But what he had, he had superlatively: valor, presence of mind, geniality, unselfishness, magnanimity,—he had all these, the qualities of a popular soldier, to a degree which made whoever fought with him worship him. No other man of his time, nor perhaps of any time, inspired so many human beings with personal affection—as distinguished from that devotion which other favorite captains have inspired—as he did. Every one of his soldiers felt that in Garibaldi he had not merely a commander but a brother; every person who approached him acknowledged his fascination.
Strip off Garibaldi’s eccentricities, look into his heart, contemplate his achievements,—we behold a hero of the Homeric brood. Again we enter the presence of a man of a few elemental traits, whose habit it was to exhibit his passions without that reserve which belongs to our sophisticated age. Like Achilles, he wept when he was moved, he sulked when he was angry. Equally simple was the mainspring of his action. He obeyed two ideals, and those two of the noblest,—love of liberty and love of his fellow-men: nay, more, he obeyed them as quickly when they led into exile, poverty, and danger as when they led him to a conquest unparalleled in modern history, and to fame in which the wonder and the affection of the world blended in equal parts.
In the making of Italy it was his mission to rouse some of his countrymen to a sense of their patriotic duty, and to lead others to fight for a nation under Victor Emanuel instead of for a faction under Mazzini. Through him, the forces of royalism and of revolution formed an alliance which, although it was almost indispensable to the success of the Italian cause, might never, but for him, have been formed.
Such was Garibaldi, his character, his exploits. Shall we not seek also for the meaning of his career? Shall we not ask, “To what attributes of general human nature had his individuality the key?” That conquest of Sicily was but an episode; long anterior to it was built up the temperament which might have liberated twenty Sicilies, and which found a multitude ready to respond to its least signal.
More than half of our nature is emotion. Men may lie sluggish, they may seem sodden in selfishness, or they may fritter their force away on petty things. But let the hero come,—the Garibaldi, the embodied emotion,—and they will know him as light knows light, or lover his beloved. What just now seemed a dead, sordid mass is tinder, is flame. The craven legions, bewitched and transformed by his example, will follow him anywhere, were it to storm the gates of hell! The immense scope of noble emotion,—is not that the significance, if we seek it, of Garibaldi’s marvelous influence? And has it ever been more certainly displayed than in our very century, miscalled prosaic?
PORTRAITS
CARLYLE
Dr. Samuel Johnson, during a long life, cherished an aversion, Platonic rather than militant, for Scotland and the Scotch. Had any one told him that out of the land where oats were fed to men there should issue, soon after his death, a master of romance, an incomparable singer, and a historian without rival, we can well imagine the emphasis with which he would have said, “Tut! tut! sir, that is impossible!” Nevertheless, for the best part of a century Scotland has shed her influence through the world in the genius of Walter Scott, Robert Burns, and Thomas Carlyle; and she has taken sweet vengeance on the burly Doctor himself by creating in James Boswell not only the best of British biographers, but one so far the best that no other can be named worthy to stand second to him. We now celebrate the centenary of the last of these great Scotchmen,—Thomas Carlyle,—and it is fitting that we should survey his life and work.[4]