Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 by Various

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A thousand flashes of uncertain light
Cleave the thick darkness, driving far athwart
The up-piled glooms, as lightnings plough their bright
Fire-furrows through the barren cloud
They sow with thunders. Thought on burning thought
Shatters the doubts and terrors which have bowed
Weak hearts on weaker leaning in a crowd
Self-crushing and self-fettering; gleams are caught
From some far centre set by God to keep
His brave world spinning, or some drifting isle
Of swift wildfire shot out by the wide sweep
Of wings demoniac,
Far winnowing and black,
Our cheated souls to 'wilder and beguile.
Only the years, the imperturbable,
Impassionate years, can sheave the scattered rays
Into one sun, these mingled arrows tell
Each to its quiver, the divine and fell,
And life's lone meteors to their centre trace.

O Father, let me not die young!
Earth's beauty asks a heart and tongue
To give true love and praises to her worth;
Her sins and judgment-sufferings call
For fearless martyrs to redeem thy Earth
From her disastrous fall.
For though her summer hills and vales might seem
The fair creation of a poet's dream,--
Ay, of the Highest Poet,
Whose wordless rhythms are chanted by the gyres
Of constellate star-choirs,

That with deep melody flow and overflow it,--
The sweet Earth,--very sweet, despite
The rank grave-smell forever drifting in
Among the odors from her censers white
Of wave-swung lilies and of wind-swung roses,--
The Earth sad-sweet is deeply attaint with sin!
The pure air, which incloses
Her and her starry kin,
Still shudders with the unspent palpitating
Of a great Curse, that to its utmost shore
Thrills with a deadly shiver
Which has not ceased to quiver
Down all the ages, nathless the strong beating
Of Angel-wings, and the defiant roar
Of Earth's Titanic thunders.

Fair and sad,
In sin and beauty, our beloved Earth
Has need of all her sons to make her glad;
Has need of martyrs to re-fire the hearth
Of her quenched altars,--of heroic men
With Freedom's sword, or Truth's supernal pen,
To shape the worn-out mould of nobleness again.
And she has need of Poets who can string
Their harps with steel to catch the lightning's fire,
And pour her thunders from the clanging wire,
To cheer the hero, mingling with his cheer,
Arouse the laggard in the battle's rear,
Daunt the stern wicked, and from discord wring
Prevailing harmony, while the humblest soul
Who keeps the tune the warder angels sing
In golden choirs above,
And only wears, for crown and aureole,
The glow-worm light of lowliest human love,
Shall fill with low, sweet undertones the chasms
Of silence, 'twixt the booming thunder-spasms.
And Earth has need of Prophets fiery-lipped
And deep-souled, to announce the glorious dooms
Writ on the silent heavens in starry script,
And flashing fitfully from her shuddering tombs,--
Commissioned Angels of the new-born Faith,
To teach the immortality of Good,
The soul's God-likeness, Sin's coeval death,
And Man's indissoluble Brotherhood.

Yet never an age, when God has need of him,
Shall want its Man, predestined by that need,
To pour his life in fiery word or deed,--
The strong Archangel of the Elohim!
Earth's hollow want is prophet of his coming:
In the low murmur of her famished cry,
And heavy sobs breathed up despairingly,
Ye hear the near invisible humming
Of his wide wings that fan the lurid sky
Into cool ripples of new life and hope,
While far in its dissolving ether ope
Deeps beyond deeps, of sapphire calm, to cheer
With Sabbath gleams the troubled Now and Here.

Father! thy will be done,
Holy and righteous One!
Though the reluctant years
May never crown my throbbing brows with white,
Nor round my shoulders turn the golden light
Of my thick locks to wisdom's royal ermine:
Yet by the solitary tears,
Deeper than joy or sorrow,--by the thrill,
Higher than hope or terror, whose quick germen,
In those hot tears to sudden vigor sprung,
Sheds, even now, the fruits of graver age,--
By the long wrestle in which inward ill
Fell like a trampled viper to the ground.
By all that lifts me o'er my outward peers
To that supernal stage
Where soul dissolves the bonds by Nature bound,--
Fall when I may, by pale disease unstrung,
Or by the hand of fratricidal rage,
I cannot now die young!

* * * * *

ODDS AND ENDS FROM THE OLD WORLD

My first visit to Turin dates as far back as 1831. We are so personal,
that our impressions of things depend less on their intrinsic worth
than on such or such extrinsic circumstance which may affect our mental
vision at the moment. I suppose mine was affected by the mist and rain
which graced the capital of Piedmont on the morning of my arrival there.
Another incident, microscopic, and almost too ludicrous to mention,
had no less its weight in the scale of prepossession. I was tired and
hungry, and, while the _diligence_ was being unloaded, I entered a
_caffe_ close by, and called for some buttered toast. My hair (I had
plenty at that time) stood on end at the answer I received. There was no
buttered toast to be had, the waiter said. "It was not the custom." I
confess I augured ill of a city from whose _caffes_, unlike all others
throughout Italy, such a staple of breakfast was banished.

I am fond of buttered toast, I own. If it is a weakness, I candidly
plead guilty. My mother--bless her soul!--brought me up in the faith of
buttered toast. I had breakfasted upon it all my life. I could conceive
of no breakfast without it. Hence the shock I felt. "Not the custom!"
Why not, I wondered. A problem of no easy solution, I can tell you! It
has been haunting me for the last seven-and-twenty years. If I had a
thousand dollars,--a bold supposition for one of the brotherhood of the
pen,--I would even now found a prize, and adjudge that sum to the best
memoir on this question:--"Why is buttered toast excluded from the
_caffes_ of Turin?" It is not from lack of proper materials,--for heaps
of butter and mountains of rolls are to be seen on every side; it is not
from lack of taste,--for the people which has invented the _grisini_,
and delights in the white truffle, shows too keen a sense of what is
dainty not to exclude the charge of want of taste.

"Pray, what are the _grisini?_ what is the white truffle?" asks the
inquisitive reader.--The _grisini_ are bread idealized, bread under the
form of walking-sticks a third of a little finger in diameter, and from
which every the least particle of crumb has been carefully eliminated.
It is light, easy of digestion, cracks without effort under your teeth,
and melts in your mouth. It is savory eaten alone, excellent with your
viands, capital sopped in wine. A good Turinese would rather have no
dinner at all than sit down to one without a good-sized bundle of these
torrified reeds on his right or left. Beware of the spurious imitations
of this inimitable mixture of flour, which you will light on in some
_passages_ in Paris! They possess nothing of the _grisini_ but the name.

"I have it!" I fancy I hear some imaginative reader exclaim at this
place. "The passion for the _grisini_ accounts most naturally for the
want of buttered toast in Turin. Don't you see that it is replaced by
the _grisini?_"

A mistake, a profound mistake. _Grisini_ are _never_ served with your
coffee or chocolate. Try again.

The white truffle,--white, mark you, and not to be confounded with its
black, hard, knotty, poor cousin of Perigord,--well, the white truffle
is--the white truffle. There are things which admit of no definition. It
would only spoil them. Define the Sun, if you dare. "Look at it," would
be your answer to the indiscreet questioner. And so I say to you,--Taste
it, the white truffle. Not that you will relish it, on a first or second
trial. No. It requires a sort of initiation. Ambrosia, depend upon it,
would prove unpalatable, at first, to organs degraded by coarse mortal
food. It has,--the white truffle, I mean, not the ambrosia, which I have
never tasted,--it has a shadow of a shade of mitigated garlic flavor,
which demands time and a certain training of the gustatory apparatus, to
be fully appreciated. Try again, and it will grow upon you,--again
and again, and you will go crazy after the white truffle. I have seen
persons, who had once turned up their noses at it, declare themselves
capable of any crime to get at it. Nature gave it to Piedmont, "_e poi
ruppe la stampa_." Gold you may find in different places, and under
different latitudes;--the white truffle is an exclusive growth of
Piedmont.

To return. If it is not the want of proper materials, or of taste to use
them, what can be the cause of the unjust ostracism against buttered
toast?

A Genoese friend of mine accounts for it on the same principle on which
another friend of mine, a Polish refugee in London, accounted for the
difference, nay, in many points, the direct opposition, between English
and French habits of life,--that is to say, on the principle of national
antagonism. Why does the English Parliament hold its sittings at night?
my Polish friend would ask. The reason is obvious. _Because_, the French
Parliament sits in broad day, when it sits at all. Why is winter the
season of _villeggiatura_ in England? _Because_ in France it is summer
and autumn. Why are beards and moustaches tabooed in Great Britain?
_Because_ it is common to wear them in France. Why are new pipes
preferred in England for smoking? _Because_ in France the older and more
_culottee_ a pipe, the more welcome it is. And so on, _ad infinitum_.

Arguing on the same principle, my Genoese friend avers that buttered
toast is proscribed at Turin _because_ it is so justly popular in Genoa.
The Genoese, in fact, excel in the preparation of that dainty article.
They have, for the purpose, delicious little rolls, which they cut in
two and suit to all tastes and whims. The upper or under crust, soft or
hard, deep brown or light brown, with much or little butter, with cold
or hot butter, with butter visible or invisible:--be as capricious in
your orders as you like, and never fear tiring the waiter. Proteus
himself never took so many shapes.

There is some speciousness in my Genoese friend's argument. The
_Superba_, naturally enough, cannot forget that she was first and is
now second. Turin, on her side, does not intend to have her official
supremacy disputed. No wonder that the two noble cities should look at
each other rather surlily, and stick to their own individuality. "Hence
it is," concludes my friend, "that the comparatively easy Apennines have
proved to this day an impassable barrier to the buttered toast on one
side, and to the _grisini_ on the other."

"But not so to the white truffle," I put in, triumphantly. "The Genoese
have adopted that; and honor to them for having done so! What do you say
to this, eh?"

My friend scratched his head in quest of a new argument. We will leave
him to his embarrassment, and have done with this string of digressions.

I was saying, that my first visit to Turin dated as far back as 1831. On
that journey I had a singular travelling-companion, a beautiful fish,
a John Dory, carefully wrapped up, and neatly laid in a wicker-basket,
like a babe in its cradle. The officers of the _octroi_, who examined my
basket, complimented me on my choice,--nay, grew so enthusiastic about
my John Dory, that, if I remember right, they let it pass duty-free.
The mistress of the house, at whose table it was served, paid it a
well-deserved tribute of admiration, but lamented the unskilfulness of
the hand which had cleaned it: "How stupid to cut it to the very throat!
See what a gap!" I laughed in my sleeve and held my tongue. It was a
frightful gap, to be sure,--but not bigger than was necessary to admit
of an oilskin-covered parcel, a pound at least in weight, a parcel full
to the brim of treasonable matter, revolutionary pamphlets, regulations
of secret societies, and what not. My John Dory was a horse of Troy in
miniature. But Turin stood this one better than Troy the other.

Turin was, or seemed to me, gloomy and chilly at that time, though the
season was mild, and the sky had cleared up. Jesuits, carabineers, and
spies lorded it; distrust was the order of the day. People went about
their business, exchanged a hasty and well-timed _sciao_, (_schiavo_,)
and gave up all genial intercourse. Far keener than the breath of
neighboring snow-capped Mount Cenis, the breath of despotism froze alike
tongues and souls. How could buttered toast, emblem of softness, thrive
in so hard a temperature? I left as soon as I could, and with a feeling
of relief akin to joy.

I was in no haste to revisit Turin, nor, had I been, would circumstances
have permitted my doing so. The fish had a tail for me as well as for
many others, and a very long tail too. Most of the years intervening
between 1831 and 1848 I had to spend abroad,--out of Italy, I mean. Time
enough for reflection. Plenty of worry and anxiety, and difficulties of
many a kind. Rough handling from the powers that were, cold indifference
from the masses. A flow of gentle sympathy, now and then, from a kindred
heart or two,--God bless them!--a live spring in a desert. A hard
apprenticeship,--still, useful in many ways, to develop the sense
of realities, to teach one to do without a host of things deemed
indispensable before to keep the soul in tune. I declare, for my part,
I don't regret those long years of erratic life. I bless them, on the
contrary; for they opened my eyes to the worth of my country. The right
point of view to take in physical or moral beauty, in its fulness, is
only at a distance.

The great convulsion of '48 flung wide the gates of Italy to the
wanderer, and I returned to Turin. I had left it at freezing-point,
and I found it at white-heat. Half Europe revolutionized,--France a
republic, Vienna in a blaze, Hungary in arms, Radetzky driven out of
Milan, a Piedmontese army in Lombardy,--there was more than enough to
turn the heads of the Seven Sages of Greece. No wonder ours were turned.
Serve a splendid banquet and pour out generous wine to a shipwrecked
crew who have long been starving, and ten to one they will overfeed
themselves and get drunk and quarrel. We did both, alas!--and those who
are drunk and quarrel are likely to be overpowered by those who keep
sober and united. We were divided about the sauce with which the hare
should be dressed, and, in the heat of argument, lost sight of this
little fact, that a hare, to be dressed at all, must first be caught.
The first reverses overtook us thus occupied. They did not sober us;
quite the contrary; we fell to doing what Manzoni's capons did.

By-the-by, since that revered name comes under my pen, I may as well
state, what every one will be glad to hear, that the author of the
"Promessi Sposi" has perfectly recovered from his late illness. It
cannot be but that the wail of a nation has reached even across the
Atlantic, without the aid of an electric cable. He looks strong and
healthy, and likely to be long spared to the love and veneration of his
country. I have this on the authority of a witness _de visu et auditu_,
a friend of his and mine, who visited the great man, not a fortnight
ago, in his retreat of Brusuglio, near Milan.

To leave the author for his book. Do you recollect Renzo tying four fat
capons by the legs, and carrying them, with their heads hanging down, to
Signor Azzeccagarbugli,--and the capons, in that awkward predicament,
finding no better occupation than to peck at each other? "As is too
often the case with companions in misfortune," observes the author, in
his quiet, humoristic way. We were just as wise. Instead of saying, _Mea
culpa_, we began to recriminate, and find fault with everything and
everybody. It was the fault of the Ministers, of the _Camarilla_, of the
army, of the big epaulets, of the King. Dynastic interest, of course,
was not forgotten in the indictment.

Dynastic interest, forsooth! So long as it combines and makes but one
with the interest of the nation, I should like to know where is the
great harm of it. As if kings alone were defiled with that pitch! As
if we had not, each and all of us, low and high, rich and poor, our
dynastic interest, and were not eager enough in its pursuit! As if
anybody scrupled at or were found fault with for pushing on his sons,
enlarging his business, rounding his estate, in the view of transmitting
it, thus improved, to his kindred and heirs!

But who thought of such things under the smart of defeat? I do not
intend, by this _post-facto_ grumbling, to give myself credit for having
been wiser than others. By no means. I played my part in the chorus of
fault-finders, and cried out as loud as anybody. The upshot was what
might have been expected. Independence went to the dogs--for a while.
Liberty, thank God, remained in this little corner, at least,--liberty,
the great lever for those who use it wisely. I know of nations, far more
experienced than we are in political matters, and whose programme in
1848 was far less complicated than ours, who cannot say as much for
themselves.

The times were unpropitious to the buttered-toast question, and it
had quite slipped out of my mind. I have never traced the string of
associations which reminded me of it, on one certain morning. Once more
I made bold to ask if I could have buttered toast. "Impossible," said
the waiter, curtly. I was piqued. "How impossible?" said I. "Erase that
word from your Dictionary, if you are to drive the Austrians from Italy.
Take a roll, cut it in halves, have it toasted, and serve hot with
butter." Long was the manipulation, and the result but indifferent,--the
toast hard and cold, the butter far from fresh; but it was a step in
advance, and I chuckled over it. For a short time, alas! Mine was the
fate of all reformers. Routine stood in my way. The waiters fled at my
approach, and vied with each other as to who should _not_ serve me. I
gave up the attempt in disgust. Shortly after, I left Turin,--without
joy this time, but also without regret.

Ten years have elapsed, and here I am again, on my third visit. The
journey from Genoa to Turin took, ten years ago, twenty-four hours by
_diligence_. Now it is accomplished in four by railway. To say that this
accelerated ratio of travelling represents but fairly the average of
progress realized in almost all directions, within this space of
time, is no mere form of speech. To whatever side I turn, my eyes are
agreeably surprised by material signs of improvement. From what but
yesterday was waste land, where linen was spread to dry, steam-engines
raise their shrill cry, and a double terminus sends forth and receives,
in its turn, merchandise, passengers, and ideas. At the gate of the
city, so to say, a gigantic work, the piercing of Mount Cenis, is
actually going on. Where I left, literally left, cows browsing in peace,
two new quarters have risen, as if by magic,--that of Portanuova,
aristocratic and rich, and that of San Salvario, less showy, but not
less comfortable. A third is in contemplation; nay, already begun,--to
be raised on the spot where once stood the citadel, (and prison for
political offenders,) of sinister memory, now levelled with the ground.
I take this last as a capital novelty. Another, more significant still,
is the Protestant Temple, which stares me in the face,--a poor work of
Art, if you will, but no less the embodiment of one of the most precious
conquests, religious freedom. I would fain not grow emphatic,--but when
I contrast the present with the past, when I recollect, for instance,
how the Jews were formerly treated, and see them now in Parliament, I
cannot help warming up a little. Monuments to Balbo, the stanch patriot
and nervous biographer of Dante,--to General Bava, the conqueror at
Goito,--to Pepe, the heroic defender of Venice, grace the public walks.
One to Gioberti, the eminent philosopher, is in course of preparation.
If these are not signs of radically changed times, and changed for the
better, I don't know what are.

Nor is the moral less improved than the material physiognomy of the
city. I see a thriving, orderly community,--no trace of antagonism, but
a free, good-natured intercourse between all classes, and a general
look of ease and contentment. Of course, there are poor in Turin, as
everywhere else,--except Japan, if we may credit travellers; but nowhere
are my eyes saddened by the spectacle of that abject destitution which
blunts, nay, destroys, the sense of self-respect. The operatives,
especially,--what are here called the _braccianti_,--this salt of all
cities, this nursery of the army and navy, this inexhaustible source of
production and riches, impress me by their appearance of comfort and
good-humor. It gladdens one's heart to watch them, as they walk arm in
arm of an evening, singing in chorus, or fill the pits of the cheaper
theatres, or sit down at fashionable _caffes_ in their jackets, with a
self-confidence and freedom of manner pleasant to behold. The play of
free institutions is not counteracted here, thank God, by the despotism
of conventionalities. No shadow of frigid respectability hangs over
people's actions and freezes spontaneousness.

But this is all on the surface; let us go deeper, if we can, and have a
peep at the workings beneath. I knock for information on this head at
the mind and heart of all sorts of people. I note down the answers of
the Minister and of the Deputy, as well as those of the waiter who
serves my coffee and of the man who blacks my shoes, and here is what
I find,--a growing sense of the benefits of liberty, a deep-rooted
attachment to the _Re galantuomo_, (the King, honest man,) a juster
appreciation of the difficulties which beset the national enterprise,
(the freeing of Italy from Austria,) and an honest confidence of
overcoming them with God's help. This last feeling, I am glad to say,
is, as it ought to be, general in the army. This is what I find in the
bulk. There is no lack of dissenters, who regret the past, and take a
gloomy view of the future. I describe no Utopia. Unanimity is no flower
of this earth.

This improved state of things and feelings, within so short a period of
time, reflects equal credit on the people which benefits by it and on
the men who have lately presided over its destinies. Among these last it
were invidious not to mention, with well-deserved praise, the active and
accomplished statesman who introduced free trade, caused Piedmont to
take its share in the Crimean War, and last, not least, by a bold and
skilful move, brought the Italian question before the Congress of Paris.

During the summer of 1848, I rented a couple of rooms in the Via dell'
Arcivescovado. There often fell upon my ear, wafted across the court
from the windows opposite mine, a loud and regular declamation. I
fancied it was a preacher learning by heart his sermon, or an actor his
part. I was told one day that it was Count Cavour, the owner of the
house, who, as a prelude to his parliamentary career, was addressing an
imaginary assembly. The fact struck me the more, as the Count was not a
member of Parliament at the time. He was elected a Deputy and took his
seat not long after. I was present at his _debut_. It was not brilliant.
Count Cavour was not born an orator; his delivery was far from fluent.
He had many things to say, and wanted to say them all at once. The sense
of the House was not favorable to the new member,--that of the public
galleries still less so. No man was less spoiled by popularity than he.
I have no other reason for mentioning these particulars than to put in
relief the strength of will and the perseverance which one so situated
must have brought to bear, in order to conquer his own deficiencies and
the popular prejudice, and attain, against wind and tide, the high place
he holds in the estimation of Parliament and of the country. That Count
Cavour has made himself, if not properly an orator, in the high sense of
the word, a nervous, fluent, and most agreeable speaker, is sufficiently
attested by the untiring attention with which his speeches, occupying
sometimes two whole sittings, are listened to in both Houses. He never
puts them in writing, and seldom, if ever, makes use of notes.

Life is substantial in Turin, and on a broad, homely scale. By which you
are not to understand, either that the male portion of the inhabitants
feast on whole oxen, like Homer's heroes, or that, the fair sex are
draped in tunics of homespun wool, like the Roman matrons of old. They
are not so primitive as that. You may have at any restaurant a smaller
morsel than an ox or even an ox's shoulder; and as to ladies' finery,
there is no _article de Paris_, no indispensable inutility, no
crinoline, hoop, or cage, of impossible materials, shape, and
dimensions, which you may not find under the Portici, or in Vianuova,
a facility of which the Turinese beauties give themselves the benefit
rather freely. What I meant to say, when I spoke of life on a broad,
homely scale, was simply this:--that in Turin, generally speaking, the
great art of putting the appearance in the place of the substance, and
juggling the principal under the accessories, has yet to be learned. If
you ask for a room, a dinner, a bath, they take you in good earnest,
and supply you with the genuine article. When I put up at the _Hotel de
Londres_, from which I am writing, I had to run no gantlet between a
double line of solemn-looking, white-cravated waiters; yet I have only
to ring my bell, to be attended to with promptitude, with zeal, nay,
_con amore_. My kind hostess, Signora Viarengo, does not wear a triple
or quadruple row of flounces, but looks after my wardrobe when I am out,
and, if anything wants mending, has it mended. The room which I occupy
is not furnished in a dashing style, nor has it a _parquet cire_, but it
is on the first floor, and thrice as large and lofty and half as dear as
that I had at Meurice's on the _quatrieme_; and a Titan might stretch
himself down at ease on the bed in which I sleep. The dining-room of the
hotel is not glittering with gilt stucco and chandeliers; but the dinner
served to me there (and served at any hour) is copious and first-rate,--
four dishes of _entremets_, butter, _salame_, celery, radishes, to whet
the appetite,--a soup,--a first course of three dishes, two of meat, one
of vegetables,--a second of three dishes, one of them a roasted fowl,
--salad, a sweet dish,--a mountain of Parmesan, or Gorgonzola, with
peaches, pears, and grapes, for dessert. Gargantua would cry for mercy.
For all this, and a bottle of wine, I pay three francs. For the bath
establishment, close by, I lack the satisfaction, it is true, of seeing
my revered image reproduced _ad infinitum_, by a vista of mirrors; but I
have a bathing-tub like a lake, and linen enough to dry a hippopotamus.
If I go to the theatre, (there are five open at this season, November,
without reckoning three or four minor ones: Italian opera at the
Nazionale and the Carignano; Italian play at the Gerbino and the
Alfieri; French _vaudeville_ at the d'Angennes,)--if I go to the
theatre, the relative obscurity of the house, I own, allows me to enjoy
but imperfectly the display of fine toilets and ivory shoulders; but the
concentration of light on the stage enhances the scenic effect, and is
on the side of Art. At least, they think so here, and like it so. It is
the custom.

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