but the despatch of the troops irritated Austria, and their subsequent participation in the campaign gave her a pretext, of which she took advantage, to again invade the States of the Church and enter Bologna.

The natural and immediate consequence of the allocution was the resignation of the ministry of March 10. Then followed the feeble administrations of Mamiani and Fabbri, and, finally, in September, the reins of power were entrusted to Count Pellegrino Rossi, who united in his own person the Treasury and the Ministry of the Interior.

Rossi was not a Roman, having been born at Carrara. At Bologna, where he studied, he followed the profession of the law, until, in 1815, the part which he played in Murat's ambitious designs upon the crown of Italy drove him into exile at Geneva. There he filled the chair of Roman law, took an active part in Swiss politics, and drafted a new federal constitution, which, although not accepted, formed the basis of the constitution as eventually revised. Thence

he passed to France, became professor of political economy, and afterwards of constitutional law in the College of France, until M. Guizot sent him as envoy to the Pope in 1845, entrusting him with negotiations for the suppression of the Jesuits in France.

Such had been the distinguished career of the statesman who now took up the difficult, if not impossible, task. Then, as now, the troubles of Italy were fully as much administrative as political, and Rossi at once turned his energies to administrative reform by suppressing the Ministry of Police, and uniting its functions to those of his own office. He was the stamp of man who in different and quieter times might have proved the Stein of Italy. Among his measures were reform of the army; discipline and purification of the public offices; financial reforms so conceived as to gradually curb the power of the ecclesiastics by throwing upon them a fair share of taxation; even a scheme for the relief of the exchequer out of their huge properties; suppression of the sanguinary conflicts between Gregoriani' and 'Piani,' and the restoration of order in the streets, and extermination of brigandage in the country, by the formation of a numerous corps of gendarmes.

All these things were good in themselves, but almost all were untimely. They only increased the general dislike of Rossi, already aroused by his non-Roman origin, by his former service under Louis Philippe, by the reserve and cold aloofness of his manner, and by the contempt which he

too plainly showed for clerical obscurantists and blatant demagogues alike. He offended vested interests of every kind. His policy in Church matters found few supporters besides the Pope himself, whose personal confidence he enjoyed. His Protestant wife; his earlier works, which were on the Index; his threatening attitude towards ecclesiastical immunities, earned for him the hatred of the Ultramontanes, while the inflexibility of his Liberal-Conservative opinions, and his frank support of the Papacy as the one good thing left to Italy,' ensured the hostility of the Radicals. In marked contrast to his predecessors, who had fawned upon the mob, Rossi launched scathing sarcasms at the demagogues, who fancied that, in his efforts to purify and strengthen administration, he was aiming at the restoration of absolutism, and his Jesuit enemies for their own purposes inflamed these suspicions.

There was a general sense that a crisis was approaching when the chambers reopened on November 15. Rossi had been warned that his life was in danger, but his proud courage flinched not. As he descended from his carriage at the entrance of the Palazzo della Cancelleria, he is said to have returned the menacing looks and groans of the crowd with a glance of withering contempt. But, as he was proceeding to mount the staircase, a sudden stab in the throat from an unknown hand laid him low. Thus died foully an aristocrat in soul, a Liberal by conviction, while the mean and jealous deputies within feigned to treat the death of the too superior foreigner' as a matter of no consequence. What is all this fuss about?' exclaimed the Prince of Canino; is it the King of Rome that is dead?' Sturbinetti, the President, proceeded to open the session without the slightest allusion to the tragedy, and the sitting was adjourned only because there was not the necessary quorum of members present.

Who assassinated Pellegrino Rossi?' was for many years a political rather than a criminal question.' The net result of recent researches, the latest of which are subsequent to the publication of any of the three books under review, seems to prove that the hand which struck the blow was the hand of Ciceruacchio's son, Luigi Brunetti; that the murder was planned by several conspirators, of whom Sterbini was probably one, while the number of those who knew of the plot beforehand must have been considerable.

The fatal consequences of this, the vilest indeed, the only very vile-deed that blots the fair fame of the Liberals

of 1848, were obscured for a time by the shortlived brilliancy of the Republic. The immediate result of the assassination was to throw Pius completely into the power of his most bigoted advisers. On the night of November 24, disguised as a simple priest, he fled to Gaeta, where he put himself under the protection of Ferdinand of Naples. The Pope's flight left Rome entirely in the hands of the Radicals. A constituent assembly was elected, which met on February 5, 1849, and, after four days' debate, decreed the abolition of the temporal power, proclaiming pure democracy as the form of government with the glorious name of Roman Republic.'

Foreign intervention was, of course, a foregone conclusion. That France, and not Austria, took the decisive action was the result of the vicissitudes of French politics, and of the personality of Louis Napoleon, but the quarter from which intervention came stamped upon the Roman Question the special impress which it bore until the year 1870, and was fraught with infinite consequences for the future of Italy. We cannot follow the fortunes of the Republic during her forlorn struggle with the power of France. But we may ask whether such a form of polity could have permanently satisfied the needs of Rome. Could it have continued to preserve order, to manage the finances honestly, to avoid Jacobin excesses? Who shall say? We only know that the defence was heroic. The Rome of Mazzini and Garibaldi was not unworthy in her fall of the Rome of the Scipios and the Gracchi,

'her soldiers fighting to the last extremity, her people vying with each other in maintaining the glorious but unequal struggle, her rulers firmly rejecting every dishonourable compromise or proposal, and as firmly declaring that Italians, and Italians only, had a right to decide what should or should not be the government under which they would live. Assuredly such men are rightly held to have deserved well of their country."

Space forbids us to touch upon the events of 1848 in Tuscany or the minor States. With greater reluctance we must turn away from the Sicilian Revolution, which derives a certain incidental interest for us, at the end of the century, from the fact that one of its chief organisers, Francesco Crispi, still lives. It was there, in his native island, and at that time, that Crispi's strong individuality began to affect the course of the fortunes of Italy.

The first rising to break out, and perhaps with the most adequate cause, was that of Palermo on January 12. It was

the spark which set half Europe ablaze. Had the British Government, which fully sympathised with the Sicilians, been willing to risk a single ship, instead of confining itself to purely platonic friendship, Sicily might then have permanently won her liberty and her independence. That she did not was well for Italy, which would now have lacked the most precious jewel in her crown. Whether it was equally well for Sicily is open to grave doubt.

Long after the stubborn islanders had succumbed to the royal forces, and for nearly two months after the fall of Rome, the flag of Italian freedom still floated over Venice. Venice, the pauperised,' to quote Mr. King, 'Venice, the 'careless, the self-indulgent, had redeemed herself by a defence of patient heroism, that won for her the admiration of Europe.' She owed her hour of strength to one great man. To-day the name of Daniele Manin is not, even in Italy, so universally familiar as those of some other heroes of the revolution. His career was short, his stage less conspicuous, his opportunities limited. Nevertheless he towers head and shoulders above all the men of '48 for singleness of aim, for daring courage of purpose and execution, for the winning but fearless frankness, which rouses and sways a fickle multitude, yet remains its master. I 'know that you love me,' he once told those Venetians who knew him as their father,' 'I know that you love me, and by that love I command order.' For disorder he had an 'instinctive repulsion, as for a discord or a deformed face.' Without the egotism and intolerance of Mazzini, full of the practical wisdom that was lacking to Garibaldi, endowed with more popular gifts, more power to stir the enthusiasm of the masses than Cavour, he had, in Mr. King's words, 'the rarest gifts of statesmanship; he had all Cavour's 'breadth and accessibility to facts; his conceptions were as 'bold, his economic view, his standard of morality higher. 'Cavour might sway people by their reason, Manin could ' touch their hearts.'

6

Of course Manin was by preference a Republican. What traditions, what force of habit, what associations could turn his thoughts towards monarchy? For what dynasty could he feel the dimmest spark of sentiment? Most of Italy had for centuries been accustomed to the sway of a monarch. Even Tuscany could take pride of a kind in the splendour of her Medicean days, and appreciate the comforts she enjoyed under the mild Lorrainer rule; Genoa herself might forget her independence in a union to the one patriotic Italian

State, but how could a Venetian Nationalist be anything but a Republican at heart? We might as well search for Legitimists at Chicago, or seek enthusiasm for parliamentary institutions among the Cossacks of the Don.

Yet Manin was a statesman as well as a patriot. patriot. He clearly saw the great political truth that all forms of government are but means to an end, τοῦ εὖ ζῆν ἕνεκα --a truth that the scales of party blindness have too often concealed from Legitimist and Radical alike—and with that judicious opportunism which sacrifices the form to gain the substance, he lived to accept the monarchy of the House ' of Savoy, provided that it concurred loyally and efficaciously to make Italy.' 'Make Italy,' he wrote from his Parisian exile to Pallavicino, and we are with you. If not, ' not.' Italy, he recognised, had two living forces-Italian 'public opinion and the Piedmontese army.'

On the 28th of May, 1856, there appeared in the Times' the famous letter in which Manin denounced the theory of 'the dagger.'

There is one great enemy of Italy,' he wrote, 'which the national party must contend against without rest or pause as without mercy, and in that contest it will be supported and seconded by the approbation and applause of the whole of civilised Europe. This great enemy of Italy is the doctrine of political assassination, or, in other terms, the theory of the poniard.

'I will not stop to discuss the morality of the question. I know that there are acute dialecticians who will undertake its defence, and among others, and above all others eminent for the exuberance of their zeal, of their acuteness and their doctrine, the reverend fathers the Jesuits. But I also know, and as a political man this suffices for me, that the feelings of every honest man in Italy and abroad reject, reprove, and abominate such a doctrine, the doctrine of destroying human life by acts of treachery, at any time, in any place, and for any motive whatever.

'The great national party in Italy invites to itself, and hopes to draw to it, the whole of its people who really love their country, and especially the most judicious, the most worthy, and the most respected for the unstained honour of their lives. But these men will never answer to that appeal unless the national party separate itself solemnly, absolutely, and irrevocably from assassins. That absolute separation is necessary to conciliate the sympathies of Europe, and to gain our national cause the respect, the veneration, and the affection which it merits. . . . Our hands must be without stain. Let our purity from crime be the mark which shall distinguish the noble defenders of our country from the suicidal instruments of the enemies of all law. Ours shall be the honourable weapons which become noble and truly

VOL. CXCI. NO. CCCXCII.

EE