FLORENCE AND ITS YOUNG EVANGELISM.
Beauty of Position--Focus of Italian Art--Education on the Aesthetic
Principle--Effects as shown in the Character and Manners of the
Florentines--The result not Civilization, but Barbarism--The
Artizans of Britain surpass the Florentines in Civilization--Early
English Scholars at Florence--Man's Power for
Good--Savonarolo--History of present Religious Movement in
Tuscany--Condition of Tuscan Government and Priesthood prior to
1848--Attempts to introduce Religious Books--The Priests compel the
Government to interfere--The Revolution of 1848--The Bible
translated and seized--Visit of Vaudois Pastors--Secret Religious
Press--Work now carried on by the Converts--Denunciation of DEATH
for Bible Reading--Great Increase of Converts
notwithstanding--Present State and Prospects of Movement--Leave
Florence--Beauty of the Vale of the Arno--Pisa--Arrive at Leghorn.
Of Florence "the Beautiful," I must say that its beauty appeared scarce
equal to its fame. In an age when the capitals of northern Europe were
of wood, the Queen of the Arno may have been without a rival on the
north of the Alps; but now finer streets, handsomer squares, and nobler
facades, may be seen in any of our second-rate towns. But its dome, by
Brunelleschi, the largest in the world,--its tall campanile,--its
baptistry, with its beautiful gates,--and its public statuary,--are
worthy of all admiration. Its environs are superb.
Florence is sweetly embosomed in an amphitheatre of mountains, of the
most lovely forms and the richest and brightest colouring. Castles and
convents crown their summits; while their slopes display the pillar-like
cypress, the gray olive, the festooned vine, with a multitude of
embowered villas. On the north-east, right in the fork of the Apennines,
lie the bosky and wooded dells of Valombrosa. On the north, seated on a
pyramidal hill, is the ancient Fiesole, which the genius of Milton has
touched and immortalized. On the west are the spacious lawns and parks
of the Grand Duke; while the noble valley runs off to the south-west,
carpeted with vines, or covered with chestnut woods, with the Arno
stealing silently through it in long reaches to the sea. During my stay,
the girdling Apennines were tipped with the snows of winter; and when
the sun shone out, they formed a gleaming circlet around the green
valley, like a ring of silver enclosing an enormous emerald. I saw the
sun but seldom, however. The bad weather which had overtaken me amid the
Apennines descended with me into the valley of the Arno; and murky
clouds, with torrents of rain, but too often obscured the sky. But I
could fancy the delicious beauty of a summer eve in Florence, with the
still balmy air enwrapping the purple hills, the tall cypresses, the
domes, and the gently stealing waters. In spring the region must be a
very paradise. Indeed, spring is seldom absent from the banks of the
Arno; for though at times savage Winter is heard growling amid the
Apennines, he dare seldom venture farther than midway down their slopes.
I cannot recall the past glories of Florence, or even touch on Cosmo's
"immortal century;" I cannot speak of its galleries, so rich in
painting, so unrivalled in statuary; nor can I enter its Pitti palace,
with its hanging gardens; or the city churches, with their store of
frescoes and paintings; or its Santa Croce, with its six mighty
tombs,--those even of Dante, Galileo, Machiavelli, Michael Angelo,
Alfieri, Leonardo Aretino. The size of Florence brings all these objects
within a manageable distance; and, during my stay of well-nigh a week, I
visited them, as any one may do, almost every day. But every traveller
has entered largely into their description, and I pass them over, to
touch on other things more rarely brought into view.
Florence is the focus of Italian art; and here, if anywhere, one can see
the effect of educating a population solely on the aesthetic principle.
The Florentines have no books, no reading-rooms, no public lectures, no
preaching in their churches even, bating the occasional harangue of a
monk. They are left to be trained solely by fine pictures and lovely
statues. From these they are expected to learn their duties as men and
as citizens. The sole employment of the people is to produce these
things; their sole study, to be able to admire them. The result is not
civilization, but barbarism. Nor can it well be otherwise. We find the
"beautiful" abundantly in nature, but never dissociated from the
"useful;" teaching us that it cannot be safely sought but in union with
what is true and good; and that we cannot make it "an end" without
reversing the whole constitution of our nature. When a people make the
love of "the beautiful" their predominant passion, they rapidly decline
in the better and nobler qualities. The beautiful yields only enjoyment;
and those who live only to enjoy soon become intensely selfish. That
enjoyment, moreover, is immediate, and so affords no room for the
exercise of patience and foresight. A race of triflers arise, who think
only of the present hour. They are wholly undisciplined in the higher
qualities of mind,--in perseverance and self-control; and, being
withdrawn from the contemplation of facts and principles, they become
incapable of attending to the useful duties of life, and are wholly
unable to rise to the higher efforts of virtue and patriotism. The
Italian Governments, for their own ends, have restricted their subjects
to the fine arts, but at the expense of the trade, the agriculture, and
the civilization, of their dominions. The fabric of British power was
not raised on the aesthetic principle. Take away our books, and give us
pictures; shut up our schools and churches, and give us museums and
galleries; instead of our looms and forges, substitute chisels and
pencils; and farewell to our greatness. The artizan of Birmingham or
Glasgow is a more civilised man than the same class in the Italian
cities. His dwelling, too, displays an amount of comfort and elegance
which few in Italy below the rank of princes, and not always they, can
command. The condition of the Italian people shows conclusively that the
predominating study of "the beautiful" has a most corrupting and
enfeebling effect. In fact, their pictures have paved the way for their
tyrants; and when one marks their demoralizing effects, he feels how
salutary is the restriction of the Decalogue against their use in Divine
worship. If pictures and images lead to idolatry in the Church, their
exclusive study as infallibly produces serfdom in the State.
In the early dawn of the Reformation, several of our own countrymen
visited the city of the Medici, that they might have access to the works
of antiquity which Cosmo had collected, and enjoy the converse of the
learned men that thronged his palace. "William Selling," says D'Aubigne,
"a young English ecclesiastic, afterwards distinguished at Canterbury by
his zeal in collecting valuable manuscripts,--his fellow-countrymen,
Grocyn, Lilly, and Latimer, 'more bashful than a maiden,'--and, above
all, Linacre, whom Erasmus ranked above all the scholars of Italy,--used
to meet in the delicious villa of the Medici, with Politian,
Chalcondyles, and other men of learning; and there, in the calm evenings
of summer, under that glorious Tuscan sky, they dreamt romantic visions
of the Platonic philosophy. When they returned to England, these learned
men laid before the youth of Oxford the marvellous treasures of the
Greek language." We are repaying the debt, by sending to that land a
better philosophy than any these learned men ever brought from it. This
leads us to speak of the religious movement in progress in Tuscany.
After all, man's power for evil is extremely limited. The very opposite
is the ordinary estimate. When we mark the career of a conqueror like
Napoleon, or the withering effects of an organization like that of Rome,
and compare these with the feeble results of a preacher like Savonarola,
whose body the fire reduced to ashes, and whose disciples persecution
speedily scattered, we say that man's power to destroy his species is
almost omnipotent,--his power to benefit them scarce appreciable. But
spread out the long cycles of history and the long ages of the world,
and you learn that the triumphs of evil, though sudden, are temporary,
and those of truth slow but eternal. A true word spoken by a single man
has in it more power than armies, and will, in the long run, do more to
bless than all that tyrannies can do to blight mankind. Savonarola,
feeble as he seemed, and unprotected as he was, wielded a power greater
than that of Rome. The truths sown by the preacher on the banks of the
Arno so many centuries ago are not yet dead. They are springing up; and,
long after Rome shall have passed away, they will be a source of
liberty, of civilization, of arts, and of eternal life, to his
countrymen.
A political storm heralded the quiet spring-time of evangelical truth
which has of late blessed that land. Prior to 1848, although there had
been no change for the better in the law, a very considerable degree of
practical liberty was enjoyed by the subjects of Tuscany. The Tuscans
are naturally a quiet, well-behaved people; the Grand Duke was an easy,
kind-hearted man; his Government was exceedingly mild; and, as he
conducted himself towards his people like a father, he was greatly
beloved by them. Tuscany at that period was universally acknowledged to
be the happiest province of Italy.
The priesthood of those days were a good-natured, easy set of men also.
They had never known opposition. They could not imagine the possibility
of anything occurring to endanger their power, and therefore were
exceedingly tolerant in the exercise of it. They were an illiterate and
ill-informed race. An Abbatte of their own number assured Dr Stewart, so
far back as 1845, that there was not one amongst them, from the
Archbishop downwards, who could read Hebrew, nor half-a-dozen who could
be found among the upper orders who could read Greek. They were masters
of as much Latin as enabled them to get through the mass; but they were
wholly unskilled in the modern tongues of Europe, and entire strangers
to modern European literature. Though poorly paid, they durst not eke
out their means of subsistence by entering into any trade. Many of them
were fain to become major domos in rich families, and might be seen
chaffering in the markets in the public piazza, and weighing out flour,
coffee, and oil to the servants at home. No priest can say more than one
mass a-day; and for that he is paid one lira, or eightpence sterling.
Such being the state of matters, little notice was taken of what foreign
Protestants might be doing. The priests were secure in their ignorance,
and deemed it impossible that any attempt would be made to introduce the
diabolical heresies of Luther among their orthodox flocks. Indeed,
these flocks were removed almost beyond the reach of contamination, not
so much by the vigilance of the priests, as by their own ignorance and
bigotry. The degree of popular enlightenment may be judged of from the
following circumstance which happened to Dr Stewart, and of which the
Doctor himself assured me Soon after his first coming into Tuscany in
1845, he came into contact with a countryman, who, on being told that he
was a Protestant minister, began instantly to scrutinize his lower
extremities, to ascertain whether he had cloven hoofs. The priests had
told the people that Protestants were just devils in disguise.
The Government, I have said, was a mild one. It was more: it was
affected with the usual Italian sluggishness and indolence,--the _dolce
far niente_; and accordingly it winked at innumerable ongoings, so long
as these did not attract public attention. Bibles and religious
Protestant works were introduced secretly, the Government knowing it,
but winking at it, as the Church did not complain. The arrest of the
deputation from the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland to the
Holy Land in 1839 was an exception to what I have now stated, but such
an exception as confirms the general statement. The deputation, with the
ignorance of us Britishers abroad for the first time, imagined that
because Leghorn was a free port, they were free to give away Bibles,
tracts, and all kinds of religious books; and accordingly they made
vigorous use of their time. Scarcely had they stepped on shore when they
commenced a liberal distribution of Bibles, books on the "Evidences,"
and other valuable works, among the boatmen, facchini, and beggars. It
did not occur to them, that of those to whom they gave these books, few
could read, and none were able to appreciate them. Many persons who
received these books carried them to the priests, who, confounded at
the suddenness as well as the boldness of the assault, carried them to
the police, and the police to the Government; and before the deputation
had been an hour and a half in Thomson's hotel, they were under arrest.
It was the Church which compelled the Government to interfere; and it is
the Church which is now driving forward the civil power in its mad
career of persecution. As a proof that we bring no heavier charge
against the priests than they deserve, we may mention, that in 1849 Dr
Stewart was summoned to appear before the delegate of Government, to
answer for having allowed one or two Italian Protestant ministers to
preach in his pulpit. The delegate informed him that the Government was
not taking this step of its own accord, but that the Archbishop of
Florence was compelling the Government to put the law in force, and that
the Archbishop was the prosecutor in the case.
The old statute of Ferdinand I., which allows to foreigners the full
exercise of their religion within the city of Leghorn, was taken
advantage of to open the Scotch church there. This was in 1845. It was
two years after this,--in the winter of 1847-48,--that the religious
movement first developed itself,--full six months before the revolutions
and changes of 1848. The work was at first confined almost entirely to a
handful of foreigners--Captain Pakenham; M. Paul, a Frenchman, and the
Swiss pastor in Florence;---- at----; and Mr Thomson, Vice-Consul at
Leghorn. Count Guicciardini was the only Florentine connected with the
movement. It was resolved to print and circulate such books as were
likely to pass the censorship, and might be openly sold by all
booksellers. The censor of that day was a remarkably liberal man, and he
gave his consent very willingly. Five or six little volumes were printed
in that country; but the people were not yet prepared for such a step;
the books lay unsold, and were got into circulation only by being given
away as presents. But the very fact that the friends of the movement had
been able to print and publish such works openly at Florence, with the
approbation of the censor, greatly encouraged them. It was next proposed
to attempt to get the censor's approbation to an edition of the New
Testament; and the work was before him waiting his imprimatur, when the
revolutions of 1848 broke over Italy with the suddenness of one of its
own thunder-storms.
I cannot go particularly into the changes that followed, and which are
known to my readers through other sources,--the flight of the Grand
Duke,--the new Tuscan Constitution,--the free press. The political for a
time buried the religious. Captain Pakenham, taking advantage of the
liberty enjoyed under the republic, commenced printing an edition of
Martini's Bible (the Romanist version), believing that it would be more
acceptable than Diodati's (the Protestant version). Before he had got
the book put into circulation, the re-action commenced, the Grand Duke
returned, and the work was seized. When engaged in making the seizure,
the gendarmes pressed a young apprentice printer to tell them whether
there were any more copies concealed. The lad replied that he had only
one suggestion to offer, which was, that, now they had seized the book,
they should seize the author too. And who is he? eagerly inquired the
gendarmes, preparing to start on the chase. Jesus Christ, was the lad's
reply.
Meanwhile the revolution had greatly enlarged the privileges of the
Waldensian Church in Piedmont, and three of her pastors, MM. Malan,
Meille, and Geymonat, arrived in Florence in the winter of 1848-49, for
the purpose of making themselves more familiar with the tongue and
accent of the Tuscans, in order to be able to avail themselves of the
greater openings of usefulness now presented to them, both in their own
country and in central Italy.
They preached occasionally, and attended the prayer-meeting, which now
greatly increased, and which was the only one at this time among the
Florentines. Having by their visit helped forward the good work, these
evangelists, after a six months' stay in Florence, returned to their own
country.
A full year elapsed between the departure of the Waldensian brethren and
the movement among the Florentines to obtain an Italian pastor. After
much deliberation they resolved on this step, and in May 1850 a
deputation set out for the Valleys, which, arriving at La Tour,
prevailed on Professor Malan to accept of the charge at Florence. M.
Malan returned to that city, and, on the 1st of July 1850, began his
ministry, among a little flock of thirty persons, in the Swiss chapel
Via del Seraglio, in which the Grisons had a right to Italian service.
The work now went rapidly forward. Formerly there had been but one
re-union; now there were ten in Florence alone, besides others in the
towns and villages adjoining. M. Malan had service once a fortnight in
Italian; and so large was the attendance, that the chapel, which holds
four hundred, was crowded to the door with Florentine converts or
inquirers. The priests took the alarm. They wrought upon the mind of the
deformed Archduchess,--a great bigot, and sister to the Grand Duke. A
likely tool she was; for she had made a pilgrimage to Rimini, and
offered on the shrine of the winking Madonna a diamond tiara and
bracelet. The result I need not state. The immediate result was, that
the Italian service was put a stop to in January 1851; and the final
result was the banishment of Malan and Geymonat from Tuscany in the May
of that year,--the expulsion of the pastors being accompanied with
circumstances of needless severity and ignominy. Geymonat, after lying
two days in the Bargello of Florence, was brought forth and conducted on
foot by gendarmes, chained like an assassin, to the Piedmontese
frontier. On this miserable journey he was thrust every night into the
common prison, along with characters of the worst description, whose
blasphemies he was compelled to hear. The foul air and the disgusting
food of these places made him sometimes despair of coming out alive; but
he had his recompense in the opportunities which he thus enjoyed of
preaching the gospel to the gendarmes by the way, and to the keepers of
the prisons, some of whom heard him gladly.
The departure of the Vaudois pastors threw the work into the hands of
the native converts, by whom it has been carried on ever since. It is to
be feared that, in the absence of pastors, not a little that is
political is mixed with the religious. It is difficult forming an
estimate of the numbers of the converts and inquirers. They have
meetings in all the towns of Tuscany and Lucca, between whom a constant
intercourse is maintained. Each member subscribes two crazzia a-week for
the purchase of Protestant religious books. To supply these books, two
presses are at work,--one in Turin, the other in Florence. The latter is
a secret press, which the police, with all their efforts, have not been
able to this day to discover. The Bible can be got into Tuscany with
great difficulty; yet the demand for it is greater than ever. The
converts have been tried by every mode of persecution short of death;
yet their numbers grow. The prisons are full with political and
religious offenders; yet fresh arrests continually take place in
Florence.
The first and more notable instance of persecution on which the
Government of Tuscany ventured, after the banishment of Count
Guicciardini and his companions, was the imprisonment of Francesco and
Rosa Madiai, for reading the Word of God in the Italian language. The
sufferings of these confessors turned out for the furtherance of the
Gospel. The attention of many of their own countrymen was drawn to the
cause of their sufferings; and the bigotry of the Grand Duke, or rather
of the Court of Rome, with which the Tuscan Government had entered into
a concordat for the suppression of heresy, was proclaimed before all
Europe. A Protestant deputation visited Florence to intercede in behalf
of these confessors; but their plea found so little favour with the
Grand Duke, that he immediately issued a decree, reviving an old law
which makes all offences against the religion of the State punishable
_by death_. To provide for carrying the decree into effect, a guillotine
was imported from Lucca, and an executioner was hired at a salary of ten
pounds a month. As if this were not sufficiently explicit, the Grand
Duke told his subjects that he was "_determined to root out
Protestantism from his State, though he should be handed down to
posterity as a monster of cruelty_." Neither the spectacle of the
guillotine nor the terrible threat of the Grand Duke could arrest the
progress of the good work. The Bible was sought after, and read in
secret; and the numbers who left the communion of the Romish Church grew
and multiplied daily. In the beginning of 1853, the Protestants, or
Evangelicals as they prefer to call themselves in Tuscany, were
estimated at many thousands. I doubt not that this estimate was correct,
if viewed as including all who had separated their interests from the
Church of Rome; but I just as little doubt that a majority of these, if
brought to the test, rather than suffer would have denied the Gospel.
Many of them knew it only as a political badge, not as a _new life_.
But, on the judgment of those who had the best means of knowing, there
were at least _a thousand_ in Tuscany who had undergone a change of
heart, and were prepared to confess Christ on the scaffold. To hunt out
these peaceful ones, and bring them to punishment, is the grand object
of the priesthood; and in the confessional they have an instrumentality
ready-made for the purpose. Taking advantage of the greater timidity of
the female mind, it has become a leading question with the confessor,
"Does your husband read the Bible? Has he political papers?" Alas!
according to the ancient prophecy, the brother delivers up the brother
to death. I heard of some affecting cases of this sort when I was in
Florence. Of the fifty persons, or thereabouts, who were then in prison
on religious grounds, not a few had been accused by their own relatives,
the accusation being extorted by the threat of withholding absolution.
At the beginning of the English Reformation, with an infernal refinement
of cruelty, children were often compelled to light the faggots which
were to consume their parents; and in Tuscany at this hour, the
trembling wife is compelled, by the threat of eternal damnation, to
disclose the secret which is to consign the husband to a dungeon. The
police are never far from the confessor's box, and wait only the signal
from it, what house to visit, and whom to drag to prison. As with us in
former days, the Bible is secreted in the most unlikely places; it is
read at the dead hour of night; and the prayers and praises that follow
are offered in whispering accents,--for fear of the priests and the
guillotine.
Every subsidiary agency that might further the progress of the truth has
been suppressed by the Government. All the liberal papers have been put
down. They appeared again and again under new names, but only to
encounter, under every form, the veto of the authorities. At last their
whole printing establishments were confiscated. The public press having
been silenced, the secret one continued to speak to the Tuscans from
its hiding-place; and its voice was the more heard that the other was
dumb. Besides Bibles, a variety of religious books have issued from it,
and have been widely circulated. Among the translated works spread among
the Tuscans are D'Aubigne's "History of the Reformation," M'Crie's
"Suppression of the Reformation in Italy," "The Mother's Catechism,"
Watts' "Catechism," "The Pilgrim's Progress," and a variety of religious
tracts. The prohibition of a book by the Government is sure to be
followed by a universal demand for it; and the Government decree is thus
the signal for going to press with a new edition of the forbidden work.
Mr Gladstone's letters on Naples were prohibited by Government; and the
very means adopted to keep the Tuscans ignorant of what Englishmen
thought of the state of Naples, and of the Continent generally, only led
to its being better known. Though not a single copy of these letters was
to be seen in the shops or on the stalls, they found their way into
every one's hands. The same thing happened to Count Guicciardini. The
Government prohibited his statement, and all Florence read it. The
well-known hatred of the priests to the Bible has been its best
recommendation in the eyes of the Tuscans. Thus the Government finds
that it cannot move a step without inflicting deadly damage on its own
interests. Its interposition is fatal only to the cause it seeks to
help. To prohibit a book is to publish it; to bring a man to trial is to
give liberty an opportunity of speaking through his advocate; to cast a
confessor of the Lord Jesus into prison is but to erect a light-house
amidst the Tuscan darkness. The Government and the priesthood find that
their efforts are foiled and their might paralyzed by a mysterious
power, which they know not how to grapple with. The guillotine has stood
unused: not that any scruples of conscience or any feelings of humanity
restrain the priests; fain would they bring every convert to the
scaffold if they dared; but the odium which they well know would attend
such a deed deters them; and they anxiously wait the coming of a time
when it may be safe to do what could not be done at present but at the
risk of damaging, and perhaps ruining, their cause. It does not follow
that the Tuscan priesthood have not the guilt of blood to answer for. If
the confessors of the Gospel in that land are not perishing by the
guillotine, they are pining in prisons, and sinking into the grave, by
reason of the choking stench, the disgusting vermin, and the
insufficient food, to which they are exposed.
But the condition of these victims, perishing unknown and unpitied in
the fangs of an ecclesiastical tyranny, is not the most distressing
spectacle which Tuscany at this hour presents. Theirs is an enviable
state, compared with that of the great body of the people. These occupy
but a larger prison, and groan in yet stronger fetters; while their
captivity is uncheered by any such hope as that which sustains the
Tuscan confessors of the truth. Mistrust of their Church is widely
spread in the country. There is no religion in Tuscany. There is as
little morality. The marriage vow is but little regarded, and the
seducer boasts of his triumphs over married chastity, as if they were
praiseworthy deeds. Thousands have plunged into atheism. Of those who
have not gone this length, the great body are dissatisfied, ill at ease,
without confidence in the doctrines of Rome, but ignorant of a more
excellent way. Straitly shut up, they grope blindfolded round the walls
of their prison-house, wistfully turning their eyes to any ray of light
that strikes in through its crevices. How this state of things may end
is known only to God;--whether in the gradual spread of Gospel light,
and the peaceful fall of that system which has so long enthralled the
intellect and soul of the Tuscans; or whether, as a result of the
growing exasperation and deepening horrors of these bondsmen, they may
give a violent wrench to the pillars of the ecclesiastical and social
fabric, and pull it down upon the heads of themselves and their
oppressors.
I may avail myself of this opportunity of introducing a few recent facts
relative to the analogous work in Genoa; and this I do because these
facts are of a character which may enable the reader more clearly to
conceive of the present religious condition of Italy, and the state of
the movement in that country.
The north of Italy and kingdom of Sardinia, as I have already said,
since the Constitution granted in 1848, is open to the promulgation of
evangelical truth; that is, it may be taught in almost every conceivable
way, provided it is not done offensively or obtrusively. While the
religion of the State is Roman Catholic, there is toleration and liberty
of conscience to all; indeed, there is _no religion_ at all. The king
cares for none of these things, and most of his Ministers are at one
with him. The present Ministry is Liberal; and Count Cavour is, to all
intents and purposes, Radical. It is said that he declares he will never
rest until Sardinia is another England. The Constitution is something
very similar to that of England, and only requires to be developed. The
present Government, however, is more liberal than the Constitution; and
the Constitution gives more liberty than the majority of the people are
yet able to receive: hence collision frequently takes place. Old
statutes are still unrepealed; and the priest party compels the
Government to do things which they are very unwilling to do. For
example, one of the Cereghini was recently tried, and condemned to pay a
fine of two hundred pauls, and go to prison for four months, for having
some little thing to do in publishing a small controversial catechism
against the Romish Church, and vending it rather too openly. An appeal
was made against the sentence, and it stands unexecuted, and will do.
As a matter of law, the executive Government is obliged to take up such
cases and deal with them; and the nobility or priesthood--for they are
one and the same--are ever on the look-out for such cases. The case of
Captain Pakenham, who was expelled from Sardinia, comes under this head.
The Constitution is the same now as it was then; only it is further
developed in the minds of the people, and the same offence would not now
likely meet the same unjust punishment, or create the same stir among
the people, as it did then. But Captain Pakenham need not have been
expelled from the State if our British Ministers in Sardinia had done
their duty; but they are sometimes only too glad to get quit of such men
as Captain Pakenham. If they had protested against the sentence, it
would never have been executed. Such a thing would never have occurred
to an American subject. "British residents or travellers in Italy,"
writes one to us, "will never have any comfort or satisfaction under the
union-jack, until the present race of consuls and plenipotentiaries,
sitting in high places, truckling with petty kings and grand dukes, is
hanged, every one of them. There is an obliging old consul at Rome who
might be exempted."
The following extract from a letter written in March last, and addressed
to ourselves, from the Rev. David Kay, the able pastor of the Scotch
congregation in Genoa, will be read with deep interest. We know none who
knows better than Mr Kay the condition of Sardinia, or is more familiar
with all that has been done and is doing there. What he says of the
moral condition of Genoa may be taken as a fair sample of the other
towns and States of Italy. None of them are superior to Genoa in this
respect, and most of them, we believe, are below it. Alas! the picture
is a sad one.
"Nothing could be more foolish or detrimental to the evangelical work
in Sardinia than for every man and woman who enters the country, to pass
through it or spend a few months even, to commence 'doing something,' as
they generally express it. They scatter Bibles and tracts broad-cast,
without knowing anything of the people they give them to; and
nine-tenths of these books are carried forthwith to the priest or the
pawnshop, generally the former, and are burned. This does not affect
them much, perhaps, because they will soon be off; but it renders the
position of those stationed in the country very precarious. The priest
likes very much to collect all the Bibles, Testaments, tracts, &c., into
a heap, and, before setting the match to them, bring some of his English
friends to see them. This is no exaggeration. At least two such cases
have come under my notice. Knowledge and prudence are very essential
qualities,--some knowledge of the country and its people, and some
little common sense to use that knowledge well. If our British
travellers and residents would give the Italians a better example of how
the Sabbath ought to be kept, and is kept, by the serious in Britain,
and let precept for the most part alone,--the real missionary work to be
done by people competent,--generally speaking, they would advance the
work far more than by the way they often adopt. We talk of liberal
Sardinia; but _liberal_ is a relative term, and all who know Sardinia
will only apply it relatively. When an injudicious thing is done, or
even when a lawful thing is done injudiciously, we soon see where the
liberty of Sardinia is. It is as lawful for a man to have a thousand
Italian Bibles in his house as to have a thousand copies of 'Rob Roy.'
Both packages come regularly through the custom-house, and duty is paid
for them; and yet the other day in Nice several houses were searched by
the gendarmes, and all Bibles and tracts carried away. This is contrary
to the Constitution of the country, and yet it was done. Englishmen will
make a cry about it, and demand justice (a thing generally sold to the
highest bidder); but it is no use,--only harm will be done by it. Every
day things in _kind_ differing in _degree_ are done throughout the
State. The long and short of the matter is this; the minds of the people
must open, and be allowed time to open gradually, ere the liberal
Constitution of Sardinia can be applied to its full extent. And it is
the forgetting this, or not knowing it, that usually brings these things
about. Something, perhaps a very common thing, and quite lawful, and
done every day, is done in a foolish way, and a foolish thing is done by
the executive Government to meet it. It is not the present
generation,--it has been too long under the yoke,--but the rising
generation, that will exhibit the new Constitution. The grand secret is
to do as much as possible,--and almost anything may be done,--and say
nothing about it. It is truly interesting to watch the gradual opening
up of the long shut kingdom, and very exciting to give every day a
stronger blow to the wedge that opens it. I remember well, when I came
here, nearly two years ago, Italian Bibles could not be got into Genoa,
as other goods, by paying the duty on them, although it was perfectly
lawful then, as now, to bring them in that way. For a year past we have
got all the Bibles the Bible-senders of Britain will send us. Hundreds
or thousands of them can be brought through the custom-house without any
difficulty. We are anxiously waiting the arrival of six thousand at this
moment. And yet a month has not passed since four thousand religious
books,--less mischievous by far than the Bible,--were sent from our port
to Marseilles. They could not be landed in any part of his Majesty's
dominions. From these facts you will see that we live in a kingdom of
practical contradictions.
"The priests, meanwhile, are by no means idle. They are instructing
their people in the dogmas of their Church; and for this they have
classes in the evening,--the zealous at least, among them have. Apart
from their petty persecution in preventing us getting a place of worship
(the affair of the 'Madre di Dio' you know all about, as also their
general story of every convert being paid), they send missionaries to
England once or twice a-year, (there is a priest whom I know just now
returned), who bring, generally prostitutes, but women of a better order
if they can find them, put them into a convent, to train, and, when
trained, send them out to strengthen the Catholics here in their faith,
and, if possible, bring back to the fold those who have gone to
Geymonat; and highly accomplished trustworthy dames they send home to
England to bring out others, or remain there and proselytise; or they
send them here and there among the English on the Continent, sometimes
to profess one thing and sometimes another. A few weeks ago one tried
her skill upon us residing in Genoa, and partially succeeded. Her tale
was, that she was the daughter of an English clergyman, who came abroad
with her aunt, travelling in great style of course, and was put into a
convent, and kept there against her will; and now she had contrived to
make her escape, and perfectly trembled when she saw a priest, or even
heard one named; and, although of high family, was ready to teach or do
anything in an English family, to be out of reach of the priests. The
things she told were most harrowing, and some of them very true-like.
One English gentleman here thought of taking her into his family as
governess, until he should get her father to come for her. I was asked
to visit her at his house, and hear her woeful history. I went; but the
line 'Timeo Danaos,' &c., was ever forcing itself upon me as I walked
musingly along to the house, which was a little distance out of town.
While hearing her long unconnected string of falsehoods, the thing that
astonished me was, why the Roman Catholic priests should have chosen
such an ugly woman to do such a piece of work; and not only had she the
most forbidding appearance of any woman I ever saw, but she was the most
illiterate; not a single sentence came correctly from her lips, and, in
pronunciation, the letter 'h' ever was prefixed to the 'aunt' and the
'Oxford,'--the very quintescence of Cockneyism. It was clear to my mind
that she had 'done' the priests, and the sequel proves my suspicions to
be correct. That day before she left, she discovered that she was
suspected, and very prudently threw off her mask very soon after. Her
correct history we are only getting bit by bit; but all we have learned
convinces us that she has deceived the Italian priest, who knows very
little of English, by persuading him that she is the daughter of an
English clergyman, and very highly connected in England. You have enough
of the story to see the kind of plot regularly carried on. What they
expected to gain by passing her off upon us, we cannot tell, unless that
they wished to know earlier and more fully our movements. There is an
English pervert here just now,--a weak fool, but an educated one,--on a
mission to Geymonat's people, to assure them that they have committed a
great sin. Having proved both systems of religion, he can judge, and
there is no comfort whatever in the Protestant. He has taken up his
abode here, and is prosecuting his mission vigorously.
"A traveller passing through Genoa, and visiting the churches,
particularly on a feast-day, would fancy that the Genoese, or, indeed,
the Catholics in Sardinia generally, are the most devoted Catholics in
Italy. Many have gone away with that impression. The reason is this. All
who attend the churches in Genoa do so from choice,--from religious
motives; and even feel, in these days of heresy, that they are wearing
the martyr's crown,--standing firmly for the true Church, while all
without are scoffers; whereas in the Tuscan, Roman, and Neapolitan
States, people attend church from compulsion. If they are not in church
on certain days, and at mass, they are immediately suspected. I believe
the male population of Italy is one moving mass of infidelity. Sardinia
is professedly so. In Genoa not one young man in a hundred attends
church. If you see him there, it is to select a pretty woman for his own
purposes. Morality is at a very low ebb,--lower far than you can have
any idea of. Every man is sighing after his neighbour's wife; and he
confesses it, and talks as gallantly of his conquest as if he had fought
on the heights of Alma. A stranger walking the streets in the evening
would not suppose this, for he would not be attacked, as in a town in
Britain; but they have their dens, and licensed ones too. Shocking as it
may appear, these houses are regularly licensed by the Government; and
medical men visit them once every week for sanitary purposes. The
defilement of the marriage-bed is little or nothing thought of. Marriage
here is generally a money speculation, and is very frequently brought
about through means of regular brokers or agents, who receive a per
centage on the bride's dowry. A woman without a pretty good dowry has
very little chance of a husband, unless she is young and very pretty,
and willing to accept an old man. There are very few women in Geymonat's
congregation. The converts are nearly all men."
While we rejoice in the spread of the light, we cannot but marvel at the
mysterious connection which may be traced between the first and the
second reformations in Italy, as regards the spots where this divine
illumination is now breaking out. We have already adverted to the
progress of the Gospel in the sixteenth century in so many of the
cities of Italy, and the long roll of confessors and martyrs which every
class of her citizens contributed to furnish. Not only did these men, in
their prisons and at their stakes, sow the seeds of a future harvest,
but they appear to have earned for the towns in which they lived, and
the families from which they were sprung, a hereditary right, as it
were, to be foremost in confessing that cause at every subsequent era of
its revival. We cannot mark but with a feeling of heartfelt gratitude to
God, in whose sight the death of his saints is precious, and who, by the
eternal laws of his providence, has ordained that the example of the
martyr shall prove more powerful and more lasting than that of the
persecutor, that on the _self-same spots_ where these men died of old,
the same mighty movement has again broken out. And not only are the same
cities of Turin, and Milan, and Venice, and Genoa, and Florence,
figuring in this second reformation of Italy, but the same families and
the same names from which God chose his martyrs in Italy three centuries
ago are again coming forward, and offering themselves to the dungeon,
and the galleys, and the scaffold, in the cause of the Gospel. Does not
this finely illustrate the indestructible nature of truth, which enables
it to survive a long period of dormancy and of apparent death, and to
flourish anew from what seemingly was its tomb? And does it not also
shed a beautiful light upon the order of the providence of God, whereby
he remembers and revisits the seed of the righteous man, and keeps his
mercy to a thousand generations of them that fear Him?
On Wednesday the 6th of November, after a stay of well-nigh a week in
Florence, I took my departure by rail for Pisa. The weather was still
wild and wintry, and the Apennines were white with snow to almost their
bottom. The railway runs along the valley, close to the Arno, which,
swollen with the rains, had flooded the vineyards and meadows in many
places. A truly Italian vale is that of the Arno, whose silvery stream
in ordinary times is seen winding and glistening amid the olives and the
chestnut groves which border its course. When evening came, a deep
spiritual beauty pervaded the region. As we swept along, many a romantic
hill rose beside our path, with its clustering village, its mantling
vines, and its robe of purple shadows; and many a long withdrawing
ravine opened on the right and left, with its stream, and its crags, and
its olives, and its castles. What would we have given for but a minute's
pause, to admire the finer points! But the engine held its onward way,
as if its course had been amidst the most indifferent scenery in the
world. It made amends, however, for the enchanting views which it swept
into oblivion behind, by perpetually opening in front others as lovely
and fascinating. The twilight had set, and the moon was shining
brightly, when we reached the station at Pisa.
The Austrian soldier who kept the gate challenged me as I passed, but I
paid no attention, and hurried on. Had he secured my passport, I would
infallibly have been detained a whole day. I traversed the long winding
streets of the decaying town, crossed the Arno, on which the city
stands, and, coming out on the other side of Pisa, found myself in
presence of its fine ecclesiastical buildings. A moon nearly full, which
seemed to veil while it in reality heightened their beauty, enabled me
to see these venerable edifices to advantage. The hanging tower is a
beautiful pile of white marble; the Cathedral is one of the most
chastely elegant specimens of architecture in all Italy; the baptistry,
too peculiar to be classic, is, nevertheless, a tasteful and elegant
design. Having surveyed these lovely creations of the wealth and genius
of a past age, I returned in time to take my seat in the last train for
Leghorn.
The country betwixt Pisa and the coast is perfectly flat, and the
flooded Arno had converted it into a sea. I could see nothing around me
but a watery waste, above which the railway rose but a few inches. I
felt as if again amid the Lagunes of Venice. After an hour and a half's
riding, we reached Leghorn, where I took up my abode at Thomson's hotel,
so well and so favourably known to English travellers. After my long
sojourn in Italian _albergi_, whose uncarpeted floors, and chinky
windows and doors, are but ill fitted to resist the winds and cold of
winter, I sat down in "Thomson's,"--furnished as it is with all the
comforts of an English inn,--with a feeling of home-comfort such as I
have rarely experienced.