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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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the dead man ' s rest ; . Verily William PaIiMEB handled his mortal instruments with the same consummate skill and collectedness as an Indian juggler handles fire .
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A CHALLENGE TO THE REVOLUTION . jylANiN has addressed another Letter to the Italians . He had said " Agitate . " The word had been construed to mean " Rebel . " Some ardent friends of the Italian cause are offended by his caution , and characterize the explanatory letter as an afflicting palinode , a sign of fear and of moral decay . But Manln is certainly right , —not less right
than when he adjured his countrymen to leave assassination to the Church , and to refuse , for liberty , the service of the dagger . The real patriot will hot incur the risk of being confounded in the same class with that pensioned bravo who walks the streets of Paris , and enjoys the favour of the Tuileries for having attempted to murder the Duke of Wellington . Of course there is an
essential difference between them . The mercenary assassin stands lowest in the scale of crime ; the political assassin , under some circumstances , stands where crime is doubtfully distinguished from error ; and in Italy it is scarcely reasonable to condemn , with all the austerity of privileged virtue , the desperate soldier of liberty who makes use of the unlawful dagger . To comprehend his situation , and the palliation of his act , we must suppose ourselves Italians , immured in a
Lombard city with an Austrian garrison . Not a human or social right is acknowledged ; we dare not speak ; we dare not write ; the members of our family may disappear , one after another , and we dare not search after them . " We may see wives and daughters exposed to infamous violence , even to public scourgings ; three-fourths of our property may be sequestrated for purposes of taxation . If we
have exiled friends , we may stand by while their entire fortunes are appropriated by the Austrian officials , who , under the protection of an insolent army , mock the citizens , and threaten them with the prison or the gallows . If we can conceive ourselves in this position , we shall be able to sit in judgment on the assassins of Parma . Nevertheless , Manin does well to repudiate the doctrine of the dagger .
He does equally well , we think , to discountenance an immediate insurrection . The reason is evident . Austria desires an immediate insurrection , provokes it , challenges it . She signs , jointly with France , a note to the Papal Government , notes to the Dukes of Pabma . and
Tuscany , perhaps a note to the King of Naples ; but she has a powerful military organization in the Italian peninsula , and a premature , partial , and desultory outbreak would give ner an opportunity to exert all her means at onco , and to break the force of the liberal movement along the whole line of the Adriatic , the Euxiuo . nud the Tiber .
The evil would not stop thoro . Wo repeat , Bonapartiam is the danger of Italy . The scheme of Roman reform , proposed at Paris , and sanctioned , probably , with modifications by the Pope , would bo tho plea of a new occupation , and out of tho embroilment that would ensue it ia impossible to say what Italy would gain . Wo know who is scheming for Naples , and who for tho Legations . We know , also , what ia contemplated in Sardima .
While the Italian Liberals , therefore , deserve oil praiso for keoping in view tho national independence of their country , in preference to dynastic and local schemes , some of them are perverse and petulant in attributing cowardice or disloyalty to Man in .
TO BE SOLD BY AUCTION—MARENGO . The English bought Waterloo—who will buy Marengo ? Who will buy the last stone of Napoleon's pyramid , the tower of Theodoric , the relic of Theodqiindb , the Fontanone , the pictured City of the Victories , the Monumental palace , the statue of the First Consul , the ossuary , the shrine of the Knight Delavo ? If it were in America , the resuscitated Baentjm would buy it ; if it were in England , it would go in building lots , and a corner would be reserved for a
tea-garden ; in France , it would be bought by and for France . But now , who will have it ? Could not some baby , born in purple among golden bees , and under the wing of an eagle , be created King of Marengo ? There would be an Italian state the more , and three dozen Swiss guards would guarantee his Majesty against all evils except an Austrian occupation , or a visit from his relatives in France . Surely , amid the glories of the
Second Empire the field of . Fontenone is not to remain mere private property . The young Knight Delavo , journeying from Alexandria , saw the plain and the field , and Theodoric ' s ruins , and seems to have grown giddy at the sight . For , with the zeal of Stylites , he ascended Napoleon's monument , and has never since come down . But , unhappily , the hammer of an auctioneer in the Place du Chatelet will detach this
devotee from his altar , and Bonaparte ' s hat , and Desaix ' s bust , and the mock tomb , will pass into other hands , and leave the Italian Tussaud without a habitation or a name . Not exactly that . Delavo did certainly bury nearly all his fortune in the purchase of Marengo . But the site and its monuments , passing through the crucible of the auctioneer , will probably restore to the tired Balthazar some part of his exhausted patrimony . It is curious , however , to observe this man , devoting himself to a reputation , spending
nearly the whole of his fortune to buy a battle-field , and lavishing the rest upon a collection of objects recalling the unspeakable degradation of Europe , and the all but irreparable abasement of the Italian nation during the supremacy of the First Empire . True , that since fourteen thousand human bodies , and horses uncounted , fed the soil of Marengo , it has been one of the most productive estates in Italy . During the first eight
years after the battle the corn grew too rapidly and rankly , bent down in the green ear , and could not be gathered in . But Delavo worshipped the ground , not for its hundred-fold yield , but for the sake of the young man , short , lean , with long straight hair , dressed in blue regimentals , and a wide grey capote , who there beat the Austrians in June , 1800 ; who drank at tho well ; who , " surrounded by fourteen thousand corpses , " wrote from the inn his famous letter to
Francis ov Austria . It was nothing to Delavo that a King of tho Goths had made this the place of his delight , that the Lombard monarchs suminerod at Marengo . lie adored the battle , and tho battle only , and calculated , with tho enthusiasm of a Carribeo , how much blood of men had swelled and stained tho triple stream of tho Fontenone . Hero ho traced tho rush of tho Consular Guard , there tho rout of tho Austrian cavalry ; hero ho devoutly noted tho stono on which Napoleon aat , thoro tho well of tho water ho had glorified by drinking . All this was madness to Delavoand he became Lord of Marengo .
, But tho consequence of his hero-worship is , that ho cannot remain Lord of Marengo . Thoro are not many Gorman princes who could bo bo prodigal with tho money of their subjects as was tho Alexandrian Knight in Lho decoration of his multiform shrine .
Where the inn formerly stood there is now a sumptuous palace , constructed for the sole purpose of preserving the little chamber in which Bonapabte stayed during the few days that . followed the battle of Marengo . Inside this palace you perceive that Delavo has one religion , one thought , one capacity ; he is the slave—the lost , mortified , spellbound slave—of the First Consul ' s fame . He
has built a Court of Honour . In the centre is a statue of Napoleon ; around rises a palisade of pikes , and lances , the Eoman fasces and the axe . On one side is a wall , illuminated with designs in fresco of the City of the Victories , which Bonaparte himself designed to build , with streets named in honour of his triumphs , and gates equivalent in number to the provinces of his empire . Delavo employed the artists of Alexandria to idealize the plan , and to paint it , as an illusion , on the wall . He procured from the Alps a block of red granite to form the
pedestal of the Consul ' s statue . The interior of the palatial monument , rich in architecture and in colour , the chamber of the apotheosis , the vaulted roofs embossed with gold , the figures of winged angels singing an everlasting hosanna to the military chief , the massive chapel of the dead , the Emperor ' s coach , his hat-case of white velvet embroidered with flowing silk , have been treasured by the knight , who lias also dug up the skulls , spines , leg , arm , and breastbones of the dead , wherever they could be found , and deposited them , iu monumental profusionin the ossuary of Marengo .
, Was ever devotion more devout ? And all this aggregate of triumphal trash is to be split to pieces by a notary ' s hammer . And the Knight Delavo is to give up Marengo , and some one is to buy it , who may " improve the property , " pull down the angels , and send the hat-case to the Napoleon Chamber in Baker-street . *
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how frantic they have been against him , on account of his absence from the division on the temporalities of the Irish Church . He has made equivocal remarks on that subject . They are not quite sure , therefore , that he intends to vindicato much longer tho robberies of tho Appropriation Clause . We , for our own part , believe they have nothing to fear They will not find in Disraeli the successor of Peel . But it has been lamentable to hear their recriminations for a week
THE SORE POINT . The sore point of the Tory party is , that not a single man of ability has risen for years to defend its principles . It has two showy orators , the indolent Earl of Derby and Mr . Disraeli , who notoriously despises hia friends , who never was sincere , either as a Radical or a Tory , who is not connected with them by family traditions , and who breaks loose , every now and then , from the Carlton set , and proves that they are dumb without their leader . It ia scarcely to be conceived
past . . . Tho party , in fact , is so destitute ot rising talent , that it is alarmed by tho least appearance of defection . Every politician of ability who has , within tho lust fifteen years , emerged from tho Carlton , hns been a thorn in the Hido of tho Tories . Lord Stanley is the latest example . Ho i « exposing them daily , amends
and though he certainly makes some by suffering his political clerks to controvert , journalistically , what ho utters in Parliament or on tho platform , yet tho Tones cannot heli ) seeing that his intelligence struggles against their principles , that ho has no desire to bo abased by conformity with tho creed ot fear , finality , and stupefaction . This was ono reason for tho lt / vNELAan
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June 7 , 1856 . ] THE LEADER . 641
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), June 7, 1856, page 541, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2144/page/13/
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