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desirous to win a great name as a statesman, and more than envious of Cavour's transcendent reputation; he was believed to be very unscrupulous, and one with a genuine Italian love for intrigue and conspiracy. Such a story circulated about Ricasoli would have found little credence, while of Rattazzi it seemed all that was most probable and likely. When the Ministerial proclamation appeared, declaring the expedition an act of lawless and outrageous character, that all who joined in it would be treated with every severity of the law, and that General Garibaldi, as the leader, was a rebel to his own sovereign, men simply said, All this was necessary-it was exactly what Cavour did-Rattazzi must be able to satisfy the French Emperor that he has done all in his power, and only yielded to events when they became too strong for him.

The Italian is by nature so intensely subtle that he is never at a loss for a secret motive for what to the_common-sense intelligence of an Englishman there would appear to be a very ordinary and open solution. If an English official in high station had declared that the Government was decided to treat Fenians as rebels, it would not be easy to find the man in England who would believe that the announcement was simply a blind, and that the Cabinet only waited till Captain O'Mulligan had planted the green flag over Dublin Castle, to avow that they were heart and soul in the whole conspiracy; and yet such a story as this would be currently believed in the Peninsula, and the chances are that the man who disbelieved it would be of a very crass and inferior intelligence. In fact, as a rule, the Italian who has not a spice of Macchiavelli in his nature is generally a very poor creature. It is this intense ingenuity in suggesting possible motives for everything that is the salt of the national character.

Rattazzi was then believed to be

doing what Cavour had done before him-disavowing boldly what he secretly approved of and was sure to recognise when recognition became safe. There were some who went even further, and averred that such was Garibaldi's personal attachment and regard for the King, that without the implied consent of the monarch he would never have embarked in the expedition.

Of course I do not pretend to any personal knowledge of these events. The sources from which I derive any information of them are such as are open to all, save in such chance opportunities as conversation offers, and in that amount of authenticity that one would feel disposed to accord to the rumours that reach him. My belief, however, isand it is strengthened by what I remember of Garibaldi when a prisoner that he himself was fully persuaded, in the outset of the expedition, that the Government was an approving party, and would give him connivance at first and support afterwards. One of Garibaldi's dearest and most devoted friends

the man whom Garibaldi made his chosen companion at Caprera, and in whose society his days were chiefly passed at Varignano, when he lay wounded and a prisonertold me that he himself knew that Garibaldi had in his possession letters which would show that every step he had taken was made with the perfect concurrence and the fullest approval of those in power; but that Garibaldi was one who, under no possible circumstances, would stoop to devolve upon another any, even the smallest portion of a responsibility he had himself assumed willingly and openly; nay, more, that he would not resent a treachery, if in doing so it might impair his own self-respect.

Whatever may have been the complications of the former expedition against Rome, none of a like nature certainly attended this last attempt. M. Rattazzi has

had far too many difficulties to meet in his dealings with the French Emperor of late, to add to them a partisanship with Garibaldi. The September Convention was doubtless a great blow to the hopes and aspirations of Italian patriotism -to proclaim openly to the world that the promise of a King and the pledge of a Parliament should go for nothing, when the word of a foreign sovereign declared against them that all the ambitions of a people should bow before the policy of the ruler of another state, and Italy accept the decrees of a foreign Cabinet as her guide and director. The change of capital was hard enough, but nothing to the tyranny that said, You must nullify the vote of your Legislature and renounce formally the pledge the nation has taken. These sufferings, however, had been endured; the season of sacrifice had passed, and the time now was dawning when any recompense which this treaty secured might be hopefully looked forward to. The French had gone-Italy was at last Italian-no event, no circumstance, would warrant a renewal of foreign intervention-none but a breach of that Convention for which Italy had paid so heavily, and by which, as yet at least, she had gained nothing in return. Was Garibaldi, then, to be permitted to risk the fate of the nation? was he to be suffered to expose the country to another intervention, and once again open Rome to the French? This was the view the Rattazzi Cabinet took of the situation. They did not suffer themselves to canvass the chances of success or the hazards of failure. No question of what resistance the Papal troops might offer, or how the Zouaves or the Antibes Legion would behave, disturbed their calculations one only issue presented itself to their thoughts-What will the Emperor say what will he do? If we suffer the Convention to be broken, will he assume the right he possesses to come back

VOL. CII.-NO. DCXXV.

and occupy Rome? - and if so, how shall we meet an event which all Italy will regard with shame, and be ready to resent with violence?

The enemies of the September Convention always declared that Louis Napoleon enforced stipulations that no Government of Italy could possibly fulfil, and that the condition of maintaining the Papacy imposed upon Italy was more than any Ministry could promise. The reply to this was, We only contract to protect Rome from external violence-we make no engagements against her being ruined from within-indeed, we are quite ready to lend a quiet unostentatious aid to that object.

This policy of waiting till the "pear was ripe" could not suit Garibaldi. To a man of his ardent impulsive nature delay savoured of deceit. Perhaps the only class of people he ever really distrusted in life were statesmen; he was not one to know and estimate the motives from which they acted, the necessities which pressed, the obligations which bound them; he simply saw something that would be good if it were done, and he could no more comprehend any delay in doing it than he would have understood any hesitation about saving a man from drowning.

It is said, too-I cannot say with what truth that Garibaldi has been smarting sorely at the ungenerous treatment he met with in the last war. The task assigned to him was, with the means to accomplish it, a simple impossibility; and even his unsuspecting nature could not have failed to see in the project a deliberate intention to sully his bright reputation by an egregious failure, if he even escaped with life. They who were about him during this short disastrous campaign never scrupled to say that he was the victim of a French intrigue.

Whether this were true or not, it 2 R

is certain that he retired gloomy and discontented to Caprera; and to the thanks somewhat tardily offered to his force, he returned a dry, cold, and not very gracious reply, and stating that they had simply done their duty.

The man who has lived much before the world, and attracted to himself an immense share of worldly homage and admiration, let him be ever so simple and self-denying, would not find it easy to retire from the gaze of his fellow-men and sink into the obscurity to which an unmerited failure had also contributed.

It is very possible that Garibaldi felt this, and determined, as has been asserted in the papers, to have sought a glorious end to his great career under the walls of Rome.

In this attempt he was doing what all well knew he had long determined on, whether the King's Government would aid him or not; and many assured him that Rattazzi has so completely broken with the Roman Court by his late bill on the Church property, that though at first he might stand aloof and watch events, if fortune seemed to favour the movement he would be at Viterbo as Cavour was at Capua, with the whole force of an army, and ratify the victory.

The question that men are now eagerly asking is, Would Cavour have done what Rattazzi has done? The mandate of the French Emperor, declaring that Cialdini should not march into the Legations, was as positive and as menacing as any stipulation of the September treaty. It was followed by a declaration of

very little short of actual war. The Minister was recalled from Turin, and all relations between the two countries were broken off. And yet Cavour braved all this; not that he was then prepared to meet France on the battle-field, but that he knew the Emperor could not make a casus belli of an event which would arouse the susceptibilities of a whole people. He whose dogma is to succour suffering nationalities must occasionally meet rather knotty questions to resolve, and some which can only be solved by sacrifices.

It is not easy to say what might have happened had Garibaldi reached Rome and entered it as a conqueror. Would Rattazzi have accepted the event, and attempted to negotiate with France, or would he have thought himself bound by the treaty to expel the reds and restore Pio Nono?

To declare by a proclamation that the man who assumes the right to place himself above the law, and by his simple authority usurp the functions of the Government, is an enemy to the State, is to issue a document which a change of date would make very awkward. Garibaldi is merely doing now what you applauded him for doing seven years ago; he is the same rebel, and no worse, than he was then. To send him the highest order of the Crown one day, and to commit him to prison the next, for the selfsame action, gives to patriotism in Italy all the excitement of a game of chance; and as Garibaldi is not the least of a gambler, it may have no possible charm for him.

WOMEN IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

BEING alive to the awkward conjunction of the words "women" and "middle age" in the same sentence, we at the outset entreat patience until the sequel shall prove our innocence of the intention to write about "middle-aged women," or even to affirm that such beings are. Women, we know, are all either young or old. There is no debatable ground between these extremes. May and December are familiar, but there is no autumn, and, if there were, it is hoped that we have too much sense to call attention thereto.

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The real subject of this paper is the social position of women during the middle ages of the Christian world; and the train of thoughts which led up to it began with reflections on woman's anxiety to unsex herself in the present age. The lovely being is tired of the sanctity in which she was shrined centuries ago, and is determined to "clear out" of the same, to jostle us men on the walks which we have hitherto considered proper to ourselves, to owe nothing to our gallantry, but to forage for herself, and to prefer a fair field and no favour to all the homage which has been hitherto hers. She, no doubt, has weighed carefully the prescriptive rights which she is about to abdicate; but we, not being well informed on that subject, desire to "take stock" of these advantages, and to understand how she acquired them. For, looking back to our early histories, and especially to that earliest of all in which are recorded her first appearance in the world, and the little obligation which she laid us all under, we see her able to exact but small regard from men, and men disposed to concede but sparing regard to her. Milton has suggested something like a beginning of chivalrous homage in Eden, but

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'Paradise Lost' is not the poetry of the period, it does not prove much for our inquiry. She appears to have been for ages little better than a drudge. Howbeit, between that original forced drudgery and the voluntary drudgery which she is to-day demanding as a right, she has known a canonisation, or rather an apotheosis; she has been exalted to an absolute sovereignty, her breath has been incense, her perpetual tribute adoration, the deeds of heroes have been amply rewarded by her smile, her displeasure has brought despair and ruin: to do her will was man's voluntary and laudable service, to offend her was to rouse the wrath of every manly bosom, and to incur the reproach of being recreant and disloyal. Perhaps this is attributing to the whole sex a power which only distinguished individ uals could exercise to the full; nevertheless the sex at large was endued with it in kind, if not in degree. Strong in her weakness, overruling by the abnegation of all right and will, woman reigned despotic; her sway rested on no charter, but the swords of paladins leapt from their scabbards to sustain it; her wrong, borne in voiceless meekness, pointed the lance of chivalry, and made every true man her sworn avenger. How the resignation of such high influences as these, which set her in some senses above the world and its vicissitudes, can be compensated by a pair of small-clothes with tribulations, one is at a loss to understand yet such is her pleasure, and our faith would be unfaithful if we did not bear with her even in her self-asserting caprice. place of her true knight, woman proposes to champion herself today; it is not masculine strength, but her own right hand, that shall help her.

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The sceptre is not one, we trow, which she can lay down and resume at will. It is an artificial ensign, not for all time, though it has endured for many ages. The halo will not disappear by a sudden eclipse, but it will go down slowly and with a mellow glory, like the setting sun, into the future; and Christendom, forlorn and chill, will accept its destiny, and seek a savage civilisation. And so, when the gentle tyranny shall be a tradition of the past, a power never to revive while the world standeth, the marvel will be how it ever existed. We do not pretend to solve the riddle, or to explain by what subtle course of feeling and opinion the unruly wills and affections of sinful men came to bow themselves before this absolute idol: but we do hope to be able to exhibit some of the circumstances of the dawn of the worship and of its meridian glory. Its decline and fall are already a topic familiar to

our age.

On first considering the question we found ourselves possessed of an idea that the social state known to our own experience and pervading our literature was according to the eternal fitness of things; that woman's position is not an arbitary one which she can relinquish or which she can be deprived of, but one prescribed by Providence and by our nature; one, therefore, certain to be re-established whatever attempts may be made to change it. But a very brief retrospect shows the fallacy of this. The mention of her in the books of the Old Testament does not indicate that she is a being claiming by natural right any particular influence, or that there should be merit in obeying or indulging her. Far less have we a warrant for worshipping her. "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception," said the Creator to her; "in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over

thee."

There is not much foreshadow of supremacy in that sentence. And we are well assured that throughout the Jewish dispensation, woman, far from dictating or controlling, was not allowed to have a will of her own. An episode here and there proves that Eve's daughters were worthy of her, and that they did a little in the beguiling line, principally to their husbands' detriment, as Solomon, Ahab, Job, Samson, and others knew to their cost, though sometimes an Abigail or an Esther showed a better spirit. But there was nothing like an acknowledged deference to the sex: on the contrary, there was scarcely a decent respect. When Jehu, a prince and a warrior, saw wretched Jezebel at the window, his order was, "Throw her down ;" and over her corpse he exclaimed, "Go, see now this cursed woman, and bury her; for she is a king's daughter." The concession of the rite of burial was not made to the woman, but to the daughter of a king. Thus, notwithstanding that between the ninth century B.C. and the nineteenth century of the present account there rises a great arch of time, on the keystone of which we see woman sitting supreme, the feet of the arch are nearly on a level. Jezreel suggests New Orleans, and Jehu might have been a humble follower of Butler. Jezebel was, it is true, an ugly old crone, but her treatment by the great charioteer is of kin to the modern outrage on Beauty by "the Beast."

If we refer to profane history we find that the heathen woman of ancient days was worse off than the Jewish. The Roman lady's condition has been carefully described by Gibbon as follows:

"According to the custom of antiquity, he" (the Roman) "bought his bride of her parents, and she fulfilled the coemption by purchasing with three pieces of copper a just introduction to his house and household deities. A sacrifice of fruits was offered by the pon

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