Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 17, No. 101, May, 1876

by Various

A printed notice had invited all English and Americans in Rome, interested in the subject, to attend at the English cemetery at three o'clock, the day having been fixed by the fact that it was the anniversary of the day of Keats's death. It was also, as it happened, the second day of our boisterous and rollicking Carnival, and those who attended had to absent themselves from the attractions of the Corso. Nevertheless, the gathering was a large one, and the contrast between the scene passing in that remote and quiet corner of old Rome under the cypresses and in the shade of the pyramid of Caius Cestius, and that which was at the same time being enacted in the Corso, was about as great as can well be conceived. We had it all to ourselves. With the exception of the coachmen, who remained lazily dozing on the boxes of the carriages which had brought us from the living Rome of to-day to this far-away spot, there was not a soul on the ground save English and Americans.

It must be quite needless to remind those who have ever seen it of the features of that most poetically suggestive spot, and I can hardly hope to enable any who have not seen it to form an adequate idea of its exceeding beauty. It is just within the city wall, niched in an angle of it, in the immediate vicinity of the Porta San Sebastiano, but it is difficult to imagine that one is within the limits of a great city; and it was especially so when the noise and racket of a city in Carnival time had just been left behind one. But the fact is, that large tracts of space, utterly uninhabited and unoccupied save by scattered masses of the ruins of ancient Rome, lie between the inhabited parts of the modern city and this far corner. The most marked characteristic of the spot is its perfect quietude. The ivy-grown city-wall, a group of fine cypresses, a few stone-pines with their lovely velvet-like verdure, the gray old pyramid of Caius Cestius immediately behind the cemetery, and a glimpse of the dreamy-looking Alban Hills on the farther side of the Campagna, make up a landscape which no artistic eye can rest on without being deeply penetrated by the charm of it. February as it was, the day might have been deemed a summer day anywhere to the northward of the Alps. It was the very perfection of weather—warm, genial, still, and breathing the sweet breath of a thousand wild flowers. The violets which abundantly covered the grave were in full blossom, even as they had bloomed beneath those old walls when the sight of them there had induced the poet, prescient of his coming end, to wish that he might sleep his long sleep beneath them.

When we had all taken our places, and a eucalyptus plant, sent for the purpose by Mr. Marsh, the American minister, had been planted on the turf just behind the grave, the sheet which covered the medallion was withdrawn, and a murmur of pleasure and admiration ran through the crowd as they looked on the strikingly characteristic and individualized presentment of the young poet's very remarkable and striking features. I had seen the medallion before, and was therefore at liberty to watch the effect which it produced on others; and I was struck by the evidences in the faces of those around me that it spoke very clearly to the hearts and imaginations of the spectators.

General Sir Vincent Eyre, who had chiefly undertaken the trouble of directing all that had been done for putting the gravestone into perfect repair, adorning it with flowers and plants, and putting up the medallion, was on the ground together with Miss Clarke, who had been entrusted with a similar labor of love from America, and who had co-operated "heart and hand," as Sir Vincent said, with him throughout the whole business. As soon as the pleased murmur of the crowd had subsided he stepped in front of the persons assembled and gave a succinct account of what had been done, and a narrative of the singular coincidence which had led to our co-heirs in the legacy bequeathed to us by the poet being co-operators in the work. He concluded a very neat and appropriate address by stating that the subscriptions sent in for the restoration of the grave had left a sum of about sixty pounds sterling in his hands, and that he proposed that this should be augmented by about as much more, which would suffice to place a bust of the poet in Westminster Abbey. The proposal met with the warm approval of the assembly, and it was determined that Dr. Stanley, the dean of Westminster, should at once be communicated with on the subject.

An interesting and affecting letter from Mr. Severn, the loving and faithful friend of Keats, was read by Sir Vincent Eyre with much feeling. It contained a few simple words to the effect that the writer would much have wished to be present on the occasion of the unveiling of the medallion, but that he feared to be overcome by the pathos of the circumstances, strong emotions not being easily borne at the age of eighty-two years. There were many moistened eyes in the assembly as Sir Vincent read the communication from the poet's venerable friend and survivor.

T.A.T.

GINO CAPPONI.

GINO CAPPONI, whose death, on the 3d of February last, has been noticed in all the principal journals of Europe and America, belonged to a family that has been honored in Florence for more than five hundred years, and whose name occurs on almost every page of its history. He was born in that city on the 14th of September, 1792. His name in full was Gino Alessandro Giuseppe Gaspero, but no one ever heard of him save as Gino. At seven years of age he shared the exile of his parents, who followed their sovereign, the grand duke Ferdinand, when he was driven from his dominions by the victorious arms of France. He was little more than twenty when he went as a member of the embassy sent to Napoleon I. immediately after the battle of Leipsic, on which occasion he is recorded to have had a long conversation with the emperor. After the restoration of the Tuscan sovereign at the fall of Napoleon he traveled extensively in England, Germany and France. Returning to his country, he was continually eager in using his large hereditary wealth for the promotion of education among all classes of his countrymen. He was one of the principal founders and supporters of the celebrated periodical, the Antologia, which played so large and conspicuous a part in preparing the public mind for the awakening which finally issued in that resuscitation of Italy which we have all witnessed.

In 1841 he mainly contributed to the foundation of the Archivio Storico Italiano, the fruitful parent of various other publications of the same kind which have within the last thirty years done infinitely more for students of Italian history than all the three centuries which preceded them. The famous bookseller Vieusseux, who himself did much and suffered much in the cause of the nascent Italian liberties, undertook the material portion of this enterprise, which was rewarded by a large measure of literary success, and by the fear and enmity of the oppressors of Italy throughout the Peninsula.

Capponi, however, would fain have avoided revolution could it have been avoided without sacrificing liberty. In July, 1847, when the general state of Europe was bringing home to the minds of rulers the cogent necessity of becoming reformers or of vanishing, Capponi was made a councillor of state, and at the close of that year was employed by the grand duke to draw up a scheme of representative institutions for Tuscany. To give anything approaching to a complete account of Capponi's activity during the troubled period which followed would be to write the history of Tuscany during that period. The general progress of affairs was precisely that which history has had so often to recount. The sovereign, frightened, obstinate, and little able to appreciate the forces opposed to him, was wavering, fickle, timid, yet stubborn, and, above all, untrustworthy. The people were bent on pushing matters to extremes to which those who had so far been their leaders were unwilling to go, and, as usual, the best of those leaders were shunted from the road, happy if they were able, as Capponi was, to retire in safety to the tranquil seclusion of studious life. When, after the flight of the grand duke from his dominions and his subsequent restoration by Austrian bayonets, a regular government was once more established in Florence, Capponi was constant, though wholly unconnected with public life officially, in tendering counsel to the grand duke which, had it been listened to, might have saved his throne and changed all the future of Italy. But he was disregarded, and even suspected; and, as we all know, the end came in the memorable 1859. After the union of Italy under Victor Emmanuel, Capponi was at once named a senator and decorated with all the honors the sovereign had to bestow. But, alas! they were bestowed on a blind old man, whose misfortune incapacitated him from taking any part in public life. From the time when the Italian revolution was consummated the life of Gino Capponi was that of a retired and laborious student. The loss of his sight by no means involved in his case the abandonment of literary labor; and his last great work, published but a year or two ago, the History of the Republic of Florence, is the second great historical work which in our own time has been produced by an author deprived of eyesight.