The Express.
London, England, 1862-10-24 00:00:00

LONDON, FRIDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 24, 1862.

ITALY.

G A R IBA L D I .
(room ova orzcia. commar

EIPEZZLA, Ocr. 20.

This place is bidding fair to be pretty much what
Ghent was to the old, and Frohadorf is to the new,
legitimists, as regards Garibaldinisin. We have
now here a strong muster from the " extreme Left"
of the Chamber, amongst whom are M.M. Mor-
dini, Crispi, Bertani, and Niootera, all of them
distinguished and foreground figures of "the party of
action," and assuredly not gathered together on
this occasion to concert measures for strengthening
the Crown or defending its prerogatives.

I have more than once laid stress on the effect
produced upon me in all my meetings with Gari-
baldi as to his total disconnection with Mazzini and
Mazziniam ; but it should be borne in mind that
though General Garibaldi is no follower of Mazzini,
"Maszinism" never relinquishes its pretensions to
claim him for its own. With any other man in
Europe this would be of less consequenoe than
with" Garibaldi, over whom the ties of personal
attachment, sentiments of gratitude, or feelings of
affection, exert a sort of despotism to which reason
and judgment afford no resistance. If there were
no other cause than this--and, unhappily, there are
several—Garibaldi could never be a great politician.
In the "rough stumble" of a most adventurous
life ; in that poverty wherein, as the proverb says,
one meets strange bed-fellows ; Garibaldi has
made many acquaintances with men more
remarkable for personal bravery than rigid mo-
rality—more distinguished for the "exaltation" of
politica than of morals. At no period of his life
could Garibaldi have been a shrewd reader of other
men. One has but to see him to be assured of this.
There is that contemplative self-contained fixity
in his look, that bespeaks one who looks within
and not without. Neither has he that plasticity
which characterises those who decipher the traits
of their fellow mortals ; and, lastly, there is a ten-
dency to optimism about him, which, taking the
world as it goes, is scarcely conducive to a know-
ledge of life.
That one so eminently pure and clean handed
should have given his friendship to some of those
who are universally believed to have improved the
occasion of their position to amass great wealth,
is one of those seeming inconsistencies which
cease to be strange when you have seen and talked
with him. I never before met with such unques-
tionable simplicity in any man. From this trait
it is, that whenever his suspicious are once aroused
he forfeits in a great degree the guidance of rea-
son. Treachery affects him just as Desdemona's
supposed infidelity did Othello ; and e wild whirl-
wind of passion usurps the place of calm judgment.
Such is the hatred he bears Louis Napoleon that
it will not admit of discussion, nor measurement,
in so much that if the Emperor were to evacuate
Rome to-morrow Garibaldi would read the act as
the prelude to some new outrage, some fresh insult
to Italy.
Only second to this is his dislike to Rattazzi, and
1 really believe that he regrets the act of amnesty,
as depriving him of the opportunity a public trial
would have afforded of unmasking one whom he
declares to be a traitor to his country. Ido not,
however, believe what I have often heard asserted,
that Garibaldi would have carried his assaults even
against royalty itself. This is, to my thinking, a
most erroneous reading of the man. There is no
truer, stauncher friend of King Victor Emmanuel
in all the kingdom. If a murmur of discontent
against the sovereign was ever heard in his presence
he rebuked it at once ; and in all the acts of the
Mazzini faction, there is not one so totally repulsive
to Garibaldi, so opposed to all his sentiments, as
the vulgar insolence of their language to the
King.
There is • great deal of speculation afloat as to
what Garibaldi will do when he is about again.
The interval must, however, be sufficiently long to
make all such guess-work very fanciful, since Italy
may present—not to speak of Europe itself—
very different elements this day six months.
Now, if Garibaldi is not so well as the
ministerial press would proclaim him—he is not,
on the other hand, in the precarious condition some
of his partisans affect to believe. The truth lies
between the two statements. His wound—a severe
one certainly—is making a steady and favourable
progress. None of those symptoms which in gun-shot
injuries are regarded as the aggravating ones have
supervened. The exfoliations of bone are small
and easily detached ; no collections of matter have
formed about the wounded parts, and no threat of
tetanus iu any shape has manifested itself. TWst
he will be stretched for months lung on a bed of
inure or less suffering is clear, and that be will rise
from it with an injured limb is almost certain.
If it be difficult to imagine what Garibaldi willdo
when he is recovered, surely less difficult would it be
to guess how he will feel—what effect the long hours of
meditation on a sick bed will have produced—what
influence over him will have those weary nights of
solitude and suffering, wherein he must have
reviewed much of the past, and speculated pa-
tiently on the future. He is certainly not hopeful
now. It is not that, like most Italians, he bewails
the loss of Cavour, and believes that no other man
remains great and gifted enough to save the country.
No ; Garibaldi's creed is, We don't want genius ;
what we stand in need of are courage and honesty.
The minister who will have courage enough to rally
the nation to his side and declare its rights, and 1I
honesty enough to appeal not to a section, nor a
class, nor a party, this man can save Italy.
He owns he does not see such a wan in any part
of the Chamber, and therefore is he low-spirited
and depressed. And perhaps in his heart he is
struck with what has often occurred to others—the
marvellous inferiority of the men who compose the
Left of the Chamber. It is not that they have
produced nothing great, but there is not really
amongst them one man of respectable mediocrity.
Many of them have occupied high places—Mor-
duel, for instance, was Pro-Dictator in Sicily—and 1
yet they exhibit an utter deficiency of all the traits
which distinguish statesmen. Radicals with us owe
much of their eminence to the idiosyncrasies of poll-
. tics. A mau takes up a specialty, and makes it his
own, as O'Connell did repeal, and Cobden free-trade.
Italian liberals have not yet learned this great
, secret of success ; "they all eat out of the same
dish," as Cavour once said of the deputies from
Naples. The passion for intrigue and mys-
tery has no small share in determining
' the line of Italian statecraft. It is very
• hard to make an Italian believe that what is
done openly might not have been done better,
arid hence all political action is hampered with a
' continual distrust, and the everlasting question