Savoy, the streets of Turin, and the harbor of Genoa, the stir and
zest, the productiveness, and the felicity of national life greet the
senses and gladden the soul. Statistics evidence what observation
hints; Cavour wins the respect of Europe; D'Azeglio illustrates the
inspiration which liberty yields to genius; journalism ventilates
political rancor; debate neutralizes aggressive prejudice; physical
resources become available; talent finds scope, character
self-assertion; Protestantism builds altars, patriotism shrines; and
genuine Italian nationality has a vital existence so palpably
reproachful of circumjacent stagnation, ruin, and wrong, that no laws
or material force can interpose a permanent obstacle to its indefinite
extension and salutary reign.

In his first youth, Foresti imbibed the creative spirit breathed into
the social and civic life of Italy by Napoleon's victories and
administration; it was at that vivid epoch when the military,
political, artistic, and literary talent of the land, so long repressed
and thwarted by superstition and despotism, broke forth, that his
studies were achieved. We have only to compare what was done, thought,
and felt in the Peninsula, during the ten years between the coronation
of Bonaparte at Milan and his overthrow at Waterloo, with the
subsequent dearth of national triumphs in every sphere, and with the
inert, apprehensive, baffled existence of the Italians in the grasp of
reinstated and reinforced imbecile, yet tyrannic governments, to
appreciate the feelings of a young, well-born, gifted citizen, when
suddenly checked in a liberal and progressive career, and remanded, as
it were, from the bracing atmosphere of modern civilization and
enlightened activity, to the passive, silent endurance of obsolete
feudalism. It was the inevitable and deliberate protest against this
wicked and absurd reaction which gave birth to the political