"_Lave_, (get up,) boy," said Killbuck, as soon as he reached him.

"Hyar's grainin' to do afore long,--and sun's about down, I'm

thinking."

"Ready, old hos," answered La Bonté, giving himself a shake. "What's

the sign like, and how many's the lodge?"

"Fresh, and five, boy. How do you feel?"

"_Half froze for hair._ Wagh!"

"We'll have moon to-night, and as soon as _she_ gets up, we'll make

'em 'come.'"

Killbuck then described to his companion what he had seen, and

detailed his plan--which was simply to wait until the moon afforded

sufficient light, approach the Indian camp and charge into it,--"lift"

as much "hair" as they could, recover their animals, and start at once

to the Bayou and join the friendly Yutes, warning them of the coming

danger. The risk of falling in with either of the Rapaho bands was

hardly considered; to avoid this, they trusted to their own foresight,

and the legs of their mules, should they encounter them.

Between sundown and the rising of the moon, they had leisure to eat

their supper, which, as before, consisted of raw buffalo-liver; after

discussing which, Killbuck pronounced himself "a 'heap' better," and

ready for "huggin."

In the short interval of almost perfect darkness which preceded the

moonlight, and taking advantage of one of the frequent squalls of wind

which howl down the narrow gorges of the mountains, these two

determined men, with footsteps noiseless as the panther's, crawled to

the edge of the little plateau of some hundred yards' square, where

the five Indians in charge of the animals were seated round the fire,

perfectly unconscious of the vicinity of danger. Several clumps of

cedar bushes dotted the small prairie, and amongst these the

well-hobbled mules and horses were feeding. These animals, accustomed

to the presence of whites, would not notice the two hunters as they

crept from clump to clump nearer to the fire, and also served, even if

the Indians should be on the watch, to conceal their movements from

them.

This the two men at once perceived; but old Killbuck knew that if he

passed within sight or smell of his mule, he would be received with a

hinny of recognition, which would at once alarm the enemy. He

therefore first ascertained where his own animal was feeding, which

luckily was at the farther side of the prairie, and would not

interfere with his proceedings.

Threading their way amongst the feeding mules, they approached a clump

of bushes about forty yards from the spot where the unconscious

savages were seated smoking round the fire; and here they awaited,

scarcely drawing breath the while, the moment when the moon rose above

the mountain into the clear cold sky, and gave them light sufficient

to make sure their work of bloody retribution. Not a pulsation in the

hearts of these stern determined men beat higher than its wont; not

the tremour of a nerve disturbed their frame. With lips compressed,

they stood with ready rifles, the pistols loosened in their belts, and

scalp-knives handy to their gripe. The lurid glow of the coming moon

already shot into the sky above the ridge, which stood out in bolder

relief against the light; and the luminary herself was just peering

over the mountain, illuminating its pine-clad summit, and throwing

its beams on an opposite peak, when Killbuck touched his companion's

arm, and whispered, "Wait for the full light, boy."

At this moment, however, unseen by the trapper, the old and grizzled

mule had gradually approached, as it fed along the plateau; and, when

within a few paces of their retreat, a gleam of moonshine revealed to

the animal the erect forms of the two whites. Suddenly she stood still

and pricked her ears, and stretching out her neck and nose, snuffed

the air. Well she knew her old master.

Killbuck, with eyes fixed upon the Indians, was on the point of giving

the signal of attack to his comrade, when the shrill hinny of his mule

reverberated through the gorge. The next instant the Indians were

jumping to their feet and seizing their arms, when, with a loud shout,

Killbuck, crying, "At 'em boy; give the niggurs h----!" rushed from

his concealment, and with La Bonté by his side, yelling a fierce

war-whoop, sprang upon the startled savages.

Panic-struck with the suddenness of the attack, the Indians scarcely

knew where to run, and for a moment stood huddled together like sheep.

Down dropped Killbuck on his knee, and stretching out his wiping

stick, planted it on the ground to the extreme length of his arm. As

methodically and as coolly as if about to aim at a deer, he raised his

rifle to this rest and pulled the trigger. At the report an Indian

fell forward on his face, at the same moment that La Bonté, with equal

certainty of aim and like effect, discharged his own rifle.

The three surviving Indians, seeing that their assailants were but

two, and knowing that their guns were empty, came on with loud yells.

With the left hand grasping a bunch of arrows, and holding the bow

already bent and arrow fixed, they steadily advanced, bending low to

the ground to get their objects between them and the light, and thus

render their aim more certain. The trappers, however, did not care to

wait for them. Drawing their pistols, they charged at once; and

although the bows twanged, and the three arrows struck their mark, on

they rushed, discharging their pistols at close quarters; La Bonté

throwing his empty one at the head of an Indian who was pulling his

second arrow to its head at a yard distance, and drawing his knife at

the same moment, made at him.

But the Indian broke and ran, followed by his living companion; and as

soon as Killbuck could ram home another ball, he sent a shot flying

after them as they scrambled up the mountain side, leaving in their

fright and hurry their bows and shields on the ground.

The fight was over, and the two trappers confronted each other: "We've

given 'em h--!" laughed Killbuck.

"_Well_, we have," answered the other, pulling an arrow out of his

arm.--"Wagh!"

"We'll lift the hair, any how," continued the first, "afore the

scalp's cold."

Taking his whetstone from the little sheath on his knife-belt, the

trapper proceeded to "edge" his knife, and then stepping to the first

prostrate body, he turned it over to examine if any symptom of

vitality remained. "Thrown cold," he exclaimed, as he dropped the

lifeless arm he had lifted. "I sighted him about the long ribs, but

the light was bad, and I could'nt get a 'bead' 'off hand,' any how."

Seizing with his left hand the long and braided lock on the centre of

the Indian's head, he passed the point edge of his keen butcher-knife

round the parting, turning it at the same time under the skin to

separate the scalp from the skull; then, with a quick and sudden jerk

of his hand, he removed it entirely from the head, and giving the

reeking trophy a wring upon the grass to free it from the blood, he

coolly hitched it under his belt, and proceeded to the next; but

seeing La Bonté operating upon this, he sought the third, who lay some

little distance from the others. This one was still alive, a

pistol-ball having passed through his body, without touching a vital

spot.

"Gut-shot is this niggur," exclaimed the trapper; "them pistols never

throws 'em in their tracks;" and thrusting his knife, for mercy's

sake, into the bosom of the Indian, he likewise tore the scalp-lock

from his head, and placed it with the other.

La Bonté had received two trivial wounds, and Killbuck till now had

been walking about with an arrow sticking through the fleshy part of

his thigh, the point being perceptible near the surface of the other

side. To free his leg from the painful encumbrance, he thrust the

weapon completely through, and then, cutting off the arrow-head below

the barb, he drew it out, the blood flowing freely from the wound. A

tourniquet of buckskin soon stopped this, and, heedless of the pain,

the hardy mountaineer sought for his old mule, and quickly brought it

to the fire (which La Bonté had rekindled,) lavishing many a caress,

and most comical terms of endearment, upon the faithful companion of

his wanderings. They found all the animals safe and well, and after

eating heartily of some venison which the Indians had been cooking at

the moment of the attack, made instant preparations to quit the scene

of their exploit, not wishing to trust to the chance of the Rapahos

being too frightened to again molest them.

Having no saddles, they secured buffalo robes on the backs of two

mules--Killbuck, of course, riding his own--and lost no time in

proceeding on their way. They followed the course of the Indians up

the stream, and found that it kept the cañons and gorges of the

mountains where the road was better; but it was with no little

difficulty that they made their way, the ground being much broken and

covered with rocks. Killbuck's wound became very painful, and his leg

stiffened and swelled distressingly, but he still pushed on all night,

and, at daybreak, recognising their position, he left the Indian

trail, and followed a little creek which rose in a mountain chain of

moderate elevation, and above which, and to the south, Pike's Peak

towered high into the clouds. With great difficulty they crossed this

ridge, and ascending and descending several smaller ones which

gradually smoothed away as they met the valley, about three hours

after sunrise they found themselves in the south-east corner of the

Bayou Salade.

The Bayou Salade, or Salt Valley, is the most southern of three very

extensive valleys, forming a series of table-lands in the very centre

of the main chain of the Rocky Mountains, known to the trappers by the

name of the "Parks". The numerous streams by which they are watered

abound in the valuable fur-bearing beaver, whilst every species of

game common to the west is found here in great abundance. The Bayou

Salade especially, owing to the salitrose nature of the soil and

springs, is the favourite resort of all the larger animals common to

the mountains; and, in the sheltered prairies of the Bayou, the

buffalo, forsaking the barren and inclement regions of the exposed

plains, frequent these upland valleys in the winter months; and

feeding upon the rich and nutritious buffalo grass which, on the bare

prairies, at that season, is either dry and rotten or entirely

exhausted, not only are enabled to sustain life, but retain a great

portion of the "condition" that the abundant fall and summer pasture

of the lowlands has laid upon their bones. Therefore is this valley

sought by the Indians as a wintering ground; and its occupancy has

been disputed by most of the mountain tribes, and long and bloody wars

have been waged to make good the claims set forth by Yuta, Rapaho,

Sioux, and Shians. However, to the first of these it may be said now

to belong, since their "big village" has wintered there for many

successive years; whilst the Rapahos seldom visit it unless on war

expeditions, against the Yutas.

Judging, from the direction the Rapahos were taking, that the friendly

tribe of Yutas were there already, the trappers had resolved to join

them as soon as possible; and therefore, without resting, pushed on

through the uplands, and, towards the middle of the day, had the

satisfaction of descrying the conical lodges of the village, situated

on a large level plateau, through which ran a mountain stream. A

numerous band of mules and horses was scattered over the pasture, and

round them several mounted Indians were keeping guard. As the trappers

descended the bluffs into the plain, some straggling Indians caught

sight of them; and instantly one of them, lassoing a horse from the

herd, mounted it, barebacked, and flew like wind to the village to

spread the news. Soon the lodges disgorged their inmates; first the

women and children rushed to that side where the strangers were

approaching; then the younger Indians, hardly able to restrain their

curiosity, mounted their horses, and some galloped forth to meet them.

The old chiefs, enveloped in buffalo robes, (soft and delicately

dressed as the Yutes alone know how,) and with tomahawk held in one

hand and resting in hollow of the other arm, sallied last of all from

their lodges, and, squatting in a row on a sunny bank outside the

village, awaited, with dignified composure, the arrival of the whites.

Killbuck was well known to most of them, having trapped in their

country and traded with them years before at Roubideau's fort at the

head waters of the Rio Grande. After shaking hands with all who

presented themselves, he at once gave them to understand that their

enemies, the Rapahos, were at hand, with a hundred warriors at least,

elated by the coup they had just struck the whites, bringing,

moreover, four white scalps to incite them to brave deeds.

At this news the whole village was speedily in commotion: the

war-shout was taken up from lodge to lodge; the squaws began to lament

and tear their hair; the warriors to paint and arm themselves. The

elder chiefs immediately met in council, and, over the medicine-pipe,

debated as to the best course to pursue,--whether to wait the attack,

or sally out and meet the enemy. In the meantime, the braves were

collected together by the chiefs of their respective bands, and

scouts, mounted on the fastest horses, despatched in every direction

to procure intelligence of the enemy.

The two whites, after watering their mules and picketing them in some

good grass near the village, drew near the council fire, without,

however, joining in the "talk," until they were invited to take their

seats by the eldest chief. Then Killbuck was called upon to give his

opinion as to the direction in which he judged the Rapahos to be

approaching, which he delivered in their own language, with which he

was well acquainted. In a short time the council broke up, and,

without noise or confusion, a band of one hundred chosen warriors left

the village, immediately after one of the scouts had galloped in and

communicated some intelligence to the chiefs. Killbuck and La Bonté

volunteered to accompany the war-party, weak and exhausted as they

were; but this was negatived by the chiefs, who left their white

brothers to the care of the women, who tended their wounds, now stiff

and painful; and spreading their buffalo robes in a warm and roomy

lodge, left them to the repose they so much needed.

The next morning, Killbuck's leg was greatly inflamed, and he was

unable to leave the lodge; but he made his companion bring the old

mule to the door, when he gave her a couple of ears of Indian corn,

the last remains of the slender store brought by the Indians from the

Navajo country. The day passed, and with sundown came no tidings of

the war-party, which caused no little wailing on the part of the

squaws, but which the whites interpreted as a favourable augury. A

little after sunrise, on the second morning, the long line of the

returning warriors was discerned winding over the prairie, and a scout

having galloped in to bring the news of a great victory, the whole

village was soon in a ferment of paint and drumming. A short distance

from the lodges, the warriors halted to await the approach of the

people. Old men, children, and squaws, sitting astride their horses,

sallied out to escort the victorious party in triumph to the village.

With loud shouts and, songs, and drums beating the monotonous Indian

time, they advanced and encircled the returning braves, one of whom,

with his face covered with black paint, carried a pole on which

dangled thirteen scalps, the trophies of the expedition. As he lifted

these on high, they were saluted with deafening whoops and cries of

exultation and savage joy. In this manner they entered the village,

almost before the friends of those fallen in the fight had ascertained

their losses. Then the shouts of delight were converted into yells of

grief; the mothers and wives of those braves who had been killed, (and

seven had "gone under,") presently returned with their faces, necks,

and hands blackened, and danced and howled round the scalp pole, which

had been deposited in the centre of the village, in front of the

lodge of the great chief.

Killbuck now learned that a scout having brought intelligence that the

two bands of Rapahos were hastening to form a junction, as soon as

they learned that their approach was discovered, the Yutas had

successfully prevented it; and attacking one party, had entirely

defeated it, killing thirteen of the Rapaho braves. The other party

had fled on seeing the issue of the fight, and a few of the Yuta

warriors were now pursuing them.

To celebrate so signal a victory great preparations sounded their

notes through the village. Paints,--vermilion and ochres--red and

yellow,--were in great request; whilst the scrapings of charred wood,

mixed with gunpowder, were used as substitute for black, the medicine

colour.

The lodges of the village, numbering some two hundred or more, were

erected in parallel lines, and covered a large space of the level

prairie in shape of a parallelogram. In the centre, however, the space

which half a dozen lodges in length would have taken up was left

unoccupied, save by one large one, of red-painted buffalo skins,

tatooed with the mystic totems of the "medicine" peculiar to the

nation. In front of this stood the grim scalp-pole, like a decayed

tree trunk, its bloody fruit tossing in the wind; and on another, at a

few feet distance, was hung the "bag" with its mysterious contents.

Before each lodge a tripod of spears supported the arms and shields of

the Yuta chivalry, and on many of them, smoke-dried scalps rattled in

the wind, former trophies of the dusky knights who were arming

themselves within. Heraldic devices were not wanting,--not, however,

graved upon the shield, but hanging from the spear-head, the actual

"totem" of the warrior it distinguished. The rattlesnake, the otter,

the carcagien, the mountain badger, the war-eagle, the kon-qua-kish,

the porcupine, the fox, &c., dangled their well-stuffed skins, and

displayed the guardian "medicine" of the warrior it pertained to, and

represented the mental and corporeal qualities which were supposed to

characterise the brave to whom it belonged.

From the centre lodge, two or three "medicine men," fantastically

attired in the skins of wolves and bears, and bearing long peeled

wands of cherry in their hands, occasionally emerged to tend a very

small fire which they had kindled in the centre of the open space;

and, when a thin column of smoke rose from it, one of them transferred

the scalp-pole, planting it obliquely across the fire. Squaws in robes

of whitely dressed buckskins, garnished with beads and porcupines'

quills, and their faces painted bright red and black, then appeared.

These ranged themselves round the outside of the square, the boys and

children of all ages, mounted on bare-backed horses, galloping and

screaming round and round, with all the eagerness of excitement and

curiosity.

Presently the braves and warriors made their appearance, and squatted

round the fire in two circles, those who had been engaged on the

expedition being in the first or smaller one. One medicine man sat

under the scalp-pole, having a drum between his knees, which he tapped

at intervals with his hand, eliciting from the instrument a hollow

monotonous sound. A bevy of women, shoulder to shoulder, then advanced

from the four sides of the square, and some shaking a rattle-drum in

time with their steps, commenced a jumping jerking dance, now lifting

one foot from the ground, and now rising with both, accompanying the

dance with a low chant, which swelled from a low whisper to the utmost

extent of their voices--now dying away, and again bursting into

vociferous measure. Thus they advanced to the centre and retreated to

their former positions; when six squaws, with their faces painted a

deadened black, made their appearance from the crowd, and, in a soft

and sweet measure, chanted a lament for the braves the nation had lost

in the late battle: but soon as they drew near the scalp-pole, their

melancholy note changed to the music (to them) of gratified revenge.

In a succession of jumps, raising the feet alternately but a little

distance from the ground, they made their way, through an interval

left in the circle of warriors, to the grim pole, and encircling it,

danced in perfect silence round it for a few moments. Then they burst

forth with an extemporary song, laudatory of the achievements of their

victorious braves. They addressed the scalps as "sisters," (to be

called a squaw is the greatest insult that can be offered to an

Indian,) and, spitting at them, upbraided them with their rashness in

leaving their lodges to seek for Yuta husbands; "that the Yuta

warriors and young men despised them, and chastised them for their

forwardness and presumption, bringing back their scalps to their own

women."

After sufficiently proving that they had any thing but lost the use of

their tongues, but possessed as fair a length of that formidable

weapon as any of their sex, they withdrew, and left the field in

undisputed possession of the men: who, accompanied by taps of the

drum, and the noise of many rattles, broke out into a war-song, in

which the valour of themselves was not hidden in a bushel, nor

modestly refused the light of day. After this came the more

interesting ceremony of a warrior "counting his coups."

A young brave, with his face painted black, mounted on a white horse

mysteriously marked with red clay, and naked to the breech clout,

holding in his hand a long taper lance, rode into the circle, and

paced slowly round it; then, flourishing his spear on high, he darted

to the scalp-pole, round which the warriors were now sitting in a

semicircle; and in a loud voice, and with furious gesticulations,

related his exploits, the drums tapping at the conclusion of each. On

his spear hung seven scalps, and holding it vertically above his head,

and commencing with the top one, he narrated the feats in which he had

raised the trophy hair. When he had run through these, the drums

tapped loudly, and several of the old chiefs shook their rattles, in

corroboration of the truth of his achievements. The brave, swelling

with pride, then pointed to the fresh and bloody scalps hanging on the

pole. Two of these had been torn from the heads of Rapahos struck by

his own hand, and this feat, _the_ exploit of the day, had entitled

him to the honour of counting his coups. Then, sticking his spear into

the ground by the side of the pole, he struck his hand twice on his

brawny and naked chest, turned short round, and, swift as the

antelope, galloped into the plain: as if overcome by the shock his

modesty had received in being obliged to recount his own high-sounding

deeds.

"Wagh!" exclaimed old Killbuck, as he left the circle, and pointed his

pipe-stem towards the fast-fading figure of the brave, "that Injun's

heart's about as big as ever it will be, I'm thinking."

With the Yutes, Killbuck and La Bonté remained during the winter; and

when the spring sun had opened the ice-bound creeks, and melted the

snow on the mountains; and its genial warmth had expanded the earth

and permitted the roots of the grass to "live" once more, and throw

out green and tender shoots, the two trappers bade adieu to the

hospitable Indians, who were breaking up their village in order to

start for the valleys of the Del Norte. As they followed the trail

from the bayou, at sundown, just as they were thinking of camping,

they observed ahead of them a solitary horseman riding along, followed

by three mules. His hunting-frock of fringed buckskin, and rifle

resting across the horn of his saddle, at once proclaimed him white;

but as he saw the mountaineers winding through the cañon, driving

before them half a dozen horses, _he_ judged they might possibly be

Indians and enemies, the more so as their dress was not the usual

costume of the whites. The trappers, therefore, saw the stranger raise

the rifle in the hollow of his arm, and, gathering up his horse, ride

steadily to meet them, as soon as he observed they were but two; and

two to one in mountain calculation are scarcely considered odds, if

red skin to white.

However, on nearing them, the stranger discovered his mistake; and,

throwing his rifle across the saddle once more, reined in his horse

and waited their approach; for the spot where he then stood presented

an excellent camping-ground, with abundance of dry wood and convenient

water.

"Where from, stranger?"

"The divide, and to the bayou for meat; and you are from there, I see.

Any buffalo come in yet?"

"Heap, and seal-fat at that. What's the sign out on the plains?"

"War-party of Rapahos passed Squirrel at sundown yesterday, and nearly

raised my animals. Sign, too, of more on left fork of Boiling Spring.

No buffalo between this and Bijou. Do you feel like camping?"

"_Well_, we do. But whar's your companyeros?"

"I'm alone."

"Alone! Wagh! how do you get your animals along?"

"I go ahead, and they follow the horse."

"Well, that beats all! That's a smart-looking hos now; and runs some,

I'm thinking."

"Well, it does."

"Whar's them mules from? They look like Californy."

"Mexican country--away down south."

"H----! Whar's yourself from?"

"There away, too."

"What's beaver worth in Taos?"

"Dollar."

"In Saint Louiy?"

"Same."

"H----! Any call for buckskin?"

"A heap! The soldiers in Santa Fé are half froze for leather; and

mocassins fetch two dollars, easy."

"Wagh! How's trade on Arkansa, and what's doin to the Fort?"

"Shians at Big Timber, and Bent's people trading smart. On North Fork,

Jim Waters got a hundred pack right off, and Sioux making more."

"Whar's Bill Williams?"

"Gone under they say: the Diggers took his hair."

"How's powder goin?"

"Two dollars a pint."

"Bacca?"

"A plew a plug."

"Got any about you?"

"Have _so_."

"Give us a chaw; and now let's camp."

Whilst unpacking their own animals, the two trappers could not refrain

from glancing, every now and then, with no little astonishment, at the

solitary stranger they had so unexpectedly encountered. If truth be

told, his appearance not a little perplexed them. His hunting frock of

buckskin, shining with grease, and fringed pantaloons, over which the

well-greased butcher-knife had evidently been often wiped after

cutting his food, or butchering the carcass of deer and buffalo, were

of genuine mountain make. His face, clean shaved, exhibited in its

well-tanned and weather-beaten complexion, the effects of such natural

cosmetics as sun and wind; and under the mountain hat of felt which

covered his head, long uncut hair hung in Indian fashion on his

shoulders. All this would have passed muster, had it not been for the

most extraordinary equipment of a double-barrelled rifle; which, when

it had attracted the eyes of the mountaineers, elicited no little

astonishment, not to say derision. But, perhaps, nothing excited their

admiration so much as the perfect docility of the stranger's animals;

which, almost like dogs, obeyed his voice and call; and albeit that

one, in a small sharp head and pointed ears, expanded nostrils, and

eye twinkling and malicious, exhibited the personification of a

"lurking devil," yet they could not but admire the perfect ease which

this one even, in common with the rest, permitted herself to be

handled.

Dismounting from his horse, and unhitching from the horn of his saddle

the coil of skin rope, one end of which was secured round the neck of

the horse, he proceeded to unsaddle; and whilst so engaged, the three

mules, two of which were packed, one with the unbutchered carcass of a

deer, the other with a pack of skins, &c., followed leisurely into the

space chosen for the camp, and, cropping the grass at their ease,

waited until a whistle called them to be unpacked.

The horse was a strong square-built bay; and, although the severities

of a prolonged winter, with scanty pasture and long and trying travel,

had robbed his bones of fat and flesh, tucked up his flank, and "ewed"

his neck; still his clean and well-set legs, oblique shoulder, and

withers fine as a deer's, in spite of his gaunt half-starved

appearance, bore ample testimony as to what he _had_ been; while his

clear cheerful eye, and the hearty appetite with which he fell to work

on the coarse grass of the bottom, proved that he had something in him

still, and was game as ever. His tail, ate by the mules in days of

strait, attracted the observant mountaineers.

"Hard doins when it come to that," remarked La Bonté.

Between the horse and two of the mules a mutual and great affection

appeared to subsist, which was no more than natural, when their master

observed to his companions that they had travelled together upwards of

two thousand miles.

One of these mules was a short, thick-set, stumpy animal, with an

enormous head surmounted by proportionable ears, and a pair of

unusually large eyes, beaming the most perfect good temper and

docility (most uncommon qualities in a mule.) Her neck was thick, and

rendered more so in appearance by reason of her mane not being

roached, (or in English, hogged,) which privilege she alone enjoyed of

the trio; and her short, strong legs, ending in small, round, cat-like

hoofs, were feathered with profusion of dark brown hair.

As she stood stock-still, while the stranger removed the awkwardly

packed deer from her back, she flapped backward and forward her huge

ears, occasionally turning her head, and laying her cold nose against

her master's cheek. When the pack was removed, he advanced to her

head, and, resting it on his shoulder, rubbed her broad and grizzled

cheeks with both his hands for several minutes, the old mule laying

her ears, like a rabbit, back upon her neck, and with half-closed eyes

enjoyed mightily the manipulation. Then, giving her a smack upon the

haunch, and a "hep-a" well-known to mule kind, the old favourite threw

up her heels and cantered off to the horse, who was busily cropping

the buffalo grass on the bluff above the stream.

Great was the contrast between the one just described and the next

which came up to be divested of her pack. She, a tall beautifully

shaped Mexican mule, of a light mouse colour, with a head like a

deer's, and long springy legs, trotted up obedient to the call, but

with ears bent back and curled up nose, and tail compressed between

her legs. As her pack was being removed, she groaned and whined like a

dog, as a thong or loosened strap touched her ticklish body, lifting

her hind-quarters in a succession of jumps or preparatory kicks, and

looking wicked as a panther. When nothing but the fore pack-saddle

remained, she had worked herself into the last stage; and as the

stranger cast loose the girth of buffalo hide, and was about to lift

the saddle and draw the crupper from the tail, she drew her hind legs

under her, more tightly compressed her tail, and almost shrieked with

rage.

"Stand clear," he roared, (knowing what was coming,) and raised the

saddle, when out went her hind legs, up went the pack into the air,

and, with it dangling at her heels, away she tore, kicking the

offending saddle as she ran. Her master, however, took this as matter

of course, followed her and brought back the saddle, which he piled on

the others to windward of the fire one of the trappers was kindling.

Fire-making is a simple process with the mountaineers. Their

bullet-pouches always contain a flint and steel, and sundry pieces of

"punk"[27] or tinder; and pulling a handful of dry grass, which they

screw into a nest, they place the lighted punk in this, and, closing

the grass over it, wave it in the air, when it soon ignites, and

readily kindles the dry sticks forming the foundation of the fire.

[27] A pithy substance found in dead pine-trees.

The tit-bits of the deer the stranger had brought in were soon

roasting over the fire; whilst, as soon as the burning logs had

deposited a sufficiency of ashes, a hole was raked in them, and the

head of the deer, skin, hair, and all, placed in this primitive oven,

and carefully covered with the hot ashes.

A "heap" of "fat meat" in perspective, our mountaineers enjoyed their

ante-prandial pipes, recounting the news of the respective regions

whence they came; and so well did they like each other's company, so

sweet the "honey-dew" tobacco of which the strange hunter had good

store, so plentiful the game about the creek, and so abundant the

pasture for their winter-starved animals, that before the carcass of

the "two-year" buck had been more than four-fifths consumed; and,

although rib after rib had been picked and chucked over their

shoulders to the wolves, and one fore leg, and _the_ "bit" of all, the

head, still cooked before them, the three had come to the resolution

to join company and hunt in their present locality for a few days at

least,--the owner of the "two-shoot" gun volunteering to fill their

horns with powder, and find tobacco for their pipes.

Here, on plenty of meat, of venison, bear, and antelope, they merrily

luxuriated; returning after their daily hunts to the brightly burning

camp-fire, where one always remained to guard the animals, and

unloading their packs of meat,--all choicest portions, ate late into

the night, and, smoking, wiled away the time in narrating scenes in

their hard-spent lives, and fighting their battles o'er again.

The younger of the trappers, he who has figured under the name of La

Bonté, in scraps and patches from his history, had excited no little

curiosity in the stranger's mind to learn the ups and downs of his

career; and one night, when they assembled earlier than usual at the

fire, he prevailed upon the modest trapper to "unpack" some passages

in his wild adventurous life.

"Maybe," commenced the mountaineer, "you both remember when old Ashley

went out with the biggest kind of band to trap the Columbia, and

head-waters of Missoura and Yellow Stone. Well, that was the time this

niggur first felt like taking to the mountains."

This brings us back to the year of our Lord 1825; and perhaps it will

be as well, to render La Bonté's mountain language intelligible, to

translate it at once to tolerable English, and tell in the third

person, but from his lips, the scrapes which him befell in a sojourn

of more than twenty years in the Far West, and the causes which

impelled him to quit the comfort and civilisation of his home, and

seek the perilous but engaging life of a trapper of the Rocky

Mountains.

La Bonté was raised in the state of Mississippi, not far from Memphis,

on the left bank of that huge and snag-filled river. His father was a

Saint Louis Frenchman, his mother a native of Tennessee. When a boy,

our trapper was "some," he said, with the rifle, and always had a

hankering for the west; particularly when, on accompanying his father

to Saint Louis every spring, he saw the different bands of traders and

hunters start upon their annual expeditions to the mountains; and

envied the independent, _insouciant_ trappers, as, in all the glory of

beads and buckskin, they shouldered their rifles at Jake Hawkin's

door, (the rifle-maker of St Louis,) and bade adieu to the cares and

trammels of civilised life.

However, like a thoughtless beaver-kitten, he put his foot into a trap

one fine day, set by Mary Brand, a neighbour's daughter, and esteemed

"some punkins," or in other words toasted as the beauty of Memphis

County, by the susceptible Mississippians. From that moment he was

"gone beaver;" "he felt queer," he said, "all over, like a buffalo

shot in the lights; he had no relish for mush and molasses; homminy

and johnny cakes failed to excite his appetite. Deer and turkeys ran

by him unscathed; he didn't know, he said, whether his rifle had

hind-sights or not. He felt bad, that was a fact; but what ailed him

he didn't know."

Mary Brand--Mary Brand--Mary Brand! the old Dutch clock ticked it.

Mary Brand! his head throbbed it when he lay down to sleep. Mary

Brand! his rifle-lock spoke it plainly when he cocked it, to raise a

shaking sight at a deer. Mary Brand, Mary Brand! the whip-poor-will

sung it, instead of her own well-known note; the bull-frogs croaked it

in the swamp, and mosquitos droned it in his ear as he tossed about

his bed at night, wakeful, and striving to think what ailed him.

Who could that strapping young fellow, who passed the door just now,

be going to see? Mary Brand: Mary Brand. And who can Big Pete Herring

be dressing that silver fox-skin so carefully for? For whom but Mary

Brand? And who is it that jokes, and laughs, and dances with all the

'boys' but him; and why?

Who but Mary Brand: and because the love-sick booby carefully avoids

her.

LOMBARDY AND THE ITALIAN WAR.

To what is the difference of national character due? Is it to climate?

Is the Negro a barbarian by a law of nature? Do his fiery sunshine and

his luxuriant soil, his magnificent forest shades, or his mighty

rivers, hiding their heads in inaccessible solitudes, and winding for

thousands of miles through fields of the plantain and the sugar-cane,

condemn him to perpetual inferiority of intellect? Was the brilliancy

of the ancient Greek only an emanation from the land of bright skies

and balmy airs?--was it the spirit of the sounding cataracts, and the

impulse of the vine-covered hills? Was the northern tempest the

creator of the northern character? and the perpetual dash of the ocean

on the Scandinavian shore, or the roar of the thunder and the sweep of

the whirlwind over the Tartar steppe, the training of the tribes which

burst in upon the iron frontier of the Great Empire, and left it clay?

The controversy has never yet been settled. Yet, on the whole, we are

strongly inclined to think that the mightier impression is due to the

operation of man on the mind of man. To our idea, "the globe, with all

that it inherits," is but a vast school-room, with its scholars. The

nations may enter with different propensities and capacities, but the

purpose of the discipline is, to train all in the use of their

original powers, to modify the rougher faculties, to invigorate the

weaker; and perhaps, in some remoter period of the world and its

completion, to educate a universal mind for the duties of a universal

family.

What education is to the individual, institutions are to the nation.

Why was it that the ancient Roman was the conqueror, the legislator,

the man of stern determination, and the example of patriot virtue? Why

was he the man of an ambition to be satisfied with nothing narrower

than the supremacy of the globe--the defier of the desert, the master

of the ocean, the ruler of all the diadems of all mankind?

Yet what is the contrast in the history of his successors,--millions

living under the same sky, with the same landscape of hill and dale

before them--even with the bold recollections of their ancestry to

inspire them, and with frames as athletic, and intellects as vivid as

those of the days when every nation brought tribute to the feet of the

Cæsars? Why is it that the man of Thermopylæ and Platæa has now no

representative but the "cunning Greek," and the land, once covered

with trophies, is now only the soil of the trafficker and the tomb?

Why has even our own island, so memorable and so admirable, exhibited

a contrast to the early terrors and capricious bravery of the Briton

in the time of the Roman? For the charioteers and spearmen who fought

Cæsar on the shore were chiefly foreigners from Gaul and Germany,

defending their own beeves and merchandise, while the natives fled

into the forest, and submitted, wherever they were pursued. Why was

Russia, for a thousand years, the constant prey of the "riders of the

wilderness," who now offer so feeble a resistance to her firm

sovereignty? Or, to come to the immediate instance, why have the

fiercest tribe of Scandinavia, perhaps the most warlike of mankind in

their day, sunk into the feeble flexibility of the Italian, in whom

resistance is scarcely more than the work of exasperation, and the

boldest hostilities probably deserve no more than the name of a

paroxysm?

The name of the Lombards was famous as far back as the sixth century

and the reign of Justinian. The camp of Attila had collected the

chieftains of the barbarian tribes on the northern bank of the Danube,

and his death had left them to divide the vast inheritance which had

been won in the briefest period, and by the most remorseless

slaughter, in the memory of the world. Hungary and Transylvania were

seized by the roving warriors of the Gepidæ. The fears or the policy

of Justinian contracted the boundaries of the empire; and whether

despising the power, or relying on the indolence, of the barbarians,

he stripped the southern bank of its garrisons, for the defence of

Italy. The Gepidæ were instantly in arms, the river was crossed in

contempt or defiance of the imperial revenge; and this daring act was

not less daringly followed by a message to Constantinople, that "as

the emperor possessed territories more than he knew how to govern, or

could desire to retain, his faithful allies merely anticipated his

bounty in taking their share." The emperor suffered the insult in

silence, but resolved on revenge. With the artificial policy which

always increases the evils of an unprepared government, he invited a

new race of barbarians to act as the antagonists of the invader.

In the country between the Elbe and the Oder, about the time of

Augustus, a tribe had settled, of a singularly savage aspect, and, by

the exaggerations of national terror, described as having the "heads

of dogs," as lapping the blood of the slain in battle, and exhibiting

at once the ferocity of the animal and the daring of the man. On the

summons of Justinian, they instantly plucked up their spears and

standards from the graves of the Heruli, whom they had slaughtered in

Poland, crossed the Danube with the whole force of their warriors, and

finally, after a long and bloody war, extinguished the Gepidæ in a

battle in which forty thousand of the enemy were slain round their

king. The conqueror, with characteristic savageness, made a

drinking-cup of the skull of the fallen monarch, and in it pledged his

chieftains to their future fame.

This victory at last had taught the imperial court the hazards of its

policy; but the deed was done, and Italy lay open to a race whose

strange aspect, ferocity of habit, and invincible courage, had already

wrought the Italians to the highest pitch of terror.

Among the effeminacies of Italy, the classic arrangement of the hair

and beard seem to have held a foremost place. But, in their new

invaders, the nation saw a host of athletic warriors, indifferent to

every thing but arms, wearing their locks wild as nature had made

them, and with visages and manners which almost justified the popular

report, that they had the heads of dogs, and lapped up the blood of

their enemies. From this length and looseness of hair they had their

name. Savage as they were, they exhibited something of that spirit

which from time to time tinges barbarism with romance. Alboin, the

prince of the Longobards, young, handsome, and a hero, resolved to

possess at once the two great objects of the passions, love and glory.

To accomplish the first, he seized on Rosamunda, the beautiful

daughter of the fallen monarch; and for the second he made a royal

banquet, and, covering the tables with the fruits and wines of Italy,

demanded of his chieftains whether the land which produced such things

was not worth their swords? We may justly conceive that he was

answered with acclamation. Their trumpets were heard through every

tribe of the North, and the multitude were instantly in arms under a

leader whose name was a pledge of possession. His vanguard scaled the

Julian Alps. All the roving warriors of Gaul and Germany, with a

column of twenty thousand Saxons, instantly joined the Lombard banner.

Italy, exhausted by a long continuance of disease and famine, and now

accustomed to yield, had lain at the mercy of the first invader, and

Alboin, with his sword in the sheath, marched through a fugitive

population, and finished his bloodless triumph within the impregnable

ramparts and patrician palaces of Verona. From the Trentine hills to

the gates of Ravenna and Rome, all was the easy prize of Lombard

victory.

It is singular to hear, at the interval of more than a thousand years,

the same names of the cities which then became the possession of the

invaders, and to see the warlike movements of the present hour

following the track of the warriors of the sixth century. Alboin

conquered Milan by fear, and Pavia by famine; but the bold barbarian

disdained to reside in a city, however splendid, which had yielded

without a battle, and he fixed the Lombard throne in Pavia, which had

earned his respect by a siege of three years.

It is a striking illustration of the superiority of institutions to

climate, that the Lombard, even in Italy, continued the same bold,

restless, and resistless man of iron, which he had been in the barren

plains of Prussia, or on the stormy shores of the Baltic. With all the

luxuries of Italy to soften him, and even with all the fervours of an

Italian sun to subdue him into indolence, he was still the warrior,

the hunter, and the falconer. Leaving tillage to the degraded caste of

the Italian, he trained horses for war and the chase, in the famous

pastures bordering the Adriatic. He sent to his native Scandinavia for

the most powerful falcons; he trained the hound, that could tear down

alike the stag and the wolf; and prepared himself hourly by the chase

through the forests, which were now rapidly covering the depopulated

plains of Italy, for the hardships and enterprises of actual war. The

favourite distinctions of the Lombard noble were the hawk on the wrist

and the falchion by the side.

We now give a rapid sketch of the subsequent periods.

From the tenth century, when Germany assumed the form of a settled

state, its connexion with Italy was always exhibited in the shape of

mastery. The modern Italian character is evidently not made for

eminence in war. The hardships of German life, contrasted with the

easy indolence of Italy, have always given the Northern ploughman the

superiority over the vine-dresser of the South; and from the time when

Charlemagne first moved his men of mail over the Alps, Italy has been

a fair and feeble prize for German vigour and German intrepidity.

On the general dissolution of the empire of Charlemagne, Italy

naturally followed the fate of all vassal kingdoms. At the close of

the ninth century its provinces had been made a common field of battle

to the multitude of dukes, counts, and captains of banditti, who

suddenly started into a brief celebrity as spoilers of the great

German empire. A terrible period of almost a century of intestine war

followed, which covered the land with corpses, and made Northern Italy

but one capacious scene of blood and desolation. At length, a German

conqueror, Otho of Saxony, fortunately came, as of old, crushed all

rivalry, drove the peasantry from the field, commanded the nobles to

do him homage, and by the combined operation of the sceptre and the

sword, partially compelled his fierce feudatories to learn the arts of

peace. Still, perhaps, there was not upon the earth a more disturbed

district than Lombardy. In the lapse of centuries, it had grown

opulent, notwithstanding its spoilers. The native talent of the

Italian, his commercial connexion with Egypt and the East, and his

literary intercourse with the fugitives from Constantinople, and the

eagerness of the Western nations, even at that early period, to obtain

the produce of Italian looms and pencils, gave the nation wealth, and

with it constitutional power. This power resulted in the formation of

small commonwealths, which, though frequently at war with each other,

often exhibited a lustre and spirit worthy of the vivid days of

antique Italy.

The feudal system, the natural product of barbarian victory, by which

the land had been divided among the conquerors, was strongly opposed

by the commercial cities; and the most successful of all resistance,

that of popular interests, rapidly broke down the system. The first

struggle was by the class of the inferior nobles against the great

proprietors. The close of the eleventh century found the principle of

resistance advancing, and the populace now mingled in the contest.

The dissension was increased by the papal violences against the

married clergy in the middle of the century. This dispute gave rise to

one of the most important changes in the Romish discipline, and one of

the longest contests between the Pope and the people. The Church of

Milan, dating its liturgy from the times of the memorable Bishop

Ambrose, had continued almost wholly independent of the discipline and

the authority of Rome. By its especial rule, the priest who was

married before his ordination retained his wife; but, if unmarried, he

was not suffered to marry afterwards. This unfortunate compromise with

superstition naturally produced the loss of the original right. The

Jewish priesthood had been married under the direct sanction of a code

confessedly divine. Peter, and apparently others of the apostles,

were married; and there is no mention of any remonstrance on the part

of our Lord against this most essential of all relationships. St

Paul's wish "that the disciples should remain unmarried" in the time

of a threatened persecution, was evidently limited to the persecution;

and instead of denying the common right of the Christian clergy to

marry, he expressly insists on his personal _right_ to marry if he

should so please, as well as any other of the brethren. The

recommendation _not_ to marry at the time was also addressed _not_ to

the peculiar _teachers_ of Christianity, but to the whole body of the

Christians--a generalisation which of itself shows that it was merely

for the period; as it must be wholly irrational to suppose that the

gospel desired the final extinction of marriage _among all mankind_.

The contest continued with great violence until the accession of the

well-known Gregory VII., who, finding it impossible to overcome the

resistance of the clergy, while they were sustained by their

archbishop, dexterously dismantled the See, by annexing its suffragans

gradually to Rome. The power of the archbishops of Milan thus sank,

until they condescended to receive investiture from the Bishop of

Rome. The See lost its independence; and the law of celibacy--one of

the most corrupting to the morals of the priesthood, but one of the

most effective to establish the domination of the papacy throughout

Europe--became the law of Christendom.

The history of the Italian republics is an unhappy record for the

advocates of republicanism. It was a history of perpetual feuds among

the higher ranks, and perpetual misery among the people. The mediæval

annals of Italy, with all their activity and lustre, might be wisely

exchanged by any nation on earth for the quiet obscurity of a German

marsh, or the remote safety of an island in the heart of the ocean.

The only palliation was in the stimulus which all republics give to

human energy, by relaxing all impediments to the exertion of the

individual. But this good is strangely counteracted by the habitual

uncertainty of republics. No man's fortune _can_ be safe while it

remains under a popular government. A decree of the party in power may

strip him of his property in a day. The general object of the rule of

the rabble is the seizure of property, and the man of wealth to-day

may be the beggar to-morrow. The most despotic monarchy seldom preys

on the individual, and still seldomer takes him by surprise. For the

long period of five hundred years, Lombardy was one of the most

unfortunate countries in the world, from its republican propensities.

Factions, of every degree of tyranny and vice, tore it asunder. The

names of the Torriani, the Visconti, and the Sforze, are seen

successively floating on the tide of blood and misery which covered

this noblest of the Italian provinces; and each faction, at its

sinking, left little more than a new evidence of the guilt of

profligate governments, each exceeding the other in professions of

public virtue. A single, vigorous sceptre--a settled constitution,

however stern--a dynasty even of despots, which had the simple merit

of stability, would have rescued Lombardy from a condition scarcely to

be envied by a galley-slave. The historians of Italy recur to this

period in words of horror. The romancers find in it an exhaustless

fund of their darkest scenes. The poets revert to it for their

deepest-coloured images of national destruction. What must be the

condition of a country, when a military despotism, and that too the

despotism of a foreign power, was a desirable change?

In the middle of the sixteenth century this change occurred, in the

transfer of Lombardy to Charles V. After a century and a half of

subjection to the Spanish dynasty, it again passed, by the failure of

the line, into the hands of Austria. But at length, under the

well-intentioned government of the Empress Maria Theresa, property

became secure, the factions were suppressed by the strong hand of

authority, commerce felt new confidence, and the natural advantages of

climate, soil, and talent suddenly raised the country into a new and

vigorous prosperity; within a quarter of a century, its population

rose from less than a million to nearly a million and a quarter; and

the produce of the soil not only fed its population, but was largely

exported.

The French Revolution of 1789, which startled every kingdom of Europe,

shook Italy to its centre. The religion of Rome, while it fills the

eye with ceremonies, and the ear with dogmas, makes but little

impression on the heart, and none on the understanding. The boundless

profligacy of Italian manners had long corrupted public life. The

opera and the billiard-table were the only resources of an overgrown

nobility, pauperised by their numbers, and despised for their

pauperism. The facility of dispensing with oaths, in a religion which

gives absolution for every crime, and repeats it on every repetition

of the crime, practically extinguishes all sense of allegiance; and,

at the first offer of what the French pronounced liberty, every

province was ready to rush into republicanism.

The campaigns of Napoleon, in 1796 and 1797, incomparably conducted by

the genius of the French general, and wretchedly mismanaged by the

inveterate somnolency of the councils of Austria, gave a new stimulus

to the frenzy of revolution. Lombardy, already resolved on

self-government, was constituted a republic by the treaty of Campo

Formio in 1797--Austria receiving Venice as a compensation for Milan,

Mantua, and Belgium. The Venetian outcry against this compact was

bitter, but it was helpless. Napoleon had the sword which settled all

diplomatic difficulties; and she had good reason to rejoice in her

release from the perpetual robbery of her republican masters. The

coronation of Napoleon in 1804, followed by the memorable Austrian

campaign, which ended with the fatal fight of Austerlitz, again

changed the destinies of the north of Italy. By the treaty of Vienna,

Venice and Lombardy were united under France, and Napoleon assumed the

crown of Charlemagne, as King of Italy!

On the exile of Napoleon to Elba, the Austrian Emperor again became

master of Milan, Mantua, and Venice, combined under the name of the

Lombardo-Veneto kingdom, which was annexed to the imperial crown--the

whole being divided into nine Lombard provinces, and eight Venetian;

and the population of the entire, by the census of 1833, being

somewhat more than four millions and a half.

It cannot now be necessary to enter into the detail of the national

government; but it was of a much more popular order than might be

conceived from the formalities of Austria. Each of the great

provinces--Lombardy and Venice--had a species of administrative

council, consisting of deputies from the minor provinces, each

returning two, the one a noble and the other a plebeian, with a deputy

from each of the royal towns, the whole being elected for six years.

Those bodies, though not entitled to make laws, had yet important

functions. They settled the proportion of the taxes, superintended the

disbursements for roads, and had the especial care of the charitable

establishments. Nor were these all. In every chief town there was a

local administration, especially superintending the finance of their

respective districts; and the general taxation seemed to have been

light, and but little felt, and scarcely complained of.

Burke, in one of his prophetic anticipations, pronounced that the

first ruin of Europe would be in its finance, and that every kingdom

was, even in his day, wading into a boundless ocean of debt. Austria,

of course, had felt its share; and after the desperate wars of 1805

and 1809, nothing is more wonderful in the history of finance, or more

honourable to the great statesman who for forty years presided over

her fate, than that she should have escaped bankruptcy.

But her liberality to her Italian provinces never failed. Some of the

details, which have already reached the public, give an extraordinary

conception of the almost prodigality with which Austria has lavished

her means upon the bridges, roads, and general public communications

of Lombardy.

We give those items in francs.

Five millions spent in repairing and constructing dikes in the Mantuan

province.

Four millions in completing the canal of the Naviglio.

A million and a half for roads in the mountains of the Bergamesque.

A million and a half for the great commercial road of the Splugen.

Two millions and a half for the road over the Hiffer Jock.

Three millions for continuing it along the shore of the lake Como.

Three millions and a quarter for completing the cathedral of Milan.

A million for improvements in the city.

Half a million for the fine bridge over the Ticino.

Twenty-four millions for cross-roads, between 1814 and 1831, besides

miscellaneous expenditure;--the whole being not less than sixty-six

millions in the fifteen years preceding 1834, in the mere matter of

keeping up the means of intercourse in a country where, half a century

ago, the cross-roads were little more than goat-tracks; besides the

annual expense of about a million and a quarter on the repair of the

roads since. And this munificent liberality was expended in Lombardy

alone. The expenditure in Venice in the latter period of its

possession has been nearly equal. The first French conquest had given

it the name of a constitution, and nothing else. The famous republic

was plundered to the last coin. On its second seizure its treasury was

again emptied by its French emancipators; and when it was restored to

Austria in 1814, its population presented a pauper list of fifty-four

thousand individuals. Its commerce was in a state of ruin; its palaces

and public buildings were in a state of decay; its charitable

establishments were without funds; and a few years more must have

filled its canals with the wrecks of its houses. Within the next

twenty years the reparations cost the Austrian treasury not less than

fifty-three millions of francs! Thus Venice rose from a condition

which all our travellers, immediately after the peace of 1815,

pronounced to be irreparable ruin, and is now one of the first

commercial cities of Italy.

But the Austrian government had not been contented with a mere

improvement of the soil or of the modes of communication--it had

employed extraordinary efforts in giving education to the people. We

are to remember the difficulties which impede all such efforts in

Romish countries. Where the priest regulates the faith, he must always

be jealous of the education. But the German habits of the government

predominated over the superstition of Rome, and a species of military

discipline was introduced, to compel the young Italians to learn the

use of their indolent understandings. Within a few years after the

peace of 1815 a national school system was put in action in Lombardy.

Within a few more years it had spread over the whole country, with

such effect, that there was scarcely a commune without its public

place of education. The schools for boys amounted to upwards of two

thousand three hundred, and for girls to upwards of twelve hundred.

Nearly a hundred of the schools for boys taught a very extensive

course of practical knowledge. The higher classes learned

architecture, mechanics, geography, drawing, and natural history, in

the vigorous, useful way for which German education is distinguished.

Still higher schools, or portions of the former, were placed in the

chief towns, for the practical acquirement of the known ledge most

important for servants of public offices. There the chief studies were

history, commerce, mathematics, chemistry, and French, German, and

Italian. Under this system, it is evident that very solid and valuable

acquirements might be made; and those were solely the work of the

Austrian sovereignty.

We give a slight abstract of the plan of education in the female

schools, because it is on this point that England is still most

deficient.

The female elementary schools had three classes.

In the youngest were taught spelling and writing, mental and written

arithmetic, needlework, and the Catechism.

In the second were taught the elements of grammar, the four rules of

arithmetic, and needlework, consisting of marking and embroidery, with

religious instruction.

In the third were taught religion, sacred history, geography, Italian

grammar, letter-writing, weights and measures, and the nature and

history of coin.

All those acquirements were, of course, dictated by the necessities

and habits of native life; but they compose a scale of practical

knowledge which, while useful in their humblest capacity, would form

an admirable ground-work for every attainment of the female mind. It

is probably from some sense of hazard that we do not observe music

among the objects of education: for doubtless singing must have been

one of the habits of schools taught by a German system. We should also

have desired to see some knowledge of domestic arrangements, of the

culinary arts, and of making their own dress. However, it is probable

that these obvious advantages, especially for the life of the

peasantry, may have been added subsequently to the period from which

our information is derived.

We should rejoice to see in England national institutions of this

order established for the education of young females of every rank,

thus withdrawing the daughters of the peasantry from those coarse

drudgeries of the field which were never intended for them, relieving

the female population of the manufacturing towns alike from the

factory labour and the town habits, and training for the labouring

population honest, useful, and moral partners of their lives. In the

higher ranks, the activity, regularity, and practical use of all their

occupations would be scarcely less essential; and we should see in the

rising generation a race of accomplished women who had learned every

thing that was of importance to make them the intellectual associates

of the intelligent world, while they had acquired those domestic

habits, and were entitled to avail themselves of those graceful and

useful arts, which make home pleasing without feeble indulgence,

hospitality cheerful without extravagance, and even time itself pass

without leaving behind a regret for wasted hours.

The Lombard system had been subsequently applied to the Venetian

provinces; where, twenty years ago, the number of schools had risen to

between fourteen and fifteen hundred. The number of boys then

attending the schools was upwards of sixty thousand. Higher still,

there were eighty-six gymnasia or colleges, with three hundred

professors, and attended by upwards of seven thousand students, with

thirty-four colleges for females. Higher still were the twelve

Lyceums, for philosophical studies; and, at the summit of all, the two

universities of Padua and Pavia. The whole system being superintended

by the general boards at Milan and Venice.

Whether all those regulations are applicable to our own country, may

be a matter of question. But the grand difficulty experienced here,

the power of making the parents avail themselves of those admirable

opportunities, is easily solved by the German discipline. A register

is kept in every commune, of all the children from six to twelve years

old; and they are all _compelled_ to attend the schools, except in

case of illness, or some other sufficient cause. But the tuition is

gratuitous, the expense and the schoolmaster being paid by the

commune. Corporal punishment is wholly forbidden.

Such were the benefits lavished by Austria upon her Italian subjects;

benefits which they never would have dreamed of if left to themselves;

and which, in all probability, the pauperised exchequer of the revolt

will never be able to sustain. Under this government, too, Lombardy

had become the most fertile province of Italy, the most densely

peopled, and the most opulent, of the south of Europe. Venice, too,

which had been crushed almost into ruins by the French, rose again

into a resemblance of that commercial power, and civil splendour,

which once made her famous throughout the Mediterranean; and Milan,

though characterised in the Italian annals as the most luckless of all

the cities of earth, having been besieged forty times, taken twenty

times, and almost levelled with the ground by the conqueror four

times,--yet, when the late Emperor Francis visited her about twenty

years ago, exhibited a pomp of private wealth, and a magnificence of

public festivity, which astonished Europe, and was the most eloquent

refutation of the declamatory ravings of the mob of patriotism.

That Austria should be unwilling to give up so fine a possession is

perfectly natural; constituting, as it does, the noblest portion of

the Italian peninsula; or, in the striking language of the historian

Alison,--

"A plain, three hundred miles in length, by a hundred and twenty in

breadth, and in the greatest portion of its length exhibiting an

alluvial soil watered by the Ticino, the Adda, the Adige, the

Tagliamento, and the Piave, falling from the Alps, with the Taro and

other streams falling from the Apennines, and the whole plain

traversed through its centre by the Po, affording the amplest means of

irrigation, the only requisite in this favoured region for the

production of the richest pastures and the most luxuriant harvests."

"On the west," says this master of picturesque description, "it is

sheltered by a vast semicircle of mountains, which there unite the

Alps and the Apennines, and are surmounted by glittering piles of ice

and snow, forming the majestic barrier between France and Italy. In

those inexhaustible reservoirs, which the heat of summer converts into

perennial fountains of living water, the Po takes its rise; and that

classic stream, rapidly fed by the confluence of the torrents which

descend through every cleft and valley in the vast circumference, is

already a great river when it sweeps under the ramparts of Turin."

The description of its agriculture is equally glowing with that of its

mountain boundaries. "A system of agriculture, from which every nation

in Europe might take a lesson, has been long established over its

whole surface, and two, sometimes three, successive crops annually

reward the labours of the husbandman. Indian corn is produced in

abundance, and by its return, quadruple that of wheat, affords

subsistence for a numerous and dense population. An incomparable

system of irrigation, diffused over the whole, conveys the waters of

the Alps into a series of little canals, like the veins and arteries

in the human body, to every field, and in some places to every ridge,

in the grass lands. The vine and the olive thrive on the sunny slopes

which ascend from this plain to the ridges of the Alps, and a woody

zone of never-failing beauty lies between the desolation of the

mountain and the fertility of the plain. The produce of this region,

which most intimately combines its interests with those of the great

European marts, is silk. Italy now settles the market of silk over all

Europe. Since the beginning of the present century, it has grown into

an annual produce of the value of ten millions sterling! Within the

last twenty years the export from the Lombardo-Venetian States has

trebled." All those details give an impression of the security of

property, which is the first effect of a paternal government. They

fully answer all the absurd charges of impoverishment by Austria, of

barbarism in its laws, or of severity in its institutions. Lombardy,

independent, will soon have reason to lament the change from Austrian

protection.

We come to other things. Italy is now in the condition of a man who

thinks to get rid of all his troubles by committing suicide. Every

kingdom, princedom, duchy, and village has successively rebelled, and

proclaimed a constitution; and before that constitution was a month

old, has forgotten what it was. A flying duke, a plundered palace, a

barricade, and a national guard, are all that the philosopher can

detect, or the historian has to record, in the Revolution of Italy.

How could it be otherwise? Can the man who bows down to an image, and

listens to the fictions of a priest, exercise a rational understanding

upon any other subject? Can the slave of superstition be the champion

of true freedom? or can the man, forced to doubt the virtue of his

wife and the parentage of his children, which is the notorious

condition of all the higher circles of Italian society, ever find

fortitude enough to make the sacrifices essential to the purchase of

true liberty? If all Italy were republicanised to-day, there would be

nothing in its character to make liberty worth an effort,--nothing to

prevent its putting its neck under the feet of the first despot who

condescended to demand its vassalage.

The war of Piedmont and Austria is another chapter, written in

another language than the feeble squabbles of the little

sovereignties. There, steel and gunpowder will be the elements; here,

the convulsion finishes in a harangue and the coffee-house. Charles

Albert has passed the Mincio, but shall he ever repass it? Certainly

not, if the Austrian general knows his trade. If ever king was in a

military trap, if ever army was in a pitfall, the Piedmontese passage

of the Mincio has done the deed. But, this must lie in the book of

casualties. Austria is renowned for military blunders. In the Italian

campaigns of Napoleon, her reinforcements came up only in time to see

the ruin of the army in the field. Successive generals followed, only

to relieve each other's reputation by sharing a common defeat; until

Italy was torn by 50,000 Frenchmen from the hands of 100,000

Austrians. Yet the Germans have been always brave; their national

calamity was tardiness. It clings to them still. They have now been

gazing for a month at the army of Charles Albert; they ought to have

driven it into the Mincio within twenty-four hours.

The Italian spirit of hatred to the German has exhibited itself in a

thousand forms for a thousand years. It has murmured, conspired, and

made vows of vengeance, since the days of Charlemagne. It has

sentenced the "Teuton" in remorseless sonnets, has fought him in

sinfonias, and slaughtered him in ballets and burlesques. But the

German returned, chained the poets to the wall of a cell, and sent the

writers to row in the galleys. For the last hundred years, Italy has

implored all the furies in operas, and paid homage to Nemesis by the

help of the orchestra--all in vain. At length, the French Revolution,

by sweeping the Austrian armies out of Italy, gave the chance of

realising the long dream. The "Cisalpine Republic" flourished on

paper, and every Italian talked of Brutus, and the revival of the

Consulate, and the Capitol. But the French price of liberty was too

high for Italian purchase; the liberators robbed the liberated of

every coin in their possession, and shot them when they refused to

give it up. Even the "Teuton" was welcome, after this experience of

the Gaul; and Italy found the advantage of a government which, though

it exhibited neither triumphal chariots nor civic festivities, yet

suffered the land to give its harvests to the right owners.

But even this feeling was to have a new temptation. About fifteen

years ago, one of the chaplains of the King of Sardinia was struck off

the court list, for uttering opinions which, touched with the old

romance of Italian liberation, struck the whole court of Turin with

horror. Charles Albert was then at the head of the Jesuits, and the

Jesuits demanded the criminal Gioberti. Italy was no longer safe for

him: he fled across the Alps, and took refuge in Belgium. There he

wrote, through necessity. But he had something to revenge, and he

wrote with the vigour of revenge. But he was an enthusiast, and he

indulged in the reveries of enthusiasm. The double charm was

irresistible to the dreamy spirit of a nation which loves to imagine

impossible retribution, and achieve heroism in the clouds. His

writings crossed the Alps. No obstacle could stop them; they wound

their way through _douanes_; they insinuated themselves through the

backstairs of palaces; they even penetrated into the cells of

monks;--and his treatise "Del Primato Civile e Morale degl' Italiani,"

which appeared in 1843, was hailed with universal rapture. The

literature of modern Italy seldom rises into that region of publicity

which carries a work beyond seas and mountains. She has not yet

attained the great art of common sense--the only art which furnishes

the works of man with wings. Her poetry is local and trifling: her

prose is loose, feeble, and rambling. Her best writers seem to the

European eye what the wanderers through Soirees and Conversaziones are

to the well-informed ear,--men of words living on borrowed notions,

and, after the first half-dozen sentences, intolerably tiresome.

But the work of Gioberti was a panegyric on Italy, a universal

laudation of the Italian genius, the Italian spirit, the Italian

language, every thing that bore the name of Italian! Its very title,

"The _Pre-eminence_, Civil and Moral, of the Italians," was

irresistible.

The monster-folly of all foreigners is a passion for praise; and the

unpopularity of the Englishman on the Continent chiefly arises from

his tardiness in gorging this rapacious appetite. Gioberti, with

evident consciousness of the offence, labours to justify the

assumption. "Individuals may be modest, but modesty degrades nations,"

is his preliminary maxim. "A nation to have claims must have merits;

and who is to believe in her merits, unless she believes in them

herself?" This curious logic, which would make vanity only the more

ridiculous by the openness of its display, is the grand argument of

the book. It has made Italy suddenly imagine herself a nation of

heroes.

"When a nation," says Gioberti, "has fallen into social degradation,

the attempt to revive its courage must be by praise; possibly

dangerous at other times, but now a generous art." It is admitted,

however, "that the facts ought to be true, and the arguments forcible;

and that no good can come from adulation." And in consequence of this

wise precaution, the patriotic monk proceeds to inaugurate his country

with the precedency in the grand procession of all the kingdoms of the

earth! But another striking feature of this work was, that all those

changes must emanate from a centre, and that centre the Pope, that

Pope being a professor of liberalism, and having for his pupils all

the princes of Italy. Whether Gioberti saw futurity with the eye of

prophet, or only in the conjecture of a charlatan, there can be no

doubt that the coincidence between his theory and the facts is

sufficiently curious. We are to remember that book was published in

the reign of Gregory XVI.--a genuine monk, hardened in all the old

habits of the cell, who thought that a railroad would be the overthrow

of the tiara, and the expression of a political opinion would call up

the shades of all the past Holinesses from their purgatorial thrones.

The book declared that the Deity being the source of all influence on

the civilisation of man, the country which approached nearest to

general influence over the world must be the leading nation. It

contends that Italy fulfils this condition in three ways. First, that

it has created the civilisation of all other nations; second, that it

preserves in its bosom, for general use, all the principles of that

civilisation; and third, that it has repeatedly shown the power of

restoring that civilisation. He further contends that the true

principle of Italian power is federation, and the true centre of that

federation must be the Pope. He declares that the whole light of

Italy, in the eyes of the world, has flashed from the papal

throne--that the Roman States are to the rest of Italy what the site

of the Temple was to the Jewish people--and seems to regard the whole

Italian nation, in reference to Europe, as like the Chosen Land to the

rest of the world. Even then, he marked the Piedmontese throne as the

chief support of the federation, and Charles Albert as the champion of

the great pontifical revolution which, expelling all strangers, and

uniting all princes, was to place Italy in secure sovereignty over all

the mental and moral influences of the world.

The work is obviously a romance; but it is a romance of genius; it is

obviously unsuited to the realities of any nation under the moon, but

it touches every weak point of the national character with a new

colouring, and persuades the loose and lazy Italian that he has only

to start on his feet to be a model for mankind. With him the church of

Rome is no longer an antiquated building of the dark ages, full of

obscure passages and airless chambers, with modern cobwebs covering

its ancient gilding, and, with the very crevices which let in light,

exhibiting only its irreparable decay. It is on the contrary a temple

full of splendour, and spreading its light through the world, crowded

with oracular shrines, and uttering voices of sanctity that are yet

destined to give wisdom to the world.

It must be wholly unnecessary for Protestantism to expose the

superficial glitter of those views, and the feeble foundations of this

visionary empire. The true respondent is the actual condition of

Europe. Every Protestant nation has left Italy behind. Even the Romish

nations, which have borrowed their vigour from intercourse with

Protestantism, have left her behind. Of what great invention for the

benefit of man has Italy been the parent during the last three hundred

years? What command has she given us over nature? what territory has

she added to the civilised world in an age of perpetual discovery?

what enlargement of the human mind has she exhibited in her

philosophy? what advance in the amelioration of the popular condition

signalises her intelligent benevolence? what manly inquiry into any

one of the means by which governments or individuals distinguish

themselves as benefactors to posterity, and live in the memory of

mankind?

It is painful to answer queries like these with a direct negation; but

that negation would be truth. Italy has nothing to show for her

intellectual products during centuries, but the carnival and the

opera; for her gallantry, but the sufferings of French and German

invasions; for her political progress, but the indolent submission to

generations of petty kings, themselves living in vassalage to France,

Austria, and Spain; and for her religion, but the worship of saints,

of whom no living man knows any thing--miracles so absurd as to make

even the sacristans who narrate them laugh; new legends of every

conceivable nonsense, and leases of purgatory shortened according to

the pence dropped into the purse of the confessional.

Italy has two evils, either of which would be enough to break down the

most vigorous nation--if a vigorous nation would not have broken down

both, ages ago. These two are the nobles and the priesthood--both

ruinously numberless, both contemptibly idle, and both interested in

resisting every useful change, which might shake their supremacy.

Every period of Italian convulsion has left a class of men calling

themselves nobles, and perpetuating the title to their sons. The

Gothic, the Norman, the papal, the "nouveaux riches," every man who

buys an estate--in fact, nearly every man who desires a title--all

swell the lists of the nobility to an intolerable size. Of course, a

noble can never do any thing--his dignity stands in the way.

The ecclesiastics, though a busier race, are still more exhausting.

The kingdom of Naples alone has eighty-five prelates, with nearly one

hundred thousand priests and persons of religious orders, the monks

forming about a fourth of the whole! In this number the priesthood of

Sicily is not included, which has to its own share no less than three

archbishops and eleven bishops. Even the barren isle of Sardinia has

one hundred and seventeen convents! Can any rational mind wonder at

the profligacy, the idleness, and the dependence of the Italian

peninsula, with such examples before it? The Pope daily has between

two and three thousand monks loitering through the streets of Rome.

Besides these, he has on his ecclesiastical staff twenty cardinals,

four archbishops, ninety-eight bishops, and a clergy amounting to

nearly five per cent of his population. With those two millstones

round her neck, Italy must remain at the bottom. She may be shaken and

tossed by the political surges which roll above her head, but she

never can be buoyant. She must cast both away before she can rise.

Italy priest-ridden, and noble-ridden, and prince-ridden, must be

content with her fate. Her only chance is in the shock, which will

break away her encumbrances.

We now come to the Avatar, in which liberty is looked for by all the

romancers in Italy. On the 1st of June 1846, Pope Gregory XVI. died,

at the age of 81. He was a man of feeble mind, but of rigid habits,

willing to live after the manner of his fathers, and, above all

things, dreading Italian change. The occasional attempts at

introducing European improvements into the Roman territory struck him

with undisguised alarm; and even his old age did not prevent his

leaving six thousand state prisoners in the Roman dungeons. On the

16th of the same month the Bishop of Imola was chosen Pope. He was of

an Italian family, which had occasionally held considerable offices;

was a man of intelligence, though tinged with liberalism; and was one

of the youngest of the Popes since Innocent III., who took the tiara

at the age of 37. The Bishop of Imola was 54.

Adopting the name of Pius IX., his first act was one of clemency. He

published an amnesty for political offences, and threw open the prison

doors. An act of this order is usual on the accession of a Pope. But

the fears of the population had been so much heightened by the

singular stubbornness of his predecessor, that the discovery of their

having a merciful master produced a universal burst of rejoicing.

But the popular excitement was not to be satisfied with the

trumpetings and parades of the returning exiles--it demanded a new

tariff, which was granted, of course. Then followed fêtes and

illuminations, until the Pope himself grew tired of being blinded by

fireworks and deafened by shouts. A succession of acts of civility

passed between his Holiness and his people. He talked of railroads,

canals, and commerce. He formed a council, which, so far as any

practical effect has been produced by the measure, seems to have died

in its birth. He cultivated popularity, walked through the streets,

occasionally served the mass for a parish priest, and fully gained his

object, of astonishing the populace by the condescension of a pontiff.

To all this we make no imaginable objection. Pius IX. did but a duty

that seldom enters into the contemplation of the prelacy, and which it

would be well for their security, and not unwise in their calling, to

practise in every province of Christendom.

But it is to be observed that, in all this pageantry of parliaments,

and all those provinces of renovation, nothing has been done--that

none of the real machinery of the popedom has been broken up--that the

monk is still a living being, and the Jesuit, though a little

plundered, is still in the world--that every spiritual law which made

Rome a terror to the thinking part of mankind is in full vigour at

this moment, and that whatever may be thought of the enlightenment of

his Holiness, every weapon of spiritual severity remains still bright

and burnished, and hung up in the old armoury of faith, ready for the

first hand, and for the first occasion.

Lord Brougham, in his late memorable cosmopolite speech, has charged

the popedom with being the origin of the European convulsions. There

can be no doubt that the popedom, if it did not give birth to the

movement, at least set the example. The first actual struggle with

Austria was its quarrel about the possession of Ferrara, which was,

after all, but a straw thrown up to show the direction of the wind.

The call to the Italian states, though not loud, was deep; and an

Italian army, for the purpose of forming an Italian confederation,

made a part of every dream between the Alps and the sea.

Then came still more showy scenes of the great drama. France had

looked on the Ferrarese struggle with the eager interest which

inspires that busy nation on every opportunity of European

disturbance. But the Parisian revolution suddenly threw the

complimentary warfare of German and Italian heroism into burlesque.

The extinction of the throne, the flight of a dynasty, the sovereignty

of the mob, and the universal frenzy of a nation, were bold sports, of

which Italian souls knew nothing. But their effect was soon perilously

felt; the populace of Milan determined to rival the populace of

Paris--had an _emeute_ of their own, built barricades, fought the

Austrian garrison, and made themselves masters of the capital of

Lombardy.

But the Italian is essentially a dramatist without the power of

tragedy; he turns by nature to farce, and in his boldest affairs does

nothing without burlesque. Could it be conceived that a people,

resolving on a revolution, should have begun it by a revolt of cigars!

In England "sixty years ago," a noble duke exhibited his hostility to

the government of Pitt, by ordering his footman to comb the powder out

of his locks--this deficiency in the powder tax being regarded by the

noble duke as a decisive instrument in the overthrowing the national

policy. It must however be said, for the honour of England and the

apology of the duke, that he was a Whig,--which accounts for any

imbecility in this world.

The Milanese began by a desperate self-denying ordinance against

tobacco. No patriot was thenceforward to smoke! What the Italian did

with his hands, mouth, or thoughts, when the cigar no longer employed

the whole three, is beyond our imagination. His next act of patriotic

sacrifice was the theatre--the Austrian government receiving some rent

as tax on the performances. The theatre was deserted, and even Fanny

Ellsler's pirouettes could not win the rabble back. Even the public

promenade, which happened to have some connexion with Austrian

memories, was abandoned, and no Italian, man, woman, or child, would

exhibit on the Austrian Corso. To our northern fancies, all this seems

intolerably infantine; but it is not the less Italian--and it might

have gone on in the style of children raising a nursery rebellion to

this hour, but for the intervention of another character.

The history of the Sardinian states is as old as the Punic wars. But

the glance which we shall give looks only to the events of the last

century--excepting the slight mention, that from the period when Italy

was separated from the fallen empire of Charlemagne in the ninth

century, the command of the passes of Mont Cenis and Mont Genevre,

with the countries at the foot of the Cottian and Graian Alps, was put

in charge of some distinguished military noble, as the key of Italy,

that noble bearing the title of Marquis or Lord of the Marches.

We come, leaving nine centuries of feud and ferocity behind, to the

eighteenth century, when the house of Savoy became allied with the

royal succession of England, by the marriage of Victor Amadeus with

Anne Marie of Orleans, daughter of Philip, brother of Louis XIV., by

Henrietta, daughter of Charles I. of England.

There are few historical facts more striking than the effect of

position on the character of the princes of Savoy. The life of the

Italian sovereigns has generally been proverbial for the feebleness of

their capacities, or the waste of their powers; but Savoy exhibited an

almost unbroken line of sovereigns remarkable for political sagacity,

and for gallantry in the field. This was the result of their location.

They were to Italy what the Lords Wardens of the Border were to

England and Scotland; forced to be perpetually in the saddle--constantly

preparing to repel invasion--their authority dependent from year to

year on an outburst from France, or a grasp from the restless ambition

and vast power of the German emperors. It is not less remarkable, that

from the middle of the century, when the hazards of Savoy were

diminished by the general amelioration of European policy, the vigour

of the Savoyard princes decayed; and the court of Turin, instead of

being a school of diplomacy and war, sank into the feebleness of

Italian thrones, and retained its rivalry only in the opera.

But the French Revolution came, sent to try the infirmities of all

thrones. It found Victor Amadeus the Third sitting calmly in the seat

of his forefathers, and wholly unsuspicious of the barbarian storm

which was to sweep through his valleys. The French burst on Nice in

1792, then on Oniglia, and stripped Savoy of all its outworks to the

Alps.

But Napoleon came, another shape of evil. While the king was preparing

to defend the passes of the mountains, the young French general turned

the line of defence by the sea, and poured his army into Piedmont. A

succession of rapid battles carried him to the walls of Turin; and the

astonished king, in 1796, signed a treaty which left his dominions at

the mercy of Republicanism.

On the death of the king in this year of troubles, his son, Charles

Emanuel IV., succeeded him. But he was now a vassal of France; he saw

his country dismembered, his armies ruined, and his people groaning

under the cruel insults and intolerable exactions which have always

characterised French conquest. Unable to endure this torture, he

retired to Sardinia, and from Sardinia finally went to Rome, and there

abdicated in favour of his brother, Victor Emanuel.

The new monarch, whose states were undergoing from year to year all

the capricious and agonising vicissitudes of Italian revolution, at

length shared in the general European triumph over Napoleon, and at

the peace of 1814 returned to his dominions, augmented, by the treaty

of Vienna, by the important addition of Genoa.

But his return was scarcely hailed with triumph by his subjects, when

the example of Spain was followed in an insurrection demanding a new

constitution. The king, wearied of political disturbance, and being

without offspring, now determined to follow the example of his

predecessor, and gave up the crown to his brother, Charles Felix,

appointing, as provisional regent, Prince Charles Albert of Savoy

Carignano, a descendant of Victor Amadeus I.

After a reign of ten years, undistinguished by either vices or

virtues, but employed in the harmless occupations of making roads and

building schools, the king died in 1831, and was succeeded by the

Prince of Carignano.

Charles Albert has now been seventeen years upon the throne; yet, to

this hour, his character, his policy, and his purposes, are the

problems of Italy. His whole course strongly resembles those

biographies of studied mystery and sleepless ambition--those serpent

obliquities and serpent trails--which marked the career of the

mediæval princes of Italy; but which demanded not only a keen head,

but a bold resolve,--Castruccio, with a Machiavel, for the twin image

of the perfection of an Italian king.

The object of universal outcry for his original abandonment of "Young

Italy,"--an abandonment which may find its natural excuse in the

discovery that Young Italy was digging up the foundations of the

throne, on whose first step his foot was already placed, and to which

within a few years he actually ascended;--from that period he has

fixed the eyes of all Italy upon his movements, as those of the only

possible antagonist who can shake the power of Austria. He has at

least the externals of a power to which Italy can show no rival:

50,000 of the best troops south of the Alps, which a blast of the

trumpet from Turin can raise to 100,000; a country which is almost a

continued fortress, and a position which, being in the command of the

passes of Italy, can meet invasion with the singular probability of

making his mountains the grave of the invader, or open Italy to the

march of an auxiliary force, which would at once turn the scale. His

government has exhibited that cool calculation of popular impulse and

royal rights, by which, without a total prohibition of change, he has

contrived to keep the whole power of government in his hands. Long

watched by Austria, he had never given it an opportunity of direct

offence; and if he has at length declared war, his whole past conduct

justifies the belief, that he has either been driven to the conflict

by some imperious necessity, or that he has assured himself, on

deliberate grounds, of the triumph of his enterprise.

He has now taken the first step, and he has taken it with a daring

which must either make him the master of Italy, or make him a beggar

and an exile. By rushing into war with Austria, he has begun the game

in which he must gain all or lose all. Yet we doubt that, for final

success, far as he has gone, he has gone far enough. On the day when

he unfurled the standard against Austria, he should have proclaimed

Italian independence. We look upon the aggression on Austria as a

violation of alliance which must bring evil. But that violation being

once resolved on, the scabbard should have been thrown away, and the

determination published to the world, that the foreign soldier should

no longer tread the Italian soil. This declaration would have had the

boldness which adds enthusiasm to interest. It would have had the

clearness which suffers no equivocation; and it would have had the

comprehensiveness which would include every man of Italian birth, and

not a few in other countries, to whom unlicensed boldness is the first

of virtues.

The private habits of this prince are said to be singularly adapted to

the leader of a national war. His frame is hardy, his manner of living

is abstemious, and his few recreations are manly and active. He has

already seen war, and commanded a column of the French army in the

campaign of 1823, which broke up the Spanish liberals, and reinstated

the king upon the throne. But, with all those daring qualities, he

never forgets that the Italian is by nature a superstitious being;

that he is, at best, a compound of the mime and the monk--with the

monk three-fourths predominating; and that no man can hope to be

master of the national mind who does not take his share in the

priestly slavery of the people. This accounts for the extraordinary

reverence which from time to time he displays in the ceremonials of

the church, for his sufferance of the monkish thousands which blacken

the soil of his dominions, and for his tolerance of the Jesuits, whom

he, as well as probably every other sovereign of Europe, dreads, and

whom every other sovereign of Europe seems, by common consent, to be

fixed on expelling from his dominions.

What the ulterior views of the King may be, of course, it would

require a prophet to tell. Whether the crown of Lombardy is among the

dreams of his ambition, whether the Italian hatred of Austria

stimulates his councils, or whether the mere Italian passion for

freedom urges him to stake his own diadem on the chances of the field

for the liberation of the peninsula, are questions which can be

answered only by the event; but he has at last advanced,--has menaced

the Austrian possession of Italy; has pressed upon the Austrian army

in its retreat; has reduced it to the defensive; and has brought the

great question of Austrian dominion to the simple arbitration of the

sword.

The history of the Sardinian campaign has been hitherto a history of

skirmishes. The Piedmontese troops have advanced, and Radetski has

retired. The Austrian position is memorable for its strength, and has

been successively adopted by every defender of the Austro-Italian

provinces. Peschiera, Verona, and Mantua form the three angles of an

irregular triangle, of which the line of the Mincio forms the base.

Charles Albert, by crossing the Mincio at Goito, is now _within_ the

triangle. The three fortresses are strong, and he has already made

some attempts on Peschiera, which commands the head of the Lake of

Garda. Those attempts have failed, and Verona is now his object; and

there too he appears to have already undergone some failures. The true

wonder is, that he has been suffered to remain a moment making these

experiments, and that Austria, with 300,000 men under arms, should

allow an Italian army, of 50,000 men at the most, to shut up her

general, and lord it over half of her Italian territory. All this is

an enigma. It is equally an enigma, that the Austrian commander-in-chief

should have allowed himself to be driven out of the capital of

Lombardy by the rabble of the streets, and have marched out with a

garrison of 15,000 men, before a mob of half their number. He ought to

have fought in Milan to his last battalion. If he had been embarrassed

by orders from home, he ought to have resigned at once. A heavy blow

at the insurrection in Milan would have extinguished Italian

rebellion.

He has now a position in which he might fight with perfect security

for his flanks and rear; with the strongest fortress in Italy, Mantua,

for his place of refuge, if defeated; and, if successful, with the

certainty of ruin to his adversary;--yet he stands still. It was by a

brilliant movement in this position that the Austrian Kray gave the

French that tremendous defeat which ultimately drove them over the

Alps.

The surrounding country is of the most intricate kind--a perpetual

intersection of large rivers, guarded at every passage by _têtes de

pont_, and all the means known to military science. A war of this

order may be carried on for years; and, unless the Italian population

shall rise _en masse_, it must be a mere waste of blood and time.