Vincenzo

Review of:
Vincenzo; or Sunken Rocks (by John Ruffini, 1863)

Mr. Ruffini has republished from Macmillan’s Magazine another of the stories in which he aims at depicting contemporary life in Italy as it is at the present day.  The story has little interest in itself.  It contains next to no plot or incident, and very little description of character; and if the  real truth must be told, it must be described as dull. Notwithstanding this, it has merits of its own. It gives, with the vividness which novels only can attain, a picture of the practical working of the Roman Catholic system in Italy, and of the means by which both the temporal and the spiritual power of the Pope are kept up in the face of the advance of knowledge and liberty. For is reason it deserves notice, and will perhaps be worth reading.

Vincenzo Candia is the son of a peasant, brought up by a landed proprietor whose father had been himself a working man, and has made a fortune in America. The landowner, who throughout the book is described as the Signor Avvocato, intends his protégé to be a priest, and for that purpose sends him to a seminary. In process of time, Vincenzo comes to the conclusion that to be a priest is not his business, and he runs away with the intention of joining the national army in 1848. In this he does not succeed, but the attempt puts an end to his career at the seminary, and he is sent to ' arm to become an advocate himself. At Turin his liberalism is strengthened, he comes to be acquainted with one of the Ministry, and on his admission as an advocate receives a Government appointment. At about the same-time, or soon afterwards, he contrives to marry his patron's daughter, with whom from childhood he had been secretly in love. At this point his troubles commence. Rose, his wife, is a very beautiful woman, and, according to her own standard, a very good one. She had been piously brought up, and her greatest pleasure in life was to do her best to ornament the church of the villae to attend all religious services, and to follow submissively the directions of the clergyman of the parish. She was sensible, commonplace, straightforward, and obstinate, with a great gift for all matters of domestic management and a blind confidence in her confessor. After a certain period of happiness, Vincenzo goes to his official appointment at Chambéry, and of course takes his wife with him. He soon finds himself very uncomfortable. She is constantly out of temper, and keeps reproaching him with his allegiance to a Government which takes the liberal side, and legislates in a way opposed to the pretensions of the Pope. At last, by pleading her interesting situation in a forcible manner, she persuades him to give up his appointment and to take her back to her father's house. He stays there for a time in a state of excessive discomfort, and at last plucks up heart of grace, and so a he will go and practise his profession as an advocate at  Turin. Rose's confessor persuades her that she would peril her soul if she went with him, and he goes without her. At this there is a terrible quarrel, but at last she and her father, by obstinate silence and neglect, work upon him to such an extent that he meekly returns to their house, where, having got him down, they naturally stamp upon him, inflicting on him every conceivable humiliation. At last the Signor Avvocato is struck down by a fatal illness, during which his son-in-law nurses him with the utmost kindness. The old man dies, and his daughter, won by her husband’s kindness and alarmed by an illness caused by it, treats him much more kindly, and appears to come round to a certain extent to his way of thinking. In this state of things occurs the French entry into Italy in 1859, and Vincenzo goes with his wife to Turin to help in what is going on. She sympathises with him cordially and treats him with the utmost affection until, unluckily for him, part of the Papal States unite themselves to Piedmont, and the Pope excommunicates all persons concerned in the impious transaction. When this is put before her by her confessor, Rose tells her husband in so many words that, in the last resort, her priest is first and her husband next, and that, unless he gives up Turin and the service of the Government, she will give up him. As there is a second baby just about this time, and as the first died at its birth, Vincenzo gives way, throws up his employment, returns to his wife's apron-strings, and writes a letter to the friend who had introduced him to public life to say that, though in a great crisis he would prefer his country to his wife and child, he cannot do so in common life:—

‘That a man’s duty to his country is absolute and exclusive of all other duties, I readily admit, but only in a few extreme and, therefore, exceptional cases. Let the country be in danger, the Austrians at the gate of the city . . . . and no citizen . . . has a choice but to fly to the rescue. But that in ordinary times and circumstances a man . . . should owe himself quand même to his country, . . . the assumption is evidently too excessive to be tenable. . . . I lay it down then as a rule that, setting aside a few extreme cases, whenever duty to one‘s country clashes with other duties, the decision as to which shall take precedence rests with the individual conscience. Now my conscience tells me that my withdrawal from office does not the least harm to the State, while my persevering in it inflicts a very serious one upon my family.’

Acting upon these flabby principles, expressed in language equally flabby, Vincenzo resigns himself to the occupations of a nursemaid. He begins to educate his little daughter in liberalism, by teaching her to make nosegays representing the colours of Italy, to clap her hands at the flag of the National Guard, and to call the picture of Cavour her “great papa." This is the final result.

The author ought to know what he is writing about, and if this is a fair, or anything approaching in the slightest degree to a fair picture of the part which priests play in domestic life, it is marvellous that any nation should tolerate them, or should fail to open its eyes to the fact—which our ancestors clearly perceived some three hundred years ago, and which really is as clear as the sun at noonday—that the clergy are men like their neighbours, neither much better nor much worse  that their character is derived from the nature of their pursuits and from their education; and that they have as much claim to supernatural or magical authority as lawyers or doctors, and no more. Until this doctrine has thoroughly sunk into men's innermost hearts, as is happily the case in England, anything like freedom, or those virtues which freedom produces, is impossible. Unless every father of a family is, within his own walls, prophet, priest, and king, to his wife for their joint lives, and to his children till they grow up, he is nothing at all. This is the peculiar blessing of married life— that which alone enables it to produce those results which may constantly be traced to it in this country. A divided conjugal authority is as good as none, especially if the division, allots to the husband the wife‘s temporal interests and to the priest her spiritual interests. There is and can be in reality no distinction between the two, and it is impossible to get a really conscientious person, who wishes before and above all things to do rig it, to recognise any such distinction. Every act of our lives is at once temporal and spiritual, and in every action that which would be described as the spiritual element is, in truth, the most important one. Shall I sit in this chair or that? That is the more comfortable, but in this I am likely to keep wider awake and do my business most efficiently. Shall I vote for or against the Inner Circle Railway? There is no doubt a right and a wrong in the matter if it could be found out, and it is certainly my duty to do my best to find it out. What is to prevent my confessor from ascertaining, by such a cross-examination as he may choose to employ, whether have done my best to find out how I ought to vote, and whether I have voted accordingly? Everything is a matter of duty if you choose to look at it in that light. No exertion of the intellect, the reason, or the imagination, is without a moral purport. Of course different minds recognize this fact in very different degrees. There is a point at which the most submissive penitent would draw the line. Probably the humblest of women would tell her confessor that she did not quite see how it was any business of his whether she sent her baby to bed an hour earlier or an hour later; and on the other hand, a man like William Conqueror was prepared to assert, and also to stand to and make good his assertion, that the way in which be governed England was his affair and not Hildebrand’s. But the difference is only one of degree and temperament. Once admit that there is any one in the world who is entitled to sit in judgment on the right or wrong of any act whatever, and to lay a conscientious obligation in respect of it on the agent, and it is impossible to exclude the possessor of such a power from any province which he chooses to occupy, except, indeed, by the exercise of that tacit scepticism which is the great protector of mankind against spiritual tyranny. In practice, every one draws a line somewhere--but if husband and wife draw it at different levels, an element of discord, between them is introduced, painful and wearing in proportion to the degree in which they are conscientious and high-minded. The simple inference is, that the same person ought to be husband and priest in every house. The separation of the two characters degrades each, and puts them into an attitude of irreconcilable hostility.

Mr. Ruffini writes for English readers, and perhaps this may give a certain colour to his novels, but they form a very pleasant contrast to French novels. This story is as good as possible, and gives the notion that the people to whom it relates lead a quiet virtuous life, and are full of natural affection and other simple virtues. On the other hand, it implies that they are a weak race. In the whole three volumes of Vincenzo there is not one thoroughly sturdy character. A fanatical priest and a crabbed old humorist show the greatest amount of vigour, but the hero is a coward in grain. If he could not guide his wife and lead her to better views he ought in the last resort to have had the spirit to leave her, and take her child from her to be educated according to his own views. If a man really wishes to serve his country, these are the kind of sacrifices for which he ought to be prepared. Anybody can get killed in a battle, but it wants some vigour of character to quarrel with your wife and break up your home rather than give up your own plans in life. Of course every way of avoiding such results should be tried, but if the worst comes to the worst, a man who cannot in the last resort do it is a wretched cur; and a nation of such men deserves to be, and will be, priest-ridden to the end of the chapter, however much infantine patriotism may be instilled into its babies.

Saturday Review, January 30, 1864.

Giulio Malatesta

Review of:
Giulio Malatesta (by T. Adolphus Trollope, 1863)

Mr. Adolphus Trollope has written Giulio Malatesta apparently with the object of showing what sort of evils induced the Tuscans to change, their government, and keep the Roman States in a condition of perpetual simmering discontent. The story begins at Bologna. Cesare Malatesta, studying there in 1828, persuades a beautiful girl, called Maddalena Tacca, to marry him by the process of waylaying an archbishop, before whom the parties declare themselves man and wife in the presence of two witnesses brought for the purpose, one of whom is, in secret, a lover of the lady. Malatesta, however, who is heir to a title and a large fortune, had no intention of really marrying the girl, and therefore took the precaution of providing that one of his witnesses (the reputed lover) should be under age, which, according to the Italian rules of evidence, made him incompetent as a witness. In due time the flaw in the marriage is discovered, and Malatesta shakes off his mistress, and dutifully marries another wife, of great rank and wealth, provided for him by his family. Maddalena Tacca, having had a child–Giulio, the hero of the story—is put into a convent to be kept till she is wanted. Twenty years then elapse, and in 1848 Giulio Malatesta comes to Florence with a friend, to keep the carnival. He is all courage, enthusiasm, black eyes, and hair to match, and he employs his time in making love to a beautiful young heiress, called Stella, who lives in the house of a Frenchified countess. They engage themselves secretly, for his illegitimate birth and want of prospects of course put her as much out of his reach as the moon.

Giulio returns after the carnival to the University of Pisa, in which he is a student, and then sets out with various friends in the University volunteer corps, which fought against the Austrians, and held them in check for some hours at Curtatone and Montanara—a delay which Mr. Trollope says was of great importance in the subsequent campaign. he corps distinguishes itself vastly, and various pictures are introduced of its different members —a Professor (the same who, in 1828, had been the incompetent witness to the sham marriage), various students, and a beautiful sister of the Professor's, who accompanies the corps in man's clothes, and is in love with one and oved by both of two brothers, one of whom is killed, so that the one that she prefers can marry her comfortably. Giulio gets a captain's commission in the Piedmontese service. In the meantime, Stella's family want her to marry the legitimate son of the Marchese Malatesta, which she refuses to do, and is put into a convent for her pains by a cruel uncle. There she stays for some time, and a good deal of convent life is described. At last she is brought back to Florence, to have one chance more given her of repentance, and just then Giulio returns in a triumphant condition, with full proof that the incompetent witness was of full age, and that he, and not his disagreeable brother, is the true Marchese. Thereupon, of course, he marries the lady; the abbess of the convent in which she was confined turns out to be his mother; the Pope releases her from her vows, and they all live together happily ever after.

Considered merely as a novel, Giulio Malatesta is as commonplace a book as could be mentioned, and the difficulty of reviewing it is to say anything about it except that it is a thoroughly commonplace novel.  It belongs, however, to a variety of novels which is not perhaps quite the commonest sub-genus of that class of literature. It is one of those novels which stand in the place of a private journal—a receptacle for descriptions and special knowledge. It so happens that Mr. Adolphus Trollope has lived a great deal in Italy, and takes a special interest in its politics, and . novel is a sort of carpet-bag to keep his views in. Every turn of the story is contrived obviously for the purpose of getting an opportunity to describe an Italian university, or a convent, or the battle of Curtatone, or the carnival at Florence, or some old-fashioned dowager or cavaliere serviente who happens to have struck his fancy. It cannot be said that there is anything morally wrong in this. If a man likes to knit together a set of Italian recollections by a chain of Giulios, Cesares, Maddalenas, and Stellas, there is no great harm in it, though the absence of any artistic merit in the book is certainly a vexation to the reader.

A book which really did describe Italian life as it passed in the smaller Italian States might be a very great book, but it would require a considerable man to write it. Such a book as Giulio Malatesta is not to be mentioned in the same year with the Chartreuse de Parme, and it is vastly inferior even to Tolla. There is nothing really characteristic about the figures, except a few turns of expression, and particular little tricks. The hero is simply, the hero vulgaris melodramaticus of commerce — the man with the dark eyes, pale but healthy complexion, and slight and well-knit frame which gradually fills out, and all the rest of it, as the third volume wears on. The heroine is simply an English girl with an Italian name, and a particularly strong will. Mr. Trollope is so anxious that she and her lover should be happily married and settled, that he cannot think of drawing her as she really must have been. He wants to make her as lovely and engaging as he possibly can, and it never seems to occur to him that a charming young Italian, bred up in a convent, ought to think and feel like an Italian – at least that there ought to be a considerable difference between her and an Englishwoman. The Chartreuse de Parme is not a pretty story by any means, and it would require special acquaintance with Italy to say whether it fairly represents the state of things which it claims to describe; but whether it does or not there cannot be a question that it does describe something, and something quite different from what we are accustomed to. It is, so to speak, good on the face of it. There is that sort of difference between the behaviour of the parties at the critical points in the story and the sort of behaviour which might be expected in the natives of other countries, which would naturally be produced by a long reign of superstition and despotism. Mr. Trollope cannot rise to this. He has not sufficient faith in himself or in his readers to introduce real defects into the characters that he likes. They are perhaps a little too romantic and febrile, but that and the indispensable local colour form the only distinctions between them and ordinary English people.

Like many other novels, Mr. Trollope's book suggests several questions to the solution of which it contributes little or nothing. The most interesting of them is — What will Italians be like in future? They are in a fair way, it may be hoped, by some means or other, to get the Austrians out of Venice and the French out of Rome. They will then have undisputed possession of one of the finest countries in the world, and of one which has certainly been the scene of some of the greatest events of human history. It may also be confidently predicted that, when they have obtained this advantage, they will by degrees form a government suited to them, and that it will give them all the benefits which we understand by the words “good order.” They will have schools, and railways, and public companies, they will pay poor-rates and do away with brigands, a great extension of trade will take place, and it is not improbable that they will gladden the hearts of a large proportion of English people by emphatically clipping the Pope's wings in some way or other. In short, they will embrace progress and civilization. The question, what will happen then, is growing almost daily to be of deeper interest. When they are grown up men and women, instead of overgrown babies, what sort of men and women will they be? Of course the mass of them will simply be very common-place people—richer, less superstitious, perhaps rather quieter than their predecessors—and the tendency of all civilization is to increase the relative importance of the majority. The minority, however, will no doubt retain much importance, and will, as in former times, determine the position which the nation will occupy in the world, and the character of the influence which it will exercise over its fortunes. What sort of men will the remarkable Italians be, and what kind of things will they do? If we consider the past history of Italy, it would seem that they will be amongst the very foremost men in the world, and that they may produce incalculable effects. Popery has been for some centuries the bugbear of Protestant Europe, and if Italy were a great constitutional kingdom, full of railroads, newspapers, trade, and books, no doubt the Pope and the priests would fall to a remarkable discount; but what would come in place of them? Some excellent people believe that the Italian nation would sit at the feet of the Bible Society, and bring an Italian translation of the new version of the Psalms. It appears about as probable that they should all come and take lodgings in London. To suppose that, if such a nation throws off the old associations and institutions which have enabled its priests to govern it, it will see in the Thirty-nine Articles or in the English Bible a religious Rubicon, is simply childish. They may very possibly cease to be Papists, but what will they be instead? Those who remember how Italian doctrines have more than once affected the whole course of European history will understand the vast importance of the question.

Another singular problem, on which nothing but conjecture is at present attainable, is to be found in the question, whether the causes which in old times made the Italian race one of the governing races of the earth have ceased to operate? Will there be any more Romans, and Marsians, and Sabines? Have they utterly disappeared from the face of the earth, or have they been lying, like the Seven Sleepers, in an unnatural torpor produced by the arts of the enchanters who are now thrown down? How, when, and why the old population of Italy disappeared has always been a problem, solved not in the most satisfactory way even by the great historians who have discussed it. Is it utterly out of the question that they should reappear as the missing Ten Tribes are expected to do, and take their place once more in European affairs? There is not the least fear that in such an event they would endanger those who were once barbarians; but they would certainly change all old political combinations. They would vastly increase the strength of the Southern and Latin element in Europe, and—especially if the Spaniards, too, were to recover their strength—might check the excessive vanity of the French, and teach them that they are not the only, perhaps not the most remarkable, branch of the great Latin and Catholic stem.

Saturday Review, June 13, 1863.

Mr. Matthew Arnold on the Italian Question

Review of:
"England and the Italian question" (by Matthew Arnold)


Mr. Matthew Arnold’s pamphlet on England and the Italian Question fully satisfies the expectations which his reputation could not fail to excite in respect of anything which he might write. It is needless to say that it is characterized by great elegance and great vigour of style; but it is remarkable on independent grounds, inasmuch as it contains the only attempt which, as far as we know, has been made on this side of the Channel to enter into and express the views with which the French regard the Italian question. It is the infirmity of all who take a clear and strong view of a particular subject to find a great difficulty in admitting into their minds the belief that any other view of it should appear equally natural to other people. Englishmen are so much in the habit—a habit in which they are amply justified by experience—of looking upon a vast proportion of the sounding professions which the late war elicited as mere bombast and hypocrisy, that they are sometimes induced to overrate the degree in which they may influence a less incredulous population, whose vanity is interested in believing them to be true. Mr. Arnold, who (in the discharge, we understand, of public duties) has lately passed a considerable time in France, has had the opportunity of forming a very clear opinion as to the real feelings of the French in reference to the Italian war. He has done good service to all who concern themselves in the matter, by expressing the opinion which he has adopted in consequence of his observations. We do not agree with his conclusions, nor do we think that he does justice to the views which determined the policy of England during the war, but we are grateful to him for putting before us, with equal ingenuity and perspicuity, a side of the question which is certainly not familiar in this country.

The thesis of which the greater part of the pamphlet is the development is that the English aristocracy misconceived the whole purport and character of the Italian war, and its object is to give them an opportunity of correcting their mistake. Our divergence begins from the very first words of the pamphlet. We deny altogether that the English aristocracy formed any conception upon the subject of the war different from that which was formed by all persons of education and reflection. The general view of the country upon the whole subject was almost unanimous. The policy which it dictated was absolute neutrality. The sentiments on which it proceeded were extreme jealousy of the French, and especially of their Emperor, and a rather cold good-will towards the Italians— cold, because tempered by just scepticism as to the prospects of liberation from foreign and despotic authority which the war held out to them. This policy and these feelings were certainly not confined to the House of Lords. They notoriously were common to both Houses of Parliament, to almost every constituency in the kingdom, and to the overwhelming majority of the newspapers and other periodicals.

Mr. Arnold's view of the matter is, that the aristocracy (which he identifies with the nation in a manner which is almost unexampled amongst English writers, though it is common enough in France) opposed the Italian war for three reasons:—first, because they thought that the Italians never had been, and never could be, independent of foreign rulers; secondly, because they considered the principle of nationality chimerical; and, thirdly, because they thought that the French intervention would end in a mere change of rulers, and not in the liberation of Italy. In answer to these three arguments, he urges, first, that the Italians were, in fact, independent from the year 1310 till 1494; and that at the latter period a great Italian nation was in the process of formation, which was only prevented from uniting itself into a great European State by the intervention of Charles VIII. Secondly, he contends that the idea of nationality is not chimerical, but substantial — that though in some cases it would be absurd to make distinctions of race and of language a ground for national independence, it is in others most reasonable to do so—and that the reasonableness of the proceeding in the case of Italy arises from the great historical importance and the hereditary glory and genius of the Italian race. Lastly, he answers the argument that the interference of Louis Napoleon would produce a mere change of masters, by asserting that the French peasantry, who are the bulk of the nation, are utterly opposed to wars of conquest—that they dreaded the Italian war because at first they thought it was to be a war of conquest and that they afterwards admired it because Louis Napoleon told them that he had no such intentions, and they believed his professions. Rightly or wrongly, Mr. Arnold argues, they have confidence in him, because they consider that he represents their own views and sympathies, and because they think that he will raise the prestige of the nation, for which they are as anxious as ever, though they have renounced their dreams of extended dominion. He adds, that to some extent this confidence in Louis Napoleon is justified by the fact that he sympathizes strongly with all the great popular ideas, which his varied experience of life has led him to feel to be most important agents in the affairs of the world. These ideas are comprised in the “Principles of 1789;” and the Emperor is not only deeply imbued with these principles, but is sincerely anxious to propagate them--probably for objects of his own—but still to propagate them effectually and sincerely. Such is the principal part of Mr. Arnold's pamphlet. The remainder consists of observations on the relations between England and the Continent to which we do not propose to refer.

Reverting to the arguments which we have already stated, we must say that in so far as they are directed against what we should call the popular, and what Mr. Arnold calls the aristocratic view of the late war, we are entirely unable to agree with them. Mr. Arnold, no doubt, states the matter in such a way as to give considerable plausibility to his opinions. It is not quite true that Italy has never been free from foreign dominion since the fall of the Roman Empire; nor is it at all true that the idea of nationality is chimerical; nor is it quite true that the object of the late war was conquest, in the strict sense of the word. In controverting these opinions, Mr. Arnold gains a victory as worthless as it is easy. No one ever maintained them; but the opinions which most Englishmen did entertain approached them very nearly, and are not only incontrovertibly true, but are unconsciously admitted and supported by Mr. Arnold himself. That Italy was during nearly two centuries free from foreign interference is no doubt the case. That those two centuries were filled with intestine broils which ended in the division of the country into five principal States, is Mr. Arnold's own statement. That in the absence of foreign interference these five States would gradually have been fused into one great nation, is an assertion which it is as easy to make as it is hard to prove. Mr. Arnold assumes it as an elementary proposition which requires no proof. The result is, that though it is not true that Italy has never, since the fall of the Western Empire, been free from foreign interference, it is strictly true that this may be affirmed of twelve centuries out of fourteen, and that the other two centuries were passed in intestine divisions which paved the way for the renewal of that foreign interference which was suspended during their course.

As to the principle of nationality, which, as Mr. Arnold affirms, the English aristocracy looked upon as chimerical, a very similar observation arises. Neither the English aristocracy, nor any other body of proximately sane persons, ever doubted the general maxim that foreign rule over any nation is a calamity; nor do we believe that any considerable section of English society ever doubted that, if the Austrians could by fair means have been ex£ from Italy, the result would have been highly desirable. If, for example, the Lombards, by their own exertions, or with the help of the Sardinians, had succeeded in driving the Austrians into the Tyrol, not only would no English politician have proposed any interference in favour of the foreign domination, but hardly any, if any, Englishman, whether a member of the aristocracy or not, would have refused his hearty sympathy to the achievement. What Mr. Arnold calls the “idea of nationality”—or what we should call the maxim that the government of nations by foreign Powers is usually an evil—is as familiar to Englishmen as to any people in the world. No one ever was absurd enough to consider it chimerical. No one could possibly dispute Mr. Arnold's cautious statement, that “in a sentiment thus natural and necessary, and the operation of which also is thus natural and necessary, there is nothing chimerical. A politician is not fanciful for taking such a sentiment into account. It is considerable enough to demand his notice.” What the English aristocracy, and every other person of education or reflection, contemplated with deep alarm was the establishment of the principle that the French, or any other people, are entitled to break through existing treaties, and deny the rights secured by them, simply on the ground that they do not square with their opinions as to what ought to be the state of international relations. Mr. Arnold does not appear to us to distinguish as he ought between ideas and principles. That the idea of national independence is an important and, indeed, essential element in all politics, is an unquestionable truth. That it is chimerical to expect any good results from the establishment of the principle that any nation may interfere forcibly on behalf of any people subject to rulers of a foreign race, appears to be a truth which is equally certain and equally important. The formation of a single powerful and independent State comprising the whole of Italy is an object to which Italians naturally and properly attach the very highest importance; but this admission has no bearing on the question whether the French had a right to make war on the Austrians in order to bring it about. It is very desirable that poor men should be acted upon by the idea of riches, but it by no means follows that they ought to act upon the principle of emptying their neighbours' pockets. Still less does it follow that the rich ought to rob each other for the benefit of the poor.

According to Mr. Arnold, the reasonableness of making “a separate nationality a plea for a separate national existence” depends upon the greatness and glory of the State by which that plea is urged, and on the prospect which circumstances afford of its being united in a satisfactory manner to the State to which it is subject; and he seems to think, though he does not exactly go on to say, that if these conditions are fulfilled in a particular case, it is lawful for any nation to bring about the necessary changes by force of arms. The establishment of such a principle would be absolutely fatal to the peace of Europe. Gibraltar, Malta, the Channel Islands, all belong by race to great nations; and it is, precisely because the establishment of the principle upon which Mr. Arnold appears to look so favourably would justify the French in inquiring whether they might not be advantageously reunited to those nations, that we entirely object to its establishment. The idea of Spanish nationality may, for aught we know, be a very fine thing, but the recognition of any principle which would justify any foreign country in treating as an open question the propriety of restoring Gibraltar to the Spanish nation would be simply intolerable. This was the ground on which the aristocracy, with the hearty concurrence of every man of sense in the country, regarded the attack upon Austria as an act full of danger to ourselves.

The third of Mr. Arnold's arguments is perhaps the most singular of them all. It depends upon his view of the character and wishes of the French nation. It is, he argues, a mistake to suppose that the French desire wars of conquest. There is nothing they dread so much; but they have perfect confidence in the Emperor; they believed him when he said that the Italian war was undertaken for the liberation of Italy; and they like glory (prestige Mr. Arnold calls it) as much as they dread a new coalition, an increase of taxation, and an even more stringent conscription than they have at present. We have no doubt that this is perfectly true. That the French really do admire and trust the Emperor is a melancholy fact; that they do intensely long to see their country play a grand dramatic rôle, as the redresser of wrongs and the liberator of the oppressed, is no less true; and we have very little doubt that an announcement that the Emperor was going to the wars for the purpose of conquering Belgium or the Rhenish Provinces would be very unpopular. All this, however, is not only quite consistent with the suspicion and dismay with which the nation viewed the proceedings in Italy, but is a complete justification of it. Mr. Arnold's case, in a few words, is that the French like, aggression, but do not care for conquest. They are fond of, knocking people down, and taking away their watches, but they never commit robbery—they always give the property to the poor. They are the Robin Hoods of Europe, and have no connexion with the low garotte robbers who have no soul for anything above plunder. If Robin Hood were still alive we suspect that the Nottinghamshire police would be just as busy as they are now. The owners of Clumber and Thoresby would not feel that their plate and pictures were more secure because, if they lost them, they would pass into some grand national museum or picture gallery, and not into the melting-pot and the Jew's back parlour. If you are to be robbed and murdered, it is no consolation that it is done on the purest principles; and, indeed, a conscientious burglar who lectured the Christian Young Men's Association before he went on his beat, and requested the prayers of the congregation at the parish church on behalf of a gentleman embarked in a hazardous enterprise, would be, to our apprehension, a far more dangerous character than the common domestic rogues who, in the language of our old law books, “mangent bien et boivent bien et nount nul bien.” Can Mr. Arnold possibly imagine that a war or series of wars of aggression and “moral influence” could possibly be carried on without ending very early indeed in wars of precisely the old type? You cannot always gallop straight at a precipice, and pull up within a yard of it. A very little more, and the question between France and Austria would have become a question of conquest. Every one feels that the present mongrel result is a mere stop-gap, as dangerous, perhaps more dangerous, than the state of things which preceded it. If Germany had been brought into the conflict—and no one knows how near such a result may have been—the French must have conquered or submitted. The beginning of strife is like the letting out of water, and though the aggressor may be quite content with displaying his own courage and skill, and may be perfectly willing, when he is satiated or exhausted with success, to retire from the contest, it is by no means certain that it will be in his power to do so. The wars of the Revolution were not undertaken as wars of conquest. They assumed that character simply because it was agreeable to the armies and their general. This danger is as great, or greater, at present than it ever was. It is not to be supposed that an enormous army, flushed with victory and accustomed to think itself invincible, will be peaceably inclined; and Mr. Arnold himself admits (though for another purpose) that “the peasant proprietary is in perfect sympathy with the army, because the army issues from its bosom.” Has any member of the aristocracy, or of any other part of the community, ever put the state of affairs in a point of view more alarming than this?

Of Mr. Arnold's estimate of Louis Napoleon himself, and of the French nation generally, we may say a few words in conclusion. The Emperor, he says, “possesses” (the italics are Mr. Arnold's) “largely and deeply interwoven in his constitution the popular fibre.” This “is the most interesting feature in his character. It is his great advantage over the kings and aristocracies of Europe.” This feature is marked, as we understand Mr. Arnold, partly by the circumstance that he recognises the value of “the ideas of religious, political, and social freedom which are commonly called the Ideas of 1789,” and “by the constitution of his own nature is in entire sympathy with them.” An Englishman, and an Oxford Professor, should have remembered that the “Ideas of 1789” were a mere copy from those of 1774, and that Independence Day was a nobler and more important date than the all of the Bastille. We do not, however, grudge the French whatever credit is to be got from the announcement of a few barren abstractions, though even that credit is not their due. The astonishing nature of Mr. Arnold's assertion is enough to concentrate the whole of our attention upon itself. What single instance can he, or any other person, adduce of the Emperor's having promoted either religious, or political, or social freedom in any particular? M. Martin observes that Malebranche was preeminently French in his admiration of ideas and his supreme disdain of facts. Possibly Louis Napoleon deserves the same eulogy. Whether it will disarm the suspicions entertained of him here is quite another question. There is indeed one passage in Mr. Arnold's pamphlet which gives an explanation of this view, which is probably more correct though even less satisfactory. Speaking of the popular feeling with which the Emperor sympathizes so deeply, he says:

‘They [the French] were sensible also to the gratification of playing before the world the brilliant part of generous and disinterested liberators of such a country as Italy. Neither for this gratification would they pay too high a price; but if it was to be had on reasonable terms, they accepted it gladly. “Après tout”—the common people were constantly saying after the Emperor's manifesto had appeared—“après tout, c'est une belle guerre, c'est une belle guerre,” and then followed string of commonplaces, taken from the journals, as to the achievements of Italy in the cause of civilization, and her claims upon the gratitude of the world. It is to the honour of France, it is what distinguishes her from all other nations, that the mass of her population is so accessible to considerations of this elevated order. It is the bright feature in her civilization that her common people can understand and appreciate language which elsewhere meets with a response only from the educated and refined classes. One is tempted to ask oneself, what would the French nation be if the general knowledge equalled the general intelligence. At present, the accessibility to ideas, in France, is only equalled by the ignorance of facts. To give a curious illustration: if ever a war with England is consented to by the French nation, it will be from the profound conviction entertained by the mass of them (I do not speak of the Emperor or his general officers) of the inefficiency of the English army.’

To our apprehension a taste for a string of commonplaces taken from the “journals” is a proof of nothing but natural poverty of character. To talk parrot, and to like fine words, is the characteristic of a silly child, whose faculties run to display and fluency, and are unfit for the real business of life. We cannot follow Mr. Arnold in his satisfaction at the discovery that the French like fine phrases, and care nothing for the facts which they represent. The Emperor, he argues, humours, and to some extent sympathizes with them, and therefore the estimate formed of him by the English aristocracy is a false one. To us, the conclusion seems rather to be that no English writer has as yet fully comprehended the imminent danger in which we are placed by a nation and an Emperor who understand each other so thoroughly, who have so many good reasons for wishing to injure us, and so strong a propensity to overrate the ease of doing so.

Saturday Review, August 13, 1859.

Naples

Review of:
“Naples: Political, Social, and Religious” (by Lord B_____ [Frederick Richard Chichester, Earl of Belfast])

We know not who Lord B—— may be, but it is much to be regretted that he should have published this book anonymously, for the name of the author is an indispensable guarantee for the accuracy of his observations in a book which owes the whole of its value to the fidelity with which it describes the existing political and social condition of a foreign country. But notwithstanding this defect, there is much that is curious and interesting in the work before us, though it has no particular pretentious to literary skill. It is impossible not to feel considerable curiosity about the reciprocal effects which the character and the government of the Neapolitans produce upon each other; and the quantity of trustworthy information upon the subject is by no means proportionate to the very general acquaintance which exists amongst English people with the external appearance of the city and its neighbourhood.

Naples contains no less than 450,000 inhabitants, of whom “at least 40,000 are houseless beggars and idlers." The whole population is sedulously engaged in idling; and this employment is so universal during the summer months, that all other business is habitually suspended from ten in the morning till five in the afternoon. The natives pass the day in the streets, lounging or driving in carriages; and even the rest lazzarone will rather pay his last halfpenny for a drive than walk half-a-mile on foot. They dine at noon on maccaroni, salad, dried fish, and garlic, and sleep away the afternoon till the heat is past and the evening breeze cools the air. Then come the hours of cafés, eating-houses, and theatres, the reign of which continues till morning. It is natural enough that the lowest classes should be the most characteristic part of such a population. The nobility and the bourgeoisie are apparently separated from them rather by external circumstances than by higher aims or more serious pursuits in life. Under the name of Lazzaroni, according to Lord B—, is included all that part of the population which lives upon its daily, or rather its occasional labour. They are probably the laziest population in Europe. A Neapolitan workman takes eight days to do what an English workman would accomplish in one. He follows eve kind of employment by turns. He is guide, boatman, sailor, fisherman, porter, shoe-black, groom, labourer, or domestic servant, just as it happens, and so long as he can earn a few halfpence, he is perfectly satisfied; and after spending part of his earnings in lemonade or iced water, and part in cheese or sugar-plums, he lays out the remainder in taking a place for the evening at the San Carlino Theatre, which is specially intended for his class. There he sees Punchinello and Pantaloon making their jokes and exchanging blows, or he joins the crowd which congregates to see a puppet-show representing all the mysteries of the Christian religion by dolls or the shadows of magic-lanterns.

The general character of the Lazzaroni is what might be expected from such a life. The have all the weaknesses, and some of the virtues, of unsteady, ready-witted children. They are altogether destitute of anything like solidity of character. They have no principles, and no perseverance. They will lie constantly, principally because lying affords greater scope for ingenuity than truth; and they are by no means averse to the graver crimes of stealing and assassination, for neither life nor property seems to them a matter of such importance as it appears to English people. On the other hand, they are extremely ingenious and clever, and wonderfully light-hearted, and are capable, if their feelings are conciliated by kindness and confidence, of very warm an faithful attachment, and of a degree of honesty which shows that their habits of stealing resemble rather the tricks of a child than the selfish depredations of a pickpocket. They are anything but a brutal population. The Spaniards could never teach them to care for a bull-fight or auto da fé. Stories about banditti or religious processions amuse them much more. Their great passion is for play. They may be seen playing at morra at all hours in the corners of the streets, “trembling with eager excitement, stretching out their fingers with shouts of ‘Three, four—all!’ as if they were mad, or their very existence depended on the result of the game." In order to flatter this passion, and also for the sake of the revenue which is derived from it, the Neapolitan Government have set on feet a "lotto" or letter, which goes on continually—drawings taking place (every Saturday—in which these poor creatures gamble away every farthing that they can raise upon the last piece of furniture in their possession. The ceremony takes place in the ancient judgment-hall of the Vicaria, the palace of the early Neapolitan kings, which is now used as a prison. In the first-floor are confined debtors and ordinary criminals, the dungeons being devoted to political offenders. On the day of drawing, crowds of lazzaroni, men, women, and children, sometimes to the number of 2000 or more, throng the hall. Four judges, and two priests in their robes, and a strong guard of soldiers, are present. The numbers are drawn by a child from the Orphan Asylum, and publicly proclaimed. Sums of any amount may be risked in this manner, from a few half-pence upwards; and as the tickets are frequently sold to the poor on a week’s credit, part payment being made on the day of purchase, an immense stimulus is given to dishonesty by the necessity imposed upon the buyer of obtaining, by some means or other, the balance necessary to secure his chance by the Saturday. Instances came to the knowledge of the author “of respectably-dressed persons begging in the street for the means to obtain a ticket.’

The clergy, secular and monastic, form a large part of the Neapolitan population. It is said that in Naples itself there were no less than 15,000 twenty years ago. The Jesuits are far the most powerful Order, and have entire control of the education of the country. The find means to enlist in their ranks all young men remarkable or their ability. Lord B____ tells a story of a lady who was banished from the country for sending her son to be educated in Sardinia. Falling dangerously ill, she became very anxious to return to her native country, but was only allowed to do so on bringing her son back with her, and placing him under the Jesuits. It is new to us to learn that there has been a great increase of liberalism amongst the other Orders of monks. The Dominicans, it is said, are all on the popular side, and nearly all the secular clergy, except the bishops. Lord B— has been informed that one half of the political prisoners in Naples are priests or common people. With such educators, the state of popular education is, as might be expected, as low as possible. Nothing can exceed the ignorance of the rural population. An Italian gentleman went out to sketch on the hills near Capua, taking with him two little boys to carry his drawing materials. He walked about some time in search of a point of view, and at last chose one. In the mean time he was observed by a passer-by, who told the mother of the boys that their companion was a sorcerer, who had carried them off to be murdered for the purposes of his incantations, and that he had himself seen him forming his mysterious circles. The whole population of the village poured out to revenge the woman's wrongs, and it was with great difficult that the artist and his friend escaped with their lives. A similar accident happened to an Englishman who was sketching between Salerno and Paestum. When storms broke out at about the same hour in three successive days, he was accused of being the cause of them, for the peasantry had seen him “bowing's head up and down, as he lifted his evil eyes to the clouds, and then bent them on his magic papers whilst he drew the lines of enchantment." He was saved from his assailants with considerable difficulty, and received a severe wound above the hip, from an axe thrown at him by an old woman. Even the town population are grossly superstitious. They believe in the miracle of St. Januarius, and similar prodigies, with the most implicit faith, and most of their festivals are more or less connected with religious observances. The firing of squibs, crackers, and cannon, when the image of a saint is carried in procession, is such that “during the festival of Christmas a listener might readily believe that the enemy was actually bombarding the city." There are countless monasteries and nunneries supported exclusively by begging. One convent contains 200 nuns, of whom ten go about begging in rotation. An artist, to whom they paid weekly visits, was in the habit of giving them a gran—less than a halfpenny—on each occasion, yet they always came.

The ignorance of the urban population, even of the upper classes, is hardly less gross than that of the country people.  Much and justly as the political corruptions of Naples have been denounced, its social condition appears to us more melancholy still. “Numbers of the young nobility have not even learnt their mother tongue, and are only able to converse in the rude and disagreeable dialect of the lazzaroni." It is said that the cleric instructors often have the vileness to undermine the principles of their pupils, in order to prevent them from paying attention to politics or morals. Even in ordinary civil affairs the law courts are full of corruption and meanness, and the natural ingenuity of the people exercises itself in fraudulent litigation. The commonest rights of property are not secure. Art is one of the few pursuits to which the Neapolitans are attached, yet the King claims, and actually exercises, not only a right of pre-emption over all pictures, but a right of pre-emption at a price which he fixes himself. Not long since, a promising artist had to leave the country because he positively refused to sell to the King, for about a third of its value, a picture which he had painted. Lord B—— also tells a story of a ruined family of nobles, who had in their possession three splendid statues of their ancestors, in a ruinous and hardly discoverable family chapel. An English nobleman wished to purchase them at a price which would have been of the greatest importance to their owner, but the King would not allow the transaction to take place, and would not even buy the statues himself.

Lord B____ adds little to the general impression which already exists in this country on the subject of the lawless tyranny which goes in Naples by the name of government. The history of the perfidious wickedness by which the lazzaroni were excited to revolt against the constitution, and against the better classes who defended it, and of the monstrous and ironical injustice by which those who suffered most cruelly from the émeute of May, 1848, were held responsible and punished for the outbreak, is well known to all Europe. Lord B—— not only confirms Mr. Gladstone’s fearful account of the sufferings of Poerio, but gives additional and frightful evidence of similar proceedings. Such, for example, is the narrative of Saverio Barbarisi, whose statement of his case has lately been published at Turin. He was arrested on the 27th of July, 1850, and confined, without any kind of legal judgment, for all two years before he was brought to trial. The place of his confinement was a cold and fetid dungeon, in which, at the age of seventy, he was imprisoned throughout a winter of most unusual severity—and the winters at Naples are frequently very severe—in a room which had no fire, and had not even the protection of glass to the windows. Such is a single instance of the kind of treatment which precedes a sentence of probably twenty-four years of chains and galley slavery, in which hundreds of the best-born natives of the country wear away their miserable existence, fastened to some malefactor by a chain six feet long.

The agents of this tyranny are hardly less to be pitied than its victims. The book before us contains a most curious account of the fortunes of one of the young men who are seduced by the Neapolitan crimps in Switzerland and Germany to join the regiments known as the Swiss Guard. Such enlistments are contrary to the laws of the Swiss federation, but they are carried on underhand to a great extent, and it is solely to the prowess of these mercenary troops that the King owes the power of retaining his position for a single day. The story of the manner in which when out of work, Lord ——'s informant was induced, by lying promises, to enlist—of the mean peculation by which he and his companions were afterwards driven to desertion, and of the nature of their punishment as galley-slaves—throws a singular light on the wretched nature of the bargain which a man makes when he sells himself to be a tool of tyranny.

How long such a system may last it is impossible to say. It is said that the Swiss troops are so much cheated, and so severely punished, that they are becoming disaffected—that the native troops share in the general discontent—and that even the lazzaroni, who have been so often used by the King as instruments for the oppression of the richer classes, have began to discover that, however easy he may have found it to gratify them by plundering their superiors, it is a matter of far more difficulty to continue to provide for them after that source of income is cut off. To see the end of such a tyranny would be matter of satisfaction to every good man; and however little we might consider our— selves justified in forcibly overthrowing it, there can be no doubt of our right to prevent others from forcibly sustaining it.

Saturday Review, December 6, 1856.