THE EXILE-WORLD OF LONDON.
Leicester Square and the region that lies around it are conventionally regarded as the exile quarter of London. The name of Leicester square suggests the idea of an exile, as surely and readily, even to the mind of one who has never looked on the mournful and decaying enclosure, as the name of Billingsgate does that of fish-woman, or the name of the Temple that of a law-student. Yet, if a stranger visiting London thinks he is likely to see any exile of celebrity, while pacing the streets which branch off Leicester square, he will be almost as much mistaken as if he were to range Eastcheap in the hope of meeting the wild Prince and Poins.
Many a conspiracy has had its followers and understrappers in the Leicester square region; but the great conspirators do not live there any more. The place is falling, falling; the foreign and distinctive character of the population remains as marked as ever, but the foreigners whom London people would care to see are not to be found there any longer. The exiles who have made part of history, whose names are on record, do not care for Leicester square. They are to be found in Kensington, in Brompton, in Hampstead and Highgate; in the Regent's Park district; a few in Bloomsbury, a few in Mayfair. A marble slab and an inscription now mark the house in King street, St. James's, where Louis Napoleon lodged; and there is a house in Belgrave square dear to all true Legitimists, where the Count de Chambord ("Henri Cinq") received Berryer and his brother pilgrims. Only poor exiles herd together now in London. Only poverty, I suppose, ever causes nationalities to herd together anywhere. The men who group around Leicester square are the exiles without a fame; the subterranean workers in politics; the men who come like shadows, and so depart; the men whose names are writ in water, even though their life-paths may have been marked in blood.
Living in London, I had of late years many opportunities of meeting with the exiles of each class. I know few men more to be pitied than the great majority of those who make up the latter or Leicester square section. On the other hand, I should say that few men, indeed, are more to be envied by any of their fellow-creatures who love to be courted and "lionized," than the political exiles of great name who come to London and do not stay too long there.
Far away as the days of Thaddeus of Warsaw and the conventional and romantic type of exile now seem, there is still a fervent yearning in British society toward the representative of any Continental nationality which happens to be oppressed. No man had ever before received such a welcome in London as Kossuth did; but Kossuth stayed too long, became domesticized and familiarized, and society in London likes its lions to be always new and fresh. Moreover, the late Lord Palmerston, a warm patron of exiles when the patronage went no further than an invitation to a dinner or an evening party, set his face against Kossuth from the first; and polite society soon took the hint.
The man who most completely conquered all society, even the very highest, in London, during my recollection, was the man who probably cared least about it, and who certainly never sought to win the favor of fashion—I mean, of course, Garibaldi. To this day I am perfectly unable to understand the demeanor of the British peerage toward Garibaldi, when he visited London for a few days some years ago. The thing was utterly unprecedented and inexplicable. The Peerage literally rushed at him. He was beset by dukes, mobbed by countesses. He could not by any human possibility have so divided his day as to find time for breakfasting and dining with one-fifth of the noble hosts who fought and scrambled for him. It was a perpetual torture to his secretaries and private friends to decide between the rival claims of a Prime Minister and a Prince of the blood; an Archbishop and a Duchess; the Lord Chancellor and the leader of the Opposition. The Tories positively outdid the Whigs in the struggle for the society of the simple seaman, the gallant guerilla. The oddest thing about the business was, that three out of every four of these noble personages had always previously spoken of Garibaldi—when they did speak of him at all—with contempt and dislike, as a buccaneer and a filibuster.
What did it mean? Was it a little comedy? Was it their fun? Was it a political coup de théâtre, to dodge the Radicals and the workingmen out of their favorite hero? Certainly some of Garibaldi's friends suspected something of the kind, and were utterly bewildered and confounded by the unexpected rush of aristocratic admirers, who beset the hero from the moment he touched the shore of England.
It was a strange sight, not easily to be forgotten, to see the manner in which Garibaldi sat among the dukes and marchionesses—simple, sweet, arrayed in the calm, serene dignity of a manly, noble heart. There was something of Oriental stateliness in the unruffled, imperturbable, bland composure, with which he bore himself amid the throng of demonstrative and titled adulators. I do not think he believed in the sincerity of half of it, any more than I did, but he showed no more sign of distrust or impatience than he did of gratified vanity.
The thing ended in a quarrel between the Aristocracy and the Democracy, between Belgravia and Clerkenwell, for the custody of the hero, and Garibaldi escaped somehow back to his island during the squabble. But I think Lady Palmerston let the mask fall for a moment, when, growing angry at the assurance of Garibaldi's humbler friends, and perhaps a little tired of the whole business, she told some gentlemen of my acquaintance, that quite too much work had been made about a person who, after all, was only a respectable brigand. This was said (and it was said) at the very meridian of the day of noble homage to the Emancipator of Sicily.
Garibaldi has never since returned to England. Should he ever do so, he will find himself unembarrassed by the attentions of the Windsor uniform and Order of the Garter. The play, however it was got up, or whatever its object, was played out long ago. But the West End is, as a rule, very fond of distinguished exiles, when they come and go quickly; and Lord Palmerston's drawing-room was seldom without a representative of the class. No man ever did less for any great cause than Lord Palmerston did; but he liked brilliant exiles, and, perhaps, more particularly the soldierly than the scholarly class. Such a man as the martial, dashing, adventurous General Türr, for example, was the kind of refugee that Lord and Lady Palmerston especially favored.
Many English peers have, indeed, quite a spécialité in the way of patronizing exiles; but, of course, in all such cases the exile must have a name which brings some gratifying distinction to his host. He must be somebody worth pointing out to the other guests. I know that many Continental refugees have chafed at all this, and some have steadily held aloof from it, and declined to be shown off for the admiration of a novelty-hunting crowd. Many, too, have been deceived by it; have mistaken such idle attention for profound and practical sympathy, and have thought that two or three peers and half a dozen aristocratic petticoats could direct the foreign policy of England. They have swelled with hope and confidence; have built their plans and based their organizations on the faith that Park Lane meant the British government, and that the politeness of a Cabinet Minister was as good as the assistance of a British fleet; and have found out what idiots they were in such a belief, and have gone nigh to breaking their hearts accordingly. Indeed, the readiness of all classes in England to rush at any distinguished exile, and become effusive about himself and his cause is very often—or, at least, used to be—a cruel kindness, sure to be misunderstood and to betray—a love that killed.
Nothing could, in its way, have been more unfortunate and calamitous than the outburst of popular enthusiasm in England about the Polish insurrection four years ago. Some of the Polish leaders living in London were completely deceived by it, and finally believed that England was about to take up arms in their cause. An agitation was got up, outside the House of Commons, by an earnest, well-meaning gentleman, who really believed what he said; and inside the House by a bustling, quickwitted, political adventurer, who certainly ought not to have believed what he said. This latter gentleman actually went out to Cracow, in Austrian Poland, and was received there with wild demonstrations of welcome as a representative of the national will of England and the precursor of English intervention. The Polish insurrection went on; and England wrote a diplomatic note, which Russia resented as a piece of impertinence; and there England's sympathy ended. "I think," said a great English Liberal to me, "that every Englishman who helped to encourage these poor Poles and give them hope of English help, has Polish blood on his hands." I think so, too.
I have always thought that Felice Orsini was in some sort a victim to the kind of delusion which English popularity so easily fosters. I met Orsini when he came to England, not very long before the unfortunate and criminal attempt of the Rue Lepelletier; and I was much taken, as most people who met him were, by the simplicity, sweetness, and soldierly frankness of his demeanor. He delivered some lectures in London, Manchester, Liverpool, and other large towns, on his own personal adventures—principally his escape from prison—and though he had but a moderate success as a lecturer, he was surrounded everywhere by well-meaning and sympathizing groups, the extent of whose influence and the practical value of whose sympathy he probably did not at first quite understand. He certainly had, at one time, some vague hopes of obtaining for the cause of Italian independence a substantial assistance from England. A short experience cured him of that dream; and I fancy it was then that he formed the resolution which he afterward attempted so desperately to carry out. I think, from something I heard him say once, that Mazzini had endeavored to enlighten him as to the true state of affairs in England, and the real value of the sort of sympathy which London so readily offers to any interesting exile. But I do not believe Mazzini's advice had much influence over Orsini. Indeed, the latter, at the time I saw him, had but little respect for Mazzini. He spoke with something like contempt of the great conspirator. It would have been well for Orsini if he had, in one thing at least, followed the counsels of Mazzini. People used to say, some years ago, that odious and desperate as Orsini's attempt was, it at least had the merit of frightening Louis Napoleon into active efforts on behalf of Italy. There was so much about Orsini that was worthy and noble that one would be glad to regard him as even in his crime the instrument of good to the country he loved so well. But documentary and other evidence has made it clear since Orsini's death that the negotiations which ended in Solferino and Villafranca were begun before Orsini had ever planned his murderous enterprise. The fact is, that, during the Crimean war, Cavour first tried England on the subject, through easy-going and heedless Lord Clarendon—who hardly took the trouble to listen to the audacious projects of his friend—and then turned to France, where quicker and shrewder ears listened to what he had to say.
I have spoken of Orsini's contempt for Mazzini. Such a feeling toward such a man seems quite inexplicable. Many men detest Mazzini; many men distrust him; many look up to him as a prophet, and adore him as a chief; but I am not able to understand how any one can think of him with mere contempt. For myself, I find it impossible to contemplate without sadness and without reverence that noble, futile career; that majestic, melancholy dream. But it must be owned that an atmosphere of illusion sheds itself around Mazzini wherever he goes. I believe the man himself to be the very soul of truth and honor; and yet I protest I would not take, on any political question, the unsupported testimony of any devotee of Mazzini to any fact whatsoever. Mazzini's own faith is so sublimely transcendental, so utterly independent of realities and of experience, that I sincerely believe the visions of the opium-eater are hardly less to be relied on than the oracles and opinions of the great Italian. And yet the force of his character, the commanding nature of his genius, are such that his followers become more Mazzinian than Mazzini himself. There is something a good deal provoking about the manner of the minor followers of Mazzini. I mean in England. I do not speak of such men as my friend, Mr. Stansfeld, now a Lord of the Treasury, or my friend, Mr. P. A. Taylor, M. P. These are men of ability and men of the world, whose enthusiasm and faith, even at their highest, are under the control of practical experience and the discipline of public life. But I speak of the minor and less responsible admirers, the men and women who accept oracle as fact, aspiration as experience, the dream as the reality. The calm, self-satisfied way in which they deal with contemporary history, with geography, with statistics, with possibilities and impossibilities, in the hope of making you believe what they firmly believe—that Italy could, if only she had proclaimed herself Republican, have driven the Austrians into the sea in 1859, and the French across the Alps in 1860, while at the same time quietly kicking Pope, Bourbon, and Savoy out of throned existence. The confident and imperturbable assurance with which they can do all this—and I have never met with any genuine devotee of Mazzini who could not—is something to make one bewildered rather than merely impatient. For it is true in politics as in literature or in fashion, the admiring imitator reproduces only the defects, the weaknesses, the mannerisms and mistakes of the original. Mazzini himself is, I need hardly say, a singularly modest and retiring man. While he lived in London, he shrank from all public notice, and was seen only by his friends and followers. He sought out nobody. "Sir," said Mr. Gladstone, addressing the Speaker of the House of Commons, one night, when a fierce and factious attack was made on Mr. Stansfeld as a follower of the great exile, "I never saw Signor Mazzini." Yet Gladstone was by far the most prominent and influential of all the English sympathizers with the cause of Italian liberty. One would have thought it impossible for such a man as Mazzini to live for years in the same city with Gladstone without the two ever chancing to meet. But for the modest seclusion and shrinking way of Mazzini, such a thing would, indeed, have been impossible.
Louis Blanc is, perhaps, the only Revolutionary exile who, in my time, has been everywhere and permanently popular in London society. The fate of a political exile in a place like London usually is to be a lion among one clique and a bête noir in another. But Louis Blanc has been accepted and welcomed everywhere, although he has never compromised or concealed one iota of his political opinions. I think one explanation, and, perhaps, the explanation of this somewhat remarkable phenomenon, is to be found in the fact that Louis Blanc never for an hour played the part of a conspirator. He seems to have honorably construed his place in English society to be that of one to whom a shelter had been given, and who was bound not to make any use of that shelter which could embarrass his host. In London he ceased to be an active politician. He refused to exhibit himself en victime. He appealed to no public pity. He made no parade of defeat and exile. He went to work steadily as a literary man, and he had the courage to be poor. When he appeared in public it was simply as a literary lecturer. He was not very successful in that capacity. At least, he was not what the secretary of a lyceum would call a success. He gave a series of lectures on certain phases of society in Paris before the great Revolution, and they were attended by all the best literary men in London, who were, I think, unanimous in their admiration of the power, the eloquence, the brilliancy which these pictures of a ghastly past displayed. But the general public cared nothing about the salons where wit, and levity, and wickedness prepared the way for revolution; and I heard Louis Blanc pour out an apologia (I don't mean an apology) for Jean Jacques Rousseau in language of noble eloquence, and with dramatic effect worthy of a great orator, in a small lecture-room, of which three-fourths of the space was empty. Since that time he has delivered lectures occasionally at the request of mechanics' institutions and such societies; but he has not essayed a course of lectures on his own account. Everyone knows him; everyone likes him; everyone admires his manly, modest character and his uncompromising Republicanism. Lately he has lived more in Brighton than in London; but wherever in England he happens to be, he lives always as a simple citizen; has never been raved about like Kossuth, or denounced like Mazzini; and has occupied himself wholly with his historical labors and his letters to a Paris newspaper.
Another exile of distinction who lived for years in London apart from politics and heedless of popular favor was Ferdinand Freiligrath, the German poet. Freiligrath had to leave Prussia because of his political poems and writings. He had undergone one prosecution and escaped conviction, but Prussia was not then (twenty years ago) a country in which to run such risks too often. So Freiligrath went to Amsterdam and thence to London. He lived in London for many years, and acted as manager of a Swiss banking-house. His life was one of entire seclusion from political schemes or agitations. He did not even, like his countryman and friend, Gottfried Kinkel, take any part in public movements among the Germans in London—and he certainly never went about society and the newspapers blowing his own trumpet, and keeping his name always prominent, like the egotistical and inflated Karl Blind. Indeed, so complete was Freiligrath's retirement that many Englishmen living in London, who delighted in some of his poems—his exquisite, fanciful, melodious "Sand Songs" his glowing Desert poems, his dreamy, delightful songs of the sea, and his burning political ballads—were quite amazed to find that the poet himself had been a resident of their own city for nearly half a lifetime. Freiligrath has now at last returned to his own country. His countrymen invited him home, and raised a national tribute to enable him to give up his London engagement and withdraw altogether from a life of mere business. In a letter I lately received from Freiligrath's daughter (a young lady of great talent and accomplishments, recently married in London), I find it mentioned that Freiligrath expected soon to receive a visit from Longfellow in Germany—the first meeting of these two old friends for a period of some five-and-twenty years.
Alexander Herzen, the famous Russian exile, the wittiest of men, endowed with the sharpest tongue and the best nature, has left us. For many years he lived in London and published his celebrated Kolokol—"The Bell," which rang so ominously and jarringly in the ears of Russian autocracy. He has now set up his staff in Geneva, a little London in its attractiveness to exiles; and his arrowy, flashing wit gleams no longer across the foreign world of the English metropolis. I do not know how long Herzen had lived in London, but I fancy the difficulties of the English language must have proved insurmountable to him—a strange phenomenon in the case of a Russian. Certainly he never, so far as I am aware, either spoke or wrote English.
The latest exile of great mark whom we had among us in London was General Prim. When his attempt at revolution in Spain failed some two years ago, Prim went into Belgium. There some pressure was brought to bear upon him by the Ministry, in consequence, no doubt, of certain pressure brought to bear by France, and Prim left Brussels and came to live in London. He lived very quietly, made no show of himself in any way, and was no doubt hard at work all the time making preparation for what has since come to pass. To all appearance he had an easy and careless sort of life, living out among his private friends, going to the races and going to the opera. But he was incessantly planning and preparing; and he told many Englishmen candidly what he was preparing for. There were many men in London who were looking out for the Spanish Revolution months before it came, on the faith of Prim's earnest assurances that it was coming. So much has of late been written about Prim that his personal appearance and manner must be familiar to most readers of newspapers and magazines. I need only say that there is in private much less of the militaire about him than one who had not actually met him would be inclined to imagine. He is small, neat, and even elegant in dress, very quiet and perhaps somewhat languid in manner, looking wonderfully young for his years, and without the slightest tinge of the Leicester square foreigner about him. He is rather the foreigner of Regent street and the stalls of the opera house—any one who knows London will at once understand the difference. Prim impressed me with a much greater respect for his intellect, even from a literary man's point of view, than I had had before meeting and conversing with him. I think those who regard him as a mere sabreur, the ordinary Spanish leader of a successful military revolution, are mistaken. His animated and epigrammatic conversation seemed to me to be inspired and guided by an intellectual depth and a power of observation and reflection such as I at least was not prepared to find in the dashing soldier of the Moorish campaign.
There is one class of the obscure exiles, different from both the favored and the poorest, whose existence has often puzzled me. A political question of moment begins to disturb the European continent. Immediately there turns up in London, and presents himself at your door (supposing you are a journalist with acknowledged sympathies for this or that side of the question) a mysterious and generally shabby-looking personage, who professes to know all about it, and volunteers to supply you with the most authentic information and the most trustworthy "appreciation" of any events that may transpire. He wants no money; his information is given for the sake of "the cause." You ask for credentials, and he produces recommendations which quite satisfy you that his objects are genuine, although, oddly enough, the persons who recommend him do not seem to have anything whatever to do with the cause he represents. He comes, for example, to talk about the affairs of Roumania, and he brings letters and vouchers from literary friends in Paris. He professes to be an emissary from the Cretans, and his recommendations are from a Manchester cotton-firm. Anyhow, you are satisfied; you ask no explanations; you assume that your Paris or Manchester friends have enlarged the sphere of their sympathies since you saw them last, and you repose confidence in your new acquaintance. You are right. He brings you information, the most rapid, the most surprising, the most accurate. Such a man I knew during the Schleswig-Holstein agitation, which ended in the Danish war of four years since. He was a Prussian—a waif of the Berlin rising of 1848. Was he in the confidence of Von Beust, and Bismarck, and Palmerston, and all the rest of them? I venture to doubt it; yet if he had been, he could hardly have been more quick and accurate in all the information he brought me. Evening after evening he brought a regular minute of the proceedings of the day at the Conference of London, which was sitting with closed doors, and pledged to profoundest secrecy. Perhaps this was only guesswork! Here is one illustration. The Conference was held because some of the European Great Powers, England and France especially, desired to save Denmark from a struggle against the immeasurably superior force of Prussia and Austria. A certain proposal was to be made to the Conference by England and France on the part of Denmark. So much we all knew. One evening my friend came to me, and bade me announce to the world that the proposal had been made that day, and indignantly rejected—by Denmark! The story seemed preposterous, but I relied on my friend. Next day I was laughed at; my news was denounced and repudiated. The day after it was proved to be true—and Denmark went to war.
The last time I saw my friend was in the spring of 1866. He came to tell me that Prussia had resolved—at least that Bismarck had resolved—on war with Austria. "Stick to that statement," he said, "whatever anybody may say to the contrary—unless Bismarck resigns." I took his advice. At this time I am convinced that the English government had not the least idea that a war was really coming. The war came; but I never saw my friend any more.
Another of my mysterious acquaintances was an old, white-haired, grave, placid man who turned up in London during the early part of the French occupation of Mexico. He was a passionate Republican and anti-Bonapartist. He was a friend and apparently a confidant of Juarez, and was thoroughly identified with the interests of the Republicans in Mexico, although himself a Frenchman. I doubt whether I have ever met with a finer specimen of the courtly old gentleman, the class now beginning to disappear even in France, than this mysterious friend of the Mexican Republic. He might have been fresh from the Faubourg St. Germain, such was the grave, dignified, and somewhat melancholy grace of his courtly bearing. Yet he had evidently lived long in Mexico, and he was an ardent Republican of the red tinge; there was something of the old militaire about him, too, which lent a certain strength to his bland and placid demeanor. I never quite knew what he was doing in London. He was not what is called an "unofficial representative" of Juarez (at this time diplomatic relations between England and Mexico were of course broken off) for he never seemed to go near any of our ministers or diplomatists, and his only object appeared to be to supply accurate information to one or two Liberal journals which he believed to be honestly inclined toward the right side of every question. His information was always accurate, his estimate of a critical situation was always justified by further knowledge and the progress of events, his predictions always came true. He looked like a poor man, indeed, like a needy man; yet he never seemed to want for money, and he neither sought nor would have any compensation for the constant and valuable information he afforded. His knowledge of European and American politics was profound; and though he spoke not one word of English he seemed to understand all the daily details of our English political life. He was a constant visitor to me (always at night and late) during the progress of the Mexican struggle. When the Mexican Empire was nearly played out he came and told me the end was very, very near, and that in the event of Maximilian's being captured it would be impossible for Juarez to spare his life. He did not tell me that he was at once returning to Mexico, but I presume that he did immediately return, for that was the last I saw or heard of him.
During the quarrels between the Prussian Representative Chamber and Count von Bismarck (before the triumph of Sadowa had condoned for the offences of the great despotic Minister), I had a visit, one night, from a mysterious, seedy, snuffy old German. He came, he said, to develop a grand plan for the extinction of the Junker or Feudal party. Why he came to develop it to me I do not know, as it will presently be seen that I could hardly render it any practical assistance. It was, like all grand schemes, remarkably simple in its nature. Indeed, it was literally and strictly Captain Bobadil's immortal plan; although my German visitor indignantly repudiated the supposition that he had borrowed it, and declared, I believe, with perfect truth, that he had never heard of Captain Bobadil before. The plan was simply that a society should be formed of young and devoted Germans who should occupy themselves in challenging and killing off, one by one, the whole Junker party. My friend made his calculations very calmly, and he did not foolishly or arrogantly assume that the swordsmanship of his party must needs be always superior to that of their adversaries. No; he counted that there would be a certain number of victims among his Liberal heroes, and made, indeed, a large allowance, left a broad margin for such losses. But this, in no wise affected the success of his plan. The Liberals, were many, the Junkers few. It would simply be a matter of time and calculation. Numbers must tell in the end. A day must come when the last Junker would fall to earth—and then Astrea would return. Now the man who talked in this way was no lunatic. He had nothing about him, except his plan, which denoted mental aberration. His scheme apart, he was as steady and prosy an old German as you could meet under the lindens of Berlin or on the Lutherplatz of Königsberg. He was, moreover, as earnest, argumentative, and profoundly wearisome over his project as if he were expounding to an admiring class of students the relations of the Ego and Non-Ego. I need hardly add that one single beam, even the faintest, of a sense of the ridiculous, never shone in upon him during his long and eloquent exposition of the patriotic virtue, the completeness and the mathematical certainty of his ingenious project.
Let me close my random reminiscences with one recollection of a sadder nature. Some three or four years ago there came to London from Naples an Italian of high education and character—a lawyer by profession; a passionate devotee of Italian unity, and filled naturally with a hatred of the expelled Bourbons. This gentleman had discovered in one of the Neapolitan prisons a number of instruments of torture—rusty, hideous old iron chairs, and racks, and screws, and "cages of silence," and such other contrivances. He became the possessor of these, and he obtained from the new government a certificate of the genuineness of his treasure-trove—that is to say, a certificate that the things were actually found in the place where the owner professed to have found them. The Italian authorities, of course, could say nothing as to whether they had or had not been used as instruments of torture in any modern reign. They may have lain rusting there since hideous old days when the Inquisition was a fashionable institution; they may have been used—public opinion and Mr. Gladstone said things as horrible had been done—in the blessed reign of good King Bomba. The Neapolitan lawyer firmly believed that they had been so used; and he became inspired with the idea that to take these instruments, first to London and then to the United States, and exhibit them, and lecture on them, would arouse such a tempest of righteous indignation among all peoples, free or enslaved, as must sweep kingcraft and priestcraft off the earth. This idea became a faith with him. He brought his treasure of rusty iron to London, and proposed to take a great hall and begin the work of his mission. I endeavored to dissuade him (he had brought some introductions to me). I told him frankly that, just at that time, public opinion in London was utterly indifferent to the Bourbons. The fervor of interest about the Neapolitan Revolution had gone by; people were tired of Italy, and wanted something new; the Polish insurrection was going on; the great American Civil War was occupying public attention; London audiences cared no more about the crimes of the Bourbons than about the crimes of the Borgias. He was not to be dissuaded. He really believed at first that he could induce some great English orator, Gladstone or Bright, to deliver lectures on those instruments and the guilt of the system which employed them. Then he became more moderate, and applied to this and that professional lecturer—in vain. No one would have anything to do with a project so obviously doomed to failure—he himself spoke no English. At last he induced a lady who was somewhat ambitious of a public career, to lecture for him; and he took a great hall for a series of nights, and advertised largely, and went to great expense. I believe he staked all he had in money or credit on the success of the enterprise; and the making of money was not his object; he would have cheerfully given all he had to create a flame of public indignation against despotism. Need I say what a failure the enterprise was? The London public never manifested the slightest interest in the exhibition. The lecture-hall was empty. I believe the poor Neapolitan tried again and again. The public would not come, or look, or listen. He spent his money in vain; he got into debt in vain. His instruments of torture must have inflicted on their owner agonies enough to have satisfied Maniscalco or Carafa. At last he could bear it no longer. He wrote a few short letters to some friends (I have still that which I received—a melancholy memorial), simply thanking them for what efforts they had made to assist him in his object, acknowledging that he had been over sanguine, and intimating that he had now given up the enterprise. Nothing more was said or hinted. A day or two after, he locked himself up in his room. Somebody heard an explosion, but took no particular notice. The lady who had endeavored to give voice to my poor friend's scheme came, later in the day, to see him. The door was broken open—and the poor Neapolitan lay dead, a pistol still in his hand, a pistol bullet in his brain.