The weekly clarion., 1874-08-13

The close of the sixteenth century ane
the triumphs of the Jesuits gave the fna
blow to the vigor of the Italian mind
From that inauspicious moment, save
one, no powerful and independent think
er, no Milton, Bacon, Newton, Hamp-
den, hourished on the sterile scene Of
priestly tyranny. For two centuries
the voice of free discussion was stilled,
the wants and aspirations of the people
found no utterance nor defender, or
one ventured to sigh for new Italy he
was shut up in the cells of the Roman in
QUESTION or banished 10 the chill regions
of the North The deliverance of Italy
from its mental bondage and its spiritual
foes has come at last from foreign hands
and hostile arms, and the perpetuation of
its novel freedom must rest in no slight
degree upon the protection of German
lord Yet it was to Italy that Europe
once looked for its own deliverance from
feudal tyranny and mental decay. Its
prosperous republics, its centres of indus
try, taught to Germany and England
the chief elements of civilization the
poet cf Tuscany awakened the European
intellect But for Dante and Petrarch
there could have been no Shakespeare,
nor Spencer; and when in its last decline,
in the close of the sixteenth century, the
poison of priestly tyranny had dissolved
all its members. When there was no
room for letters, and no hope of mental
advance, the genius of Italy had already
clothed itself in the guise OF painters and
sculptors, and covered with cloud of
artistic glory land that was swiftly per-
ishng in the deadly embrace of popes and
kings.
The trial and imprisonment of Calico
form the final scene in the death of the
italian intellect. The most eminent ge-
MUS of his country, if not of his age, al
most the founder modern science, the peer
and contemporary of Shakespeare, Bacon,
Milton, the successor of Michael Angelo,
had Galileo obtained an utterance in TIA
ly for scientific truth, the spell that rested
upon her might have been broken.
There might have bloOmed once more lit
erature touched by the free spirit of Dante,
a political progress that would have re-
fected the Puritanic revolutions of the
North. But with Calico fell the indie
pendence of italian thought. His abju-
ration is the saddest picture in modern
history. Conscious of the
truth, he was condemned to renounce it
and repeat falsehood. The Newton,
the Herschel of bis age, he was forced to
abjure the favorite studies of his life, and
pause forever in that path of scientific
discovery which had already made Italy
famous. All the world witnessed his fall,
and he, whose eye had first pierced the
mysterious vault above, who ofall his race
had first brought back tidiDgs of new
runs and planets in its sublime abyss,
yielded to the terrors of torture, the fear
of death and sacrificed the integrity Of his
soul to the menaces of the church. |
With malignant joy the Jesuits saw thelast
great Italian perish within their tolls, and
were perhaps satisfied with the humilia-
ton of Galileo.
When, at the close of his splendid |
career, covered with renown, yet shut up |
in his villa at Arcetri, the prisoner of the |
watched by envious eyes, !
shouli he murmer or rebel, |
with the most dreadful punishment of the
church, Calico, sick and worn out with |
age and sorrow, lamented in letters to /
his friends that he had ever ventured upon |
those fatal studies which had served only |
to bring upon him persecution and shame,
a fair haired, blue-eyed poet from the
cloudy north, who was just entering with
an equal ardor upon the search for truth,
visited the bright skies of Florence, saw
with astonishment the Imprisonment if its
greatest genius, and heard, perhaps, from
his own lips the unmerited sorrows that
had fallen upon his later years. 1t was
Milton lamenting for Calico In the
cultivated society of Florence the young
English scholar must often have remem-
Dered the lonely prisoner who, shut ont
rom all the pleasures of intellectual inter
course, was confined in the distant villa.
Milton at Florence wrote verses, was
in graceful stanzas, and
vas not slow to return the elegant adula-
ion. Yet with all the more intelligent
he saw typifed in the fate of
ialileo the quick extinction of italian
etters, In his defence of the freedom of
he press he related to the English pub
ic how a severe inquisition had checked
It Florence all mental progress, how the
Florentines lamented that
hey mad not been born in a land ike Eng
and, where learning was free; now moth
ng was now written in Italy but ''fiat-
cry and fustian." "There, he adds, ''it
vas that found and visited the famous
1alileo, grown old, prisoner to the In
Iuisition. The spectacle of the great
silenced, terrified. con-
never passed from bis mind.
n his youth he had lamented over him
enderly. In manhood, when mental
tyranny like that which hung over Italy
eemed about to envelop all England, and
prosecuting church and despotic king
ad nearly subdued its virtue, Milton;
by the fate of Italian thought,
ed on the defenders of freedom. And
Then, in his old age, blind and forsaken
Ike Galileo, he poured forth in sonorous
trains the treasures ofa life of study, one of
is most splendid SMILES, one of his most
Ouching illusions, is when he paints the
tuscan artist on the hsights of Feisole,
nd makes the chief glory of science lend
id to the immortal grandeur of his song.
She got into the street-car just before ,
eaching a switch. She only weighed
yo hundred and ten pounds including