Cavour

ion, but this, strangely enough, was the case with Cavour. He was simply a private person, but he was hated by all parties. His writings, which had made their mark abroa

hospitals, but, unless report erred, he was speaking of him to others as the most dangerous man in his kingdom. The degree to which Cavour was hated by the conservatives is shown by one small fact: he was treasurer of an Infant Asylum, but it was thought necessary privately to ask him to retire for the good of the charity, his connection with which set all the higher society against it. The case with the radicals was no better. He belonged to an agricultural association in which Valerio was a leading spirit; one day he asked leave to speak, upon which almost all the members present left the building. On this side, no doubt part of the antipathy arose from the popular feeling against Cavour's father, who still occupied the invidious and ill-defined office of Vicario. No particular ferocity was laid at his door, but he was supposed to serve up all the private affairs of the good Turinese to the king, and if any one got into trouble he was thought to be the cause. When the liberals triumphed, the firs

retired to Leri, as he did not wish it to appear that he meant to embark on public life while the existing political dead-lock lasted. There was only room for conspirators or for those who extended toleration to the régime in force. It is doubtful if anything would have driven Cavour to conspiracy against his own king, and he would have considered it a personal disgrace to be mixed up with the men then in p

mployed his leisure in translating the sublime appeals to national sentiment in the history of the Maccabees, of which, by a curious coincidence, Mazzini once said that it seemed written for Italians. Charles Albert made the mistake of forgetting the age in which he lived. His ancestors fought the stranger without troubling themselves about representative government-why should not he? But his ancestors represented in their own persons the nerve and sinew of the State, its most adventurous spirit, its strongest manhood, whereas Charles Albert represented only the party of reaction which was with him in his absolutism but not in his patriotism. He was accused o

e first surrender the wavering mind of the king would make retrogression probable; he understood that, if reforms were more difficult to obtain in Piedmont than elsewhere, they would be more durable when obtained. At last a concession of real value was wrung from the king: the censure was revoked. Cavour saw that the press, which till then had been a cipher, would instantly become of vast importance. He left his retirement to found a newspaper, to which he gave the name by which the Italian movement will

ly from foreign yoke before all things-to Gioberti's mystical outpourings, much as they pleased the general. Gioberti, once a follower of Mazzini, and afterwards a priest, imagined a United Italy, with the Pope at its head, w

est names in the country; it would be difficult to find more distinguished or disinterested pressmen than those who were then writing for the Piedmontese newspapers. Valerio was there to represent his new journal, Concordia, in which he carried on war to the knife with Cavour. His high personal character, as well as his talents, made him no inconsiderable opponent. It was at this meeting that Cavour first entirely revealed himself. He showed that faith in the prudence of daring which was the keynote to his gre

Most politicians begin by asking for more or less than the measure which finally contents them; those who cried for a republic have been known to put up with a limited monarchy; those who preached the most moderate reforms, at a later stage have danced round trees of liberty. Cavour asked at once for what he wanted and all that he wanted as far as the internal organisati

est patriot and the writer of charming poems in the Piedmontese dialect, which gave him a great popularity. Brofferio was an ultra-democrat, but he was no party man, and he had the courage to walk over to the unpopular editor of the Risorgimento with the remark, "I shall always be with those who ask the most." Valerio made no secret among his private friends of the real reasons of his conduct. What was the good of wasting efforts on some sort of Englis

x, to govern the country as he found it governed. He called the members of the royal family together and informed them that if there must be a constitution there must, but the decree which bestowed it would be signed by his son. The queen and the Duchess of Savoy, who were both extremely afraid of him, sat in silence; the handsome Duke of Genoa tried to prove that constitutions were not such dreadful things; Victor Emmanuel opposed his intention of abdicating in resolute terms. Then he summoned a high ecclesiastic, who succeeded in convincing him that it would be a greater sin to ab

sat like a statue on his bay horse, upright and impassible. Cavour walked in the company of journalists, and all those who had opposed him a few weeks before were the

stooped a little, and two narrow lines were visible on either side of a mouth, cold and uneffusive; but these lines, by their trembling or contraction, showed the play of inward emotion which the rest of the face concealed. In after days people used to watch them in order to guess his state of mind. It was his large and solid forehead that chiefly gave the idea of power

!" The splendid edifice was on the verge of being nearly ruined, but by timidity-which has lost a score of thrones,-not by audacity. The new Cabinet entered upon their duties on March 16. Two days later occurred an event utterly unforeseen-the rising of Milan against the Austrians. It took them unprepared. They had talked so much about war that perhaps they thought it would happen in the next century. When the "now or never" sounded, which does sound sooner or later in all human affairs, they hesitated or suffered the king to hesitate, which came to the same thing. That Charles Albert stood for one instant in doubt when the hour was come desired by him all his life, as he had often stated, and there is no reason to think untruly, is possibly the most serious stain on his memory. There are moments when to reflect is criminal: a man has no right to reflect when his mother is in a burning house. The reflections which held Charles Albert back were two. He was afraid that the Milan revolution would breed a republic, and he was afraid of England and o

ng resolves, on which hangs the fate of empires, the destinies of peoples. Hesitation, doubt, delay, were no more possible: they could only prove fatal. "We, men of calm minds, accustomed to listen more to the dictates of reason than to the impulses of the heart, after deliberately weighing each word we utter, are bound in conscience to declare that only one path is open to the nation, the government, the ki

omane "Milord Risorgimento" was less surprised at the current of English official thought than were his radical critics, but would any English minister, he asked, enter on a European war to prevent the liberation of Italy, which was an object sacred in the eyes of the mass of the English peo

solution and those who were not. It does not follow that all the liberals wished for a republic, but they would all have taken office under it. Of this there is little doubt. Cavour

ed in a dangerous struggle, but to Lombardy victorious. Cavillers said that the king had come to eat the fruits others had gathered. Confidence in the ultimate result reached the point of madness, but with revolution stalking through the streets of Vienna the Austrian eagle seemed to have lost its talons. In May 1848, in Austria itself, Lombardy was looked upon as completely lost, and with it the Southern Tyrol

on whom Cavour had fixed all his hopes for the future of his name and house. His uncle's last letter of encouragement to do his duty was found on Augusto's body. The blow unnerved Cavour; he was found lying prostrate in an agony of speechless grief. Through

howed, for instance, that in the nineteenth century a free and independent Italy under the hegemony of the Pope belonged to political mythology. Here was a Pope who was, at heart, patriotic, but who drew back at the crucial moment, precisely as Mazzini (almost alone) had predicted. The first threat of a schism was enough to make him wear du

first college of Turin. He did not make an immediate impression; his short stature, and still more the imperfect accent with which he spoke Italian, were not in his favour. French was allowed in the Sardinian Chamber, but Cavour never opened his lips in it in Parliament. By degrees his speeches became marvels of close reasoning, and they even soared, sometimes, when he was deeply moved, into a kind of eloquence superior to that of rh

ly supported by it (an assertion as true now as then). The king threw himself into the arms of demagogues who thought that freedom and independence were to be won by phrases and proclamations. The army had been disheartened, the best officers kept inactive; twelve months' sacrifices of men and money placed them in a worse condition than before the Milan revolution. Self-love m

ly thing to save the country and to lay the foundations of Italian unity. The king was more eager for war than the most unthinking democrat. Reviled by all parties, he sought the great conciliator, death

were said to be reactionaries, his brusque manners offended most people. He had practically no advisers in these critical moments, but the moral courage with which he refused the Austrian offers of lenient terms if