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The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 25, November, 1859 by Various
page 22 of 293 (07%)
pressing upon it for years,--only the belief in a Power above and
beyond human will and perversity,--only, in a word, the recuperative
force of moral individuality and aspiration, could keep intact and
uninvaded the integrity of conscious being. Of course, the method
thereof depends on character; a cheerful heart In one, a buoyant
imagination in another, and the sweet self-oblivion which Faith imparts
in a third, sentiment here and will there, work the same miracle.
Foresti belonged to that class of Italians who combine perspicacity and
force of reasoning with a frank, affectionate, and trustful
disposition,--types of the manly intellect, the childlike heart;
incarceration, while it failed to enfeeble the former, by seclusion
from life's game and the world's encroachments from early youth to
middle age, perhaps confirmed the latter into the candid and loving
nature which endeared him to so many friends in Europe and America.
Sterne says, that, if he were in a desert, he would love some cypress;
and Isaac Taylor has observed, that the devout heart can find in a
single blade of grass the evidence of a Divine Creator. We have all
read of Bruce testing his fate, when a captive, by the gyrations of a
spider, of Baron Trenck finding solace in a dungeon in the
companionship of a mouse, and the imaginative prisoner of Fenestrelle
absorbed in vigilant and even affectionate observation of a little
plant,--its germination, slow approach to maturity, and consummate
flowering. But there were alleviating circumstances in the situation of
these captives,--a definite hope of release or a certainty of
life-bondage, either of which alternatives is more favorable to
tranquillity of soul than absolute suspense; they enjoyed tidings from
without or indulgences within. At Spielberg, the _sistema diabolico_,
as it has been justly called, especially at the epoch of Foresti's
incarceration, retained the galling chain on the limbs, cut off the
supply of moral and intellectual vitality, refused appropriate
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