my native town, first revealed to me the Epicurean side of life. My elders of that austere community, were anxious plodders; they did everything by rule; a thrifty, grave set, whose ideal was respectability, and their universal test common sense-formalists, utilitarians, who eat, walked, transacted business, married and died, with little apparent emotion, and in a perfectly decent but extremely uninteresting way. Sometimes a vague idea flitted across my overtasked brain, that there was another kind of life somewhere on earth; and, as a child, I wished myself Mungo Park, with that amiable negress singing to me in the African desert, Crusoe's man Friday, milking goats, or even poor Belzoni, half-smothered in mummy-dust in an Egyptian catacomb at least, that I might try another mundane sphere; but it was the jolly violinist who, apart from books, convinced me there was an absolutely enjoyable vein in the mere act of living, a way to take things easy, a possible art of being happy. He used to breakfast in a flowered robe de chambre at ten o'clock, chat, by the half hour, with any one who would stop with him at the street corner, take zestful pinches of snuff, pat boys on the head, laugh at mere trifles, look in at shop windows, nibble lumps of sugar, pet a canary, and, every night, flourish his bow with a good-will that was magnetic. All this

VOL. IX.-1

was such a violation of the current philosophy of life, such a free, irresponsible, genial exception to the general rule, that it fairly bewildered me; and all the answer I could obtain, when trying to solve the problem by catechising_my respectable fellow-citizens, was, "He's an Italian." Happy race, thought I, exempt from care, children of nature, living by music! But there was one more specimen of the nation among us, whose demeanor quite contradicted my theory. Every afternoon he passed our house, looking so melancholy and abstracted that it made one pity his beautiful little greyhound, who followed as if afraid to gambol. That slender and sad figure was a perfect contrast to the round, chirping musician; and even the tinkle of his dog's silver bells was foreign to merriment. One day, when the hush and gloom of an impending thunder-storm made our quiet street more deserted than usual, he went by with a shadow, deeper than the heavens wore, on his pale forehead, and the dark eye below seemed alive with the latent fire of a mad resolve; he ascended the granite steps of a mansion, where we had often seen him keeping vigil in the summer moonlight; it was the home of a fair, wealthy pupil, whom he had wooed in vain; the servant hesitated to admit him; he rushed by, ascended to the lady's boudoir, demanded again to know her final answer to his irresistible passion, was once more calmly but firmly denied, placed a pistol to his

breast and shot himself dead. His corpse stretched on the floor, with the little dog crouched upon the breathless chest, and moaning piteously, was a spectacle not to be erased from a young and appalled heart. This early experience of the actual comedy and tragedy of human life, identified both, to my imagination, with Italians. Years after, in their beautiful land, the manners, the incidents, the associations and the literature expanded and confirmed this impression. I witnessed their demonstrative habits, the gestures of the market-place, the language of the passions, the emotional temperament, the ardor, the sensibility, and the exaggeration so characteristic of that home of genius, beauty and woe. I found the glow of history and art in the living men and women around me: Salvator's wildness, Machiavelli's cunning, Raphael's tenderness, Tasso's romance, Dante's gloom, Alfieri's pride, Boccaccio's luxury of sensation, Titian's radiant color, Bellini's sentiment, Petrarch's grace, yet visible on the bright surface or shadowy depth of actual life; and understood why, on this soil, the great poet of our common nature sought the dramatic story and the impassioned character, whereon to graft his matchless conceptions. Hence, in the more restrained and uniform life around me, I cannot pass unheeded any remnant or token of that ardent clime. Even the poor organ-grinder is to me a pilgrim from the land of song, and the imagevender a "missionary of art;" frescos and maccaroni breathe of Rome and Naples; an old master, or the semblance of one, inspires reverence, and the tenor who is so ridiculously jealous of the prima donna, the basso who is so boastful of his hunting achievements, and only shoots sparrows, and blows off his fingers; and the barytone who has such a conceit of his horsemanship and rides like a goose, excite a certain sympathy-they are so like children in the dwarfed manhood of their nation's civic infancy, dashed to subserviency by ill-fortune, and elated to complacent self-confidence by success.

Italian refugees, without resources or education, suffer, here and elsewhere, the worst penalties of expatriation. The recent appeal of nine Tuscan peasants to the municipal authorities of New York, exposes the fraudulent means resorted to abroad, to

shake off the irritating load of unprovided labor; and there is no class of emigrants, who, from their want of adaptation, strong home attachments, and inability to cope with a new climate and foreign habits, claim such ready sympathy. Among the large intermediate class, between the contadini and the highly cultivated, this natural inaptitude, sensitiveness, and ignorance of the world, produce some ludicrous contrasts of character and circumstances, they often prove the most difficult people to help, the most amiable of marplots, as a few sketches of my protégés will illustrate :

Il Dottore brought municipal certificates, heavy with seals and faded ribbons, and chirography attesting his coragio during a pestilence in the little town of the Roman states, where his life hitherto had glided on serenely between monotonous provincial bounds. Swarthy, melancholic, and sensitive, he wore only black-not even a blanched collar relieving the solemn costume; lithe. nervous, agile, brooding, and martyr-like, he looked unutterable woe from his dark, gloomy eye to his flitting smile and deprecating motion-a gentle cross between Machiavelli and Wer. ther. For his narrow experience and delicate organization the political crisis had proved too great a trial. Sent to the Roman assembly, because of his private worth, the bold words of the Triumvir and the fierce valor of Garibaldi, the noise of bombs, the glitter of French bayonets and the sacrifice of patriots, were too much for nerve and heart; he stole off with the earliest fugitives and succeeded in reaching America scathed; but a thousand fears pursued him he was jealous of his wife left behind; jealous of his brother exiles; jealous of his new patrons; of Austrian spies; of encroaching poverty; of the law, and the Pope. He had a habit of stepping quickly aside, as if in danger of a shot; of gliding stealthily; of glancing furtively-he acted like a man with blood-hounds on his track and a price on his head, and this unconscious betrayal of an apprehensive mood in an American city, was a most affecting token of the keen and cruel despotism he had tried to brave and vainly escaped.

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His presence was like coming events," and "cast a shadow before." He would sit for hours, silent, dark, almost reproachful, in gay drawing

rooms, and amid cheerful company. He grew tremulous when liberal opinions were ascribed to him, repudiated the Italian movement as a mistake, identified Mazzini's doctrines with fanaticism, lamented his own credulity, and heartily wished himself uncompromised as of old, in his little house in the pontifical states. The difficul

ty in securing classes for Il Dottore was, that he gave young people the blues. They began by sympathizing with the melancholy exile, but soon finding him inaccessible and suspicious, the lesson became a penance, and the soft bastard Latin" fraught with Dantesque associations of darkness and doom.

Every week, Il Dottore came to me with an injured air, and declared he should withdraw from this and the other pupil-acquired with no little difficulty-because convinced that he was employed merely from pity; another he renounced for the reason that they differed in political opinions; a third a third showed too much levity; a fourth was anti-Catholic. One day he abruptly took his leave, saying he should go to Iowa, and cultivate the soil. I ventured to hint that his delicate frame was inade. quate to rude labor; that his small savings would not purchase land enough; that his education and tastes would not coalesce with hardy and illiterate neighbors he was deaf to such reasoning, and, with visions of Cincinnatus, Ferney and Vaucluse, went forth to see his castle in the air vanish before the chills, fever, and isolation of a wet prairie.

:

My next protégé was of the species militaire. He had served under Guerazzi in Tuscany, and delivered critical dissertations upon that unfortunate patriot's conduct, as technical and verbose as Uncle Toby's on the famous seige of Namur. He affected brief sentences, made copious use of phrases rife among soldiers, and had the air of a man fresh from camp. He wore a faded blue coat, buttoned up to the chin; his head was always erect, his gesture abrupt, his eye stern, and his intonation that of one accustomed to call the roll or echo an order. His very buon giorno was exploded from under his fierce moustache. If I ventured an opinion on the state of Europe, he answered by army statistics; if I suggested a diversion, an acquaintance, or a book that did not chime in with

He

his humor, he responded, in a lofty and deprecating tone, "Signor, sono soldato." Had he been the commandant of a fortress, and myself his prisoner, he could not have stood more thoroughly on his professional dignity. Although Carlo Alberto's army had long since ceased to exist, he spoke of it as if entrenched near by, and himself absent on leave. All this time the poor fellow was destitute, and his ostensible motive for very frequent visits was to obtain pupils. Those I succeeded in finding, soon grew weary of his military reserve and authoritative pronunciation, and regarded him as a frigid Thaddeus of Warsaw; his male pupils feared a challenge, his female a catastrophe, so intent, alert, official, and resolute was his air. would bow stiffly upon entering the room, place himself squarely in a seat, fix his eyes, fold his arms, hear the lesson as if it were an indictment for treason, correct an error sternly, and, with "grim-visaged war" on his brow, seem every moment about to chant, in a deep bass voice, Suoni la tromba! Nervous students were discomfited, and when they resigned this ungenial tuition, and ventured some excuse or sympathizing word with the quarter's payment, the giovane soldato would thrust the cash uncounted into his breast-pocket and gravely reply-Sono in esiglio; vivo per la patria mia; addio! and march forth like the leader of a forlorn hope about to storm an entrenchment. When France and England declared war against Russia, he came to me with an Extra Sun in one hand, and an American passport in the other, refusing to be seated; and, with his napless hat under his arm, and his high stock buckled tighter than ever, announced his intention of embarking for Turkey the next day, to join the Allies. In vain I represented that this measure would bring no advantage to his country. He complacently informed me that when Russia was subdued, the Italian regiments would instantly proceed to take Rome, bring King Bomba to a court-martial, and force Sardinia to declare a republic; and, with this programme sonorously enunciated, he gave me a military salute and disappeared forever.

Then came the Avocato, who had made a figure at the bar of Venice in his youth, and helped overhaul the treacherous archives of Austrian rule, when that romantic city fell into the hands of the revolu

with the programme of versatile capabilities. This document happened to catch the eye of a Methodist agent skilled in the pathetic, whose sympathies were won immediately by the promise and the pity of the stranger's application; and in a fortnight after his arrival, the weight of this new responsibility was suddenly lifted from my mind, by a letter from the enchanted Zanetti, dated from a pine-grove of New Jersey, in which he described his fortunata famiglia as snugly fixed in a cottage, villa quasi Etrusca, he called it, with a garden, a peach-tree, an arbor, and a rose-bush-veramente un paradiso. He had planted artichokes, fennel, and garlic; he had laid in a cask of wine, and a quantity of maccaroni; his guitar was newly strung; plaster casts of Metastasio and Beatrice, a watercolored escutcheon of the Zanettis, a parrot that could distinctly say dolce far niente, and a large gray cat, the joy of the ragazzo's heart, were among the household gods thus miraculously set up in the land of freedom. His domicile was rent free, his salary eight hundred dollars, and, for all this, he was only required to teach at the adjacent seminary, four hours a day, and his wife three. Was ever a povero esigliato so lucky? If he could only forget his paese disgraziato, he should deem himself the most prosperous of men; yet, why complain? Had he not una moglia fedelissima, un figlio bello, a house, a garden, and a part in the grand work of educating young republicans? Benedetta sia il giorno, l'ora ed il puntowhen he crossed the sea and found a patron in un uomo liberale, simpatico, buono, come lei, excellenza mia! Scarcely had the euphonious compliments and couleur-du-rose atmosphere of his epistle faded from my imagination, when another came written in terse sentences, whose very emphasis and brevity announced implacable resolution, like the fateful expressions of Alfieri's heroes. He would abandon his garden, though the artichokes had just sprouted, for the desert of the world, before he would compromise that cara libertà for which he had abandoned dear Italy! employers, though Protestants, were infected with papal tyranny; they had requested him not to walk round the church during worship on Sundays, smoking cigars; their excuse for this gross interference with his rights as a

His

man, was, that such an example was not desirable for the pupils. Miserable sophistry! He was in a land of freedom, he defied spiritual tyranny; and he had resigned his office!

Quite the reverse of this impassioned and fastidious devotee of liberty, was the next émigré. Calm, slow, and passive, like Hamlet's friend, he took the good and ill with "equal thanks;" and, instead of being on the qui vive for changes, or troubled about the future, the great difficulty was, to rouse him to exertion. So long as his receipts as a teacher provided him with the dollar a week, for the weekly rent of his attic, and enough more to pay for bread and milk twice a day, and a heaping dish of maccaroni à la Napolitaine, at noon, he would read, and lounge, and speculate on metaphysical questions, on the sunny side of the street, and ponder the Christian fathers at the Astor library. This indifference, so unusual with his race, at first surprised me, until I discovered that, from boyhood to middle life, he had belonged to a Benedictine fraternity in one of the islands of the Mediterranean. The waves of revolution at length reached the walls of his convent, and swept him forth, as it were by a mechanical impulse, until, one fine spring morning, he found himself in bustling, wide-awake Gotham, with no robe, cell, refectory, or other sublunary convenience, such as, heretofore, had been provided; the hair had grown over his shaved occiput, but the dependent, inefficient habits of the monk remained; he was erudite, but unpractical, versed in Latin authors, but ignorant of the world; placid as a summer lake, but as unfit as a child to fight his way in the new world.

To balance these disadvantages, Signor Placido, as the girls called him, was by far the most comfortable teacher of la bella lingua yet introduced to their seminaries. He never flushed, trembled,nor adjured the heathen divinities; he never scolded nor complained; neither tragedy nor comedy was hinted by his eye or voice-only good-nature, and what Hazlitt calls, "reposing on one's sensations." In fact, quick spirits were nettled at his negative virtues, and grew weary of his monotonous suavity. His visits to me, whom he honored with the appellation of suo consigliatore, were interminable; he would sit and split hairs in the