fallen, proud of the past, and lazy amidst ruins, but a people rising,
practical, industrious, active; there, in a word, is an eager youth to
be formed to mature development, not a decrepit age to be restored to
bloom and muscle. Progress is the great characteristic of the Sardinian
state. Leave it for five years; visit it again, and you behold
improvement. When you enter the kingdom and find, by the very skirts of
its admirable roads, a raised footpath for the passengers and travellers
from town to town, you become suddenly aware that you are in a land
where close attention to the humbler classes is within the duties of
a government. As you pass on from the more purely Italian part of
the population,--from the Genoese country into that of Piedmont,--the
difference between a new people and an old, on which I have dwelt,
becomes visible in the improved cultivation of the soil, the better
habitations of the labourer, the neater aspect of the towns, the greater
activity in the thoroughfares. To the extraordinary virtues of the
King, as King, justice is scarcely done, whether in England or abroad.
Certainly, despite his recent concessions, Charles Albert is not and
cannot be at heart, much of a constitutional reformer; and his strong
religious tendencies, which, perhaps unjustly, have procured him in
philosophical quarters the character of a bigot, may link him more than
his political, with the cause of the Father of his Church. But he is
nobly and preeminently national, careful of the prosperity and jealous
of the honour of his own state, while conscientiously desirous of the
independence of Italy. His attention to business, is indefatigable.
Nothing escapes his vigilance. Over all departments of the kingdom is
the eye of a man ever anxious to improve. Already the silk manufactures
of Sardinia almost rival those of Lyons: in their own departments the
tradesmen of Turin exhibit an artistic elegance and elaborate finish,
scarcely exceeded in the wares of London and Paris. The King's internal
regulations are admirable; his laws, administered with the most