ample volumes contain an account of the
wonderful events which have occurred in Italy
within the last four years; but it is with his
account of the social condition of the south that
we have now to do. The battles of Lombardy,
of Sicily, of Naples, and of the Papal States,
are matters of history; and with politics we
do not meddle in these pages. The accuracy of
the count's volumes will not be doubted by
any one acquainted with the work from which
they are derived. The author, it is true, is a
Lombard, and a strong Lombard feeling
pervades his mind. Who so brave, patriotic,
intelligent, statesman-like, gentle, and virtuous,
as the men of that northern province
recently belonging entirely to Austria, and still
in one small fragment languishing beneath the
grip of the Kaiser, or the count would not be a
man proscribed in the ancient halls of his race?
It has been a characteristic of Italians at all
times to dwell with undue emphasis on what
may be called provincial patriotism; but in
Count Arrivabene this is balanced by a manifest
habit of fairness, of the most scrupulous kind.
The fact, moreover, is unquestionable, that the
Lombard population is one of the finest in the
peninsula, and has done priceless service in the
national cause; but our author, while recording
this with natural pride, does not forget the
glories and the virtues of other parts of the
common country, from the Alps to the
Mediterranean.

Italy, like the sometime United States of
America, may be divided into two grand
sections, presenting many obvious contrasts. "The
North" and "the South" are terms having a
Transalpine as well as a Transatlantic signification,
only with this vast difference — that the
tendency of the two bodies in the one case is to
cohesion, and in the other to separation. Yet
in Italy there is in some respects a much more
strongly marked distinction between the North
and the South than exists in America. The
original Italic stock in the North has been
greatly and most advantageously qualified by the
influx of Gothic races— the very bone and sinew
of the modern world; the men of Naples and
Sicily are in some measure Greek in their origin,
and, though not without a Gothic infusion (for
the Vandals, Normans, and Suabians have been
there), have received a large element of Oriental
and semi-Oriental blood, which they seem to have
assimilated with greater readiness than the
Teutonic. Their Greek ancestry should have made
them great; but the Hellenes have not shone in
the modern world, and they ceased to be the
dominant race even in ancient times. The Greeks
of the present day exhibit something of an Asiatic
character; and the Neapolitans and Sicilians
bear a strong family likeness. On the other
hand, the contrast between the latter and the
Northern Italians is most palpable. Though
the language spoken by a Lombard or Tuscan
and by a Neapolitan or Sicilian are both dialects
of Italian, they are so dissimilar that an
uneducated man from the one part of the country
is absolutely unable to understand the speech of
those belonging to the other part. The personal
characteristics of the two races are equally
distinct. Neither can claim a monopoly of good
qualities; but the North is certainly far more
energetic, strong, educated, and self-reliant, than
the South, and is therefore fitter for freedom
and self-government. Cavour saw and expressed
the truth in those dying words of his, when
he said that the Neapolitans must be taught
morality, and be educated; but that, in the
mean while, it was of no use to revile them.
They are the children of a long succession of
governments incalculably vicious and degrading,
and it is to their credit that they have come no
worse out of the trial.

Courage, which is one of the virtues of freedom,
is not so widely diffused among the
Southern as among the Northern Italians. It
is true that, by a species of guerilla warfare,
the Sicilians kept alive the insurrection in their
island, in the spring of 1860, until the arrival
of Garibaldi and his heroes changed a series of
desultory operations into a triumphant
campaign. But the Liberator had a good deal of
trouble with the recruits he raised on the spot.
Our countryman, Colonel Dunne, was entrusted
with the command of a regiment of "Picciotti:"
a name given to the volunteers supplied by
the Sicilian peasantry. They had never been
under fire, and at the taking of Melazzo they
flinched unequivocally. This would not suit
their English officer. Dunne accordingly
resorted to a very rough device for urging them
to the combat. He literally sabred them right
and left wherever he found them hanging back,
being at least determined that they should not
save their lives by their cowardice. A battalion
of this regiment was at one time skirting the
wall of a garden from which the Neapolitan
soldiers were directing a sharp fire. The colonel
ordered one of his companies to jump over the
wall, and dislodge the enemy from the enclosed
space. The Picciotti hesitated, and even a
vigorous application of the colonel's sword
failed to urge them on. Dunne thereupon
seized two of his lagging men, and threw
them over the wall into the garden, repeating
the operation two or three times. Struck
with astonishment and consternation at this
apparent descent from the sky of red-shirted
Garibaldians (though, in truth, they were not
worthy of that name), the Neapolitans exclaimed,
"They fly, they fly!" and straightway began
themselves to fly also, though in another sense
and in a different manner. A good deal should
of course be pardoned in young troops, to whom
the perils of war are entirely new. The annals
of all nations, if honestly written, would
probably furnish instances of raw recruits wavering
when opposed to disciplined battalions;
for courage is as much a habit as a gift of
nature. But it must be admitted that it is a
very extreme instance when we find a people
sabred by a foreigner into fighting for their own
freedom. The population of Melazzo, moreover,
left the town during the attack, instead
of falling on the rear of its Neapolitan defenders.