The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 25, November, 1859

Various

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 25, November, 1859 / A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics

E. FELICE FORESTI

Late in the autumn of 1836, an Austrian brig-of-war cast anchor in the harbor of New York; and seldom have voyagers disembarked with such exhilarating emotions as thrilled the hearts of some of the passengers who then and there exchanged ship for shore. Yet their delight was not the joy of reunion with home and friends, nor the cheerful expectancy of the adventurous upon reaching a long-sought land of promise, nor the fresh sensation of the inexperienced when first beholding a new country; it was the relief of enfranchised men, the rapture of devotees of freedom, loosened from a thrall, escaped from surveillance, and breathing, after years of captivity, the air where liberty is law, and self-government the basis of civic life. These were exiles; but the bitterness of that lot was forgotten, at the moment, in the proud consciousness of having incurred it through allegiance to freedom, and being destined to endure it in a consecrated asylum. In that air, when first respired, on that soil, when first trod, they were unconscious of the lot of strangers: for there the vigilant eye of despotism ceased to watch their steps; prudence checked no more the expression of honest thought or high aspiration; manhood resumed its erect port, mind its spontaneous vigor; nor did many moments pass ere friendly hands were extended, and kindly voices heard, and domestic retreats thrown open. Their welfare had been commended to generous hearts; and the simple facts of their previous history won them respectful sympathy and cordial greeting.

Prominent amid the excited group was a tall, well-knit figure, whose high, square brow, benign smile, and frank earnestness bespoke a man of moral energy, vigorous intellect, and warm, candid, tender soul. Traces of suffering, of thought, of stern purpose were, indeed, apparent; but with and above them, the ingenuousness and the glow of a brave and ardent man. This was ELEUTARIO FELICE FORESTI,—subsequently, and for years, the favorite professor of his beautiful native language and literature in New York,—the favorite guest and the cherished friend in her most cultivated homes and among her best citizens,—the Italian patriot, which title he vindicated by consistency, self-respect, and the most genial qualities. The vocation he adopted, because of its availability, only served to make apparent comprehensive endowments and an independent spirit; the lady with whom he read Tasso, beside the chivalrous music of the "Jerusalem Delivered," learned to appreciate modern knighthood; and the scholar to whom he expounded Dante, from the political chart of the Middle Ages, turned to an incarnation of existent patriotism. Not only by the arguments of Gioberti, the graphic pictures of Manzoni, and the terse pathos of Leopardi, did he illustrate what Italy boasts of later genius; but through his own eloquent integrity and magnetic love of her achievements and faith in her destiny. The savings of years of patient toil were sacrificed to the subsistence of his poor countrymen who came hither after bravely fighting at Rome, Venice, Milan, and Novara, to have their fruits of victory treacherously gathered by aliens. Infirmity, consequent upon early privation and the unhealed wounds of long-worn chains, laid the stalwart frame of the brave and generous exile on a bed of pain. He uttered no complaint, and whispered not of the fear which no courage can quell in high natures, that of losing "the glorious privilege of being independent": yet his American friends must have surmised the truth; for, one day, he received a letter stating that a sum, fully adequate for two years' support, remained to his credit on the books of a merchant,—one of those mysterious provisions, such as once redeemed a note of Henry Clay's, and of which no explanation can be given, except that "it is a way they have" among the merchant princes of New York. By a providential coincidence, surgical skill, at this juncture, essentially improved his physical condition; but it became indispensable, at the same time, that he should exchange our rigorous clime for one more congenial; and he sailed five years ago for Italy, taking up his residence in Piedmont, where dwell so many of the eminent adherents of the cause he loved, and where the institutions, polity, and social life include so many elements of progress and of faith. It was now that those who knew him best, including some of the leading citizens of his adopted city, applied to the Executive for his appointment as United States Consul at Genoa. There was a singular propriety in the request. Having passed and honored the ordeal of American citizenship, and being then a popular resident of the city which gave birth to the discoverer of this continent,—familiar with our institutions, and endeared to so many of the wise and brave in America and Italy,—illustrious through suffering, a veteran disciple and martyr of freedom,—he was eminently a representative man, whom freemen should delight to honor; and while it then gratified our sense of the appropriate that this distinction and resource should cheer his declining years, we are impelled, now that death has canonized misfortune and integrity, to avail ourselves of the occasion to rehearse the incidents and revive the lessons of his life.1

Underlying the external apathy and apparently frivolous life of the Italian peninsula, there has ever been a resolute, clear, earnest patriotism, fed in the scholar by memories of past glory, in the peasant by intense local attachment, and kindled from time to time in all by the reaction of gross wrongs and moral privations. Sometimes in conversation, oftener in secret musing, now in the eloquent outburst of the composer, and now in the adjuration of the poet or the vow of the revolutionist, this latent spirit has found expression. Again and again, spasmodic and abortive émeutes, the calm protest of a D'Azeglio and the fanaticism of an Orsini, sacrifices of property, freedom, and life,—all the more pathetic, because to human vision useless,—have made known to the oppressor the writhings of the oppressed, and to the world the arbitrary rule which conceals injustice by imposing silence. The indirect, but most emphatic utterance of this deep, latent self-respect of the nation we find in Alfieri, whose stern muse revived the terse energy of Dante; and in our own day, this identical inspiration fired the melancholy verse of Leopardi, the letters of Foscolo, the novels of Guerrazzi, and the tender melody of Bellini. Recent literature has exhibited the conditions under which Italian Liberals strive, and the method of expiating their self-devotion. The novels of Ruffini, the letters of the Countess d'Ossoli, the rhetoric of Gavazzi, and the parliamentary reports of Gladstone, the leading reviews, the daily journals, intercourse with political refugees, and the personal observations of travel, have, more or less definitely, caused the problem called the "Italian Question" to come nearer to our sympathies than any other European exigency apart from practical interests. Moreover, the complicated and dubious aspect of the subject, viewed by transatlantic eyes, has, within the last ten years, been in a great measure dispelled by experimental facts. That Italy needs chiefly to be let alone, to achieve independence and realize a noble development, civic, economical, and social, every intelligent traveller who crosses the Austrian frontier and enters the Sardinian state, knows.

A greater contrast, as regards productive industry, intellectual enterprise, religious progress, comfort, and happiness, no adjacent countries ever exhibited; constitutional freedom, an unrestricted press, toleration, and public education on the one hand, and foreign bayonets, espionage, and priestcraft on the other, explain the anomaly. In Venice the very trophies of national life are labelled in a foreign tongue, the caffès of Milan resound with Teutonic gutturals, and under the arcades of Bologna every other face wears the yellow beard of the North; yet the family portraits in the vast palace-chambers, the eyes and dialect of the people, the monumental inscriptions, announce an indigenous and superseded race; their industry, civil rights, property, and free expression in art, literature, and even speech, being forcibly and systematically repressed: while in the mountains of Savoy, the streets of Turin, and the harbor of Genoa, the stir and zest, the productiveness, and the felicity of national life greet the senses and gladden the soul. Statistics evidence what observation hints; Cavour wins the respect of Europe; D'Azeglio illustrates the inspiration which liberty yields to genius; journalism ventilates political rancor; debate neutralizes aggressive prejudice; physical resources become available; talent finds scope, character self-assertion; Protestantism builds altars, patriotism shrines; and genuine Italian nationality has a vital existence so palpably reproachful of circumjacent stagnation, ruin, and wrong, that no laws or material force can interpose a permanent obstacle to its indefinite extension and salutary reign.

In his first youth, Foresti imbibed the creative spirit breathed into the social and civic life of Italy by Napoleon's victories and administration; it was at that vivid epoch when the military, political, artistic, and literary talent of the land, so long repressed and thwarted by superstition and despotism, broke forth, that his studies were achieved. We have only to compare what was done, thought, and felt in the Peninsula, during the ten years between the coronation of Bonaparte at Milan and his overthrow at Waterloo, with the subsequent dearth of national triumphs in every sphere, and with the inert, apprehensive, baffled existence of the Italians in the grasp of reinstated and reinforced imbecile, yet tyrannic governments, to appreciate the feelings of a young, well-born, gifted citizen, when suddenly checked in a liberal and progressive career, and remanded, as it were, from the bracing atmosphere of modern civilization and enlightened activity, to the passive, silent endurance of obsolete feudalism. It was the inevitable and deliberate protest against this wicked and absurd reaction which gave birth to the political organization of the Carbonari; wherein the noblest men and the wisest princes of that day enrolled themselves; and the inefficiency of whose far-reaching, secret, and solemn aims can be accounted for only by the fatal error of trusting in the magnanimity of an order born to hereditary power, and overlooking, in their municipal fraternities, the vast importance of the more scattered, but not less capable and patriotic agricultural class.

Foresti was born at Conselice in the Ferrarese. Few American travellers linger in Ferrara. Fresh from the more imposing attractions of Florence or Venice, this ancient Italian city offers little in comparison to detain the eager pilgrim; and yet to one cognizant of its history and alive to imaginative associations, this neglect might increase the charm of a brief sojourn. It is pleasant to explore the less hackneyed stories of history and tradition, to enjoy an isolated scene fraught with grand or tender sentiment, to turn aside from the trampled highway and the crowded resort, to listen to some plaintive whisper from the Past amid the deserted memorials of its glory and grief. Such a place is Ferrara. The broad and regular streets and the massive palaces emphatically declare its former splendor; and its actual decadence is no less manifest in the grass-grown pavement of the one and the crumbling and dreary aspect of the other. It requires no small effort of fancy, as we walk through some deserted by-way, wherein our footsteps echo audibly at noonday, to realize that this was the splendid arena where the House of Este so long held sway, limited in extent, but in its palmy days the centre of a brilliant court, a famous school of pictorial art, the seat of a university whose fame drew scholars from distant Britain, and whose ducal family gave birth to the Brunswick dynasty, whence descended the royalty of England. The city dates its origin from the fifth century, when its marshy site gave refuge from the pursuing Huns, and the ambition of its rulers gradually concentrated around the unpromising domain those elements of ecclesiastical prestige, knightly valor, artistic and literary resources which enriched and signalized the Italian cities of the Middle Ages. Enlightened, though capricious patronage made this halting-place between Bologna and Venice, Padua and Rome, the nucleus of talent, enterprise, and diplomacy, the fruits whereof are permanent. But there are two hallowed associations which in a remarkable degree consecrated Ferrara and endeared her to the memory of later generations: she gave an asylum to the persecuted Christian Reformers, and was the home and haunt of poets. It is this recollection which stays the feet and warms the heart of the transatlantic visitor, as he roams at twilight around the venerable castle "flanked with towers," traces the dim fresco in a church Giotto decorated, reads "Parisina" in Byron's paraphrase near the dungeons where she and her lover were slain, or gazes with mingled curiosity and love on the chirography of St. Chrysostom, the original manuscripts of Tasso, Ariosto, and Guarini, or the inscription of Victor Alfieri in the Studio Publico. It is because Calvin was here sheltered, and Olympia Morata found sympathy and respect,—because the author of "Jerusalem Delivered" here loved, triumphed, and despaired, and the author of the "Orlando Furioso" so assiduously labored for his orphaned family, the exacting Cardinal Ippolito, and the cause of learning, and strung a lyre which has for centuries vibrated in the popular heart and fancy,—because, in a word, Ferrara contains the prison of Tasso, and the home of Ariosto, who called her "città bene avventurosa," as did Tassoni the "gran donna del Po,"—that the desolate old city is revived to the imagination, with its hundred thousand people, its gay courtiers and brave knights, the romance of its feats of minstrelsy and arms whereat noble beauties and immortal bards assisted, and Art, Chivalry, Learning, Church, and State held festival with the Muses to adorn and perpetuate the transient pageant, the loveliness, and the rule,—otherwise since consigned to the monotonous record of vanished pomp and arbitrary sway.

When Napoleon fell, Foresti was a student at the University of Bologna, whence he returned to his native capital, after obtaining the degree of Doctor of Laws. His earliest forensic labors, like those of our young advocates, were in the defence of accused criminals; and, limited as is this sphere, he must have displayed unusual maturity of judgment and natural eloquence, to have received successively the eminent appointments of Provisory Assistant Judge in the Court of Justice of Ferrara, Supplementary Professor of Eloquence and Belles Lettres in the Lyceum, and Judge of the Peace, by virtue of which latter office he crossed the Po to practise at Polesino,—wisely preferring the Austrian to the Papal jurisdiction. In Crespino, in the province of Rovigo, in the Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom, Foresti was made Praetor under the Emperor's warrant. Coincident with this recognition of his judicial knowledge and skill, was a kindred appreciation on the part of his liberal and patriotic countrymen; they beheld in the vigorous and disciplined mind and generous heart of Foresti, in his civic wisdom and courage, the representative and ally they sought in this portion of their beautiful and unhappy land. To disseminate the principles and secure the cooperation of Venice became the special office of the Carbonari leaders of Ferrara, and they had only to reveal the high and holy object they cherished, to one who so well knew the wants and woes of his country as Foresti, to enlist his adventurous sympathy. The delicate and difficult mission, fraught with the dearest prospects of Italy, was nearly consummated, when a treacherous colleague revealed to the accredited agents both of Austria and the Pope the system of this mysterious revolutionary combination in and around Ferrara. The latter shrank from extreme measures, and was content with an oath of retraction; but the Austrian government gave instant orders to the chiefs of police, both there and at Venice, to arrest those whom the perjured Count Villa named as adherents of Carbonarism. The decree was executed with military force; and, without warning, preparation, or even a parting interview with their families and friends, the suspected were hurried off to the Piombi, that Venetian prison so graphically described by Pellico. All correspondence and personal intercourse was denied. Meantime, an ingenious and persevering investigation went on, to ascertain the scope of the enterprise thus summarily baffled, the means proposed, and the individuals implicated. To complicate still further the situation of the victims, in other quarters the flame they had secretly fed burst forth conspicuously; Naples and Piedmont were in arms; and Austria conceived an alarming idea of the national spirit she had partially contravened. The rigor of espionage towards the imprisoned and their friends increased; the prosecution was insidiously prolonged; privation and solitude, vigilance and suspense were made instruments for subduing the resolution and invading the confidence of the captives; they pined in desolation, ignorant of their fate, uninformed of the welfare of those most dear to them, without resources of defence or consolation, except what the strength of individual character yields; physically weakened, morally isolated; sometimes roused from sleep and bewildered with questions; at other times told they were to die, that some companion had confessed, or that some loved one had ceased to exist;—and all these crises of feeling and anxiety, of surprise and despair, induced with a fiendish deliberation, to startle honor into self-betrayal, wring from exhausted Nature what conscious rectitude would not divulge, or agonize human love into inadvertent disloyalty.

At length their fate was decided. Foresti's companion in prison was the son of a judge of Ferrara; and, one November midnight, their conversation was interrupted by the unexpected entrance of the jailer, who bade Foresti follow him. The hour and the manner of the official convinced both him and his comrade that his sacrifice was resolved upon; they embraced, and he left the cell to find himself strictly guarded by six soldiers. This nocturnal procession marched silently through the vast, lonely, and magnificent rooms of the Ducal Palace to the door which leads to the Bridge of Sighs: it was the old road to destruction,—the mysterious process, made familiar by novelists and poets, by which the ancient and sinister republic made more fearful the vengeance of government. As the unfortunate youth passed through a labyrinth of gloomy corridors, he recognized the haunts of the ancient Inquisition; the atmosphere was clogged with damp; moisture dripped from the stones. A dungeon, lighted only by a lamp suspended from the vault, and narrow, humid, and unfurnished, except with a pile of straw and a rude table, proved the dreary goal of their heavy steps. Left to his own reflections, Foresti contemplated his prospects with deliberate anguish; that he had been found guilty was apparent; if the fact of his direct agency in initiating the oath of self-emancipation, the sacred compact of national self-assertion in the Austrian dominions, had transpired, he felt that his prominence as a judicial officer, and the firmness with which he had refused to explain the purposes or betray the associates of this memorable league, made him the most probable victim of extreme measures, should one be chosen from the Carbonari of Ferrara. At that period of his life he entertained the opinion that suicide was justifiable to avoid an ignominious death at the hands of arbitrary power. Believing his fate sealed, he gave a few moments of tender reminiscence to his dead mother and his living father and sisters, to the dreams of his youth, and the patriotic aspirations to which he was about to fall a sacrifice. The jailer returned, bringing a book and a bottle of wine, for which he had asked; a few tears were shed, a prayer for forgiveness breathed, and then he plunged a knife into his breast; the blade broke; he shattered the bottle at his side and swallowed the fragments, and then fell bleeding and exhausted on the straw. If left long alone, life would have ebbed away; but, probably in anticipation of such a catastrophe, the officer ere many hours revisited the cell to put chains upon the prisoner. Discovering his condition, a surgeon was called, remedies were applied, and two Austrian sentinels carried Foresti into the presence of the judge. It was scarcely dawn; the venerable and courteous, but inflexible representative of the Emperor expressed solicitude and sympathy; a secretary and physician, with the guard and their prisoner, confronted each other by the dim light of two candles. Irritated by the conventional politeness of this arbiter of his destiny at such a crisis, having vainly sought death, and bitterly conscious of the long outrages perpetrated under the name of justice, Foresti burst forth into stern invectives, and boldly declared his liberal sentiments, his allegiance to the principles for the sake of which he thus suffered, and his absolute enmity to the usurpers of his country's freedom. The Cavalier Mazzetti treated this overflow of emotion as the ebullition of a youthful mind, romantic and intrepid, but unreasonable; he professed the sincerest pity for so gifted and brave a youth, lamented his delusion, painted in emphatic words his want of gratitude and allegiance, treated his political creed and organization as chimerical, and wound up by informing Foresti that he was condemned to die on the public square of Venice, and that nothing would save him but a complete revelation of the true plan, arrangements, and members of the secret conclave to which he belonged. Threats and blandishments failed to move the prisoner; he was silent, accepted his doom, and was remanded with two allies,—one of whom purchased a remission by treason to his vows. Such was the climax of two dreary years of imprisonment, aggravated by ingenious moral torture.

If the modern history of liberty is written by a comprehensive humanitarian, he will not look exclusively to the battle-field for picturesque and impressive tableaux; in that record most signally will it appear that "the angel of martyrdom is brother to the angel of victory"; and among the memorable scenes which an earnest chronicler will delineate with noble pathos, few can exceed in moral interest that which the Piazza of San Marco, at Venice, presented on Christmas Eve, 1821. There is not a spot in Europe, within the limits of a city, more distinctly remembered by the transatlantic traveller,—the only spacious area of solid ground under the open sky, in that marvellous old city of the sea,—the gay centre of a recreative population, where the costumes and physiognomies of the Orient and the West mingle in dramatic contrast,—the nucleus of historical and romantic associations, singularly domesticated in two hemispheres by the household lore of Shakspeare and Otway, Byron and Rogers, Cooper and Ruskin. The ancient temple of St. Mark, the bronze horses of Lysippus, the arched galleries of the Palace, the waters of the Adriatic, the firmament above, and the stones beneath seem instinct with the fame of commercial grandeur, maritime triumphs, and diplomatic prowess; the cheerful arcades that shade the caffès remind us of the "harmless comedy of life" which Goldoni recorded; the flush of sunset on dome, balcony, and canal seems warm with the peerless tints which Titian here caught and transmitted; the crowd of pleasure-seekers recall the music, love, and chivalry, of which this was once the splendid centre; while the shadow of a dark façade whispers of the mysterious oligarchy, the anonymous accusers, the secret council, and the venerable Doge;—a more remarkable union of gloom and gayety, of romance and reality, of the beautiful and the tragic, directly suggested by inevitable local associations, cannot be found in the whole range of European travel. Imagine this memorable square, on the afternoon of a great Christmas festival;—fair faces at every window,—the adjacent roofs crowded with spectators,—an Austrian regiment drawn up around a scaffold,—the Viceroy, brother of the Emperor, standing in the large balcony of the Palace,—two cannon placed between the columns of San Marco and San Teodoro,—every inch of the vast Piazza, without the circle of soldiery, occupied by eager spectators. Over this vast assemblage, amid the impending thoughts which the incidents of the hour and the memory of the Past inspired, reigned a profound silence; no laugh or jest, such as bespeaks a holiday, no heartless curiosity, such as accompanies a mere public show, no vulgar excitement was evident; on many faces dwelt an expression of awe and pity,—on others an indignant frown,—on all painful and sympathetic expectancy. Every class was represented, from the swarthy fishermen of the lagoons to the dark-eyed countess of the Palazzo,—pale students, venerable citizens, the shopkeeper and the marquis, the priest and the advocate. It was not merely the fate of the few prisoners on the scaffold, deep as was the public sympathy, which occasioned this profound suspense; they represented the national cause, and in every city of the land there were scores of the bravest and the best equally involved in the patriotic sacrifice, and whose destiny had, for long and weary months, agonized their relations, friends, and countrymen. The anomalous tyranny under which the nation had collapsed was demonstrated not so much by the outward aspect as by the moral facts of that fatal day in the Piazza of San Marco. On the scaffold were a group of educated, courageous, honest Italians, guarded by Austrian soldiers and overlooked by the official representative of imperial despotism; their attitude was criminal, their acts sublime; ostensibly condemned, they were in reality glorified. Not a being in that vast multitude, except the official creatures of Austria, but gazed with respect, love, sorrow, pride, tenderness, and admiration upon her noble victims; it was the apparent triumph of physical force, and the actual realization of moral superiority: the silence of that multitude was the eloquent protest of humanity.