political matters by those who could not see the subtler tendency of
his whole life and works. Marc Monnier says, "There are countries
where it is a shame not to be persecuted," and this is the only
disgrace which has ever fallen upon Manzoni.

When the Austrians took possession of Milan, after the retirement of
the French, they invited the patricians to inscribe themselves in
a book of nobility, under pain of losing their titles, and Manzoni
preferred to lose his. He constantly refused honors offered him by the
Government, and he sent back the ribbon of a knightly order with the
answer that he had made a vow never to wear any decoration. When
Victor Emanuel in turn wished to do him a like honor, he held himself
bound by his excuse to the Austrians, but accepted the honorary
presidency of the Lombard Institute of Sciences, Letters and Arts. In
1860 he was elected a Senator of the realm; he appeared in order
to take the oath and then he retired to a privacy never afterwards
broken.


IV

"Goethe's praise," says a sneer turned proverb, "is a brevet of
mediocrity." Manzoni must rest under this damaging applause, which was
not too freely bestowed upon other Italian poets of his time, or upon
Italy at all, for that matter.

Goethe could not laud Manzoni's tragedies too highly; he did not find
one word too much or too little in them; the style was free, noble,
full and rich. As to the religious lyrics, the manner of their
treatment was fresh and individual although the matter and the