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    Juke 7, 1856.] THE LEADER. 541

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    A "CHALLENGE TO THE REVOLUTION. ISIanin ...

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    THE SORE POINT. The sore point of the To...

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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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    Palmer—As An Autist. For Ten Days And Mo...

    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 .

    Juke 7, 1856.] The Leader. 541

    Juke 7 , 1856 . ] THE LEADER . 541

    A "Challenge To The Revolution. Isianin ...

    A "CHALLENGE TO THE REVOLUTION . ISIanin 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 Mjlntn 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 not 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 scourgmgs ; 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 Pamu and Tuscany , perhaps a note to the King of Naples ; but she has a powerful military organization in the Italian peninsula , and a premature , partinl , and desultory outbreak ¦ would give her an opportunity to exert all her means at onco , and to break tlio force of the liberal movement along the whole line of the Adriatic , the ! Euxincj and the Tiber .

    The evil would not stop there . Wo repeat , Bonapartism is the danger of Italy . The scheme of lloman reform , proposed at Paris , and sanctioned , probably , with modifications by the Pope , would be the plea of a now occupation , and out of tho embroilment that would ensue it is impossible to say what Italy would gain . Wo know who is scheming for Naples , and who for the Legations . We know , also , what is contemplated in Sardinia .

    While tho Italian Liberals , therefore , deserve all praise for keeping in view tho national independence of their country , in preference to dynastic and local " schemes , some of them are perverwe and petulant in attributing cowardice or disloyalty to Manin .

    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 Theodolinde , 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 Barntjm would buy it ; if it were in England , it vould 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 nearer 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 TrrssAUD without a habitation or a name .

    Not exactly that . Delato 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 liis 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 moat productive estates in Italy . During the first eight years after tho battle the corn grew too rapidly and rankly , bent down iu the green ear , and could not be gathered in . But Delato 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 regimoutals , and a wide grey capote , who there beat the Austrians in Juno , 1800 ; who drank at the well ; who , " surrounded by fourteen thousand corpses , " wrote from tho inn his famous letter to Francis oi 1 Austria .

    It was nothing to Dej , avo that a King of tho Gotha had made this the place of his delight , that tho Lombard monarchs summered at Marengo . Ho adored the battle , and the battle only , and calculated , with the enthusiasm of a Carriboo , how much blood of men had swelled and stained tho triple stream of the Fontenone . Hero he traced tho rush of the Consular Guard , there the rout of tho Austrian cavalry ; hero ho devoutly noted the stono on which Napoleon « at , there tho well of tho water he had glorified by drinking . All this was madness to Delavoand ho became Lord of Mnrongo .

    , But tho consequence of his hero-worship ia , that ho cannot remain Lord of Marengo . There arc not many Gorman princes who could be so prodigal witli the money of their subjects aa was the Alexandrian Knight in tho 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 Bonaparte stayed during the few days that followed the battle of Marengo . Inside this palace you perceive that DjbIiAVO flas 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 lloman 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 has also dug

    up the skulls , spines , leg , arm , and breastbones of the dead , wherever they could be found , and deposited them , in monumental profusion , in 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 .

    The Sore Point. The Sore Point Of The To...

    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 his 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 conceived

    their leader . It ia scarcely to be 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 quito sure , therefore , that he intends to vindicate much longer the robberies of the Appropriation Clause . We , tot our own part , believe they have nothing Co fear . They will not find in Disraeli the successor of Fbel . But it haa been lamentable to hear their recriminations for a week

    past . . . The party , in fact , is so destitute of rising talent , that it ia nlnrmcd by the leaat appearance of defection . Every politician of ability who haa , within the last fifteen years , emerged from the Carlton , has been a thorn in tho aide of tl > o Tories . Lord Stanley ia tho latest example . Ho is exposing them daily , and though he certainly makes aomo amends by Buttering his political clerks to controvert , journalistically , what he utters in Parliament or on tho platform , yet tho Tories cannot help seeing that hia intelligence struggles against their principles , that ho has no desire to bo abused by conformity with tho creed ot fear , finality , and stupefaction . This was one reason for tho ItANEiiAQU

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), June 7, 1856, page 13, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_07061856/page/13/