Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859

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THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. IV.--NOVEMBER, 1859.--NO. XXV.

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]

[Footnote 1: It is to be lamented that Foresti had not anticipated our
purpose with that consecutive detail possible only in an autobiography.
"_Le Scene del Carcere Duro in Austria_," writes the Marquis
Pallavicino, "non sono ancora la storia del Ventuno. Un uomo potrebbe
scriverla e svelare molte infamie tuttavia occulte del governo
Austriaco. Quest' uomo e Felice Foresti. Il quale abbandono gli agi
Americani per combattere un' altra volta, guerriero canuto, le gloriose
battaglie dell' Italico risorgimento. Il martire scriva: e la sua
penna, come quella d' un altro martire,--Silvio Pellico,--sara una
spada nel cuoro dell' Austria."--Notes to _Spielbergo e Gradisca_.]

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 _emeutes_, 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 _caffes_ 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 "_citta 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 _caffes_ 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 _facade_ 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.

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