in it precious political germs, widened into patriotism. Italy was
re-born.

Black, however, was the present outlook. Total commercial stagnation
and famine increased the sentiment of unmitigated hopelessness which
spread through the land. The poet Monti, who, alas! sang for bread the
festival songs of the Austrians as he had sung those of Napoleon, said
in private to an Englishman who asked him why he did not give his
voice to the liberties of his country which he desired, though he did
not expect to see them: 'It would be _vox clamantis in deserto_;
besides, how can the grievances of Italy be made known? No one dares
to write--scarcely to think--politics; if truth is to be told, it must
be told by the English; England is the only tribunal yet open to the
complaints of Europe.' A greater poet and nobler man, Ugo Foscolo, had
but lately uttered a wail still more despondent: 'Italy will soon be
nothing but a lifeless carcass, and her generous sons should only
weep in silence without the impotent complaints and mutual
recriminations of slaves.' That as patriotic a heart as ever beat
should have been afflicted to this point by the canker of despair
tells of the quagmire--not only political but spiritual--into which
Italy was sunk. The first thing needful was to restore the people to
consciousness, to animation of some sort, it did not matter what, so
it were a sign of life. Foscolo himself, who impressed on what he
wrote his own proud and scornful temperament, almost savage in its
independence, fired his countrymen to better things than the
despairing inertia which he preached. Few works have had more effect
than his _Letters of Jacobo Ortis_. As often happens with books which
strongly move contemporaries, the reader may wonder now what was the
secret of its power, but if the form and sentiment of the Italian
_Werther_ strike us as antiquated, the intense, though melancholy