the expedition. Virginie would have it that any intelligence about you
would be in one's way here."
"Then you told her nothing of the authentic account of our foundering?"
"Indeed but I did--but she would not believe it. Depend upon it,
instinct is a fine thing. Her instinct has proved better than our
reason,--for she would have it that you were not drowned, and that news
would find its way here."
Then we entered into a sort of _resumé_ of the shore-going events of
the last night; of all that the governor had done, and the good fellows
who had volunteered to row guard all night with lights. Then it was
told me that the ladies had been deeply affected, but none so deeply
as Virginie. She had taken no rest all night; but with tearful eyes
had looked out for concerted signals of intelligence, and breathlessly
questioned every messenger. My sailor friend had been in the same
boat with her, and had won from her expressions of gratitude, by his
determination to pass the whole night, if necessary, in the search
for me. At that moment when we stood speaking, she did not know of my
safety.
I determined to be myself the announcer of my prorogued existence,
and set off at once to the residence of her father. I had prepared
speeches of thankful acknowledgment of her interest in my welfare, and
was maturing the intention of letting her see that love for her had
been kindled in my breast. But my fine resolves were rendered of little
effect, and my speeches broken short by the young lady, who, the moment
she beheld me, threw herself--her dear self--right into my arms. She
did, indeed, without the least preamble or apologetic qualification.
There is but one issue to such a predicament as this. I had not much
time, certainly, for wooing; but I am happy to say, that before long I
was wed, and that now I am the husband of Virginie.
SWITZERLAND AND ITALY.
IT is not one of the least curious incidents of the times in which we
live, that two directly opposite movements should have taken place in
the countries on either side of the Alps, and that their results should
have been so extremely different from what might have been expected.
In one,--the chosen land of freedom, as it has been called, the last
home and refuge of Liberty, when she had deserted other and more genial
climes,--the so-called liberals, the democrats, the radicals, have just
undertaken a successful crusade against freedom of conscience, and have
subdued the aristocratic defenders of religious liberty, even amidst
the strongholds of their mountains. In the other,--long the supposed
seat of despotism in its purest and most unmitigated form, where
liberty and freedom of opinion had not, except during the storm of the
French Revolution, ever shown any signs of existence,--a most decisive
and energetic movement in favour of political freedom has taken place,
and has been originated by the very chief and organ of what the
Transmontane people generally consider as the concentrated expression
of all that enslaves and subdues the mind. The facts have certainly
been unexpected; they have burst upon European statesmen, or at least
upon those of the northern and western courts, unawares; and their
ultimate consequences appear to be as much beyond their ken as they
are beyond their control. The Swiss Federation, notwithstanding the
proffered mediation of the great powers, have settled their own matters
among themselves; and the Italians seem inclined to _laver leur linge
sale en famille_, as Napoleon used to recommend people to do when the
operation was of a more than usually unpleasant nature, without saying
"by your leave, or with your leave," to any of the barbarians that
dwell on the northern sides of the Alps. Austria and France are equally
balked in their views upon Switzerland and Italy; and the only power
that seems likely to gain any thing by these events will be, in spite
of herself, "the perfidious Albion." As usual, however, with English
diplomatists, but still more as usual with Whig officials, and with the
gaping good-natured multitude of the British Islands, those advantages
that may accrue to our country will come, not through any astuteness of
the government, or its servants, but through the sheer force of events
urging themselves on in their inevitable course, and filling up the
series of secondary causes and effects that compose the history of the
world.
To any one contemplating the enviable position and the natural
advantages of Switzerland, and still more to any one looking at the
fundamental character of the Swiss people, it would seem one of the
most difficult political problems to find any cause for internal
quarrel and disunion, much less for civil war. Blessed as they are
with a country that necessitates all the skill and industry of man
to bring forth its full powers, but which, when man tills its bosom,
and pours the sweat of his brow into its lap, yields him the sweet
return of abundant competence and varied riches, the Swiss have long
been looked up to with justice as one of the most truly prosperous
and thriving people of Europe. They have not been tempted to throw
aside the agricultural occupations of their country for the dangerous
and transitory fluctuations of commerce; they have remained strong
in their national and natural simplicity; rich, and more than rich,
in the produce of their lands, raised by the labour of their arms;
and, amid the many changes of other states, when once the fever of
the revolutionary malady had left them, tranquil and contented, and
objects of envy to all surrounding people. Thus national ambition was
of necessity limited; external aggrandisement and colonial extension
they could know nothing about; their territory was safe from foreign
aggression, or was supposed so, and their energies could only expend
themselves on the affairs of their own country. Switzerland remained
till within the last few years, as it had always been, the "cynosure
of neighbouring eyes" to all Europe; and scarcely a traveller ever
wandered amidst its vales and mountains, but sighed after a dwelling
in that fairy land, and longed for it as his country by adoption next
after the land of his birth. Of all people in the world, the Swiss, to
external spectators at least, seemed to have the least to wish for,
and the least cause to be discontented either with their country or
themselves.
And yet, of a sudden, up rises a storm; the Federation splits; and,
before men can come to comprehend what the mountaineers are quarrelling
about, swords are drawn, shots are fired, a couple of towns are
captured, and the war is declared at an end almost before it was known
to have commenced. It has been like a drama at the opera. _Scene_,
a rocky district, with a town in the distance: enter a chorus of
peasants, who sing about liberty. Alarums: a band of soldiers rush in
and drive them off the stage. Grand cantata of the president,--and the
curtain falls. Some connoisseurs in the boxes call for the manager, and
ask when the opera is going to begin, as they wish to intervene: the
manager enters from the side-door, bows humbly, and intimates that they
may have their tickets returned if they please, the play being over.
General disappointment!
Something like this would be the dramatised history of the late
Helvetic disturbances; so brief, and we may almost say so ridiculous,
has the whole seemed. In most countries, when a civil war is
proclaimed, and one-third of the nation declares its intention of
separating from the other two-thirds, a struggle of some length and
earnestness of purpose may be with tolerable certainty predicted: even
in Belgium, we should suppose that a civil war would take a month
or two before it could be finally extinguished. But in Switzerland
it appears that the feelings of the belligerents, whatever may have
been their previous intensity, have found an easy vent for rapid
evaporation; and after one or two passes with the sword, the weaker
combatant has dropped his point and given up.
There must have been something false and spurious at the bottom of all
this, or all the braggadocio of the Federalists and the Sonderbund
could never have been dissipated by a few shots at Fribourg and
Lucerne: one of the two parties at least could not have been in
earnest, or they never would have knocked under so easily and so
speedily. Political reasons for war cannot become on a sudden so
thoroughly fallacious, nor military resources so thoroughly exhausted,
as that one day's skirmishing at Fribourg, and two day's fighting
near Lucerne, could suffice to settle the quarrel. We are inclined,
therefore, to suspect the weaker party to have been conscious of wrong
in this case, though to any impartial observer the acts of aggression
lay all at the door of the stronger.
How stood the matter? The central cantons, strong in their mountain
fastnesses, and on the borders of their sublime lakes, have maintained,
under republican forms, the true aristocratic spirit, and the ancient
religion of Switzerland. Those encircling these central states, the
dwellers in the champaign country and in the cities, have gone into
the follies of democracy, and have abandoned more or less the dignity
of the old Swiss character, to ape the vices, political and social,
of the neighbouring people, whether French or German. Ever since the
factious burst of pseudo-patriotism, during the _in_glorious "Three
days" of 1830, the inhabitants of the northern Swiss towns have had
their heads running on the visionary schemes that have distracted
Frenchmen's brains; and like daws in peacocks' feathers, or servants
in their masters' cast-off clothes, have been trying to imitate the
"virtues," political and social, of the Gallic people. Hence has arisen
the Radical party in the larger cantons; hence has arisen the crowds
of infidels and debauchees which have latterly disgraced the petty
capitals of those cantons; hence the Catholics have been persecuted
and robbed in Argau, and the respectable people of Geneva ousted out
of the government by the rabble of that city. Hence came the outcry
against the Jesuits, and the former quarrel with Lucerne, in which,
however, that city came the best out of the struggle: hence an infinity
of petty jealousies and heartburnings, and acts of oppression, on the
part of the Radical majority against the Catholic minority, and hence
finally the recent resort to arms. The Radical and the stronger cantons
have considered it injurious to their own interests, and derogatory to
their own dignity, that the freedom of opinion which they claim for
themselves should exist in its full integrity among their Catholic and
less powerful brethren. They have insisted on the abolition of certain
religious orders of men within the limits of their territories; and,
because the others have claimed the liberty guaranteed by the Federal
compact, they have envenomed the quarrel so far, as to bring it to
the decision of might rather than of right. It is in fact, however, a
struggle of the democratic against the aristocratic party, of which
the Catholic question is only a particular phase; the real bone of
contention was, whether the Democrats or Radicals should be endangered
in their predominance in the Diet, by the compact votes of the
Aristocrats or Catholics. The expulsion of the Jesuits was only a very
subordinate part of the question; and, as it now stands decided, the
supremacy of the Radical and Democratic faction is firmly established.
It appears to us that, had the cantons of the Sonderbund been governed
by clear-headed men, and their armies led by men of talent, not only
the political, but also the military, result of the contest would
have been essentially different. The cantons cannot have been united
by any very strong tie, or they never would have broken off from each
other, and made their separate submission, so speedily after the
fall of Lucerne. The forces of the Sonderbund cannot have been very
confident in their leaders' abilities, or they never would have given
up the fight while all the country on the south and east of the Lake
of Lucerne remained in their possession. And yet if they were able
only to carry on the war for ten days or a fortnight, they were very
blameable for having allowed things to come so rapidly to a crisis. It
was a political mistake of no small gravity to form the Sonderbund, and
to talk so largely of their separate existence, unless they intended
to make a more stout stand in defence of their liberties. Although
the Radicals were, like all democrats, the aggressors, still the
aristocrats should not have defied them so loudly, unless they had
better grounds for showing such confidence. The little boy who squares
his fists even at the bigger one that bullies him, deserves a sound
thrashing for his impudence, if he is ready to give up at the end of
the first round.
We believe the policy of the French government to have been the true
one on this occasion: it coincided, indeed, pretty nearly with that of
the Austrian cabinet. In fact, any government, that wishes to stand,
should be prepared to take the side of the Conservative party, wherever
that party, in the true sense of the term "Conservative," exists. It
must be prepared, at all times, to support the cause of order and
religion against that of anarchy and infidelity; and, though the French
cabinet is not overburdened with feelings of honour and delicacy, it
has a sufficiently strong instinct of self-preservation, to induce it
to side with its friends rather than with its enemies. The policy of
the Austrian government could not be for a moment doubtful. Austria has
always been the friend of order and of rational liberty; and it was
her duty, no less than her interest, to take a decided step in favour
of the Forest Cantons. We can conjecture no other reason for these two
great powers not having interfered sooner, than that they must have
been in uncertainty as to the intentions of the Whig cabinet on our
side of the channel, and that they were checked in their action by the
certainty that Prussia must take part in the contest, in virtue of the
principality of Neufchatel. And yet we doubt not that both France and
Austria will be sufferers from the impulse given to Radicalism, by the
recent petty triumph of its principles within a day's journey of their
respective frontiers. A French regiment in Geneva, and an Austrian one
in the Grisons, would have restored the balance of parties, and would
have brought back the Radicals to their proper dimensions. It may now
be confidently expected that Switzerland will become a little focus
of agitation for the discontented in both countries; and that it will
exist as a political nuisance under the nose of each of its powerful
neighbours, loudly calling for abatement.
England, which, as represented by the present tenants of Downing
Street, is no doubt inclined to intrigue with the Radicals rather
than with the Catholic party in Switzerland, may lay her account to
profit by the stagnation which this contest will occasion in Swiss
manufacturing and commercial operations; and may calculate on enriching
some of our great exporting houses at the expense of the manufacturers
of Zurich and Basle. That she intended or foresaw this result, we more
than doubt; but it will very probably be a consequence of her tardy
offer of mediation.
As it is, the dignity of position lies altogether on the side of the
Federal Diet: they have employed force successfully. Whatever be
the merits of their pretensions, they have imposed their claims on
their opponents both promptly and efficaciously; and, more by the
faint-heartedness and disunion of their enemies than by their own
valour and concert, they have established their sway in undisputed
tyranny over the whole Federation. The president of the Diet predicted
this result, and his words have come true. As in the case of the United
States and Mexico, it is the unrighteous cause that has triumphed;
and the glory, if there be any, is all on one side. But the ultimate
consequences of this state of things may be expected to bring about the
decay of the national character, and therefore to undermine the last
remaining foundations of Swiss nationality. Whenever a European war
again occurs, Helvetia will fall as an easy spoil to be partitioned
by France and Austria; and what is more, she will fall unregretted.
Her mountains, her lakes and valleys, her forests and her glaciers,
will still remain grand and beautiful, till time itself shall be no
more; but the old Switzers will have become degenerate, and will have
forgotten the glories of their former history. Some of them will be
affiliated to the restless family of the Gauls, while the remainder
will be learning over again the first rudiments of agricultural and
rural prosperity, under the sceptre of the Ostrogoths. Swiss freedom
and Swiss commerce will have disappeared from the land; and English
manufacturers will be rejoicing at the bankruptcy of one class of their
competitors in European or American markets.
In Italy, it is devoutly believed by all English politicians that the
genius of catholicism is destructive of the national spirit; and that
the long subjugation of that peninsula to the northern conqueror is
to be attributed to a prostration of moral vigour arising from the
trammels of superstition. And yet, what has happened? A new spiritual
chief ascends the throne at Rome, by accident rather than by design;
he pronounces a few magic words, and in an instant the sacred fire
of liberty, and the desire of resisting foreign oppression, pervade
the whole land. Nor are the people only affected by this universal
enthusiasm: even monarchs are carried away by the stream of popular
opinion. The King of Sardinia and the Grand Duke of Tuscany come
forward as the promoters and defenders of Italian liberty; the King
of Naples advances in the same path, though not so rapidly as the
revolutionists of his dominions could wish; and all but Lombardy
is thrown into the vortex of political reform. To Pius IX., and to
the noble conceptions of his prudent mind, the whole of the recent
movements in Italy may be fairly attributed. Not but that the public
mind was anxious for change: there have long been evils enough rankling
in the Italian breast to make change desirable. Yet had it not been for
the circumstance of a potentate, the father of his people, and the head
of the Roman Catholic religion, coming forward and proclaiming himself
favourable to a political change, the whole impulse that now has been
given to the various races of Italy would have been altogether wanting.
It would be, perhaps, idle at the present moment to speculate upon the
positive direction which this resuscitation of Italian freedom may
take; the events of a few months are not to be trusted, as affording
any very certain or fixed indication of how the current of the national
fortunes is destined to run. The Italians may, perhaps, arrive at a
gradual and moderate degree of freedom, such as may conduce to the
improvement and elevation of their national character, and to the
raising of Italy in the scale of European powers; or, on the other
hand, they may run wild into the theory and practice of revolutionary
wickedness, and may become the pest and the abhorrence of all Europe,
while they sink down to a lower and still a lower depth in the abyss
of political degradation. We hope for the former of these results, but
we know that the latter is by no means improbable; and in order to
point out where the danger of tending towards it lies, we append the
following remarks:--
In the first place, it must be sufficiently obvious to any one, ever so
little acquainted with the character of the Italian people, that the
different nations and tribes of that peninsula are by no means all in
the same degree of preparation and advancement for receiving the boon
of constitutional government. There is a very wide difference between
the inhabitants of Milan and those of Naples, between the denizens of
the Bolognese and the shepherds of the Abruzzi, and generally between
the dwellers in Italian cities and the agricultural population in
the bosom, or on the skirts, of the Apennines. But to apply the same
kind of political institutions to all the inhabitants of a district,
without regard to their various degrees of moral preparation for it,
is to confer on them a punishment rather than a boon, and to do them
evil rather than good. We have too melancholy an example of it at our
own doors, where the exaggerated philanthropy of Englishmen has given
to the Irish the same political privileges as they enjoy themselves,
to wish that such a fruitful source of evil should fall to the lot of
any other people. And so it would be with nine-tenths of the people
of Italy: however advanced may be the notions of the upper classes,
however ripe for political freedom may be the citizens of Florence or
Rome, the peasants of Lombardy and Campania would not know how to use
the advantages put within their reach, and they would but change the
rule of the few for the more terrible despotism of the many.
Before the Italians can, as a nation, be fit for what we call a free
government, they must be better educated, and better fitted by their
moral and social organisation to understand its nature and advantages.
But in order to this, we must first of all see the education of the
people taken up as a national object by the national clergy; and we
must further see the morals of the people made a point of all-paramount
importance by the same body of men, and brought forward into a place of
greater prominence than the mere practices of devotion. Can it be any
boon to confer the political rights of election and self-government on
men who are still plunged in the depths of complete ignorance? Can it
be of any use to call upon a nation for the exercise of public virtues,
when social and domestic virtues do not exist among them? Before the
Italians can be constituted as a nation of freemen, they must be formed
into families of virtuous citizens, in which decency and the natural
exercise of the affections may be firmly established. For if there be
one political axiom more fully demonstrated by the voice of history
than another, it is this, that public freedom can never exist where
private vice preponderates over private virtue; and where the sacred
ties of domestic virtue do not prevail, it is in vain to look for the
bonds of public good. It was the domestic vices of the ancient Romans
that first weakened the empire; and until their degenerate descendants
shall have awakened from their moral lethargy, that empire, that
national power, shall not rise again. It is, therefore, a favourable
indication for Italy, that the movement should have commenced with
the head of the national religion; for it may be hoped that a proper
course will be adopted by the ecclesiastical authorities, and that
the amelioration of all ranks and orders of men, clerical as well as
lay, will precede and accompany the dawn of Italian independence.
As long as the Italians remain in the state of moral weakness which,
for so many centuries, they have exhibited, they need never expect to
escape from the sway of the more virtuous nations of the north: they
will never be able to face the Germans, whether in the cabinet or the
field, until they learn to emulate them in the purity of their national
character.