cause. 66 among the first martyrs in his country's "On the 21st," wrote a friend from Palermo, one of our columns, "headed by the gallant and generous "Rosolino Pilo, had, at S. Martino, a "fierce encounter with the royalists: "the Sicilians were few; still they "fought valiantly-Pilo foremost; but "through his ardent nature, and full of "noble courage, he exposed himself to "the last; and the last shot of the "royalists wounded him mortally. The "loss of this man is a great misfortune "for the Sicilians." Garibaldi's expedition was entirely the work of patriots, who acted independently of any assistance or favour from the government. Money, arms, ammunition, were provided by means of popular contributions; and, at the end, from the funds raised, in the name of Garibaldi, for "Il Milione di Fucili," though not without difficulty, owing to official control on the money thus collected. Garibaldi has been and is also not indifferently helped by private subscriptions in England, from different quarters, with a unanimity which is the highest testimonial to the noble devotion of his glorious enterprise. Men of democratic principles, as Bixio, Sirtori,1 Savi, the editor of the Unità Italiana of Genoa, Mosto, the 1 Giuseppe Sirtori was originally a priest. He is a Lombard. At an early age he became convinced of the falsehood of Roman Catholicism, and then, consistently with the sincerity of his conscience, gave up the priestly office. But deeply religious at heart, he turned to the cause of the moral and national regeneration of his country that spirit of devotion which he would have given to the Church if true to its mission. Thus he became a soldier of liberty and independence. In '49, during the siege of Venice, his perfect calmness in the very face of death made him an object of admiration to his soldiers. He commanded there the battalion of Lombard volunteers. During the exile, he applied himself with assiduity to military studies, preparing himself for the expected national wars. He is now one of the most able officers of Garibaldi, and the chief of his staff. He was slightly wounded at Calata Fimi. La Masa is a Sicilian, who took a prominent part in the insurrection of Palermo in '48; Orsini, a Sicilian also, a very experienced officer, and an exile since '49. leader of those "Cacciatori Genovesi" who did wonders of courage and were decimated at Calata Fimi; Orsini and La Masa, both Sicilians, and many others like them, joined as brothers in the same patriotic work with persons of the highest nobility. Lads of aristocratic families, as well as of humble extraction, inspired from their childhood with the love of their country by their own parents, have abandoned their homes to fight for Italy, writing, on their departure, the most touching letters, full of a deep sense of duty, to soften their mothers' grief. You see in all this the symptoms of the resurrection of a country, the youthfulness of a race, which, though trampled down for centuries, has in itself the seeds of a noble future. The success of the Sicilian revolution, under the leadership of Garibaldi and his companions, will necessarily lead to the re-opening of the whole Italian question. The news from the peninsula seem already to point to the spreading of the revolution in the continental portion of the kingdom as unavoidable. The party which desires national unity has greatly increased even at Naples the most distinguished minds of the kingdom (the greater number of them in exile) have declared for annexation. Many of them form now part of the Italian Parliament at Turin ; and they will not easily be induced to renounce their independent constitutional position, to venture their freedom and life under a sham-constitution granted, through compulsion, by the descendant and imitator of a series of sovereigns who have repeatedly broken through all constitutional securities, and laid violent hand on the representatives of the country in the very sanctuary of their parliamentary functions. The army itself, worked upon by patriotic ideas, will not long resist the call of the nation. All these circumstances exercise a deep influence on the subjects of Francis II.; whilst on the other side the Italians know well that a separate dynasty in the south of the peninsula will never be a faithful ally to the rest of the country. Diplomacy may delay, but will not be able to prevent, the formation of a united Italy. Will force then be used? We hope that no European power will commit itself to such a course; we trust that England will efficiently back with its moral influence the cause of the Italian nation. Any interference would lead not only to a regress in Italian affairs which, sooner or later, the Italians would retrieve by revolution; but it would also create a complication of a serious nature as regards the interests of the naval powers in the Mediterranean. Let Sicily solve the question of her destinies by her own free vote; let the principle of non-intervention be fairly applied to the progressive development of Italian nationality, and, if national unity should be the result, let the world acknowledge and welcome the event. Europe requires a redistribution of sea. her forces, a new law of equilibrium conformable to national exigencies, as a condition of peace and improvement. Italy free, independent, united, within the limits of her Alps, will help in keeping France and Germany at peace; she will naturally co-operate with England in preserving the freedom of the Geography, experience of past errors, and social condition appoint the Italian nation to a pacific mission in Europe. But let, above all, the Italians of all parties earnestly act for themselves, with energy and comprehensiveness equal to the great task they have in hand. Let them be convinced that any division in the camp is fatal, that all political and personal antagonisms must be waived in presence of their country's cause, and that if they manfully rely on their own action and on the justice of their cause, Italy is theirs. THE BOOT. FROM THE ITALIAN OF GIUSEPPE GIUSTI. WHEN Giusti wrote the poem of which we here offer a translation, a quarter of a century back, Italy was in the apprehension of most minds a geographical expression, and nothing more. That unique physical configuration of the peninsula, which has arrested the attention of every boy or girl who has ever studied a map of Europe since maps were first correctly drawn, was the sole tangible "unity of Italy in which anybody north of the Alps could then profess a belief, without laying himself open to the imputation of being a mere political enthusiast and dreamer. The undeniable resemblance to the shape of a boot is the basis upon which Giusti built this poem. It was natural for a poet, whose every line was written with the view of awakening among his countrymen that strength of feeling and purpose which alone might enable them to restore Italy to the rank of a free nation, to take hold in some shape or other of a permanent fact, which neither native municipal jealousy, local tyranny, nor foreign contempt or repression, could contradict or do away with. The Boot, with its strong hem or fringe of Alps at top, and its broad seam of Apennine down the middle-coinciding in its extent with the spoken Italian language-was a symbol of unity so pointedly at variance with the existing subdivision of despotic principalities, as readily to form a speaking text for a suggestive sermon. The historical fortunes of the poor Boot, as it has been torn and pulled out of its pristine and native compactness by the rapacity of one appropriator after another, until, from being the wonder of the world. as the cradle and centre of the Roman Empire, it has fallen to its patchwork condition of the nineteenth century, shaped themselves in Giusti's mind into a humorous and pointed allegory. It is difficult for those who have lived in a land where freedom of political discussion has been long coextensive with freedom of thought, to appreciate the skill of the irony which, under the censorship of an Austrian police, was at once the most necessary and the most effective weapon of offence and defence for an anonymous writer whom everybody knew. To the subtle apprehension of all among his own countrymen who sympathized with his yearnings for a nobler national life, at a time when such sympathy involved frequent inconvenience, and some danger, Giusti's Boot conveyed a truth and a moral spur in the most forcible manner. At a time when the calm firmness of the attitude taken by the Italians of North and Central Italy has baffled foreign intrigue, falsified the sneer which spoke of "La Terre des Morts," and won for themselves the conditions of a national existence-at a moment when a noble and unselfish heroism is still struggling in the South against enormous odds to give an equal share of liberty to the long-oppressed subjects of the Sicilian kingdom-English readers will not be unready to listen to the utterances of a foreign humour, and to value, as they have been valued by his countrymen, the words of the greatest and most national poet of the present generation of Italians. The particular allusions to different wearers of the Boot will in general be easily understood by readers of Italian history; though one or two of them are rather puzzling. The "German full of bluster," probably refers not so pointedly to any single invader, as to the contests between the German emperors, the great towns, and the Church, at intervals, from Barbarossa to Henry the Seventh. The rise of the Venetian and Genoese republics, the struggles of Charles of Anjou and Peter of Aragon, the Sicilian Vespers, and the magnificent tyranny of the Medici, are in their turn sufficiently indicated. The rivalry between French and Spaniards for the rich prize of Italy, which culminated in the wars of Francis the First and Charles the Fifth, is balanced by a reference to the shameless nepotism of the Popes, repeated in the instances of Bertrand de Poïet, John and Cæsar Borgia, and so many other illegitimate scions of successive Papal families. The misused power and "crooked courses" of the first Napoleon, who might have made Italy free and great in unity, if he had wished to do so, are finely pointed out in the last allusion to the past fortunes of the Boot; and the half-dozen concluding verses are as clear and forcible an exposition of the spirit and policy which are still required for the best solution of the Italian problem as if they had been written in the present year. No foreign interference or usurpation-"no French or German leg, you understand," to fill the Boot, and no French or German bootmaker to manipulate the material, or to fix the pattern! Italy, if left alone-farà da se. I AM not made of ordinary stuff, Nor am I such a boot as rustics wear; Up to mid-thigh I stand, nor ever stir, All stitched compact and firm by vigorous needle, With hem at top, and seam straight down the middle. But then, I'm not drawn on with so much ease, A slender foot I should but lame or tease, To suit the vulgar leg I should not choose: I won't inflict on you the category Of all who've tried to get me for their own, But only here and there, to fit my story, Note such and such, most worthy to be known; Relating how my ruin first was planned, And thieves have passed me down from hand to hand. You'll think it past belief, but once I started Off at full gallop of my own accord, And right across the whole known world I darted, This way and that, and so the matter ended. By a priest's counsel, or a demon's passion; Hither and thither let me out on hire: Firm in me, came a German full of bluster; Those heels were forced their utmost speed to muster: He tried and tried enough to gall his foot, But never yet could pull on all the boot. Left for a century upon the shelf, A simple trader next I'll name who wore me, And o'er the sea to Eastern climates bore me, But something of solidity was lost; And in the long run, finding out the difference, And try to clutch it with his little claw; Among the other foreign dilettanti, A certain King of Spades with all his might Would pull me on-but while he toiled and panted Found himself planté ld in sorry plight; A capon, jealous of the hen-roost, crowed In those same times, my fortune's underminer, Who next, to make me easy to his feet, Of plots and frauds that o'er three centuries spread. He smoothed me, decked me out with tinsel, rubbed Unguents and humbugs in at such a rate, My very leather into holes was scrubbed,. And all who since have meddled with my fate Set about tinkering me by the receipt Of that same school of black and vile deceit. Thus harassed, tossed about from hand to hand, I felt a Frank and Spaniard take their stand, Contending which could prove the stronger arm ; At length Don Quixote bore me off, but found me Crushed out of shape with all the blows around me. Those who beheld me on his foot have told me This Spaniard wore me in most evil style; Still half-way down me grew, in vermeil coloured, But this a shameless Pope, of birth dishonoured To crown a scion of his guilty race. Well, from that moment each one at his will With awl and shears in cobbler-craft might dabble And so from frying-pan to fire I fell; Viceroys, police, and all that sort of rabble, To grind me down struck out a new idea, Et diviserunt vestimenta mea. Thus clutched alternately by paw of famished By stranger legs I would be put in motion, |