALA
This list of dates and titles testifies to
Senator Chiala's astonishing industry; but
mere industry is common, and many a writer
who has filled a shelf with twenty-five vol
umes has been quickly, and deservedly, for
gotten. It is Senator Chiala's distinction to
have worked in a subject which, for Italians at
least, can never lose interest, and to have con
tributed from his own talents a very unusual
fair-mindedness and an almost unrivaled
skill in tracing intricate political transac
tions, or in piecing together, from imperfect
clues, a diplomatic negotiation. His know
ledge of the traditions and practices of Euro
pean cabinets since 1840 was simply unlim
ited. He knew the opinions of the public
men of Italy, France, England, Germany,
and Austria for fifty years; he had their
memoirs and published correspondence by
heart ; and, so far as concerned Piedmont
and Italy, he knew the secret springs of ac
tion behind legislation and behind diplomatic
intrigues. He was as famihar with the gossip
as with the archives. Taken into confidence
by the statesmen of two generations, he
never betrayed their secrets nor committed
an indiscretion. He could be the friend of

LUIGI CHIALA 239
two rivals without sHghting either. This
trustiness explains why he became so general
a confidant. It was most fortunate that so much of the
material of the history of the Risorgimento
came to such a man for editing. The unifica
tion of Italy was not achieved without arous
ing violent partisan animosities. There were
Mazzinians, who hated the Cavourians almost
more bitterly than the Austrians; there were
intransigent Democrats, irreconcilable Cler
icals. Senator Chiala treated them aU fairly,
taking pains to give to each his due as a
helper towards national regeneration. Instead
of partisan narrowness and sectarian exclus-
iveness, he kept in view the ideals which
embraced all parties. He accomplished this
not by an easy indifferentism, nor by a sac
rifice of his own opinions, which were clear
and firm, but by a genuine passion for fair
ness. And as no other Italian of his gen
eration has done more to promote good will
among his countrymen, so no other has sur
passed him in effectively defending the pohcy
of Italy against foreign accusers. His ex
position of the affairs of 1866, for instance,
may well be final.

240 LUIGI CHIALA
He was a commentator rather than a bio
grapher or historian. Give him a coUection of
letters or a batch of political articles, and he
would set them in proper order, explain the
connection of one with another, clear up
every allusion, cite, if need be, a dozen pass
ages mutually remote to complete the under
standing of a line, and so put the reader in
possession of all the data needed for forming
an opinion. Thanks to this method, he em
bedded in his books much fugitive material
that might otherwise have been lost. But
this method, which serves so admirably his
purpose, is of course too diffuse, too discurs
ive, for formal history. Nearly ten years
before his death I urged him to recast his
introductions to the six volumes of Cavour's
" Letters " in the form of an independent
biography. They make more than 2000
pages, which, by condensation such as would
suit a biography, might be reduced one half.
But he said to me that it was too late : he
had neither time nor means to undertake
such a work, although if he had realized at
the outset how voluminous a commentary
the letters would require, he should have
adopted a different plan.

LUIGI CHIALA 241
To those who knew him, the personality
of Senator Chiala was most sympathetic. He
was tall, above six feet in height; and in the
later years, when my relations with him be
gan, his hair, moustache, and imperial were
white. He had a soldier's rather than a schol
ar's bearing ; but in manner he was very
gentle, a model of urbanity. You never came
to the end of his information in his chosen
field or of his liberality in imparting it, and
a talk with him was worth much reading as
a proof of the innate genius of the Italians
for diplomacy. He was most generous in
praising what he deemed excellent, and his
praise carried great weight. I weU recall the
satisfaction which Jessie White Mario, the
last important survivor of the Mazzinian
inner circle, expressed when I told her that
Chiala had recommended to me in high terms
her " Life of Bertani." Though he and she
were leagues apart in politics, yet she knew
that he was just. He lived frugally, like so
many of the intellectual elite in Italy, chiefly
dependent on his writings for his support.
Italy may weU blush to reflect that although
hundreds of his contemporaries enriched
themselves at her expense, demanding in

242 LUIGI CHIALA
return for past patriotism pensions and
offices, this modest veteran of her wars, this
sterling chronicler of her heroic struggle,
had during his last years a stipend of only
1100 lire. It was better so. No enemy could
insinuate that he wrote to liquidate past
favors or to encourage possible patrons. He
worked conscientiously without scanting, and
without rest. In his books as in his life, he
personified the galantuomo — the chivalrous,
honest, fair-minded gentleman; the type to
which the modern Italians do well to look
up as their ideal.

DANTE AS LYRIC POET

DANTE AS LYRIC POET

We have been so long accustomed to think
of Dante chiefly as the poet of " The Divine
Comedy," and of Shakespeare chiefly as the
dramatist of the "Plays," that we do not
always remember that they are also supreme
among modern lyric poets. There are two
apparent reasons for this supremacy. The
first concerns the Poet as Artist. Dante
could never have perfected the terza rima
of " The Divine Comedy," Shakespeare could
never have elaborated the blank verse of the
" Plays," — those Protean metres, each sus
ceptible of endless variety in cadence, in
sweep, in delicacy of modulation, in richness
of tone, — unless they had both been, poten
tially at least, masters of minor metrical
forms. The greater includes the less.
The second reason concerns the Poet as
Man. Of all poetry, the lyric is the most
i Atlantic Monthly, March, 1902.

246 DANTE AS LYRIC POET
personal. Through it the poet utters, with
out feigning or restraint, his subjective emo
tions. But the value of an emotion, for the
purpose of poetry, depends on the calibre of
the individual who experiences it. In music
or painting it may be otherwise, but great
poetry inevitably presupposes greatness of
character in the poet. He may have many
flaws, — sins, even, and startling limitations;
he certainly will not let himself be measured
easUy by conventional standards; but his
greatness is essential, the one fixed fact in
Hterature. Accordingly, there is no luck in
the surpassing excellence of the lyrical poems
of Dante and Shakespeare, nor of the lyrics
of Milton and Goethe, — the greatest char
acters after those Two that have expressed
themselves through poetry in modern times.
Let us glance first at Dante the Man.
Fate gave him genius; life brought ex
perience ; and he, by self -correction, perfected
both. Commentators, in their effort to recon
struct the poet from his poetry, have almost
made us forget that he was a man at all :
rather was he, if we could beHeve them, a
marvelously intricate mechanism for turning
out Hterary masterpieces according to rules

DANTE AS LYRIC POET 247
which these commentators have deduced
from his works. Now, Httle as we know
about Dante's external hfe, we do know this
beyond dispute, — he was no literary form
ula. Historically, he came at the climax of the
thirteenth century, — that wonderful cen
tury, only to be matched in importance by
the fifteenth and the nineteenth. It was the
great CathoHc century. It witnessed the
Papacy at its zenith under Innocent III,
the formulation of Catholic theology by
Thomas Aquinas, the rise of the great
orders, — the Dominican to safeguard the
faithful by persecuting heretics, the Francis
can to lead all men to Christ by foUowing
his example. It boasted its mystics and its
logicians; it built cathedrals; it set forth on
eight crusades ; it beheld the establishing
of popular government in Italian cities, the
bourgeoning of popular literatures, the as
tonishing expansion of the great universities.
Above all, it saw the death-struggle between
the Holy Roman Emperors and the Popes
— the world their stake — which resulted
in the destruction of both Church and State
as the joint arbiters of Christendom.

248 DANTE AS LYRIC POET
Into all these immense problems of creed
and of government, into the speculations
of the philosophers, into the antagonisms of
popes and emperors, Dante plunged with
might and main. He mastered not merely
the theory of the medieval world reHgion
and world politics, but threw himself into
the civic life of his native Florence, where
factions raged, and where to discharge a
citizen's duties meant to hazard property and
Hfe on the caprice of a fickle people.
Coming of a well-to-do family, he enjoyed
whatever schooling Florence then gave her
youth, and he early, I conceive, outstripped
his masters. Like most Italian lads, he
wrote verses ; unlike most, he quickly proved
himself a poet, for when he was eighteen
his sonnet, " A ciascun' alma presa" won
him a reputation among the chief poets of
Florence. He fell in love with a damsel whom, after
the fashion of his time, he never aspired to
marry, being content to worship her at a dis
tance, from his ninth year to his twenty-
fifth, when she died. The commentators
would persuade us that throughout his
adolescence and young manhood this passion

DANTE AS LYRIC POET 249
shut Dante out from aU other thoughts,
keeping him in a state almost hysterical —
now ecstatically oblivious to everything ex
cept the recollection that Beatrice had salut
ed him last week ; now plunged in gloom ;
now fainting or seeing visions ; forever sigh
ing and weeping; and more than once stark
mad. In his "little book," "The New Life,"
Dante himself supplies the outlines for this
portrait; but not to perceive that he there
writes as an artist, and not as a systematic
chronicler, is to miss the key to " The New
Life" and to him. Unquestionably, that
passion for Beatrice was the chief experience
of his youth ; and, on looking back, he omit
ted, like the great artist that he was, all that
he had done or thought outside of the orbit
of Beatrice during those years, and by this
omission he created the impression that
there was nothing more.
So we must distinguish between the ideal
world, in which Dante placed his passion for
Beatrice, and the actual world, in which,
during those very years, he was really busy
with many other things. Specifically what
things, we cannot say in detail. We know,
however, that he was mixing with the best

250 DANTE AS LYRIC POET
inteUects of his time, studying, meditating ;
eagerly taking part in the affairs of Florence,
even enlisting in her militia and going forth
to battle for her independence : in a word,
playing from the outset the part of a man
hungry for life, impetuous, stern, of mani
fold capacities, and as far removed as pos
sible from any abstraction or formula. Let
us not think of him as the central figure in
a Pre-Raphaelite picture, — a soulful, esthetic
youth, condemned to gaze yearningly at sad-
eyed, large-jointed, wry-necked ladies, whose
spirits and complexions seem sodden in
opium. Pre-Raphaelitism had its charms, but
it could no more mterpret Dante than Pope
could Homer.
After Beatrice died, almost every certi
fied glimpse we get of Dante, for ten years,
shows us a man seizing hold on active life
with ever increasing energy. He takes part
in the government of Florence ; he goes on
embassies ; he is one of the city priors, and a
recognized leader in one of the great pohtical
parties. He marries, and has several children ;
presumably, he has also some bread-giving
occupation. Then, in January, 1302, whUe
he is absent from Florence, his enemies,

DANTE AS LYRIC POET 251
having got the upper hand, banish him on
a charge of barratry and falsifying, and ten
weeks later they condemn him to be burned
aHve. Thenceforward, until his death in 1321,
he leads an exile's life : at first cooperating
in attempts to capture Florence, then chafing
because one possible liberator after another
fails to come to her aid. Amid these per
turbations, and in spite of wanderings which
took him to almost every part of Italy, and
perhaps across the Alps, he writes "The
Divine Comedy " and " The Banquet," and
makes himself master of all the knowledge
of his time. And to his learning he adds an
intensity of observation and a breadth of re
flection which had been united in no earher
man of genius.
I venture to recall almost at random these
points in Dante's career, because I beheve it
to be much more essential to know the tre
mendous energy of the man, and to see how
in his character and genius he held a whole
epoch in solution, than to be learned in his
commentators. Only in this way shall we rid
ourselves of the common notion that a great
poet cannot be a man of action, and we shaU
understand Dante's lyrics better by perceiv-

252 DANTE AS LYRIC POET
ing that they are authentic fragments of a
colossal personality.
To be able to certify that a given poem
was written on a given day in a given year,
or to whom it was addressed, or what all its
allusions refer to, is often gratifying; but
the matter of first importance is, how much
of these poems is alive to-day ? how much of
the eternal do they hold ? what message do
they bring to your heart and to mine ?
The approach to all the masterpieces of
literature has become so clogged by the pa
tient labors of the critics that one might
waste a lifetime climbing over or tunneling
the Cordilleras they have raised before reach
ing the rich kingdoms where Homer or Dante
or Shakespeare reigns. We might almost
conclude that to be a scholar now is to read,
not the originals, but the reviews of critiques
of commentaries on the originals ; and yet
the best advice is : " Seek the original — read
it — ponder it — enjoy it — absorb it — find
out what it means to you." What it meant
to the poet himself or to his contemporaries
we shall never wholly know; for we can
never reconstruct Dante's mind or Shake
speare's, or the age in which each lived.

DANTE AS LYRIC POET 253
Many of the aUusions, much of the spirit of
that age, and the scope of the master's gen
ius, we can understand; but stiU much re
mains, and, unless evidence now unknown be
discovered, wUl forever remain, conjectural.
In the domain of conjecture criticism shifts
its position from time to time, as an army
besieges an impregnable fortress, attacking
now on one side and now on another, even
making a complete circuit, yet never taking
it. A beautiful Greek statue is dug up : while
archeologists are disputing whether it re
presents god, demigod, or hero, and who
carved it, and where the marble was quar
ried, shall their uncertainty prevent us from
delighting in its beauty ? And although it
can never be established to whom Shake
speare addressed his sonnets, or just how far
" The New Life " mingles fact with allegory,
have they no meaning for us ? Does it really
signify whether Shakespeare had Pembroke
or Southampton in mind when he uttered his
passion in such sonnets as " When, in dis
grace with fortune and men's eyes," or
" Not marble nor the gilded monuments," or
" That time of year thou mayest in me be-

254 DANTE AS LYRIC POET
hold," or " When to the sessions of sweet
sUent thought " ? Must we have solved the
enigma of Beatrice in order to thrill as a
lover thrUls at the beauty of " Tanto gentile
e tanto onesta pare" ?
Let us emphasize this, because erudition
threatens to usurp the function of taste in
dealing with Hterature, and, indeed, with all
works of art. Erudition continually thrusts
upon us irrelevances whose only excuse is
that they are facts. Philology sits in judg
ment on poetry. And since the cardinal
facts about Dante or Shakespeare were inven
toried long ago, erudition offers theories,
conjectures, plausible guesses, buttressed by
many citations, instead of facts.
n
Dante's Canzoniere, or book of lyrical
poems, contains eighty-six pieces usually held
to be genuine, eight more called "doubtful,"
and some fifty surely " apocryphal." I pro
pose to consider only the genuine, — counting
less than twenty-eight hundred lines in all, —
among which are fifty sonnets and twenty can-
zoni; taking their authorship for granted, and
making such comments on them as would

DANTE AS LYRIC POET 255
stUl be pertinent even if Dante were not
their author. In short, it is their substance
and style — questions of pure Hterature
rather than of erudition — with which I wish
to deal.
The first difficulty which confronts the
reader of Dante is aUegory. Not less in the
Poems than in "The Divine Comedy" you
soon find yourself entangled in a network of
meanings and cross-meanings. Just as your
mind grasps a thought, this suddenly dis
solves into another, and this again is metamor
phosed. It is as if, when you gaze into the
translucent blue of noon, you could see, first,
the constellations of the stars, and, after a
little, beyond them, and loveher still, angelic
hosts, such as the old painters put in the
heaven of their pictures. Dante intended this.
There are, he said, four meanings possible in
the highest poetry, — the literal, the allegor
ical or mystical, the moral, and, finally, the
anagogical. For our present purpose we will
not lose ourselves in the maze of symbolism:
we wiU take the poems as they stand, and
see what they mean to-day.
For commentaries, turn to the excellent
works of Witte and Fraticelli, those scholars

256 DANTE AS LYRIC POET
to whom every subsequent reader of Dante
gladly acknowledges his indebtedness, and
to Giosue Carducci, who, at the close of the
nineteenth century was at once the most
eminent poet in Europe and one of the fore
most critics. In Carducci's monograph, Delle
Rime di Dante,1 there is a full discussion,
based on the then latest information, of the
sources, composition, date, probable mean
ing, and style of most of the poems in the
Canzoniere. Carducci discriminates so nicely
that he thinks he can set down the order in
which the lyrics were written. He assigns
the first poem of " The New Life," inspired
by Guido GuinizeUi and the popular poets of
the third quarter of the thirteenth century,
to 1283 and the next few years. Then Dante,
feeling his own genius, enters his second pe
riod, that of the "sweet new style" (il dolce
stil nuovo), which lasted till Beatrice's death.
From 1292 to 1298 Carducci discerns an
other period, which he subdivides into three
parts, according as " natural," " allegorical,"
or "gnomic" tendencies manifest themselves.
Finally, Dante's banishment in 1302 opened
1 Giosue Carducci, Studi Letterari, vol. viii. Bologna,
1893.

DANTE AS LYRIC POET 257
another period, in which the agonizing nov
elty of exile rekindled the poet in him, whUe
years and experience matured the sage and
the statesman.
Let us admit at once that Dante's lyric
poetry has the raw material from which such
a classification can be made ; but let us be
politely skeptical as to the probability that
such minute dissection is right. To suppose
that Dante, or any other true poet, produced
his works after this orderly, chessboard fash
ion — now aU black, again all red, one month
joy, the next month gloom — would be to
make that most mysterious of all creations,
a poet's soul, as humdrum as a railway time
table. Before we survey the contents of Dante's
lyrics, let us examine for a moment his work
as an artist in metre. He did not invent the
forms in which he moulded his poems, but
he so stamped his originality on each of them
that the sonnet, the ballata, and, above all,
the canzone, became through his genius new
metrical instruments, capable of producing
effects hitherto undreamt of. It was as if
two strings had been added to a primitive
violin.

258 DANTE AS LYRIC POET
While he ennobled these verse-forms, he
showed how the Italian language could serve
the highest purposes of poetry. There is a
striking contrast between the metrical de
velopment of English and of Itahan. English
is rough rather than musical in sound ; it has
few perfect rhymes ; its words, except in a
few cases, refuse to be contracted or cur
tailed. How to get from such an instrument
the dehcate modulations that beautify the
lyrics of Shakespeare, Shelley, and Tenny
son, — that was the technical problem for
the masters of EngHsh verse.
Italian stands as the reverse of all this. It
is plastic almost to the point of fluidity; it is
dangerously friable. If a final syUable harms
the rhythm, it can be elided ; if the first syl
lable interferes, it can often be suppressed ;
if a foot or half-foot is needed, a suffix, of
the required length, can be added ; even the
central syllable of a word is not always safe
from condensation. Of rhymes there is no
limit, and they are exact rhymes. The very
genius of the language is musical, its prose
having a dactyhc flow almost as marked as
the formal metres of its poetry. For impro
visation, for sweet ditties and dulcet ser-

DANTE AS LYRIC POET 259
enades, for folk-songs with their simphcity
and their easy, haunting refrains, such a
language could not be surpassed ; but could
it be the mouthpiece for great passion?
Would tragedy not find it too soft, satire
too flimsy? Could it be trumpet, viohn, or
organ, as well as guitar? «
Dante achieved this wonder ! He wrote
some sonnets which not even Petrarch, com
ing after him and profiting by his example,
has rivaled. He raised the canzone to be the
peer of the English ode. Welcoming difficul
ties, because he saw that to overcome them
he must have control over every phrase,
word, and syUable, wherewith to clothe his
thought, he experimented with novel kinds
of metres and rhymes. The intricacies of
structure which in English prevent the son
net from ever losing, except with a few mas
ters, an artificial air, checked in Italian that
tendency to improvisation which Dante re
sisted. Accordingly, he packed his canzoni
with thought, firm of texture and poHshed
until every syUable fitted irremovably into its
place. Sometimes, indeed, he carried conden
sation across the border of obscurity : imag
ine the terseness of Tacitus rendered still

260 DANTE AS LYRIC POET
more difficult by the omissions and ellipses
permitted in poetry, and you wiU get an idea
of his most compressed passages. His treat
ise on " The Vulgar Tongue " shows how
completely he had mastered the theory of
the science of verse, especially in the Romance
languages ; his poems prove that he could
embody his knowledge in his technique.
Dante gives no comfort to the idle singers
of an empty day, who pretend that technical
knowledge and the file need not be included
in a poet's outfit. "The highest conceptions
cannot exist," he says, " except where there
is knowledge and genius." * "Never without
sharpness of genius, nor without assiduity in
art, nor without practice of knowledge," he
says again, can one succeed in writing a can
zone ; " and hereby is confessed the folly of
those who, without art and without know
ledge, relying solely on their genius, set
themselves to sing in the highest fashion of
the highest things." 2 In a famous passage
of "The New Life" he remarks: "It
would be a great disgrace to him who should
rhyme anything under the garb of a figure
or of rhetorical coloring, if afterward, being
1 De Vulgari Eloquio, ii, 1. 2 Ibid, ii, 5.

DANTE AS LYRIC POET 261
asked, he should not be able to denude his
words of their garb, in such wise that they
should have a true meaning. And my first
friend [Guido Cavalcanti] and I are well ac
quainted with those who rhyme thus fool
ishly." 1 And so are we, who have heard the
follies of French Symbolists and of their
foreign mimics gravely proclaimed as a new
triumph in poetry.
In Dante we find that rarest union, — in
tensity of imagination and clearness of intel
lect. When Love inspired him, he wrote;
but the fervor of that inspiration did not
prevent the working of his critical faculty,
by which he tested its validity and decided
how to clothe it in words. He seems to have
held that our thought lies beyond control,
but that its expression depends on faculties
which we may direct, — on knowledge, taste,
patience, and skill, which are greater or less
according as we voluntarily cultivate them.
" Speech," he says, " is not otherwise an in
strument necessary to our conceptions than
is the horse to the soldier." 2 A memorable
simUe. 1 The New Life, § 25, Norton's translation.
2 De Vulgari Eloquio, ii, 1.

262 DANTE AS LYRIC POET
The little singers of our day and of all
days shun knowledge and dread criticism, and
weU they may ; for their verse-making is but
effervescence. But Dante, seer and knower
in one, could endure the most searching crit
icism — his own — without chUHng his in
spiration. The analyses which he makes of
each poem in " The New Life," and the ex
haustive interpretation of his canzoni in
" The Banquet," show critical talents of the
highest order. Indeed, we almost resent his
cold-blooded dissection of those throbbing
sonnets to Beatrice, until we reflect that
through his ability to criticise, not less than
to create, Dante became the chief moulder
of Italian poetry. He rescued it from the
doom of improvisation. The Provengal, lack
ing such a savior, had degenerated quickly,
never to revive.
Thus we can hardly overestimate Dante's
importance as a lyric craftsman. As such, he
greatly influenced his immediate successors,
and he has dominated the best Italian poets
ever since. Shakespeare certainly ranks sec
ond to no other lyric poet, and yet his direct
influence on English metrical development is
scarcely discernible, — his lyrics, like his plays,

DANTE AS LYRIC POET 263
have had no progeny ; whUe Dante, both in
his lyrics and in his epic, stands HteraUy as
the Father of Italian Song.
Such was Dante's influence on the struc
ture of Itahan poetry : not less elemental was
his effect on its substance. His treatment of
Love, the imperial theme of lyric poetry,
illustrates this.
Chivalry as an ideal partook somewhat of
the feudalism and somewhat of the reHgion
of the society out of which it sprang. The
devotion of the Knight to his Lady went by
the name of love, but ought rather to be
caUed worship ; for between them there ex
isted, in theory at least, no personal relations.
In fact, however, that faultless worship of
the Knight for his Lady, untainted by thought
of sex, had few votaries. As ancient as Adam
and Lilith was the love the Troubadours
sang. " Galeotto was the book, and he who
wrote it," — in those words Francesca da
Rimini revealed to Dante the influence which
had brought her and her lover to Hell. That
sexless attachment of Knight and Lady, like
its counterpart, sacerdotal celibacy, might
have prospered save for one thing : in the one
case Chivalry, in the other the Church, left

264 DANTE AS LYRIC POET
human nature out of the reckoning ; and
flax and flame, then and to-day and always,
must burn when they meet.
The sudden exalting of woman, commonly
regarded as the chief product of Chivalry,
had in essence a deeper origin. It marked a
change in the ideals of sex that had slowly
overspread Christendom ; nay, they had
not only overspread Christendom, they had
mounted to heaven. The deification of the
Virgin Mary typified the gradual recognition,
unconscious rather than reasoned out, that at
the very Heart of the Universe there must
abide those qualities which make woman
woman. The Christian God, as defined by
the theologians, whether he were worshiped
as One, or as Three in One, was a mascuhne
God. The Power personified in the Father,
the Wisdom in the Son, the Love in the
Holy Ghost, were still the attributes of man,
and not of mankind, since they did not in
clude attributes which are the pecuHar en
dowment of woman. Motherhood, the most
intimate and beautiful of human relations,
had no recognition in that scheme of Deity.
But instinct deeper than creed supplied the
lack in the creed which theology had drawn

DANTE AS LYRIC POET 265
up. In the apotheosis of Mary medieval
Christendom made its most precious contri
bution to human ideals.
But while ideal womanhood had already
before Dante's birth been deified, chivalric
love had sunk in practice to the carnal level.
The song might stiU be innocent, but the
courtly singer and his mistress, the Knight
and his Lady, were not. And the poetry it
self, naively charming in its youth, had be
come conventional. The old phrases and
much of the old prettiness remained, and
the metrical skUl had increased; but instead
of many themes there was only ingenious re
petition of one theme, — conceits refined and
overrefined, and, worst of all, the evidence
that neither the poet nor his readers believed
in the pure devotion which he extolled.
Then Dante came, and into this faded ideal
he poured that which first suffused it with
new life, and then transfigured and sanctified
it, until he had created a new ideal. Dante's
passion for Beatrice was genuine ; accord
ingly, his lyric poems to her vibrate with sin
cerity. Fortunately, he was spiritual as well
as sincere ; and it is of great moment that
he, the earliest master of modern poetry,

266 DANTE AS LYRIC POET
should thus spiritualize the poetry of personal
passion. Physical beauty remains of the earth,
unless it be the medium through which the
soul shines forth. Expression transcends form.
Into his portrait of Beatrice he painted those
attributes which never grow old, which could
not be exhausted though every woman in the
world possessed them ; and the mere descrip
tion of them must have more and more mean
ing according as men see with the eyes of
the spirit. To have converted to such high
uses the poetry of chivalry from being either
a metrical plaything or an erotic ornament
attests the genuineness of his passion. But
he did more than this : he revived and
amplified the mystical conception of Platonic
love. In his passion for Beatrice — as in aU his
other vital experiences — he passed by a pro
cess of growth from the personal and con
crete to the impersonal and universal. At
first it was the real Beatrice, the beautiful
and lovely daughter of Folco Portinari, on
whom aU his passion centred; then, after
she died, it was her memory that he wor
shiped ; until gradually, from a person she
became a personification, — the symbol in

DANTE AS LYRIC POET 267
Paradise of Heavenly Wisdom. What is this
but Platonic Love, as described so mightily
by Plato in " The Symposium," and so com
monly misunderstood ?
in
And now for the poems themselves. We
find in the earliest of them a mystical view
of love, which tends more and more towards
the Platonic ideal, and which, after the death
of Beatrice, when Dante writes avowedly in
allegory, visibly merges in that ideal. As a
youth, he had before him the beautiful can
zone of Guido Guinizelli, " Al cor gentil
ripara sempre Amore," in which mystical
love is described with much philosophical
finesse and much poetical charm. Among all
the poems of that century, not by Dante,
this is, I think, the most delightful ; and if
it had here and there a little more distinction
of phrase, it would rank with the best mod
ern lyrics. In it we have the two cardinal
points laid down, that Love's dwelling-place
is the gentle heart, — " Love and the gentle
heart are one same thing," is Dante's own
expression, — and that Love, since it came
from God, wears an angel's face.

268 DANTE AS LYRIC POET
Only a barbarian would undertake to de
grade into cold prose the loveliness of the
love-poems in " The New Life " : no other
medium than verse can convey the music of
the words, the heightened imagery, the emo
tion which pulses through the metre. We
may, however, indicate some of their charac
teristics. First, the freshness of them ! They are the
earliest blossoms of the Spring of Modern
Love ; and they glisten with the newness and
the tenderness of Spring. For this vernal
rapture we go back, in EngHsh poetry, to
the Elizabethans; but Sidney and Spenser
drew from Italian streams which flowed from
Dante's fountain.
Then, their blending of naivete with know
ledge ! This strange power, Love, overcomes
Dante : it fills aU his life, and transfigures
the universe before his eyes ; he watches
its influence spread, as he might watch with
increasing wonder the mystery of dawn grow
into the pageant of sunrise. But while his
soul is thus enthralled by the ecstasy of love,
his reason seeks to know the origin and na
ture of his new master : hence that interweav
ing of passion and philosophy, in which

DANTE AS LYRIC POET 269
Dante came at last to transcend all other
poets. This blending reaches perfection in his
descriptions of Beatrice, which rise higher
and higher in spirituality, without letting us
doubt that they apply to an actual woman.
He reveals her to us by the effect she pro
duces on those who beheld her, rather than
by a definite portrayal of her countenance.
Her eyes and her smiling mouth (the two
features through which the soul becomes vis
ible), and the sweet dignity of her bearing —
her expression, and not her physical mould —
these are the outward signs of Beatrice which
Dante describes. Accordingly, his portrait of
her is at once actual and ideal : every lover
who looks upon it beheves that it was drawn
from a living Beatrice, but that it cannot
possibly be true of any other than his own
beloved. And then, how many chords are touched
by the poems in " The New Life " ! Dante
sings not only the perfection of Beatrice, but
also his own perturbations. Like all lovers,
he pendulates between boldness and shyness.
For days or weeks his one desire is to see
her, yet when they meet his courage deserts

270 DANTE AS LYRIC POET
him, he trembles at her salutation. He goes
home to cry out on the tyrant Love who
thus torments him ; and even while he cries
out, he longs for a repetition of the torment.
Like other lovers, he resorts to subterfuge,
and pays such marked attention to another
damsel that Beatrice herself is deceived into
thinking that he has forsaken her. When he
hears of this, he sends her a poem (Ballata i)
in which he explains his conduct, and pro
tests that his devotion has never wavered.
The time comes when his passion is no longer
a secret : his friends talk to him about it ;
Beatrice's companions question him as to its
goal, and he pours forth the canzone, " La
dies, who have intelligence of love," a pas
sionate ode in praise of Beatrice, whom the
angels desire to be their comrade in heaven.
Not long afterward the father of Beatrice
dies, and for the first time the realization
that Beatrice herself may die crashes like
a thunderbolt through Dante's soul. For him,
as for every true lover in youth, nothing else
can equal the dismay and agony which that
possibility causes. Life and love are identical
to the youth who loves ; how can he think
of life without the beloved ? Only in the all-

DANTE AS LYRIC POET 271
enveloping immensity of Death can the agony
which Death inflicts be quenched. This sub
limation of grief is rarely felt in later years,
for experience teaches us that life can be
Hved, bereft of the beloved, or even love-
lessly, and that Duty, Friendship, or Phil
anthropy may take Love's place at the helm.
This canzone, embodying Dante's first pre
monition of Death, lifts his love-story to
a higher plane of significance by endowing it
with that tragic quality which intrudes sooner
or later upon us all. Dante had, in truth, al
ready written two poems (Sonnet 3, BaUata
ii), when one of Beatrice's friends died ; but
they are graceful and sweet, the utterance
of sentiment, while this is tragic. And even
after the death of Beatrice herself he speaks
as one sorrowing, but not amazed, at Death.
In the third canzone he pictures Beatrice in
heaven, God having called her to him be
cause he saw that this troubled mortal life
was not worthy of such a gentle thing. But
if we except the lamentation addressed to pil
grims who are passing through Florence, sor
row rather than anguish henceforth prevails.
He suffers keenly, but he continues to live ;
he strives for resignation, or at least for dis-

272 DANTE AS LYRIC POET
traction, and is stirred by moral incentives of
whose force he had not dreamed till now.
The conclusion of " The New Life " con
tains further the record of Dante's experi
ence with the Compassionate Lady, who
grieved at his grief and tried to cheer him,
and so far succeeded that he found himself
in love with her. A very human touch is this,
bearing witness to the close resemblance be
tween Sympathy and Love. But the memory
of Beatrice comes back so vividly to Dante
that he realizes that Sympathy, however
sweet, is not Love, and cannot replace the
passion which Beatrice inspired; and so he
concludes " The New Life" with that famous
resolve to say of her " what was never said
of any woman."
Brief as is this analysis of the themes
dealt with in " The New Life," it will show,
I trust, how wide their range is. Alike in
the history of the poetry of the modern world
and in the history of the ideals of love, they
are of immense importance : intrinsically, also,
many of them have never been surpassed,
some of them have never been equaled, by
subsequent singers of spiritualized love, of
beauty, and of womanly perfection.

DANTE AS LYRIC POET 273
This cycle of poems in " The New Life,"
although it fills less than a quarter of the
Canzoniere, is better known because of its
sequence, its completeness, and the delight
ful prose setting, than aU the rest, although
among these are many magnificent poems,
the fruits of Dante's lyric genius at its ma
turity. There are perhaps a dozen which seem
to belong, either in theme or in treatment,
with " The New Life " ; then come the three
canzoni of " The Banquet," and finally some
forty other pieces which have not been classi
fied. We may mention first that strange group
of poems1 in which Dante inveighs against
a lady who wUl not listen to his suit. They
have shocked some of his critics and puzzled
all, and many specious allegories have been
invented to explain them. To analyze them
we have not space here; but in the briefest
review of Dante's lyrics they should not be
passed by. For just as the poems to Beatrice
reveal him as the youthful lover, so these
1 These are Canzoni ix, x, and xi, Sestina I, and Sonnets
22, 32, 37, and 43. Canzone vm refers to the Lady of
the Casentino. I follow throughout Fraticelli's numbering
(Canzoniere, Barbera, 1873), which is the best in print, al
though by no means satisfactory.

274 DANTE AS LYRIC POET
show him to us loving with the full vehe
mence of his prime, and not at all resigned
to worship sUently and aloof the object of
his passion. Who the lady was who has been
called Pietra, quite without authority, and
whether she was also the Lady of the Casen
tino, will probably never be known, but the
poems add an entire province to our estimate
of Dante's personahty.
May we not be content to admit that much
of the Canzoniere has never been satisfac
torily " explained," nor can be, unless fur
ther evidence turn up, but that, nevertheless,
nine tenths of it has intrinsic, vital meaning
to-day ? Most of the controversies rage round
insoluble matters. I care not whether the
stony-hearted lady lived in Padua, or the
Lady of the Casentino had (as alleged) a
goitre ; what would it profit us to know the
names of the grandmothers of the sculptor
of the Venus of Milo, or of the musicians
who played the shawms when the 90th Psalm
was first sung ? The vital facts we have : the
passion of the " Pietra " canzoni and of the
canzone written in the Casentino is plain,
and these poems all testify that no bardling
wrote them.

DANTE AS LYRIC POET 275
Nor do I observe that psychology has yet
found the key to literary criticism. Like
pedantry, — or scholarship, if the old name
seems discourteous, — it furnishes facts which
do not touch the inner meaning of any art
product. Suppose that we could, by some
miracle of hindsight, measure, after the
psychologist's fashion, the emotions of Shake
speare and Dante, and that we learned that
Shakespeare's pulse rose three beats when he
entertained an angry thought, or that Dante's
temperature feU three twenty-ninths of a de
gree when he thought vehemently of love :
what would it prove ? Absolutely nothing as
to the value of a scene from Timon or a
sonnet from " The New Life." Equally vain
are the efforts, so far as I have seen them, of
those critics who have imagined that by such
devices they could fathom the mysteries of
the creative imagination. Psychology hath
its bubbles, as religion and science have, and
these are of them. Thirty years ago other
critics believed just as confidently that they
could explain genius by heredity.
Returning to our survey, we cannot but be
amazed, as we get to the heart of one poem
after another, by Dante's inexhaustibility

276 DANTE AS LYRIC POET
of thought, phrase, and metre. Judged
merely by their number, the twenty canzoni
are among the most remarkable evidences of
poetic genius; but quality is the final test,
and in this they do not fail. Not one is me
diocre ; fully three quarters are superior. If
Coleridge had produced fifteen odes equal to
" Dejection," we might have had in English
a poetical achievement to set beside Dante's
canzoni. I do not imply, of course, that Cole
ridge's genius resembles Dante's in kind.
But without frequent citations from the orig
inal, it is impossible to do more than speak
of some of the obvious characteristics of such
poetry. Lyrics like the ballate — ten in num
ber — evade even description. Their beauty
depends on the perfect marriage of word and
music, and is no more to be described except
by itself than is one of Shakespeare's songs.
The first two canzoni of " The Banquet "
record the stages by which Dante passed
from the love of Beatrice to the love of
philosophy ; the third expounds the nature of
true nobility. The remaining forty-five lyrics
may be divided into moral, personal, and
patriotic, according to their themes.
Concerning Dante's didactic poems in gen-

DANTE AS LYRIC POET 277
eral, it may be said that, even to an Anglo-
Saxon who has personaUy, and vicariously
through Puritan ancestors, listened for cen
turies to moral preaching, they still have
that insistence of truth which was old before
Dante's birth, and is born again whenever
the youngest chUd perceives its meaning. In
their intensity, they are among the few mod
ern utterances through which the Old Testa
ment resonance echoes ; but Dante reasons,
whereas the Jewish prophet proclaims down
right, " Thus saith the Lord ! " and awaits no
reply. In these works, as in nearly all that
he wrote, Dante was a pioneer. He tells us
that before his time there were only love-
poems in Itahan, but that he chose to write
of Philosophy under the guise of Love.
When we reflect that the Italians, from never
having read the Bible freely in their mother
tongue, have been cut off from the traditional
source of moral education in Protestant coun
tries, we shaU hardly overestimate what it
meant to them that their greatest poet was
also their greatest moralist.
Among other personal poems there are
three sonnets (40, 41, 43) apparently written
to Cino da Pistoja, for whom Dante feels

278 DANTE AS LYRIC POET
such friendship that he frankly urges him to
mend his ways; but above all, there is the
sonnet to Cavalcanti, " Guido, I would that
Lapo, thou and I," — the delightfulest ex
pression of Love and Comradeship, with its
strange modernness of sentiment, and its
language as simple and musical as that which
captivates us in Heine's songs.
FinaUy, there are two patriotic canzoni.
In one of them (xx) Dante addresses Florence,
— " My country, worthy of triumphal fame,
mother of great-souled sons," — conjuring
her by her spotless past, when the citizens
" chose virtues to be the pillars of the State,"
to extirpate the impious children who degrade
her : " so that downtrodden faith may rise
again with justice, sword in hand." From
the first line to the last, we hear the out
pouring of a true patriot, one who loves his
country with a son's devotion, and knows
that he best proves his love by repudiating
the evil policy into which she has been led.
Are there not lands to-day which might
well heed the alarum of this envoy ? " Thou
shalt go forth, Canzone, boldly and proudly,
since Love leadeth thee, into my country, for
which I mourn and weep ; and thou shalt find

DANTE AS LYRIC POET 279
some good men whose lantern gives no light ;
for they are submerged, and their virtue is
in the mire. Shout unto them : Arise, arise !
It is for you I caU ! "
Thus Dante pleads for the regeneration of
his beloved Florence. In the other canzone
(xix) he rises at once to the summit of patri
otism. He is an exile, outcast, yearning for
his ungrateful city, when three ladies come
together about his heart, because Love sits
within. They too have been cast out from
their rightful place in the affairs of men;
they have been scorned, insulted, despised.
Who are they? Righteousness, Generosity,
Temperance : think what it means that a
whole people should banish them, and that
their refuge should be the heart of one just
man, himself in banishment ! Love listens to
the story of their wrongs, and bids them not
despair, for he and they are of one family,
founded on the Eternal Rock. " And I who
hear," says Dante, " such lofty exiles con
sole them and lament, hold as an honor the
exile decreed to me: and if man's judgment
or the force of destiny will that the world
turn its white flowers to dark, to fall among
the good stUl merits praise." Here, then, is

280 DANTE AS LYRIC POET
the last behest of patriotism: you shall not
condone your country's sins, but you shall
keep your heart so pure that it may be the
abode of Justice and Righteousness when all
other men reject them; and above any com
promise with the wicked, you shall prefer to
fall among the good.
We may well close our survey with this
magnificent poem, in which Dante has set
Patriotism immutably on the heights, where
Love and Righteousness dwell.
Thus is the circle of the Canzoniere com
plete. Love in many phases, — expectant,
adoring, timid, angry, ecstatic ; Friendship ;
Scorn; Wisdom; Integrity; Honor; Beauty;
Patriotism; Death, — Dante has touched one
after another these everlasting chords of hu
man interest, and he has so touched them as
to produce lyric poetry of the very highest
quality. If we measure the range of Shake
speare's Sonnets and Songs, the only other
work which equals the Canzoniere in lyric
genius, we shall find that Shakespeare has
little or nothing to say on several of these
themes, however royally abundant is his
utterance of others. In their capacity for
passion the two poets were equal ; but Dante

DANTE AS LYRIC POET 281
had a theory of life, the centre of which was
Love, by which he came to test whatever ex
perience, reflection, or imagination brought
him. Shakespeare, so far as I discern, had
no such unifying principle. The Niagara of
life swept before him, and he sat upon the
bank and strove to paint it as he saw it, —
incessant, vast, awful, beautiful, — infinite
in its momentary variations, yet apparently
one and permanent: so he painted it, not
recking to put on to his canvas any ques
tions of Whence, or Why, or Whither. Ac
cordingly, myriads of men have had their
characters formed by Dante ; I doubt whether
many have been consciously formed by Shake
speare. I am not trying to compare these
Incomparable Two, but merely to indicate
their most striking differences. A comparison
of Dante and Shakespeare, for the purpose of
ranking them, would be as idle as a compari
son of the Alps and the Atlantic Ocean ; the
genius of each sufficed to symbolize life in
its entirety.
What abatement must we make in our
estimate of the Canzoniere ? Something, no
doubt, must be deducted on the score of age,
although Dante's language has fewer anti-

282 DANTE AS LYRIC POET
quated words than Shakespeare's. More for
midable is his use of allegory ; for even when
we have agreed to take what we can of the
natural meanings, and to let the gnomic and
anagogical go, we should prefer to know all
the possible answers to the riddle, and may
feel a little aggrieved that we never can.
That Dante sometimes exercises his marvel
ous gift for logical disputation beyond the
proper limits of lyrical poetry, in which the
main business is not to syllogize, can hardly
be denied. So, too, we may justly object to
an occasional display of learning, or to a
passage obscured by too great condensation.
But these blemishes occur very rarely, and
not one of his poems is spoUed by them. To
complain that even he could not Hft some of
the intricate metres with which he experi
mented out of the region of artificiality con
demns those verse-forms, and not him.
After making whatever deduction we must,
an inestimable treasure remains. In the Can
zoniere, the highest lyrical genius embodies
itself in the noblest themes. Appraising
Dante's lyrics absolutely, for their contents
and art, they belong at the head of modern
poetry; judging them historically, to deter-

DANTE AS LYRIC POET 283
mine their place in the evolution of European
poesy, they have, like all of Dante's writings,
unique structural importance. By his con
science for form and respect for unity of
theme and tone he belongs with the ancients,
whUe by his treatment of the passionate and
spiritual he seems strangely modern. He is
the spokesman not of his own time and place
merely, but of an entire age, of a complete
civUization, which after six centuries of
growth culminates before his eyes. And so
his works embody that civilization, and trans
mit to us and to later ages as much of it as
has perennial life.
But it is his genius, — the throbbings
of his heart, the intensity and penetration of
his mind, the medieval ideals exalted by his
spirit, the terrible earnestness of his moral
nature, — it is Dante, the man, the person,
the poet, and not his epoch, that Hves to-day ;
it is Dante, the passionate lover, that sings
this matchless song to Beatrice — " Tanto
gentile e tanto onesta pare."

CARDINAL HOHENLOHE — LIBERAL

CARDINAL HOHENLOHE— LIBERAL1
If Primo Levi, " L'ltalico," whose trenchant
articles are highly prized by intelligent Ital
ians of all parties, had sought a favorable
moment for issuing his recollections of the
late Cardinal Hohenlohe, he could have found
none better than the present. For just now,
when Pius X, under Jesuit guidance, has
launched his Syllabus against Modernists and
Ultramontanism is everywhere recrudescent,
the portrait which Signor Levi paints of a
great prince of the Catholic Church who
dared to be a Liberal is all the more strik
ing by contrast.
Americans know so little about the real
condition of Clerical cliques at Rome that
they imagine that there is only one party,
which acts always in perfect harmony. The
real Papal Rome is, however, the battle
ground of unceasing conflict between one
party in the Church and another — Francis
cans strive with Dominicans, Jesuits with
1 Boston Evening Transcript, November 2, 1907.

288 CARDINAL HOHENLOHE — LD3ERAL
Liberals, seculars with regulars, and there is
as great a difference between the members of
the extremes as between, let us say, standpat
ter Repubhcan s and Paterson Anarchists. In
Rome this is well understood. Any one who
has access to Black circles hears very much
such talk of partisan hopes and personal
ambitions as he would hear in pohtical circles
at Washington. Archbishop X is to be made
a cardinal because a certain powerful Papal
family insists upon his promotion ; Bishop Y,
on the contrary, has lost his hope of prefer
ment because he resented Jesuit interference
in his diocese ; Z was slated for Nuncio to
Tierra del Fuego, but it was thought expedi
ent to propitiate the Spanish prelature by
sending Monsignor Luis y Juan instead; and
so on through all the changes of persons and
combinations. Primo Levi's recoUections x give us an
authentic glimpse behind the scenes. Cardi
nal Gustavo Adolf o Hohenlohe, a brother of
the German Chancellor whose memoirs caused
such a fluttering of German imperial dove
cotes, chose the Church as a career, not be-
1 " 11 Cardinale d'Hohenlohe nella Vita Italiana." Rome :
Societh Tipografico-Editrice Nazionale. 1907.

CARDINAL HOHENLOHE — LIBERAL 289
cause he was specially religious, but because
it offered to him, thanks to his great famUy
connections, a brilliant future. And he had
a young man's enthusiasm for Pius IX, then
recently made pope and the willing leader,
as Italians fondly supposed, of the national
cause. Pius soon backslid, but the young
prelate held fast to his Liberalism and his
love of Italy without surrendering his affec
tion for the bland pope. He was rapidly
promoted, and at a comparatively early age
he became cardinal, with the Church of Santa
Maria Maggiore as his seat. LuckUy, the red
hat reached him when it did, because he
could hardly have expected it from Leo XIII,
who was personally and politically unsympa
thetic to him. But being Cardinal and Prince
Hohenlohe, and the most distinguished repre
sentative of the German Catholics, he could
not be ignored by Leo, who had adopted the
policy of appearing Liberal in non-essen
tials, while he maintained the old Pian atti
tude — nonpossumus — towards the King
dom of Italy, the French Republic, and the
German ecclesiastical agreement.
It was early in the nineties when the Car
dinal's acquaintance with Signor Levi began,

290 CARDINAL HOHENLOHE — LIBERAL
and quickly ripened into the warmest and
most trustful friendship. Primo Levi, now
the foremost publicist in Italy, editor of the
Tribuna of Rome, co-editor of the Nuova
Antologia, confidant and mouthpiece of the
administration, and a distinguished official in
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was then
under forty, but he had already made his
mark in journalism, and had been taken by
Crispi as confidential secretary. During the
rest of Hohenlohe's life Levi served as inter
mediary between him and the Government.
Even earlier than this the Cardinal's courtesy
toward the officials of the Quirinal had not
been relished by the Pope ; " for among Leo's
other contradictions," says Levi, "was this —
he wished to obtain favors from the Govern
ment, but to scold those who in order to
serve him must have and have had cordial
relations with the Ministers of the King of
Italy." Through Cardinal RampoUa Leo under
took to reprove Cardinal Hohenlohe. It was
during the crisis when the Blacks were try
ing to inflame Catholics outside of Italy by
declaring that unless the intolerable "im
prisonment " of His Holiness ceased he would

CARDINAL HOHENLOHE — LIBERAL 291
be forced to depart from Rome. Hohenlohe
was not the person to submit meekly to a
dressing-down, even by the Pope, and to
Leo's reproof he returned the following reply,
which is one of the most important historical
documents of the time : —
"At the last audience," the Cardinal
writes, " I said to your Holiness that I had
invited Minister Boselh, who had agreed to
construct the great staircase at San Gregorio
and had promised other favors. It seemed to
me that your Holiness was pleased. AU the
greater was my surprise on receiving that
letter from Cardinal RampoUa.
" To-day we can no longer isolate our
selves in Chinese fashion from the person
ages of the Itahan Government. God has so
ordained that the Church can never again
get back her temporal power. The salvation
of souls requires that we resign ourselves to
this fact, that we keep quietly within the
ecclesiastical sphere and perform charity by
giving of our substance and by teaching the
faithful. " There is talk of quitting Rome. Now
his Excellency Crispi told me the other day
to inform your Holiness that, if you wish

292 CARDINAL HOHENLOHE — LIBERAL
to go, he will not oppose it and will have
you escorted with all honors, but that your
Holiness will never return to Rome ; that
if your departure should stir up a war —
for example, on the part of France — re
ligion would lose immensely thereby ; that
Italy will not make war unless France at
tacks her ; that in case of war the Italian
Government guarantees the safety of the
Pope at Rome, but that the Pope must
cherish no illusions : let him once depart,
he shall never return to Rome, and the Holy
See will suffer a terrible shock.
" Furthermore, France is giving Russia in
the Orient every facility for the triumph of
the schism, in order to secure a political alli
ance with Russia. So that there would seem
to be very little to hope for in that quarter.
" We cardinals have the strictest right to
speak the truth to the Pope ; therefore, listen.
In the time of Pius VI the five miUion crowns
stored by Sixtus V in the Castle of St. An
gelo were lost, and nevertheless, up to 1839,
every new cardinal had to swear to preserve
those five millions which no longer existed.
It was only Cardinal Acton who in 1839 pro
tested against that oath, and Pope Gregory

CARDINAL HOHENLOHE — LIBERAL 293
found Acton's reasons just. Likewise, to-day,
also, cardinals are made to swear things which
they cannot perform. Therefore it is time to
find a remedy."
The letter is dated July 24, 1889. No
wonder that Leo XIII, with his masterful
nature, did not relish a cardinal who was so
fearless and so frank ; for popes, like other
sovereigns, live in an atmosphere of flattery.
But Leo and the Curia laid to heart Crispi's
message, which I have italicized, and from
that day to this there has been no serious
talk of the Pope's abandoning Rome. Cardi
nal Hohenlohe's warning sank deep. The last
point in his letter, however, has not yet been
heeded. Every cardinal, and each new pope,
is made to swear that he will preserve intact
the inheritance of the Holy See, and this
inheritance includes, theoretically, the Tem
poral Power, which was lost nearly forty years
ago, and is as as much of a phantom as the
five million scudi of Sixtus V or the legacy
of Countess Matilda.
Cardinal Hohenlohe's other suggestion,
that the Holy See abandon political in
trigues and devote itself to works of charity
and the saving of souls, has also been dis-

294 CARDINAL HOHENLOHE— LIBERAL
regarded. In 1889 he was one of the so-
caUed Liberal Party among the high clergy,
who hoped, by accepting the God-ordained
loss of temporal power, that they might
organize a religious revival in the Catholic
Church. Two other cardinals, Franchi and
Schiaffino, and the Papal Nuncio at Vienna,
Monsignor Galimberti, who upheld the Lib
eral policy at that time, all died, as Signor
Levi remarks, " rather mysteriously," — a
euphemism for "by poison," according to
the common belief of their intimates at
Rome. Hohenlohe himself believed that his
Clerical enemies were bent on getting rid of
him in the same way. On December 5, 1892,
the Messaggero newspaper announced, with
out the slightest reason, that he was ill, —
as if to prepare the pubhc for the subse
quent announcement of his death. The news
was inspired, he wrote Levi, from the Seg-
reteria of the Vatican. That he deemed the
danger real cannot be doubted ; for shortly
after, on being called to Schloss Rauden to
the deathbed of his brother, the Duke of
Ratibor, he turned to Levi to recommend
to him a trusty traveling companion. The
priests whom the Vatican wished to send

CARDINAL HOHENLOHE — LIBERAL 295
with him might, he thought, be too expert
in the preparation of the acquetta which
the Jesuits were supposed to use with satis
factory results on their enemies. The situ
ation was sufficiently dramatic : Hohenlohe,
one of the most eminent cardinals of his
time, relied upon Signor Levi, a Jew, and
the confidential aid of Crispi, to save him
from his own coUeagues ! The mere fact
speaks volumes. How much danger he actu
ally ran is not important; but what is im
portant is that a cardinal, who had spent
forty years in the heart of the Papal ma
chine, did regard assassination as a probable
means of his taking-off. If a motive be
sought, it can easily be suggested. Leo
XIII, already over eighty years old, might
die at any moment, and in the conclave to
choose his successor the Liberal Party, al
though numerically small, might stUl be
able to hold the balance of power and cause
the election of a Liberal.
Primo Levi even goes so far as to suggest
that Hohenlohe himself might possibly have
been elected pope ; and this, not merely be
cause throughout the Catholic Church there
were many earnestly religious persons, both

296 CARDINAL HOHENLOHE — LIBERAL
lay and clerical, who, wearied or disgusted
by the politico-worldly regime of the pre
ceding forty years, longed for a religious
revival, but because there was the feeling,
which slowly gains ground, that if the Cath
olic Church is reaUy universal as it pretends
to be, its pope should sometimes be chosen
from outside the Italian cardinals. With
five sixths of the Catholics non-Itahans,
it is unlikely that they will go on forever
contributing the great bulk of the sums
received at the Vatican, to be used for the
benefit of a comparatively small number of
Italians, or that they will consent to see the
highest offices in the Church, especially the
popeship, always bestowed on the small ring
of Italian theocrats. But in the nineties,
the reactionists and pohticians at the Vati
can knew very well that if there were even
a compromise with the Liberals and the
religious in the Church their own occupa
tion would be gone. And so it happened
that the three Liberal cardinals, — Franchi,
Schiaffino, and Hohenlohe, — who might
have exerted a deciding influence on the
next conclave, were removed " rather mys
teriously " long before Leo XIII died.

CARDINAL HOHENLOHE — LIBERAL 297
As titular protector of the Rosminians,
Cardinal Hohenlohe incurred the implacable
hatred of the Jesuits, who, since 1848, have
never ceased to attack Rosmini. And with
reason ; for Antonio Rosmini was the one
great reHgious leader produced by Italy in
the nineteenth century, a saint in character,
a philosopher of profound and comprehen
sive inteUect, a churchman who wished the
Catholic Church to be divorced from politics,
an Italian who longed to see Italy free and
independent. In the dawn of Pius the Ninth's
career as a reformer, Rosmini was welcomed
by the Pope, who announced that he should
create him cardinal; but before the con
sistory was held the Jesuits had won Pius
over, Rosmini was disgraced, and in 1855
he died, presumably of poison. The Ros-
minian ideal of the Church is so diametric
ally opposed to the Jesuit ideal that the fol
lowers of Loyola were logical in assailing it.
Although Pius IX had formally approved
Rosmini's doctrines, the Jesuits denounced
them without respite and persuaded Leo
XIII to approve their condemnation by the
Inquisition. In 1892 the Vatican press is
sued an attack upon them which the Osser-

298 CARDINAL HOHENLOHE — LIBERAL
vatore Romano, the official organ of the
Jesuits, extolled. Cardinal Hohenlohe there
upon wrote a satirical reply to the Osserva-
tore, which he entrusted to Levi for publica
tion. One passage from it must be quoted,
as showing the Cardinal's position : " The
traditions of the Church," he says, "have
been left on one side ; the episcopate is mis
used by treating the bishops like servants ;
without any right they [the Ultramontanes]
are trying to impose on other nations poht
ical opinions which the majority of them
cannot approve ; in short, they are doing
everything to compromise the Church. But
this comes from a party ; because if it came
really from Leo XIII the episcopate would
find itself in the hard necessity of depos
ing him as the champion of false doctrines,
in opposition to his predecessor — quod
absit." In 1894, Signor Levi conferred with the
Cardinal in behalf of Baron Blanc, Itahan
Minister of Foreign Affairs, and of Crispi,
Prime Minister, in regard to the attitude
which the members of the Triple Alliance —
Italy, Austria, and Germany — should hold
in case a new conclave had to be summoned.

CARDINAL HOHENLOHE — LIBERAL 299
They agreed that as Germany was primarily
a Protestant country it would not be becom
ing for her to take the lead, and that Italy
must do nothing that might be construed as
an interference with the spiritual activity of
the Church. Therefore it would devolve on
Austria, whose orthodoxy could not be ques
tioned and whose sovereign was both " Cath
olic " and " Apostolic," to exercise, if neces
sary, her traditional right of veto. A secret
memorial to this effect was drawn up, and a
copy of it was sent to the Cardinal's brother,
Prince Chlodwig Hohenlohe, at that time
Chancellor of the German Empire.
Signor Levi recalls two other incidents of
the Cardinal's last days which showed how
far removed he was from the unreconstructed
Clericals. He had an ardent admiration for
Crispi, whom he regarded as a statesman of
great ability, the mainstay of Italy against
Clerical reaction on the one hand and against
revolution on the other. More than once he
entertained Crispi privately at his palace at
Santa Maria Maggiore. At the wedding re
ception of one of Crispi's lieutenants in the
Foreign Office, Hohenlohe took off his crim
son beretta and put it on Crispi's head, with

300 CARDINAL HOHENLOHE — LIBERAL
the playful remark, " When I am Pope, you
shall be my Secretary of State." The story
leaked out, but as the occasion was strictly
informal, Leo seems to have taken no official
notice of it.
A little later, however, the Cardinal at
tended a banquet given by Baron Blanc,
then Minister of Foreign Affairs, in his splen
did quarters in the Sciarra Palace ; and dur
ing the course of the dinner he caught
Crispi's eye, lifted his glass of champagne
and drank to him in silence. The next morn
ing all Rome was talking about the affair.
The Vatican professed to be horror-struck at
the scandal. Leo summoned Hohenlohe and
attempted to administer a rebuke, which, how
ever, the impenitent Cardinal did not take
very submissively. "He vindicated his lib
erty of action," says Levi, " whether as
Prince of the Church or as earthly prince :
for, being a great personage by birth and
by nature, he could not evade certain social
obligations, much less, he said, since he was
the brother of the Chancellor of Germany,
which naturally placed him in a special posi
tion, different from that of the other cardi
nals, towards the Italian rulers, who were

CARDINAL HOHENLOHE — LIBERAL 301
precisely the allies of Germany." Leo, be
sides maintaining the official hostility towards
Italy which he inherited from Pius IX, hap
pened at that time to be coquetting with
France, and so the reference to Germany ir
ritated him. " The interview," Levi remarks,
" was not absolutely pacific." Cardinal Ho
henlohe absented himself from Rome for
several months, taking care to inform his
friends, and through them the public, that
it was not because the Pope bade him to do
so. Leo was a masterful pontiff, but he knew
when he had gone as far as it was safe in
dealing with that massive German nature.
The following summer the Cardinal re
joiced at the dedication at Milan of Luca
Beltrami's monument to Rosmini, to which
festival he sent a personal representative, as
he could not be present himself. Soon after
ward his health began mysteriously to fail.
Now he seemed better, now worse; but as
his physician expressed no anxiety his friends
felt no alarm. Suddenly, on October 30,
1896, he died. He was in his seventy-third
year. Primo Levi hints at poison ; in Rome
that was and is the commonly accepted ex
planation. The Cardinal's family, remember-

302 CARDINAL HOHENLOHE — LD3ERAL
ing that he had twice before almost died in
this way, and dreading that an autopsy might
confirm their suspicions, and so necessitate
an attempt, by criminal process, to discover
the agent whom the Cardinal's enemies had
hired, preferred that he should be buried
without an examination. When the next
pope was elected — in 1903 — those enemies
were in the ascendant.
Primo Levi's brief memoir is important as
an historical document, because it reveals
what was going on at the Vatican between
the years 1888 and 1896. But it contains
also much that is non-political, and gives us
a most affectionate and sympathetic portrait
of the princely Cardinal, the patron of art
ists, the lover of music, the host of Liszt, the
grand seigneur who dwelt simply in the Villa
d'Este. Hohenlohe Italianized himself to a
degree that few foreigners have reached. On
the intellectual and esthetic side he looked
back to the Renaissance ; but in religion,
while he was sincerely CathoHc as to doc
trines, he was anti-Papal (in the modern
sense), and he had the innate sturdy behef
of the Teutonic race that religion should be
judged by its fruits. The Church, he held,

CARDINAL HOHENLOHE — LIBERAL 303
ought to uplift souls and purify conduct, and
not to pollute herself by pursuing mundane
ambitions. So Dante also urged six centuries
before him.

ITALY IN 1907

ITALY IN 1907 1
One who has known Italy for more than
thirty years can never return there without
at once inquiring into her condition and
comparing his latest with his earlier impres
sions. For United Italy is the great European
experiment in which all the world is inter
ested — an experiment involving patriotic,
moral, racial, political, and reHgious consid
erations which have their points of contact
with aU the world. From 1860, when the
Italian Kingdom sprang into being, its course
was long precarious, and often so perilous
that one watched it as men watched Blondin
crossing Niagara on a tight-rope. At frequent
intervals observers, native and foreign, pre
dicted her collapse. Her public men made
mistakes, apparently irretrievable; her ene
mies rallied again and again to destroy her ;
fortune dealt her more than one staggering
blow; and yet she survived, and to-day she
has a firmer position than ever before.
1 Boston Evening Transcript, April 27, 1907.

308 ITALY IN 1907
The most obvious contrast between Italy
in 1907 and Italy even ten years ago is the
present financial optimism. Italy's credit is
good, her currency circulates at par, and
throughout the North she enjoys a period of
rapid and sound commercial expansion. The
United States can scarcely show a city of
equal size to match Milan for progressive-
ness and "hustle." Material prosperity, the
indispensable corner-stone on which the moral
and intellectual improvement of the masses
must rest, meets one at every turn ; but this
condition does not extend beyond Tuscany,
except that the cities of Rome and Naples
give evidence of rapid growth. Southern
Italy and Sicily, however, offer an almost
tragic contrast ; and the problems which con
front them have very deep roots. So bound
up in Italy's Southern Question are histor
ical, economic, social, and racial perplexities,
that to unravel any one of them would mean
almost a social transformation. But distress
ing though the plight of the Neapolitans and
SicUians truly is, we must remember that the
conditions which now excite horror or in
dignation have existed for centuries, and
that they would not now be discussed if the

ITALY IN 1907 309
happier conditions of the North and the Cen
tre, and a quickened pubhc conscience, had
not forced the contrast into the foreground.
Within a few years, for instance, the South
ern peasants have been emigrating in such
multitudes that entire districts are Hterally
unmanned, if not depopulated; yet these
peasants do not suffer worse than their
fathers and ancestors did, who struggled
half-starved through life, or died of famine
in the lean years, and had no means of escap
ing their doom. The emigration problem
itself has assumed an altogether different
aspect for Italy. Not long ago emigration
was encouraged as an easy way of getting
rid of the superfluous or undesirable thou
sands ; now the wisest Italians see that emi
gration is bleeding Italy of its best rural
blood, and that, while temporarily necessary,
the conditions which make it necessary must
be remedied if the nation is to maintain its
vigor. Very striking, also, is the subsidence of
Sociahsm. The number of Socialists has prob
ably not decreased, but the cause itself no
longer seems to portend an immediate up
heaval. The change may be traced to several

310 ITALY IN 1907
reasons, among them being: the prosperity
of the North, which is the hot-bed of Social
ism ; the recognition by many of the intellect
ual leaders who supported the Socialist
programme that the people are not fitted to
enter suddenly into Utopia ; the splitting of
the militant Socialists into three or four sects,
mutually antagonistic. All these have con
tributed to the dispersal of an apparent
danger. The same holds true of Republican
ism. There are a good many Republicans,
actual or theoretical, but no man of command
ing influence advocates the Republic. Carducci
in 1895 expressed the general feeling when he
declared that the Monarchy was the only
practical government for Italy, and that it
would take several decades, if not generations,
before the Italians would be ripe for a re
public. In 1905, at the national celebration of
Mazzini's centenary, Signor Ernesto Nathan
delivered the oration, in the presence of the
King, and he said that were Mazzini still alive
he would unquestionably support the Mon
archy as the guarantee of Italian unity and
independence. Such an avowal from the de
positary of Mazzini's papers and the guardian
of Mazzini's memory, himself in other times

ITALY IN 1907 311
a distinguished Republican, sufficiently meas
ures the complete change that has come to
pass. Socialists and Repubhcans wiU go on
holding meetings, and their deputies in Par
liament will prod the bourgeoisie majority to
concede many of the reforms for which they
justly clamor, but only a few fanatics would
rejoice to see the Monarchy overturned and
Italy plunged into civil war from which she
might not emerge intact. Nevertheless, the
Party of Revolution recently scared the con
servative classes so thoroughly that all of
them, even the Clericals, rallied together for
mutual support. The scare had at least the
beneficial effect of compeUing each party to
faU back on its fundamental principles. The
intuition that in the Monarchy lies their salva
tion Ulustrates the level-headedness of the
Italians. Up to a certain point they wUl listen
to political Utopians; but long experience
with adverse fortune during the Old Regime
has made them too skeptical to be wiUing to
fly to Uls they know not of.
In her foreign relations Italy shows an
other improvement. She maintains the Triple
AUiance, but somewhat less burdensomely,
and under conditions which have not pre-

312 ITALY IN 1907
vented the restoration of very friendly inter
course with France. Crispi's rupture with
the French Republic blocked the regular
financial and commercial channels and caused
much hardship ; but many persons who for
merly denounced it now admit that it has
been justified by the results, for it broke up
the unhealthy tendency of the Italians to look
to France for their initiative, and it led the
French Repubhcans to understand that when
they connived with the Vatican to harass
the Itahan Kingdom they were employing a
weapon which might be turned against them
selves. Italy has always been able to count
on England's friendship, and latterly this
good wiU seems to have had something
stronger than a polite sympathy behind it.
Next to France, Italy is the largest naval
Power in the Mediterranean, so that her co
operation with England, in case the English
supremacy at Malta, Cyprus, and the Suez
Canal were threatened, might be of vital serv
ice to John Bull. Italy's abandonment of
her wild-goose chase in Abyssinia — that ad
venture in Imperiahsm which, besides drain
ing her of men and treasure, had the demor
alizing effect of a blunder persisted in — has

ITALY IN 1907 313
contributed largely to her recovery of self-
respect and strength.
Another factor which should not be over
looked is the personahty of King Victor
Emmanuel III. Unlike his father, he con
ceives that the Italian Monarchy cannot
function properly unless the Monarch plays
an active part, as the Constitution intends,
in the government of the country. The Ital
ian King should be, in theory, less auto
cratic than the German Emperor, but polit-
icaUy more active than the British Sovereign ;
and this is the view which Victor Emmanuel
III has conscientiously foUowed. He is a man
of a highly-trained intelhgence, of a control
ling sense of duty, and of unfailing common
sense. His influence, which has none of the
theatricality that one associates with the
Kaiser, is a very real fact, growing from
year to year, to strengthen the Monarchy and
help Italy at home and abroad.
Before passing on to discuss in detail the
most striking change of all, I must pause for
a moment to mention a few evidences of in
tellectual vitality. Carducci, the most emi
nent poet and critic of modern Italy, had been
silenced by failing health for some time be-

314 ITALY IN 1907
fore his death, recently, but his presence has
been seen in the work of all the younger lit
erary men. The repudiation of D'Annunzio,
except by his special clique, marks a health
ier tone, partly due, one might argue, to the
maturing of the sound principles which Car
ducci sowed. In like manner Professor VU-
lari has bred up an able body of historical
students and writers, men skilled in the Ger
man methods of research but free from the
German heaviness of presentation. Great
scholars abound in various specialties, and
the even rarer type of men who, Hke Pro
fessor Vittorio Fiorini, can organize and lead
great enterprises of cooperative scholarship,
has been developed. In science, Lombroso,
MorseUi, Mosso, Golgi, who lately received
the Nobel prize for his discoveries in medi
cine, and Marconi, enjoy international repu
tations. So do Benedetto Croce, one of the
keenest of hving Itahan philosophers ; Pom-
peo Molmenti, the historian of Venice, and
Guglielmo Ferrero, who has made his new
interpretation of Imperial Rome the fashion
able topic in Parisian salons, and has aroused
among his colleagues a vehement dispute as
to his method of writing history. " He is the

ITALY IN 1907 315
only real historian we have," a man of world
wide fame assured me ; " all the others are
mere annalists." "He writes a mixture of
psychology and romance, but not history,"
was another opinion I heard expressed. In
fiction Senator Fogazzaro towers so far above
his fellows that he stands in a class by him
self. " The Saint " has been read rather as
a war-cry or party manifesto than as a novel,
but his earlier works, especially "Daniele
Cortis," show that he is a novelist by birth
right. The younger men and women pour
out fiction, much of which is popular, al
though it lacks epochal significance, seeks too
much inspiration in Paris, and flaunts as a
staple the tedious sexual theme. One veteran,
Edmondo de'Amicis, has turned from writing
novels to Socialism and syntax.
Much intellectual activity of a high order
has gone into the reorganizing of the great
museums and the pushing forward of arche-
ological exploration. The work of Giacomo
Boni at the Roman Forum and on the Pala
tine can best be described as unique. The
inestimable collections of paintings at the
Milan Brera, the Venice Academy, and the
Florence Uffizi have been rearranged, so that

316 ITALY IN 1907
now those galleries are, what they should be,
treasuries in which every work of art can be
studied both in its historic relations and for
its intrinsic qualities. The most remarkable
improvement of all has taken place at the
Naples Museum. Under the impelling genius
of Ettore Pais — in whom are combined im
mense erudition, an extraordinary gift for
classification, executive ability, and untiring
physical energy — that museum has become
a model. No similar work has been accom
plished in so brief a time against what seemed
insuperable difficulties, pohtical, financial, and
personal. Professor Pais's countrymen do not
even yet recognize that he has given Italy
a museum superior in its field to the Louvre
or the British Museum or the Berlin Mu
seum ; but they wiU doubtless buUd a monu
ment to him after his death. In this sphere
of achievement belongs the restoration by
Senator Luca Beltrami of the Castello Sfor-
zesco at MUan. It is well that such an object-
lesson of the power of the Italian despots
should be planted before the eyes of a gen
eration which, exasperated at to-day's bur
dens, sighs for a medieval and Renaissance
social perfection which never existed.

ITALY IN 1907 317
But in many respects the most striking
change is in the new attitude of the Vatican.
A foreigner who skims only the surface of
Italian life never understands how naturally
and completely the Italians separate Church
and State. They distinguish exactly between
the political and religious side of Catholicism.
They discount the appeal to the religious
side which the adroit managers at the Vati
can make when they are seeking a political
advantage. They have smUed half-cynically,
half -contemptuously, for instance, at the pre
tense which the Papal reactionists have kept
up since 1870 that the Pope is a "prisoner";
for they know pretty accurately how much
that pretense has been worth in dollars and
cents by stimulating the contributions and
inflaming the zeal of Catholics in foreign
countries. So, too, they have taken the peri
odical denunciations of the Italian Govern
ment at their true value. The parry-and-fence
has come to be an affair as well understood
on both sides as the vituperations which
criminal lawyers hurl at each other in court,
before they go to dine together, as if nothing
had been said.
But, although a tacit modus vivendi has

318 ITALY IN 1907
long existed, and although since 1870 ninety
per cent, at least, of the Italians would never
have consented to the restoration of the
Pope's temporal power, there has lurked in
their minds tiU lately the thought that pos
sibly foreign interference might try to bring
that about. At any rate, they have had to
take it for granted that the Vatican would
annoy Italy as much as it could — that being
simply part of the game which Pius IX
elected to play and Leo XIII decided to con
tinue. But since the advent of Pius X there
has come about a cessation of hostilities.
At the very moment when Liberal Catholics
are chafing at the reaction which the Vatican
has wrought in religious matters, they are
astonished by an unheard-of quiescence in
political matters. The same pope who per
mits the suppression of a prelate like Bishop
Bonomelh, who sanctions the condemnation
of Fogazzaro, the most distinguished Catho
Hc layman in Italy, who winks at the scatter
ing of the Christian Democrats, and issues
orders that the Bible is to be interpreted lit
erally, sanctions an agreement with the Ital
ian State ! Let us examine somewhat closely
the pontiff and the seeming paradox.

ITALY IN 1907 319
For Pius X personally everybody in Italy
has sincere respect. Clericals, Liberals, and
Independents concur in praising his piety
and genuine religious fervor, not less than
the purity of his motives. " He is a model
parish priest," I heard from many witnesses;
" but," most of them added " not the stuff
out of which successful popes are made now
adays. ReHgion is well, piety is well, but the
great Catholic machine, whose dynamo is in
the Vatican, must be run by a different sort
of power." And immediately comparisons are
drawn between Pius X and his predecessor.
Leo Xni, like the mightiest of the popes
in earlier days, — like Hildebrand and like
Innocent III, — was a sufficiently adept theo
logian and a master diplomat. The high
prestige to which he raised the Church was
due more to his diplomacy than to his theo
logy. His diplomatic instinct taught him
when to push theology into the foreground
and when, discreetly, to keep it out of sight.
Thanks to this fact, he created the illusion
of always winning his case. He inherited
from Pius IX, for instance, the Culturkampf
in Germany, and for eight years, he main
tained outwardly a no-surrender attitude : but

320 ITALY IN 1907
meanwhile Bismarck was gaining his point,
and when the Pope saw the futility of strug
gling further, he had the adroitness to make
it appear that he, and not the German Chan
cellor, had won. So after opposing the French
Repubhc for many years, and conniving at
every effort to overthrow it, when he found
that it was too stanch to be overthrown, he
prudently decided to accept French repub
licanism ; and again his recognition was so
adroitly ostentatious that it seemed as if he
were conferring a favor on France, instead
of acknowledging a defeat. Such achieve
ments are the acme of diplomacy; and by
them Leo XIII secured for his Church not
only a fruitful influence over CathoHc
countries, but a larger measure of respect
among Protestants than she had enjoyed
since the Reformation.
Leo died in the summer of 1903. In less
than two years his successor, "the model
parish priest," had squandered that immense
legacy of prestige and good will, and by
the end of 1906 he found even Spain — the
home of the Inquisition, of the Jesuits, of
the Counter-Reformation, and of Catholic
intolerance — proposing to throw off the fet-

ITALY IN 1907 321
ters of Ultramontanism. Worse than this, he
had driven France, the chief contributor of
Catholic money, to open rebellion. How did
this come about ? The explanation given by
Itahans of all shades is that the Jesuits are
in full control — that Pius X was elected,
indeed, as their candidate. When Leo XIII
died, three possibUities presented themselves
to the College of Cardinals. They might
choose a Liberal, who should frankly accept
the new order and honestly work to put an
end to the political and worldly activities of
the Church and strive to make it — what its
founders intended it to be — a religious in
stitution. Next, they might elect Cardinal
RampoUa, the ablest member of the Sacred
College, and the natural continuer of Leo's
policy. Finally, they might agree on a Re
actionist. The Liberals among them were few
in number and faint-hearted. RampoUa en
countered the implacable hostility of the
Jesuits and of the other malcontents who had
been held too long in check by Leo to consent
to stay out in the cold during another ponti
ficate run on similar Hnes. Accordingly, they
combined on Cardinal Sarto, the Venetian
Patriarch. He was not a Jesuit, he was pious,

322 ITALY IN 1907
somewhat naif, with the obstinacy of virtuous
men, narrow in proportion to their rectitude :
a capital instrument for the Jesuits' purpose.
They forced upon him for Secretary of State
Merry del Val, a Spaniard brought up by
Jesuits, without experience, ominously young,
ambitious, and naturaUy in full harmony
with his creators. They had little difficulty
in persuading Pius that the policy they sug
gested to him originated with himself. In
this way has a pope, whose election was
hailed by those who did not know him as a
triumph for Liberahsm, become the leader
of reaction.
But how does it happen, many ask, that
the Jesuits advise so disastrous a pohcy ?
The reply is simple : there is no greater delu
sion than that which attributes to the Jesuits
unusual capacity for statesmanship. Because
they are supposed to excel in craft, it is as
sumed that they make successful statesmen.
History shows that for three centuries they
controlled, directly or indirectly, at differ
ent times, the political destiny of Catholic
Europe, yet nothing is surer than that when
they were in the ascendant the country they
controlled declined. The annals of Spain, of

ITALY IN 1907 323
Portugal, of France, of Italy, of Austria bear
witness to this truth. The rate of decline of
the Papal power itself under Gregory XVI
and Pius IX can be measured by the in
crease in Jesuit influence ; the undermining
of Charles X and of the Second French Em
pire was as surely achieved by the Jesuits in
the nineteenth century, as was the downfall
of the Stuarts in the seventeenth. Many other
similar instances wUl occur to students of
modern history. So commonly does disaster
follow on Jesuit ascendency that one would
be justified in predicting that the fact that
Jesuits are at the helm to-day in the Vatican
forebodes a further humiliation for the Holy
See. That the Jesuits should be bad statesmen
is inevitable. Excellent as is their training
for many purposes, the very constitution and
ideals of their Company make them fanatics.
They obey logic as remorselessly and as dis
astrously as Robespierre obeyed it. But the
first attribute of a statesman, as Cavour said,
is tact to discern the possible — a very dif
ferent matter from trying to twist the world
to fit a preconceived formula. The true states
man, recognizing the inevitable evolution of

324 ITALY IN 1907
human society, makes it his business to re
model the past according to the needs and
ideals of the present. In the largest sense,
he experiments. But the Jesuit, being im
movably rooted in the past, denies the claims
of the present. Since 1560 he has had but
the single greeting — " This is damnable "
— for every symptom of theological growth,
as well as for democracy, vaccination, rail
roads, telegraphs, free speech, and free press,
and a hundred other manifestations of pro
gress. He has been magnificently consistent,
perfectly logical, but with a consistency and
logic which disqualify him from succeeding
in statesmanship. If we are to believe the
Jesuit declarations from the Council of Trent
down to the Syllabus of 1864 and onward to
our own day when Pius X, at Father Billet's
behest, condemns " Modernism," the modern
world is incompatible with Roman Cathol
icism. But what if the modern world turn the
proposition round and declare that Roman
Cathohcism, a medieval product, is incom
patible with the modern world ? Leo XIII
saw that in millions of minds this reversal
was actually being made or considered, and
he set himself to work to demonstrate its

ITALY IN 1907 325
inaccuracy. Pius X, on the contrary, listened
to the Jesuits and forced the issue in France.
The French Republic, after long waiting,
announced its determination to put an end to
the outworn alliance between Church and
State, and to establish perfect sectarian lib
erty. The Greeks, the Jews, the Protestants
in France found the new laws satisfactory,
and many Roman Catholics were wUling to
accept them ; but the Vatican said No, with
the results which we have seen. Thereby it
has virtually declared that religious liberty
and equality are incompatible to it — at least
in France ; for the " religious liberty " to
which the Vatican has recently expressed
its devotion is really nothing but religious
monopoly, and American CathoHcs are disin
genuous, to say the least, when they declare
that the Vatican insists on securing in France
only such freedom as Catholics enjoy in the
United States.
The Italians have watched this struggle
with increasing satisfaction, quick to see the
mistaken policy of the Vatican, and to re
cognize in one blunder after another the sign
of their adversary's weakness. For Itahans
will instinctively regard the Papahst faction

326 ITALY IN 1907
as their adversary until that faction ceases to
put forward, even in a Pickwickian sense,
claims to temporal sovereignty. Throughout
Italy the sympathy of the intelligent classes,
excluding, of course, the Papalists, was al
most unanimously with France. Officially,
Italy maintained an absolutely correct atti
tude, going even so far as to prevent a pro-
French demonstration in Rome, in order that
the Vatican might not be able to cite such
a meeting as a proof of the Government's
secret unfriendliness. In other places, sym
pathy with the French Government was
freely expressed, and the Clericals also had
their counter-demonstrations. The Itahans'
hope that France would not yield was not
wholly unselfish. Believing in reHgious lib
erty, they are glad to see it prevaU in other
countries, but their first concern is that the
rupture between France and the Vatican shall
remove the possibility that France might in
terfere to restore the Temporal Power. French
interference was for years a danger they had
to take into their reckoning ; for French poli
ticians have not always disdained to intrigue
with the Clericals to stir up trouble in Italy
and even to threaten to interpose in behalf

ITALY IN 1907 327
of the Pope. Nor have the Itahans forgotten
that it was Louis Napoleon's protectorate
which prolonged the existence of the Papacy
and made the Roman Question insoluble.
The removal of this danger now lifts Italy
to a new plane ; for Austria, the only other
Catholic Power with a considerable army, has
nothing to gain by a war against Italy, at
the instigation of the Vatican. If Jingoes
and yeUow journalists should bring Austria
and Italy to blows, it would not be over the
Pope. The resumption of friendly relations be
tween the Vatican and the Quirinal is of
course officially disavowed on both sides ; but
it is an undeniable fact, and indicates the
tacit recognition by the Papalists that they
need the Kingdom of Italy. The one thing
indispensable to the Roman Catholic Church
is that its headquarters shall remain at Rome.
Some fifteen years or so ago, when the politi
cians of the Vatican were plotting to incense
the CathoHc world against the Italian Govern
ment, they thought they could strengthen
their case by threatening to remove the Pope
from Rome as a sign that his " imprisonment "
had become intolerable. Thereupon Crispi

328 ITALY IN 1907
sent word to Leo that, if he wished to quit
Rome and Italy, he should be escorted with
sovereign honors to the frontier, that every
courtesy should be shown to him, but that
neither Pope nor Curia should ever come
back. Leo heeded the warning. He knew that
Crispi meant what he said, and was the man
to carry out his purpose; he knew, too, that
were the Roman Church to hail from Barce
lona, or Avignon, or Graz, or Baltimore, it
would cease to be Roman, cease to speak urbi
et orbi, and inevitably sink into a second-rate
institution. Since that time there have been
no serious threats of seeking a more congenial
home for the Holy See.
Although the Church is Catholic, yet its
management is Italian, and when it comes to
risking their control, the Italian majority in
the hierarchy may be trusted never voluntar
ily to abandon the Italian environment on
which their supremacy depends. For four
hundred years, by arranging the CoUege of
Cardinals so that its majority is always Italian,
they have permitted no foreigner to be chosen
Pope. At the present time there is only one
American cardinal, although if the red robe
were conferred upon Catholic prelates in the

ITALY IN 1907 329
United States in the same ratio as in Italy,
there would be twenty American cardinals.
So there are only four French cardinals, yet
the population of France nominally Catholic
outnumbers that of Italy, which has over
thirty cardinals and the Pope besides. Some
of the more progressive Catholics foresee that
an agitation for a fairer distribution of the
great prizes of the hierarchy may not long
be deferred. "Taxation without representa
tion " is a powerful wedge, and in this case
the charge applies in so far as it is true that
the contributions of Catholics all over the
world go to maintain a disproportionately
large body of Italian prelates.
Having tried in vain since 1870 to over
throw the Kingdom of Italy, or at least to re
cover temporal control over Rome, and being
convinced at last that they cannot secure
foreign aid to restore them, the Papalists
have adopted a new pohcy. For a while,
internal revolution seems to have dangled
before their imaginations as a cheering pos
sibility. Help from foreigners being out of
the question, why might not the Monarchy
be demolished from within? Discontented
factions were noisy, the idle and the dis-

330 ITALY IN 1907
orderly were numerous, and in any upset
the Papalists might hope to profit. There
is a strong presumption, although naturaUy
no documentary proof, that they secretly
cast about to form a league with the vari
ous opponents of the Monarchy ; undeniably
they did not allow any opportunity to es
cape for embarrassing the Government. And
then, having been thwarted again and again,
they saw a great Hght. They realized that
if the Monarchy were overturned, it could
be only by the Repubhcans and the Social
ists, whose next act would be to destroy
Church and Curia, root and branch. When
they realized this, the Papalini took coun
sel of common sense and of the instinct of
self-preservation. They accepted the con
tinuance of Monarchy as the condition indis
pensable to their own existence. Hence the
latter-day rapprochement between the Vati
can and the Quirinal, the sure avowal that
what the hierarchy dreads most of all is a
political catastrophe which might compel it
to depart from Italy. The State having got
on for thirty years in spite of the open hos
tility and insidious intrigues of the Church,
now becomes, after a fashion, the protector

ITALY IN 1907 331
of the Church. Certainly, the divinity that
shapes our ends likes occasionally to indulge
his sense of humor.
By this action, the Clericals do not in
tend to relinquish their immemorial claims.
If the occasion should ever arise for them
to seize Rome they would not let it slip;
but most of them admit in private that
there is just about as much probability of
restoring the extinct line of Stuarts to the
throne of England as of restoring the Pope
to the temporal sovereignty of the Eternal
City. Modern government has ceased to be
an affair for ecclesiastics. Italian Clericals
may hope in time to exert an influence in
Parliament, as they do in France, Germany,
Austria, and Belgium ; they may even, con
ceivably, control an administration in the
ebb-and-flow of party struggles ; but this is
very different from having the government
handed over to cassocked and berrettaed
clerics. And at Rome many of the stanchest
Blacks would shudder if they believed there
were the slightest possibility of the restora
tion of ecclesiastical government ; for they
know that that would involve an immediate
financial crash, a fall in the value of pro-

332 ITALY IN 1907
perty, the stoppage of industries, the turning
over to untrained and incompetent priests
of the management of the great agencies of
modern progress and convenience. Imagine
the consternation which would ensue if on
a given day our railway or telephone sys
tems were to be entrusted to boards com
posed of Roman Catholic bishops and priests,
instead of to the experts who have devoted
their lives to railways or telephones, and
you will understand how the Romans would
feel if they could be brought to regard the
restoration of the Temporal Power as a live
issue. Foreigners, and especiaUy untraveled
Catholics, still think of Rome as the Papal
city; but in truth Rome is now the Italian
capital, in which Papal interests hold a sec
ondary place. The Clericals — including in
this class all those who have Church offices,
or are dependent upon such office-holders,
together with members of religious orders,
and members of families which, from motives
of conviction or interest, refuse to accept the
Monarchy — aU these persons probably do
not number one tenth of the inhabitants of
Rome. It must not be forgotten that among

ITALY IN 1907 333
the priests and other reHgious there are many
Liberals, and that even among the avowed
Clericals there are few who wish to see Italy
destroyed. But the dominant life of the city
is ItaUan, not Roman. The thousands of
Government employees, with their families
and connections, the mUitary garrison, the
civU courts, the central administration of
the raUways, depend upon the maintenance
of the Monarchy in the Eternal City. These
groups, moreover, are not Romans, but Ital
ians, natives of every part of the Peninsula,
who have gravitated to their national capital
just as Americans gravitate to Washington.
A similar change has transformed Roman
society. Down to 1870 the aristocracy and
the classes affiliated with it were naturaUy
Roman and Papal. But with the entrance of
the King, the Court, government, and aris
tocracy became Itahan. The grandees of
Piedmont, Lombardy, Venetia, Tuscany,
Naples, and Sicily met to form a truly na
tional aristocracy, compared with which the
Roman aristocracy could muster only a small
contingent. Some of the Romans, already
tried patriots, welcomed the new order;
others, irreconcilable, treated the House of

334 ITALY IN 1907
Savoy and its court as intruders and par-
venues. But little by little the success of the
Kingdom has wrought a great change in
the attitude of the old Roman nobles. To be
deprived of the opportunity to display their
wealth or their social hauteur was a sacrifice
which many of them saw no sufficient reason
for making. They aspired also to the offices
and honors which the New Regime could
bestow, and they felt no imperative call to
endure social martyrdom as a protest against
the unification of Italy. Consequently, they
made their peace with the Quirinal. There
are Papal families of ancient pedigree which
resolutely hold out, like the Bourbons of the
Faubourg St. Germain, against the modern
order; but a Colonna at the Quirinal is at
least the social equivalent of a Chigi at the
Vatican. One result of this change has not been
sufficiently remarked. So long as Rome was
the Papal capital, members of the great Papal
families went into the Church as a matter of
course. Younger sons had to be looked after,
and they expected the Papacy to look after
them. Nor did they expect in vain. Every
great family had its monsignore or its bishop,

ITALY IN 1907 335
its legate or its cardinal ; and the lucrative
civU offices, mostly sinecures, fell to other
aristocrats who did not care to take orders.
The Papal Court, whether clerical or lay, was
therefore aristocratic, and the hierarchy itself
was — to employ the common phrase — of
the social upper crust. But that condition
has passed. The Pope has no lay sinecures
to bestow ; and the sons of the Roman aristo
cratic families — even of the Blacks — are
no longer attracted to enter the Church in
order to qualify for ecclesiastical prizes. It
foUows inevitably that the personnel of the
hierarchy has ceased to be fashionable. What
this means will be appreciated by every one
who recognizes how great a part social pre
stige plays in the success of institutions.
The Papalini at Rome feel this, although
they are not aU so frank in expressing it as
was a distinguished noble of an old Black
famUy, who said to me : " Pius X is a good
man, reHgious, well-meaning, but what can
we expect? He is only a peasant, with no
social training, brought up in an out-of-the-
way corner of Italy, where he had no con
ception of how to run a Church whose
200,000,000 members live in all parts of

336 ITALY IN 1907
the world. Naturally, he 'butts in' and
makes the blunders we se^." " Only a peas
ant " — there spoke the aristocrat. I was re
minded of a Philadelphian who once assured
me that "Abraham Lincoln did very well,
but he wasn't a gentleman — wouldn't have
been met in West Walnut Street society."
Now, Leo XIII was Count Pecci, and Pius IX
was Count Mastai Ferretti, aristocrats by
descent and temperament, and to-day the
aristocracy feels rather keenly the difference
between them and Giuseppe Sarto, the Vene
tian peasant. The Vicar of God on earth
(strange as it seems, considering what is
reported of the antecedents of Jesus Christ)
lacks something in not being born in the
proper social set.
But although Rome has ceased to be the
Papal city, it is stUl the centre of Catholic
Christendom, and of late years Catholic fra
ternities and organizations of all kinds have
made it their home, untU now it numbers
more religious houses than in the old Papal
days. This is of itself a tribute to the liberal
treatment which the Itahan Government
accords even to its enemies. At the very
moment when Roman Catholic politicians in

ITALY IN 1907 337
foreign countries were crying out against
the cruelty of keeping the Pope " a prison
er" in the Vatican, Catholic priests, monks,
and nuns were flocking to Rome to establish
themselves there, where they feel secure in
their persons and their property. Not only
have they invested large sums in real estate
and buUdings, but it is no secret that the
Papal corporations are heavy holders of Ital
ian Government securities. Not all Italians
regard with satisfaction this sUent re-invasion
of Rome by Papal elements. They foresee
that if the process continues, a milieu wUl
be created in which old abuses may revive.
They regard as corrupting the presence of
bodies of Clericals who work underhand and
through intrigue, according to the methods
which their kind have employed for cen
turies. Some of these critics, and among them one
counts several of the foremost Italians, view
with disgust or regret the recent rapproche
ment between the Vatican and the Quirinal.
They insist that the truce, or alliance, call it
what you will, benefits the Pope and not the
King. The Royal Government had proved,
during thirty-five years, its ability to go on

338 ITALY IN 1907
its way irrespective of Papal hostility; by
consenting now to accept Papal overtures, it
appears to set an unwarranted value on Papal
friendship, and it hampers the political march
of Italy towards the goal of Liberalism ; for
the views of the Vatican party must insens
ibly react on the Monarchy. There wUl be
secret understandings, bargains, collusions,
in which the slippery, astute, and unscrupu
lous politicians of the Curia may be counted
upon to outwit the pohticians of the Consulta.
To this the Ministerialists reply that the
Kingdom of Italy has never made war on
the Catholic religion, that it has, on the con
trary, always desired to see the Church
work freely in a free State ; and that when
the Vatican gives up its political hostility,
the Government cannot do less than treat it
courteously. But while this tacit rapprochement has
been effected between Church and State, in
the Church itself there has been a marked
reaction under Pius X. The same influences
that have embroUed the Vatican with France
and undone elsewhere the achievements of
Leo XIII, have cried halt to every sign of
religious Liberalism. The fate that has over-

ITALY IN 1907 339
taken the Christian Democrats may serve as
an example. They are one of the most hope
ful religious symptoms of modern Italy ; for
they are sincere, earnest men, imbued with
the desire to apply religion to life. They wish
to purge the slums, to raise the downtrodden,
to educate the ignorant, to bring to the
masses a helpful knowledge of the social and
economic principles to which the world now
looks for health, and to kindle among the
elite a sense of their responsibility. They saw
the avowed Socialists doing the work among
the lower classes which ought to be done by
the foUowers of Jesus Christ; and so they
launched forth with zeal — ¦ some to operate
by personal contact, others to spread their
propaganda by addresses and writings. They
founded several journals, and in Don Romolo
Murri, their religious chief, they had a man
intellectually superior and sincerely religious.
Among laymen their prophet-leader was Sena
tor Fogazzaro, a poet and novelist of genius,
who incarnated in "The Saint" many of
their ideals. For a while the Vatican not only
tolerated but seemed to welcome them, re
garding their movement as a wholesome
counter-current to Socialism, which was mak-

340 ITALY IN 1907
ing inroads into the masses. Pius X was sup
posed to look with particular favor on them
and to take personal satisfaction in Senator
Fogazzaro's views. Then came a revulsion.
"The Saint" was put on the Index, the lead
ing Demo-Cristiani disappeared from Rome,
or kept themselves secluded ; their editorial
offices were closed ; Don Murri was assailed
by the Jesuit press and annoyed by petty
persecutions. "We must wait patiently till
the wind changes in the Vatican," one of
them wrote to me from the remote province
to which he had been practically banished.
In suppressing the Christian Democrats
and in proscribing " The Saint," both having
Liberal tendencies, the Jesuits have been
wholly logical. "If you grant an inch to
Liberalism," they consistently argue, " it will
take an ell. Christian Democrats propose to
show that the most important thing is to do
good to their fellow men — that that is the
essence of religion. If we admit that, what
becomes of Catholicism, of authority, of faith,
of religion itself ? " And yet in spite of
logic, the great majority of the intelligent
Italian Catholics regard the suppression of
the Christian Democrats, the condemnation

ITALY IN 1907 341
of " The Saint " and the recent furious bulls
against Modernism, as stupid blunders : for
the majority are Liberal and they resent the
implication that Catholicism is incompatible
with Liberalism. Caring little about theo
logical quibbles, they fret at the reactionary
policy which prohibits them from being patri
otic citizens and even from performing acts
of common Christian charity. They protest
in the name of the Church that it is a mis
take to forbid churchmen to exercise legiti
mate influence on public and social issues.
Their spokesman, Senator Fogazzaro, does
not approve, however, of the formation of
a Clerical Party because he beheves that such
a party, preoccupied with its selfish political
interests, would set the political above the
reHgious — witness the career of the Clerical
Party in Germany — and provoke a reaction
against the Church. " What he desires," he
wrote recently, " is that there shall be Cath
olics in the ranks of every party, ready to
unite only when, were the rights of the
Catholic conscience threatened, they could
count on the support of all the friends of
liberty." And so in the social-economic field,
he urges that " since action exclusively Catho-

342 ITALY IN 1907
lie might be suspected of serving party ends,
he would prefer to see the Catholics take the
initiative suggested to them by a noble senti
ment of solidarity with the people which
works and suffers, and then to accept the col
laboration of all persons of good will, irre
spective of creed, and to set to work with a
programme to which the agnostic and the most
ardent beHever can equally adhere." There
we have the Liberal-religious reply to the
Jesuit-theological declaration; and nobody
who is famUiar with history or with the under
currents of Catholicism in Italy to-day can
doubt that the tide of Liberalism is rising.
Some time or other, it may be next year, it
may be ten years hence, it will rise above the
breakwater which the Jesuit reaction has
thrown up against it. The Demo-Cristiani
know that, from the first Franciscans on,
every group, that set out on the simple plan
of doing good, has been opposed, at the out
set, by the Papal entourage.
The nearer we approach Rome the more
does the Church appear to be a political
rather than a religious institution. In Rome
itself the political aspect is paramount. Not
that there are not spiritually-minded men in

ITALY IN 1907 343
the Vatican — Pius X is a noble example of
a prince of the Church who has preserved
his piety up to old age. Nevertheless it is
notorious that political considerations dom
inate, even in purely religious matters. Many
persons beHeve, for instance, that Pius X, in
resisting the introduction of Hberal laws in
France, has had the secret support of the
German Emperor, who hoped that out of
the dispute a civU war might spring up, to
the weakening of the French Republic. This
suspicion may be weU founded, for it is whis
pered that Kaiser Wilhelm's hostility to Car
dinal RampoUa helped to kill the latter's
chances in the last conclave, with the result
that Cardinal Sarto was elected. The fact
that the Kaiser is a Protestant makes no dif
ference; for when the intriguers at the Vat
ican seek political advantage, they do not
ask inconvenient questions about their allies'
reHgion. So, in old times, it was believed that
they would not shrink from a league with
the Turk if they thought he could help them
to humble a refractory Catholic ruler.
But we shaU fail to perceive the signifi
cance of the great drama unless we go deeper.
The Catholic Church, beginning as a relig-

344 ITALY IN 1907
ious institution, gradually grew in wealth
and power and took on political functions.
Then it became incarnate in a political
State, the most corrupt and worldly of aU the
States of the Renaissance. The conscience
of Christendom revolted ; the Reformation en
sued; the Papacy, still political, shorn of its
splendor and influence, barely maintained
itself as a degenerate principality. FinaUy,
the march of progress deprived it in 1870
of the last shred of temporal power. So the
very stars in their courses have been fighting
to force the Church back to religious founda
tions, on which alone its existence can be
justified. But the political motive, the love
of power, and the worldliness, which are
never so insistent as when they take posses
sion of ecclesiastics, still dominate the hier-
archs, many of whom have so long confounded
the spiritual and the temporal that now they
cannot distinguish between them, and so
they cry out that the Church is being robbed,
when it is plain that she is simply being
relieved of a political impediment to her re
ligious usefulness. A force mightier than
pope or cardinal or the Society of Jesus has
been at work spiritualizing the Church : this

ITALY IN 1907 345
force works slowly, too slowly for the zeal of
the devout who have a vision of what the
Church, purged of its worldhness, might
achieve towards uplifting the multitudes that
turn to it for guidance. Yet this devout rem
nant, this spiritual residuum, which regards
the craving for temporalities as unholy
and the political intrigues of the Vatican as
the desperate devices of men whose cause is
doomed, may prove to be the forerunners of
a purified Cathohcism.
In any case, the Itahans can view the situ
ation with equanimity. The reaction in the
Vatican surely increases the number of those
intelhgent CathoHcs throughout the Penin
sula who desire to see the Church divorced
from worldly politics, and who resent being
subjected on the rehgious side to medieval
intolerance. The Italians have had, further
more, sufficient proof that even the Jesuits
dread the possible triumph of the Party of
Revolution much more than the maintenance
of the Monarchy. Finally, they would not be
human if they failed to rejoice at the fact
that the embroiling of the Vatican with their
own neighbors both weakens the Vatican and
tends to strengthen the friendship of these

346 ITALY IN 1907
neighbors for Italy. So the situation at the
beginning of 1907 is more propitious than
any the Italians have seen since the death of
Cavour.

GIOSUE CARDUCCI

GIOSUE CARDUCCI1

Giosue Carducci died at Bologna on Febru
ary 15, 1907, after an illness of several years,
which had latterly almost completely dark
ened his many-sided and brilliant genius. Since
the death of Tennyson he had been the most
eminent lyric poet in Europe — a poet still
unduly neglected outside of his own country,
too robust to be made the idol of a fashion
able cult, too disdainful and too exacting to
be contented with troops of pliant disciples.
Carducci was born July 27, 1835, at Valdi-
castello, Tuscany, his father being a coun
try physician, his mother a Florentine who
could trace her ancestry back to a gonfalo-
niere in the days of the Repubhc. The boy
passed his early years in the Maremma, lead
ing a wild and lonely life, with a pet wolf for
a companion. When his parents removed to
Florence, he studied in the college of the
Scolopian Brothers. He seems also to have
1 The Nation, February 21, 1907.

350 GIOSUE CARDUCCI
attended the University at Pisa for a while,
after which he undertook to support himself
by teaching and by editing the Itahan class
ics for Barbera. He soon attracted notice,
and Mamiani, Minister of Education, being
impressed by his ability, appointed him, in
1860, professor of Italian literature in the
University of Bologna. That post he held
for over forty years, until, owing to faUing
health, he reluctantly accepted a special pen
sion from the Government. Of such a career
the real events are the intellectual campaigns
and the books, the ideas sown in the minds
of receptive pupUs, the slowly broadening
influence and the ultimate triumph.
Never was there a professor less pedantic
than Carducci, never one better fitted to be
the interpreter of literature. He was a scholar
of the best German type ; one who pored over
texts and codices ; who was famihar with all
the apparatus of the philologian ; a tireless
ransacker for the last fact, the elusive final
link, to complete a chain of evidence; an
insatiable reader ; a stickler for perfection in
line and word and comma. Yet all this was
but the beginning. His pupils in the class
room met a critic of sure taste and contagious

GIOSUE CARDUCCI 351
enthusiasm, a poet whose genius etherealized
his stores of information, and who dreaded
lest mere erudition should become " a funeral
shroud." Since SchiUer taught at Jena no
such poet had sat in a professor's chair ; but
Carducci was, what SchiUer was not, a pro
found and careful scholar as well as a great
poet. In person Carducci was short and in later
years stout; but he had a massive, shapely
head, large enough for a man of heroic size,
very impressive with its wealth of hair and
beard, and most noticeable for the eyes, which
fastened on the person or object before them
as if they would Hterally grasp and penetrate
and absorb. Carducci had an astonishing
capacity for work — he could toU eight or
ten hours at a stretch ; he could even take
recreation in reading proofs for an hour, and
then go back to his main task. He cultivated
his naturaUy strong memory, so that he knew
almost aU of VirgU and Horace, Tibullus and
CatuUus, by heart, not to speak of Dante,
Petrarch, and the later Italian poets. He had
a thorough acquaintance with French litera
ture, and a sympathetic knowledge of Ger
man, although over the alcove containing his

352 GIOSUE CARDUCCI
German books he put the sign, " I Barbari,"
— "The Barbarians." English, also, he read
fluently, and he was an enthusiastic admirer
of Shelley, on whom he wrote a brief but
penetrating critique. He had a very respons
ive nature — witness that story of his burst
ing into tears after Pascarella read him some
sonnets on Rome. He was quick and some
times petulant, but forgiving and ready to
ask forgiveness. And in spite of the immense
respect he enjoyed in his last years, he seems
to have kept himself unspoUed by either fame
or flattery. ii
In his professorship Carducci set himself
several important tasks. First, he insisted on
scholarship; surface impressions of books,
dUettante Hkes and dislikes, would not do for
him. Next, he laid stress on taste, the culti
vation of the critical faculty through ac
quaintance with the abiding elements in Ht
erature. Finally, he never ceased to apply
Hterature to life, to show that its usefulness
and its glory depend upon its power to repre
sent life ; that it shall not merely reproduce,
after the fashion of the photographic camera,

GIOSUE CARDUCCI 353
the facts visible to the outward eye, but em
body the passions and hopes, "the con
secration and the poet's dream." The most
scrupulous of artists himself, he scorned the
formula " Art for art's sake," behind which
lurk now the vacuous and the conventional,
and now the lubricious, the shameless, and
the obscene. He applauded Manzoni for
having by " truth " renewed the literary and
civic conscience of Italy. " And since truth,"
he said, " conceived under all its aspects by
a great and serene intellect, by a lofty and
pure nature, becomes of itself ideality, I ap
plaud the art of Alessandro Manzoni in its
wholeness" — a single sentence which sums
up an entire creed.
Carducci as a professor became popular,
but not through condescension or the shal
low, genial arts by which teachers sometimes
try to win the favor of their classes. He was
brusque : he tolerated no slackness in work, no
slipshod behavior. " This is very bad," was
often his remark in handing back a thesis :
but then he would go on to soften the
effect of his condemnation by pointing out
the better way ; and he rarely failed to dis
cern real merit or to give it generous encour-

354 GIOSUE CARDUCCI
agement. So the flower of Itahan youth went
to sit under him, and to hear not only what
was for Italy a new and compelling "gospel
of literature and criticism, but fiery outpour
ings on manhood, patriotism, religion, life.
" Let not the weak, the anemic, the skep
tical, come to provoke us," he exclaimed in
an address to the students of Padua ; " let
them not come to deprive us of the Ideal, to
deprive us of God. Recreants ! The Ideal was
so stored up in our fathers' souls and in ours
that, merely in freeing itself and confound
ing the false prophets, it revealed a people
to itself, renewed a nation, determined the
fate of an historic epoch. The God of love
and of sacrifice, the God of life and of the
future, the God of the people and of human
ity, is in us, with us, and for us."
At another time he uttered this solemn
appeal :
" Young men of Italy, your fathers and
your brothers gave their soul and their blood
to their country : you give your talents. A
melancholy rumor is abroad — and even
among us lips but not hearts repeat it — that
tells of the decline and eclipse of the Latin
races. Oh, we desire neither to be quenched

GIOSUE CARDUCCI 355
nor to rot ! Rally in your hearts, 0 youth,
the constancy and the glory of the mighty
sires who made the revolution of the Com
munes and the Renaissance, who discovered
new continents for human industry, new fields
for art, new methods for science. Love art
and science, love them with a true love :
love them for themselves, much more than
for the gains they may bear you, much more
than for the praise they may procure you :
love them as the exercise and the manifesta
tion in which the nobility of man is most
apparent, in which the worth of the nations
perpetuates itself forever. Be good and have
faith : have faith in love, in virtue, in justice :
have faith in the high destinies of the human
race, which mounts, glorious, along the ways
of its ideal transformation. And it shall
surely come to pass that science shall fortify
you, that art shall comfort you, that your
country shaU bless you."
This was a message which the youth of
Italy needed to hear even more than literary
criticism. No wonder that Carducci became
their leader and prophet ; the greater wonder
is, seeing how seldom the miracle is performed
in academic experience, that his preaching

356 GIOSUE CARDUCCI
in nowise interfered with his scholarly exac
tions. He dared to rhapsodize without har
boring the ignoble fear that some pedantic
coUeague would whisper against him the
damning epithet " popular." In the large
sense he was not and is not popular ; but
like Matthew Arnold he diffused his ideas
through a body of sympathetic pupils, who
in turn have distributed them far and wide.
During the last twenty years of his life he
had the satisfaction of knowing that no line
of poetry and no page of criticism worthy of
attention was written in Italy that did not
bear the trace of his influence. Other schools,
other movements, other fashions have come
forward, but they all acknowledge his pre
sence, by what they reject, if not by what
they adopt. in
Carducci's prose, which fiUs ten or twelve
volumes, consists first of formal studies in
literary criticism — such, for instance, are his
work on " The Evolution of National Litera
ture," the study of the Ode, and the remark
able survey of the literature of the Risorgi
mento ; next, there are essays, half -critical,

GIOSUE CARDUCCI 357
half-biographical, on great literary figures —
Dante, Muratori, Metastasio, Manzoni; then
there are commemorative addresses ; and,
finally, what we may call personal confes
sions on politics, art, criticism, and conduct,
called forth by inquiry or by attack. On any
scale, Carducci wUl rank among the few mas
ter critics of the age. He has insight as well
as knowledge, taste as well as comprehensive
ness. He understands not only the historic
position, but the intrinsic value of the makers
of literature, and so he infallibly reaches the
human residue in every author and in every
book. Critics who stop short of that palm off
on us easy formulas of heredity and environ
ment to explain the mysteries of genius.
In nothing does Carducci's generous na
ture display itself more attractively than in
his commemorative eulogies. He has the
courage of his enthusiasms, and his pages
glow with admiration and affection for Au-
relio Saffi and Goff redo Mameli, for Garibaldi
and Manzoni and Victor Hugo, for Leopardi
and Shelley, for Alberto Mario and Maria
Gozzadini. His rhapsody on Garibaldi — a
gem of Romanticism — written at a sitting,
has become classic in Italy, and may stand

358 GIOSUE CARDUCCI
as a model of that sort of eloquence. In Eng
lish, our growing distrust of rhetoric has put
such flights out of vogue. Shelley in his
"Defence of Poetry" is perhaps the last
Englishman whose sustained achievement
cannot be questioned, although Ruskin, still
later, soared sunward in many a magnificent
passage ; but too often the rhetorical flyers
have only the wings of Icarus, and meet his
fate. Carducci, however, just because he was
a poet and an Italian, to whom it was natu
ral to give expression to burning emotions in
burning phrase, made even his prose dithy
rambs genuine.
His personal confessions, though frequently
of vital importance on the autobiographic
side, have the least permanent literary inter
est. He indulged in sarcasm that was too
subtle, and in allusions or parallels that were
too remote. More than once — as when, in
1868, he hurled scorn at those who wished
to banish him from the university for poli
tical reasons, or when, in 1881, he replied to
the critics of his Levia Gravia — he missed
the opportunity of matching Shelley's re
joinder to Lord EUenborough or Mazzini's
crushing invective against De TocquevUle

GIOSUE CARDUCCI 359
and Falloux. On such occasions the literary
artificer in him seemed to get the upper hand :
indeed, although he had a strong man's
capacity for indignation and scorn, he spoke
most naturally and most victoriously when
love, friendship, and ideals moved him.
IV
But great as he is as prose writer, critic,
and leader, it is as poet that he holds the
supreme place in modern Italy ; it is as poet
that his fame will endure, and that he will
become more than a name outside of Italy.
He began to write verse at the age of eleven,
and during his boyhood he printed fugitive
pieces. He grew up in the fifties in the hey
day of Romanticism. The struggle for Italian
independence, borne forward on the great
wave of Liberahsm, found its true spokesmen
among the Romanticists. But although Car
ducci was fired by patriotism, his intellectual
and esthetic elements recoiled from Roman
ticism. He devoured the masters of Latin
literature, studied Latin religion and history,
and reveled in the Renaissance, with its ap
parent reproduction of Paganism. In 1858,
together with other young enthusiasts, he

360 GIOSUE CARDUCCI
edited a journal which they called II Poli
ziano, after the typical Humanist, and
wished to be the vehicle of a return to
Classicism. Its chief result was Carducci
himself. His poems, inspired more and more
by Pagan or Humanistic ideals, made their
way slowly. Not until 1865, when he pub
hshed the "Hymn to Satan," did he reach
the general public. The "Hymn" created
a scandal, was hotly denounced, and generally
misunderstood; for the Satan glorified by
Carducci is not the Principle of Evil, but a
latter-day Prometheus, the implacable adver
sary of sullen and joyless creeds, of worn-
out deities, and of corrupt ecclesiasticism.
Carducci issued in 1871 his Levia Gravia
which marks another stage in his progress
towards the complete repudiation of Ro
manticist form and of Christian substance.
Finally, in 1878, he brought out the first
series of Odi Barbare, in which he attempted
to revolutionize Italian prosody. Abandoning
rhyme and the traditional metres of his coun
try, he imitated the verse-forms of Horace,
taking care that his themes should be treated
from the Classic point of view. A storm of
criticism burst upon him. It was easy to

GIOSUE CARDUCCI 361
point out that the Latin, with its more solid
word-units, its quantity, and its inflections,
is a very different metrical instrument from
the Italian, with its more plastic word-units,
its accent, and its looser construction. The
battle raged for many years, and was re
newed when Carducci flung a second and
third series of Odi Barbare into the arena.
It can hardly be said that the question has
been settled yet. Few foreigners, certainly,
find pleasure in the metrical intricacies of
the Odi, and no Italians, although they
have been trying for a quarter of a century
to imitate them, have succeeded in equal
ing Carducci. If we may hazard a tempo
rary verdict, we may say that a remarkable
genius, with extraordinary finesse as a met-
ricist, achieved a success which proved his
genius, but not his theory. The poems them
selves are often very beautiful, and are among
the most precious poetic treasures of the age ;
but like the best poems of Wordsworth's
" Lyrical Ballads," the world accepts them
because they are genuine poetry, and not
because they illustrate a new doctrine in
prosody. As to the content of Carducci's poetry, its

362 GIOSUE CARDUCCI
Humanism, Paganism, Hellenism, — for it has
each of these qualities, — I cannot speak at
length here. It is a fine theme, awaiting the
properly equipped critic. Classicism, or " the
Classic spirit," is one of the most abused
terms in literary criticism. It is applied alike
to Keats's " Endymion," to Landor's " Hel
lenics," and to Swinburne's mongrel Greek
dramas. In the case of Carducci we should
ask not only, "Has he fumigated his mind
of all Christian-Romanticist instincts and
prepossessions? " but also, " Has he reaUy
attained the Pagan outlook? Can a man of
the nineteenth century, by whatever con
scious effort or unconscious affinity, be able
to see life as Horace or Catullus saw it — no
more, no less — unalloyed by the least hint
of the tremendous experience which eighteen
hundred years have graven into the memory
of the race?"
To understand modern Italy one must
remember the four historical layers which
underlie it. First, there is the Itahc, or
Pagan; next, the Medieval Christian, of
which Dante is the consummate represent
ative; third, the Renaissance; and, last, the
National-Patriotic. You can usually classify

GIOSUE CARDUCCI 363
Italians according as one or another of these
strata predominates. The singular fact about
Carducci is, that, although he voluntarily
planted himself in the first, he could not
exile himself from the others. Few men have
ever felt more powerfully Dante's spell; few
critics have ever written more illuminatingly
about the " Divine Comedy " and the Can
zoniere than the Humanist who rejected the
religion in which Dante found final truth.
Patriotism was for Carducci almost a religion,
and it is doubtless the many patriotic poems,
some of them magnificent in form and mess
age, which have endeared him to masses of
his countrymen who cared little about tech
nical disputes over his Odi Barbare. A
fervent disciple of Mazzini, Carducci clung
to his early Republican ideals until long after
the unification of Italy ; then he accepted the
Monarchy, and consented to be appointed
a Senator, not because he had fallen a victim,
as some irreconcUables gossiped, to Court
blandishments, but because he set the union
and independence of Italy above partisan
claims, and saw that, for the present at least,
it is the Monarchy, and not the Republic,
which can best serve Italy's needs.

364 GIOSUE CARDUCCI
Carducci never flattered any one ; least of
all would he have flattered those in power.
He spared no criticism of politics or education
or literature or social standards. He scourged
the " Byzantinism " of his countrymen, who
seemed to settle back, after their splendid
achievement of unity, into a self-complacent,
materialistic existence. He held ever before
them the ideal Italy, for which they must
strive. And they ended by admiring him.
He brought to them the example of vigor,
the shining gifts of genius, the daily stimulus
of character. As professor he had been
neglected, as critic derided, as poet attacked
— yet he kept on his way unshaken. Little
by little he saw the tide turn, and he lived to
be honored by an entire nation. The Italians,
obeying a wise intuition, would place him
beside Cavour and Mazzini, Garibaldi and
Victor Emmanuel : first, the heroes who do,
then the poet who immortalizes their heroic
deeds. Whatever estimate posterity may set
on Carducci's works, there can be no dispute
as to his hfe; in him genius and character
were robustly blended.

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