and for making a certain Lilliburlero song; | Polish, and adopted by that gallant nation. with which, if you will believe himself, he sung a deluded Prince out of Three Kingdoms." A pleasing reminiscence of the power of song is recorded in the late Irish State Trials. Richard Dalton Williams, a poet of considerable genius, and one of the editors of the Irish Tribune, was prosecuted by the government for articles in that journal. His fellow-collaborator, Kevin Izod O'Doherty, had been sentenced to banishment for the publication of the same articles, the law making responsible all parties in whose name the journal was published. Affairs thus stood, and every person expected that as a matter of course Williams would share the fate of his friend, the offense being the same, and the like charges being made against both; when by a happy thought his counsel, Mr. Ferguson, himself a poet and editor of the Dublin University Magazine, concluded his defense by reading to the jury one of the "Traitor's" most beautiful poems, the Sister of Charity, and appealing to them if the author of such, in their minds, was guilty of the charges made against him. Some of the ancient fealty and love of the Irish for their bards seemed to have been awakened in the breasts of the jury; the consideration which was denied to the patriot was awarded to the poet; and Williams, not the traitor but the author of the "Sister of Charity," was acquitted. Bishop Lowth was of opinion that one song like the Hymn of Harmodius" would have done more towards rousing the spirit of the Romans than all the Philippics of Cicero; and Lord Chatham has said, nearly in the same words as Fletcher, that "he would give the making of the laws for the making of the ballads of the people;" a maxim, the spirit of which, says O'Callaghan in his "Green Book," " was acted upon by his son, Mr. Pitt, when he bestowed a pension upon Dibdin, for the great services he was so justly deemed to have rendered, during the French War, as a naval Tyrtæus." It was the intention of the government of the day to have prohibited the publication of Moore's "Irish Melodies," as being dangerous. Unfortunately, though their circulation was unparalleled, they proved not so dangerous" at home as elsewhere. These grand songs of Moore were translated into 66 during their struggle for liberty. The ef fect of the songs written by Drennan, Orr, and one or two by John Sheares and Lysaght, on the Irish Insurrection of '98, are matters of history to that unfortunate island; and of late years the fact of the prosecution by government of some of the Young-Ireland lyrics has stamped their character for power, spirit, and "treason." The lyrical writings of Davis, De Jean, Mangan, Williams, and a number of "Young-Ireland" poets, more materially produced the rising of '48 than any other influence. The people of England and Ireland read them with eagerness; the American press reprinted them extensively; the English critics praised their spirit and glory, while they condemned and spoke of danger, and the Government accordingly prosecuted the party. Freiligrath was exiled for his revolutionary songs in Germany; and but a few months agone in Paris the performance of an opera (Sappho) by M. Gounot was stopped until certain stanzas of a song commencing, "Tremblez, tyrans, forgeurs de chaines," &c., were cut out, the Government dreading a political meaning. We have given sufficient examples to prove the power of song, if any person doubted it. With a knowledge of the power thus invested, it ought to be the emulation of critics to receive nothing short of a true standard, and of song-writers, a profession most noble, to strive after the highest ideal of their vocation. In the opening part of this paper we have given our ideas on the subject of the song perfect, and adduced illustrations to prove our premises. We believe we are true in our idea of the Song, and satisfied that what we have suggested are at least the principles which should actuate song-writers in the composition of such works. This country is most essentially lyrical. The rapidity of progress, the fastness, so to speak, of our people, the spontaneity of ideas, earnestness of character, and suggestiveness in action and invention, make song a necessary vehicle to convey back to the people their characteristics. It should reflect the people, taking them at their highest standard, strong, generous, and sympathetic-witty, earnest, and national. Such songs, if written, will live, and mark the nation as distinctively as the 1851. Songs and Song -Writers. Land of the Forest and the Glen! O fairest clime! O dearest land! Who shall your banded children sever! "I fill this cup to one made up productions of the European lyrists their] is beautiful, and Howard Payne's "Home, upon. J. S. 1 SANTA ROSA. AMONG the later productions of M. Victor Cousin, "the greatest philosopher of France."* is the fol lowing biographical sketch of Santa-Rosa. We are not aware that it has before been translated. The narrative, in the form of a letter addressed to the Prince De La Cisterna in 1838, possesses the interest of a heroic romance. Every American reader will thank us for introducing to his acquaintance one of nature's noblemen, struggling, suffering, dying for the cause of liberty and humanity, in the midst of the monarchical institutions of Europe; that Europe which has been for centuries, and will be for some time to come, the battle-field of contending principles. The style of the narrative is surpassingly beautiful. "Of all nations in the world," says Morell, the French are among the greatest masters of prose; and of all their prose writers scarcely any one can be said to excel Cousin in power of expression and perfect finish of style. The lovers of lighter literature will see his style in all its purity in some of the later fragments, such as the biography of Santa-Rosa, &c." TO THE PRINCE DE LA CISTERNA: . MY DEAR FRIEND:-Time has nearly obliterated the memory of the short Piedmontese revolution of 1821, and that of the personage who played in that revolution the principal part. This oblivion has nothing in it unjust. In order to endure in the memory of men, one must have done things which endure. It is not only through weakness, as it is supposed, that men adore success; it is in their eyes the symbol of the greatest virtues of the soul, and of the first of all,-I mean that strong sagacity which engages in no enterprise without having weighed all its chances, and without having been assured that it contains nothing which could render constancy and energy in vain. The most brilliant courage against the impossible touches but little, and the most heroic sacrifices lose in some sort their value in the service of imprudence. Without doubt, the Piedmontese revolution was above all a military movement, destined to arrest Austria at the moment when she was going to cross the Po, to stifle the Neapolitan Parliament, and to rule Italy. The great fault of the chiefs of this military movement is that they put on their banner, by an ill-understood condescension, the device of an excessive and foreign liberalism, the inevitable effect of which was to create divisions, to disaffect the nobility, in whom resided fortune and power, and to shake allegiance to government. And then, the success of a contest of arms on the part of the house of Savoy against O. W. W. In Austria depended upon two conditions: 1st. That France, if she did not openly sustain Piedmont, should not oppose it, and should even secretly serve it; 2d. That the Neapolitan army should hold out in its resistance at least several months. Now, these two conditions were necessarily wanting. 1821, the French government already inclined to the fatal re-action which soon terminated in the ministry of M. Villèle, and later in the ordinances of July; and every one in Piedmont who had any military experience knew that it was chimerical to count upon the Neapolitan army. The Piedmontese revolution therefore was condemned to fail. It did great harm in that small country, which owes every thing to sagacity combined with audacity, and which can be enlarged in size and increased in importance only by the same means which for three centuries have made it what it has become. Placed between Austria and France, the house of Savoy has been elevated only by serving in turn one against the other, and by never having but a single enemy at a time. The Piedmontese monarchy is the work of political management; political management alone can maintain it. It came near being destroyed in the revolution of 1821. A respected King abdicating the throne; the heir of the throne compromised, and almost a prisoner; the flower of the nobility exiled; the first commander of Italy, the pride and the hope of the army, General Gifflenga, disgraced for ever; you, my dear * Sir Wm. Hamilton, dedication of his edition of Reid to Cousin. friend, destined by your birth, your fortune, | awaken certain sympathies, to recall certain and above all by your character and your memories, and to serve as a text for certain genius, to represent Piedmont so usefully at sad conversations in a circle narrowed day Paris or London, condemned to inaction for by day. The public, I know, is indifferent, your whole life perhaps; officers like Saint and ought to be, to these entirely domestic Marsan, Lisio, and Collegni reduced to the details between two men, of whom one has necessity of breaking their swords; finally, been long since forgotten, and the other soon he who surpassed you all,-permit me to shall be forgotten; but in this long malady say it, he whose heroic soul better directed, which consumes me, and in the sombre and whose superior talent ripened by expe- inaction to which it condemns me, I find a rience, would have been able to give to his melancholy charm in reverting to those days native Piedmont and to the house of Savoy for ever vanished. I love to bind my lanthe minister most capable of guiding her guishing life to that animated episode of my destinies, M. de Santa-Rosa, proscribed, wan- youth. I evoke for a moment before me the dering in Europe, and going to die in Greece shade of my friend, ere I go to rejoin him. in a contest hardly worthy of him: such are Sad pages, written thus to speak between the bitter fruits of an enterprise at once most two tombs, and destined to die in your noble and most imprudent. hands!* Europe scarcely remembers that there was a liberal movement in Piedmont in 1821. Those who have the instinct of the beautiful distinguished in that passing report certain words which revealed a great soul. The name of Santa-Rosa resounded for a moment; a little later, that name reappeared in the affairs of Greece, and it was learned that the same man who had shown a shadow of greatness in his short dictatorship of 1821, had bravely died in 1825, while defending the isle of Sphacteria against the Egyptian army; then ensued a profound silence, an eternal silence, and the memory of Santa-Rosa lives only in a few souls scattered at Turin, at Paris, and at London. I am one of these. My relations with Santa-Rosa were very brief, but intimate. More than once I have been tempted to write his life, that life half romantic, half heroic; but I have renounced that project. I am not about to dispute with oblivion the name of a man who failed of his destiny; but several persons, and you in particular, who take a pious interest in his memory, have often asked me to recount by what adventure I, a Professor of Philosophy, an entire stranger to the events of Piedmont, happened to be so intimately connected with the chief of the Piedmontese revolution, and what were my true relations with your dear and unfortunate compatriot. I am about to do that which you desire. I shall abstain from all general, political, and philosophical considerations. My subject shall be only Santa-Rosa and myself. This is not a historical composition; it is a simple home picture, traced for some faithful friends, to I was In the month of October, 1821, suspended from my functions as Professor of the History of Modern Philosophy in the Faculté des Lettres, and menaced in my teaching of the Normal School, which itself was soon after suppressed; confined in an humble retreat situated by the side of the garden of the Luxembourg, I had been, as an addition to my misfortune, in the course of unrelaxed toil upon the unedited manuscripts of Proclus, violently attacked with that affection of the chest which during all my youth frightened my family and my friends. almost in the condition in which you see me to-day. I know not how at that time there fell into my hands a pamphlet entitled "The Piedmontese Revolution," having for an epigraph this verse from Alfieri: "Sta la forsa per lui, per me sta il vero." My journey in Italy during the summer and autumn of 1820, my attachment to the cause of European liberty, the report of the lost affairs of Piedmont and Naples, naturally interested me in that production; and although sick, shunning every lively emotion, especially every political emotion, I read that pamphlet as one would read a romance, without searching in it for any thing else than a diversion for my ennui and the spectacle of human passions. In fact, I found a true hero of romance in the avowed chief of that revolution, the Count de Santa-Rosa. That man so ruled the events of those thirty days, that he alone engaged my attention. I saw him at first, a partisan of the English parliamentary The public is deciding otherwise, and these pages shall die only with French literature.—ED system, demanding for his country only a | his country should separate from this necessary constitutional government, two chambers, resolution! he would not deserve to conduct Pied even a hereditary peerage; and then, when the fatal example of the Neapolitans and the adoption of the Spanish constitution had carried away all minds, no longer occupying himself except with a single thing, the military direction of the revolution, and, borne by circumstances to a veritable dictatorship, displaying an energy that his enemies themselves admired, without losing for a single moment that spirit of chivalrous moderation so rare in times of revolution. I still recollect and wish to reproduce here the order of the day which he published March 23, 1821, at the very moment when the constitutional cause seemed to be despaired of: "Charles-Albert of Savoy, Prince of Cariguan, invested by his Majesty Victor-Emanuel with the authority of regent, has named me, by his decree of the 23d of this month, regent of the ministry of the army and the navy. "I am, therefore, a legitimately constituted authority, and it is my duty, in the terrible circumstances in which the country is found, to let my companions in arms hear the voice of a subject, affectionate to his King and a loyal Piedmon tese. "Let no Piedmontese accuse the intentions of a Prince whose liberal heart, whose devotion to the Italian cause, have thus far been the hope of all well-disposed people. A small number of men, deserters of their country and servants of Austria, have without doubt deceived, by an odious tissue of falsehoods, a young Prince who has not the experience of stormy times. "A declaration, signed by the King CharlesFelix, has appeared in l'iedmont; but a Piedmontese King in the midst of Austrians, our unavoidable enemies, is a captive King; nothing that he says can or ought to be regarded as coming from Let him speak to us on a free soil, and then we will prove to him that we are his children. him. "Piedmontese soldiers, national guards! do you desire civil war? Do you desire the invasion of strangers, the devastation of your plains, the conflagration and the pillage of your cities and your villages? Do you wish to lose your glory, to soil your ensigns? Go on then. Can armed Piedmontese rise up against Piedmontese? Can the breasts of brothers strike against the breasts of brothers Commanders of corps, officers, sub-officers, and soldiers! there is no longer any means of safety. Rally to your colors, surround them, seize them, and run to plant them on the banks of the Te sin and the Po. The country of the Lombards awaits you, that territory which will devour its enemies at the sight of your van-guard. Woe to him whom different opinions upon the institutions of montese soldiers; he would not merit the honor of bearing the Piedmontese name. “Companions in arms! this epoch is European. We are not abandoned. France lifts up her head, too much humiliated beneath the yoke of the Austrian cabinet; she is about to extend to you a powerful hand. "Soldiers and national guards! extraordinary circumstances demand extraordinary resolutions. If you hesitate, country, honor, all are lost. Think of these things, and do your duty; the Junta and ministers will do theirs. Your energy will give back to Charles-Albert his first courage, and the King Charles Felix will one day thank you for having preserved for him his throne." Finally, when every thing was lost, SantaRosa negotiated a general peace with the Count de Mocenigo, Minister of Russia at the court of Turin, on condition of an amnesty and some internal ameliorations; offering on this condition to renounce the amnesty for himself and the other constitutional chiefs, and to submit to banishment, the better to secure the peace and happiness of the country. This noble conduct struck me forcibly, and for some days I repeated to all my friends: "Gentlemen, there was a man at Turin." My admiration redoubled when I learned that the hero of this production was also its author. I could not restrain a feeling of respect, at seeing in the defender of an unfortunate revolution that absence of all party spirit, that magnanimous loyalty which does justice to all intentions, and in the most poignant sorrows of exile gives way to no unjust recriminations, no bitter feelings. Enthusiasm in a noble cause, carried even to sacrifice, and at the same time a moderation full of dignity, to say nothing of the rare talent displayed on every page of this work, exhibited in my eyes one of those beautiful characters, a hundred times more interesting than the two revolutions of Naples and of Piedmont; for if philosophy in me seeks, in contemporaneous events, the movement of eternal principles and their visible manifestations, so man does not with less ardor seek humanity in human things. And what feature of human character is more admirable than the union of moderation and energy? This ideal of which I had so often dreamed seemed presented to me in Santa-Rosa. I was told that he was in Paris. I longed to know him, and a friend whom I had made in |
