The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1882-07-24
The Easy Chairs Tribute to Carl
baldi.

Od1lll'
GHarper's for Augusta
SIN the long Summer nights at sea" said
friend who knew Garibaldi, eve sat upon the
deck, and he recited italian poems. He was
poet himself-a poet in action. When he stood
in his red shirt upon balcony at Naples and
gave the kingdom to the king, he was tie same
simple man as on those Summer nights at sea. :"
But whoever remembers the days of Gregory
XVI, the last pope but one, may well rub his
ewes as he reads that triumphal procession,
headed by the municipal authorities, marched
through the chief streets of Rome, amid uni
yersal reclamation, carrying bust of Garibal-
d. which it deposited in the Capitol. There
were the usual details of pageantry-the black
yelled ladies, the chariot typical OF triumphal
entries the figure OF Liberty GROWING the
bust and there were the red-Shirted veterans,
the historic flags, the great banners of Italian
cities the schools, the clubs, the artists and the
committees But more than the spectacle was
it's significance. 1t was new Italy, regenel ated
italy, the Italy to which Gregory XVI. is as
remote and alien a figure as Alexander VII,
the Borgia. Perhaps some Of the strangers
who watched the procession smiled at the black
wells and the emblematical Liberty and the al
legorical figures, thinking them trivial and
melodramatic, and giving an artificial and in
sincere aspect to the spectacle. But the pine
temperament must not be severe upon southern
srdor lavishing itself in expression. Long ago
the Easy Chair was wandering in Italy, when
the Austrians were occupying Lombardy, and
had lust taken possession OF Milan. On all the
roads at the cafes, on garden balconies, there
were Italians with symbolic hats and symbolic
ribbons, and loud gesticulation and gusts OF
patriotic song; and despite its sympathy with
the Italian cause, and its consequent detesta-
ton of the Glolddetti IedeSchi, the Easy Chair
hal linz of Rraryr trcr'g 0nr1-
temptuous Lu1tolfo mockingly and constantly
repeating itself: 81 have known three-and-
twenty leaders of revolts." And SO supreme
was his disdain of Italian patriotism and per-
sstence that the sneering Luitolfo was sure
that the twenty-fourth would be as imbecile or
treacherous as his predecessors. So it was in
credible to child of Sam Adams and the New
York Sons of Liberty that men who really
meant to rescue their country from the grasp
of a tvrant would tic ribbons in their hats, and
waste patriotism in frivellty, and apparently
suppose that revolution could be helped by
millinery. 1t was but a generation ago, and
vet it was that generation which has redeemed
italy and driven the Austrian away. The tern
permanent is not our temperament But IL is
our temperament sometimes to confound the
ford expression with the sentiment, and then
we deceive ourselves why cannot Alfred
say thing without jingling if?' asked Car
lvle of Tennyson. Carlyle mistook the rhyme
for the poem. The impatient pine often thinks
that the palm SPENDS ltSelt utJefIy upon eX-
preston, forgetting that it is the same deep af-
lection for the dead child which often hardens
the father into stone, and dissoves the mother
into a flood of woe. Garibaldi was a perfect
TYNE of that Southern temperament. His ca
reer illustrates the persistent and creative
power of sentiment. He typifed the new Ita-
" to itself. He was the symbol Of the seDti-
ment which Cavour moulded into nation,
and he will be always canonized more univer-
SALLY than any italian patriot, because 10 9th
or represented SO purely and simply to the
national imagination the Italian ideal of
patriotic devotion. "He was himself a
poet" said his fellow-voyager. He had
that enthusiasm of high sentiment which
makes no calculation for defeat, because it
does not believe in it. Despite Napoleon, even
battles are not sums in arithmetic. 1t is
strange that Napoleon, half of whose success
was due to a sentimeut-the glory of France
which welded his army into thunderbolt and
still burns to our later hearts in the feryid
song of B6ranger, should have supposed that
it is numbers and not conviction and enthu-
siasm which win the final victory. Italia far
a dd Sc. Garibaldi was that faith incarnate,
and its prophecy is fulfilled. Italy, more proud
than stricken, bears his bust to the Capitol,
and there its elegant marble will say, while
Rome endures, that one man with God, with
country, with duty and conscience, is at last
the majority.