skill with which they were appropriated by a minister whom they were anxious to dethrone. The advantages which Gari baldi and his companions achieved over large masses of Austrian troops in the Como district emboldened them to join their co-revolutionists in Sicily. If the Sardinian cabinet did not suggest, they certainly favored the expedition. Though Cavour had just united the deputies of eleven millions of Italians in one parliament, his position did not promise much stability. France had tolerated rather than approved of the annexation of Central Italy. Europe had been estranged from Piedmont by her cession of Savoy and Nice. The Pope was collecting a large force under an able general upon the Sardinian frontiers. The King of Naples had an immense army ready to move as soon as the Emperor Francis Joseph gave the word. It was evidently Cavour's interest, that the democrats should be prevented from instigating public opinion to coerce his government into any rash enterprise, by alluring them to take the initiative, and to turn to account any new situation which might arise favorable to his own government. His bold yet delicate handling of the events which accompanied and arose out of the Sicilian expedition furnish the crowning features of his political sagacity.

Sardinia, in bad odor with European courts through the surrender of her ancient monarchy, disavowed the undertaking. Yet she fed its first successes with arms and men. As soon as King Francis had quitted Naples, Cavour landed one thousand Bersaglieri upon its shores. A few days after, eleventh September, he advised the King to receive a deputation from Umbria and the Marches, claiming deliverance from the new Papal mercenarics who stifled the expression of public opinion, and subjected the inhabitants to grievous exactions. The occasion was critical. Garibaldi, who had just entered Naples, threatened to march on Arne, and make a breakfast meal of Lamoricierce's condottieri on his way. He even went so far as to write to Victor Emmanuel demanding the dismissal of Cavour and his colleagues. The resolute minister at once ordered Cialdini to advance into Umbria, and defended in a memorandum to foreign courts his violation of neutral territory on the ground of national requirements. The exceptional character

and the legitimate interest of the situation, showed how much it behoved monarchical states to have those interests settled by a regal and well-ordered government rather than by the emissaries of revolution. The victory of Castel Fidardo led the Sardinian army across the confines of Naples just as Garibaldi had received his first check under the walls of Capua. Its arrival was all the more welcome. The soldier of the people resigned his dictatorship into the hands of the King. The inhabitants of Sicily and Naples on the twentieth of October voted themselves members, with Piedmont and. Central Italy, of one common country. The eleven millions of subjects under Victor Emmanuel became at a stroke twenty-two millions. His dominions, a few months before shut up between the Po and the Alps, extended from Susa to Peloro.

In the spring of this year, Count Cavour opened the first Parliament of the kingdom of Italy. To interpellations respecting Rome and Venice, he replied that he had no specific means of untying the knot which detached those states from the rest of the country. The problem was difficult. The mathematicians of diplomacy had not the requisite data for its immediate solution. Without Rome, however, for the capital of the new kingdom, there could be no satisfactory adjustment of the Italian question. But the completion of the nationality of Italy was only a question of time. Austria, since the unification, would find every day her difficulties increase with regard to Venice. For the moral world was governed by laws analogical to the physical, and bodies attracted each other in proportion to the mass. Catholic Europe would also feel that its august chief was likely to be more free and independent in the exercise of his functions when surrounded with the love and respect of twenty-five millions of Italians, than as defended with twenty thousand foreign bayonets. The minister was right in thus counseling patience. He could afford to preach caution, as he had shown himself, as often as the proper opportunity presented itself, the most daring of statesmen. There was, in addition, a world of work to do in completing the consolidation of the North with the South. States so dissimilar as Naples and Piedmont are not amalgamated by a decree scrawled

upon a scrap of paper. Nor can new administrative ties be improvised in the course of a single week. They require months of conjoint action and of ministerial labor. Had the Count been spared, no one entertains a doubt that, in the course of a year or two, he would have found some opportune juncture to set the corner-stone to the structure of Italian nationality. But fortune had favored him too much to allow him to consummate his triumph on the steps of the Capitol. Like his country's most cherished bard, as the laurel wreath was on the eve of preparation, he sank, the victim of his physician's unskillful treatment of a fever brought on by over-work. He expired in the same house, in the very room, in which he was born.

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Count Cavour is represented in the ordinary accounts of his career as being the inheritor of a large fortune. But this is a mistake. As the cadet of the family, he had only a few hundreds a year; but he early increased this small patrimony by private speculation. It seems ridiculous to state which is really the truth-that by selling matches he gained the great bulk of his fortune. When lucifers first made their appearance in Italy, by his large investments in the trade he realized thirty thousand pounds. He also reaped a considerable harvest by introducing guano and other manures into Piedmont. He prepared himself, by constructing his own fortunes, for becoming the architect of the fortunes of his country. This is a far greater standard of fitness for office and command in the state than the highest university distinction. What he gained easily he spent with a lavish hand. He never allowed the consideration of ways and means to stand between himself and his objects, or financial restraints to curtail the grandeur of his plans, or check the profuse liberality of his disposition.

Cavour's habits of work were something terrific. While minister, one bu

reau seldom sufficed him; he generally held two of the offices of state in common. During the Austrian war of 1859, he held four portfolios in his grasp. His ordinary hour for rising was four o'clock. In conference, he came at once to the point at issue, and did not allow his time to be wasted by idle garrulity. But in the evening he would receive a few of the deputies at dinner, and talk over state affairs with his intimate circle at the opera. But when midnight came round, he was frequently so exhausted as to be overtaken with sleep while taking off his clothes.

His attainments out of the region of mathematics and political economy were not profound. To accurate scholarship he had not the slightest claim. Even his Italian was never pure. It was the French idiom strained through an Italian translation. None of his speeches can be called eloquent in the same sense in which Mirabeau's or Canning's can be called eloquent. While his writings are distinguished for limpid clearness of thought and clever repartee, and most clenching logic, they are sadly deficient in musical ryhthm of language, in scholar-like neatness of phrase, and vigor of expression. Literary studies seem not have arrested his attention. Of the grand regions--the seductive vistas of the ideal world, he knew little and cared less. The whole vigor of his intellect was absorbed in the practical element. He is the only example on record of a great statesman whose mind never traveled beyond the material aspects of humanity, leading a passionate people to throw off by the sheer force of enthusiasm their foreign oppressors, and reënter on the path of their ancient glory. What the scathing iron of Machiavelli, the classic eloquence of Rienzi, the boiling imagination of Dante, could not achieve for their highly susceptible countrymen, was accomplished by the matter-of-fact student of Scotch political economy.

determine whether sugar agrees with him or not. Just so, when the commonsense of mankind has decided that fiction does minister to the refreshment of our mental faculties, it is the part of the analyser to test each particular sample, and discover how much is nourishment and how much is sweet clay or poison; but when that is done, each individual reader must decide whether it shall minister to health by moderate use, or to disease by

excess.

Perhaps the lowest sort of novel is that which derives its interest from wild adventures or horrors; and in these the author of The War Trail and Oceola greatly excels. We should have judged that his popularity would be almost limited to school-boys, who rejoice in wild adventures, and call every thing that belongs to the softer sentiments "bosh;" but, considering how much all uneducated people delight in horrors, we incline to think he may be popular among the lower order of readers; and, indeed, we have of ten seen Mayne Reid's works in the hands of adult second-class railway passengers. It would be hard to say that this style of writing does harm; much more hard to suppose that it does any good; but, like the clay with which the wild Indian fills his stomach when he can not get food, it may possibly allay a craving without doing injury. The wild improbability of these stories is in favor of their harmlessness. When we plunge into Indian wars and stratagems with Oceola, in the swamps of Florida, we find ourselves in a sphere completely separated from our own. It is not our life; not our joy and grief, our good and evil. We do not weigh or consider it we pass no judgment, learn no lesson; we look on it as a spectacle, and that is all. If we are but young enough or ignorant enough to lose sight of the gross improbability, then, the more wonderful and appalling the incidents, the better we shall enjoy the phantasmagoria of our adult magic-lantern.

own, we look on it with the curiosity of spectators: and the two feelings meet in a suspension of judgment highly favorable to the authors of such works. Every thing that is true and good is set down to their credit as well drawn ; while every thing that is silly or coarse is set down to the discredit of the life they have sketched for our benefit. When the young Italian, in Felicita, calmly discourses to the cousin he loves, about the intended wife whom he does not love, it does not jar on our feelings as it would do in the mouth of an English lover. When little Lucy makes her wild compact of endless trust with the young Roman painter-when that young Agostino himself suddenly rises from an idler into a heroin short, when the whole story bears on its face the romance which it bears in name, we read it with indulgence, and are willing to accept the faults of the story as part of the social system that belongs to Italy rather than to England. This is equally the case with Miss Bremer's novels. If some of her scenes seem vulgar, some of her characters ill-drawn, some of their sentiments high-flown, we scarcely venture to apply these terms to such unfamiliar phenomena: perhaps they are only Swedish life and Swedish feelings. When the young mar ried couple find their respected chère mère fiddling to her dancing servants on Sunday afternoon; when she slaps and pinches the young bride, and gives them a bundle of veal-cutlets for their breakfast the next morning; when a wife of twenty-seven and a husband of forty scuffle and romp till he is rolled into a ditch-we stare and laugh, but pass no judgment, for perhaps these are Swedish manners. accept the home life of The Neighbors, with its quiet wisdom and right feeling, as part of our common humanity; and we accept every thing peculiar or fantastic as a Swedish slide in the magic lantern which amuses us by its novelty, and with regard to which we never pause to decide how far its tragic and comic figures are caricatures of life.

In short, we

is, we would rather think that our innocent boys and girls are thrown off their guard by the novelty of these features of foreign life, than that, seeing all the human loath