So the Italian liberator proved it. He has done the work and wears the laurels of a pure-hearted patriot chief. If southern Italy can have a really liberal government, can get rid of her swarming priesthood and other ecclesiastical orders, male and female, can set her thousands of lazzaroni to some industrious craft, who are now crawling like countless vermin over her fair surface; if education and the useful arts can wake up her volatile, sensuous, careless people to understand what men and women were made for and can do; nobody need search any further for the garden of Eden on this footstool of the Lord. Turner has idealized, in one of his pictures, the imperial wealth and power and splendor of ancient Italy, in a fabulously magnificent grouping of architectural pomp piled up in columns, cornices, and templed grandeurs as even Grecian genius could never have made actual; with palm trees, and flowers of the orient, and birds of gayest plumage, to complete a scene of matchless terrestrial glory. But more than a Turner's pencil would be tasked to embody, in forms of created grace, the conception of what one and united Italy might again become, under the appliances of modern Christian civilization; would political balance-wheel makers only let her work out her own redemption unhindered by their mischievous help. That kingdom would be the gem of Europe in material prosperity, as for centuries she has held the supremacy in the elegant arts. But Rome there lie her ill-cemented states right across the middle of the peninsula from sea to sea a load of social and mental inertness enough to break down any people; and at their centre the dead old capital itself, a sepulchre of ancient pride and living putridity. How pensively she keeps guard over her own lifeless remains out there amid the lonesome weariness of her Campagna- leagues of the monotonous level stretching away from her to the sea in the dim distance, and to the blue-topped hills skirting inland the scene on the eastern horizon; while year by year the poisonous malaria creeps nearer and nearer her walls, threatening her people with a literal extermination. No one can mock or curse her in her anguish, though her hands are red and her head is hoary with the guilt of centuries. "The Niobe of nations! there she stands, Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow, Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress. "The Goth, the Christian, Time, War, Flood and Fire, Have dealt upon the seven-hill'd city's pride; She saw her glories star by star expire, And up the steep barbarian monarchs ride, And say here was, or is' where all is doubly night?" Nothing but sadness can come of thinking upon her degradations and crimes. But the flowers grow among her ruins these were gathered on the loftiest range of her colossal Coliseum walls; hundreds of specimens find soil enough on those old ruins for a vigorous nourishment; and one forgets her woes in wandering through her gorgeous galleries where the canvas and the marble tell how immortal are the creations of human genius. These are in truth "Her resurrection; all beside - decay." It is very singular to a traveller from our own bran-new country to be walking these streets some ten to twenty feet above the grade where Roman armies and citizens used to go, and all this filling up the work of Goth and Vandal ravages, and the steadier desolations of more than a thousand years. What masses of rubbish-the wrecks of imperial, civic, sacerdotal edifices have been tumbled and bedded together to lift the surface of this city to its present level! These bits of stone were lying at the foot of the Tarpeian rock of fatal memories, some thirty feet higher up than its ancient base which once gave a fall of seventy or eighty feet, when in republican days, from the precipice above, "the traitor's leap Cured all ambition." You lean over the wall of street or piazza, where excavations have been going on, and look down as into a deep cellar to the foundations of former structures rising from the original pavements far below your feet. In this way the great Forum and some smaller ones, and baths and columns and temple walls have been reopened. The peerless marbles of the Vatican, the massive basalts and porphyries and red granites and alabasters and jaspers which shine in perpetual polish through its long halls and galleries, brought by the Caesars from Greece and Egypt, were exhumed from the debris of their palaces fifteen or twenty feet under ground, where they had lain in oblivion since Rome fell before her northern spoilers. How silent that long sleep! and who can tell what else of priceless worth may lie down there still in the same forgetfulness?* Yet it would not much matter what may slumber thus underground, if that which lives and breathes above the surface might but throw off the nightmare which suffocates it, and really live. But these other silent" compagnons de voyage" lying here so long and patiently for a friendly recognition also in this rambling reviewal bright agates and carnelians of the Alps; cunning marvels of Swiss whittling in yellow cedar; battered bullets and torn draperies from the trampled field and cannonaded chateaus of Magenta; bits and chips of all breakable and cutable and carry-off-able things, from a cone of the monarchs of Lebanon to a piece of the old cathedral of Hebridean Iona; coins too of those far away peoples; pictures recalling so vividly the sublimities, beauties, oddities of their world of work and play, and varied, ceaseless novelties; and you, not least, our trusty Alpen-stock, scored with the name of many a perilous pass, which helped the unpractised adventurer safely over the yawning chasms and slippery footing of the seas of ice-what thronging memories do ye evoke, mirthful and thrilling and softly pleasing from the empurpled past, each asking for a voice to tell its story; but like many an eloquent pleader obliged to submit in silence to the inexorable "make way for another." Since writing this we see in a foreign paper an account of the exhuming of a palace outside the Porta del Populo, a few feet only under ground, where, among other treasures, a noble statue of one of the old emperors has been recovered. ARTICLE V. JOHN CALVIN. "AFTER darkness I hope for light." Such was the significant and prophetic motto of Geneva. Rapidly had her character and her influence changed since the return of Calvin from his temporary banishment. From being the favorite resort of those who seek for nothing more in this world than pleasure and the unchecked indulgence of lawless passion, receiving into herself from every quarter, and dispersing abroad as freely again, the influences that tend to corruption and ruin, she was becoming, more and more, the longed for asylum of the oppressed and persecuted, those whom the world had cast out of her bosom, to whom the cross of Christ was more precious than all things beside, and the liberty to worship God in purity and peace the dearest boon that earth could any where bestow; while instead of the poisonous streams that had issued forth from her of old, she was become a fountain of sweet and healthful waters sent out far and wide to refresh the thirsty and waiting lands. The number of inhabitants in Geneva in the year 1500 was 12,000. In 1543, two years after Calvin's return, it was 13,000. In 1550 it had swelled to 20,000. This great accession of population was mainly due to the influx of refugees which now took place from every quarter. To give an example of the variety of nationalities thus represented, the register of Oct. 14, 1557, contains the following record: "300 inhabitants were received [to citizenship] in one morning, to wit, 200 Frenchmen, 50 Englishmen, 25 Italians, 4 Spaniards," &c. Yet Calvin did not hesitate to warn those whom he exhorted to flee thither, that they must expect no haven of earthly peace. "You will ask me," he says, in addressing Madame Budè, "if being come hither you shall always have assured repose. I confess that you will not; for while we are in this world, it is fitting that we should be like birds upon the branch. So it has pleased God, and it is good for us. But since this little corner is vouchsafed to you, where you may finish the remainder of your life in his service, if he so please, or profit more and more, and be confirmed in his word, in order that you may be more ready to endure persecutions, if it so please him, it is not right that you refuse it." And he thus expresses himself to Marolles, Seigneur of Picardy: "I ought not to inveigle you by vain expectations, having no other desire than your wellbeing, whatever it may be. True it is that what some promise themselves in retiring hither, rests, it appears to me, on very slender grounds. However, there is this to be said, the Christians here have liberty to worship God purely, which is the chief point of all.” Yet another instance of this fair and truthful spirit may be given from a letter to a French Seigneur, probably Charles de Jonvilliers, who afterwards became his secretary and friend. "It is needful, at least, that you be informed beforehand, that you shall enter here no earthly paradise, where you may rejoice in God without molestation; you will find a people unmannerly enough; you will meet with some sufficiently annoying trials. In short do not expect to better your condition, except in so far, that having been delivered from miserable bondage of body and of soul, you will have leave to serve God faithfully." "Make up your mind then to follow Jesus Christ, without flying from the cross; and indeed you would gain nothing by trying to avoid it, because it will assuredly find you out." To write in this strain must have required self-denial, for Calvin dearly loved to surround himself with the noble, the cultivated and the good, and their presence rendered ever stronger the party of order and peace, but what he told them was no more than truth, for indeed they found much to suffer. The old inhabitants regarded them with an always restless jealousy and suspicion, and steadfastly resisted their admission to the rights of citizenship. They were exposed to much insult and abuse, especially at those times when the spirit of the Libertine party broke forth into its most violent excesses, and on one occasion a formidable popular tumult threatened their lives, but was happily allayed without bloodshed. Yet well were such men as these contented with what they found. "I always wished in my heart," says Knox, "nor could I ever cease to wish, that it might please God to bring me to this place, where I can say, without fear or shame, the best Christian school |