The Sun.
London, England, 1849-04-13 00:00:00

Vint

LONDON. FRIDAY. APRIL 13 1849.

A sigh for CHARLES ALBERT ! Lovers of liberty,
of heroism, of generosity, have nothing more to
offer that kingly fugitive in his misfortunes. Me
has nothing more to receive. History will be his
recompense. At this moment when the • rabble-
cries of execration follow him into his compulsory
banishment, when the curses of an ungrateful race
are hounding after him in the exile which he is suffer-
ing through his championship of their cause, when
Lombardy preserves an ignoble attitude of lethargy,
and Piedmont can only afford sufficient enthu•
aim& to vote to the glory of her de-
parted SOVEREIGN the souvenir of a com-
memorative monument, that Royal unfortunate i

if hi be only as far-seeing as he is unquestion-
ably courageous, will hear even through the din of
adversity the voice of the future annalist, the voice of
a second GIIICCIAILDINI, telling to after ages the
touching story of his daring and his misery.
According to the latest intelligence of his where-
about the ex-King of SARDINIA was passing through
the Spanish Peninsula on his road to Oporto, whence,
if rumour speaks truly, he purposes to cross the
Atlantic, with the intention of burying in the American
forests the recollection of his sorrowful destinies.
Some few glimpses of ancient attachment are said
to Dave gleamed across his path at Valladolid,
where he is reported to have received an invitation to
the Curt of ISABELLA, and whither the Sardinian
ambissador had hastened from the capital.
Imagine to yourself an attenuated man, of tall
statute and of a bearing somewhat martial, notwith-
stan4Thg the weakness of his proportions—his body
enveloped in an olive-green coat reaching almost to
his ancles, and buttoned to the throat—his hair
silverld, his attitude dejected, his features deadly pale
and overspread with a profound melancholy : that
is CIitARLES ALBERT. That is his appearance, given
with miuute exactitude by those who have seen
him 'since the moment of his last catastrophe ; that
is thA' monarch who in 1848 drew his sword against
the German oppressors of Italy, and drove the
veteran soldiers of Austria almost back to the slope
of the:Carpathians. It is the man so long vilified as
the Mince DE CARIGNANO-40 passionately applauded
as tl-e vindicator and champion of Italian indepen-
dence—so basely and atrociously forsaken in the ex-
tremltty of his chequered career by the men in
wholg behalf he had staked his crown, his life,
and i,..his reputation. A twofold sadness at-
tachei itself to the fate of this illustrious
victik of patriotism. 'Wearing, as he does, the
phantprn of the Crown of England—the shadowy
successor of the Plantagenets—the last descendant of
the chivalrous and once puissant dynasty of the
Stuaita--his own individual sorrows seems to be:en-
hancects by the remembrance of his ancestral calami-
ties, ativi now, in the days of his flight and misfortune,
the (tallness of his own personal exile appears (by its
association with the past) to be deepened into the
glooaiseurrounding the representative of many gene-
ratiahfof suffering. There is in the case of CHARLES
ALBF..*T not one alleviative circumstance—not one
circtrarstance which can cast a ray of consolation
across the blackness of his catastrophe. His destiny
is ac94,4lplisbed. The sands of his public life have
run oast to the last bitter grain. He has drained the
cup 60141 is sovereignty to the dregs. His remembrance
of thf, L7.ygone is not cheered by one gleam of hope—
howtvar transitory —as to the future. In
the ripeness of his manhood he is isolated from all
power; from all Pump, from all obedience—from
everything but sympathy, lie is like a man who,
while yet alive, has gone down into the tomb. And to
add t(*flie solemnity of his fall, he remains in doubt
as tr,',t e light in which his name. niay be regarded
Jt)
hereder. He sees himself the opprobrium of his
cotearepsiraries at the very time he knows that all his
adv,4silie,-; have originated in a sublime effort to drag
his c-4aTutry out of the abysses of political servitude
and —intellectual stagnation. His fate is the
common target against which all the shafts of
mal4tffi'y and misrepresentation are directed, both
froirt tile right side and from the left, both from
the aristocrats and the peoples, both from Democracy
and 4.'••,•rn Absolutism. All the vices that have ever

bee,i di4stributed over a succession of demagogues and
despots have been imputed to the once lauded victor
of Goff°. lie is as rash as RIENZI ;heis as hypocri-
tic4 a 4 FRANCIS ; he is as vain as PHILIP, as unscru-
puh:us7,as CORTES, as sinister as BORGIA, as treacher-
ous ,-aal-,,Tonst, and as unforgiving as TAMERLANE,
F,vety•oele has visited upon him the consequences of
their 4$,Tl folly, of their own sins, of their own atro-
;The Lombards have charged him with the de-
.