Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 25, November, 1859

Their journey from Brunn to Gradisca was a perfect contrast to that melancholy transit, so many years before, from Venice to Spielberg. It was near the beginning of April, 1836, when they started in carriages with a commissary and a few guards; in every town and village through which they passed, crowds surrounded them with gratulations; the inns where they stopped were besieged with well-wishers; Nature, too, seemed to hail their release with vernal beauty; and so they journeyed on, to be received as honored guests rather than prisoners-of-state at the Castle of Gradisca. Their sojourn here was as recreative as was consistent with that degree of supervision necessary to prevent escape; they were at liberty to walk about, to make and receive visits, to bathe in the sea, to attend the fairs, and examine the local celebrities of Friuli; a single commissary often accompanied their excursions, and personally the most delicate consideration was paid them. Here, too, the most affecting reunions of long-severed kindred and friends took place; their relatives hastened hither to embrace them.

Foresti used to relate many anecdotes illustrative of the sympathy and respect felt and manifested by strangers during this interlude between prison and exile. One deserves record here. Two travelling-carriages arrived at a village-inn, one evening, where they were resting. While the gentlemen were inspecting the apartments, a lady of distinguished appearance inquired of a bystander, who the strangers were towards whom so many friendly glances were directed; soon after, the landlord bore to them her request for an interview; they rose at her entrance; she attempted to speak, but her voice faltered, and, with tears, she turned to her little boys and said, "Kneel, my darlings, to these brave Italian patriots; they are illustrious victims in the great cause of Liberty; and you, gentlemen, bless my sons; your blessing will be fruitful to them of good; it will make them love their country and die for it, if need be. I am a Pole. My country is oppressed like yours. I have two brothers compromised in the last insurrection in Cracow. May God preserve them!"—and weeping bitterly, she retired. They afterwards learned that her husband was Counsellor of State to the King of Prussia.

On the 1st of August, 1836, they were transported by night to Trieste, and, by a singular coincidence, placed on board the same brig-of-war whence Kozsta was subsequently taken at Smyrna,—an incident memorable in our subsequent diplomacy, as having occasioned the celebrated letter of Webster to the Austrian envoy. Provided by that government with warm clothing, the money they had taken to Spielberg was restored to them, not, however, in the original gold coin, but in the Vienna bills for which it had been then exchanged by the police, diminished nearly two-thirds in value during the interval of fourteen years. The vessel was uncomfortably crowded; the voyage occupied three months; but they fared alike with the officers. Towards the close of October, they beheld the noble bay of New York; and so intense was the satisfaction with which they first trod American soil, the goal and terminus of such protracted suffering, that, ever after, the Battery, where they landed, was hallowed to their memories as consecrated ground.

Within a few days of their arrival, a banquet was given them by their compatriots; and from that hour, Foresti became the oracle and the consoler, the teacher, almoner, and chief of his fellow-exiles. Subsequent events drove many other Italian patriots to our shores; his purse and his counsel were ever ready for the impoverished and inexperienced, who regarded him with filial admiration; while to the more educated he was the intimate companion or sympathetic friend. Through his personal influence, employment was constantly obtained and kindness enlisted for his countrymen. When the great political crisis of 1848 occurred, Foresti hastened to Europe; Pius IX., at the urgent prayer of his sisters and cousins, offered him free entrance to his dominions, a favor his predecessor might have granted but for the strong opposition of Cardinal Lambruschini. He took counsel with the revolutionary leaders at Paris, and passed through Italy to the frontiers of the Papal States, whence the fatal reaction, supported by French bayonets, at Rome, sent him back once more to the land of his adoption, whither he was soon followed by many of the heroic and unfortunate men who redeemed the martial fame, without being able to retrieve the fate of Italy.

Of the many Italian exiles who have found an asylum in the United States, Foresti was preeminently the representative man. The period of his arrival, the circumstances of his life, and the traits of his character united thus to distinguish him even among the best educated and most unfortunate of the political refugees from Southern Europe. At the time of his arrest, the vilest modern despotism of the Continent had reached its acme; and the patriotic movements it then sought to annihilate by a cruelty unparalleled since the Middle Ages were justified even by conservative reformers, on account of their stringent moral necessity, the intelligent scope of their advocates, and the high and cultivated spirit of their illustrious martyrs. As scholars, citizens, gentlemen, and, in more than one instance, authors of real genius, these Liberals stand alone, and are not to be confounded with the perverse Radicals of a subsequent epoch. Moreover, their aspirations were, as we have seen, more reactionary than experimental; for the rights for which they conspired had been in a great measure enjoyed under Europe's modern conqueror, then impotent in action, but most efficient in remembrance, although isolated on his prison-rock. Foresti's companion in misfortune has made their mutual wrongs "familiar as household words"; and to be associated in captivity with the author of "Le Mie Prigioni" was of itself a passport to the sympathy of the civilized world.

The interest his previous history inspired was deepened and confirmed by intimate acquaintance with Foresti. He lived for many years domesticated in the family of a fellow-countryman; and an habitué of his apartments was transported in a moment from bustling, prosperous, and republican New York, to the land of song, of martyrdom, and of antiquity. The soulful ardor and childlike ingenuousness, the keen perceptions and earnest will of Foresti suggested an obsolete, or at least rare type of character; he belonged essentially to the olden days of loyalty and lore which gave birth to self-reliance on the one hand, and disinterested feeling on the other. His manner and conversation had, as it were, an historical as well as national flavor, by virtue whereof we were borne away from the prosaic and practical spirit of the age, to the days of chivalry, feudal zeal, and genuine humanity,—when faith was an inspiration, friendship a moral fact, and manhood, in its virile simplicity, greater than wealth. Nor were the generous exile's humble surroundings alien to these impressions: the effigies of his country's poets were the favorite ornaments of his sitting-room; a volume of Foscolo on the table, or a fresh letter from Silvio Pellico under his snuffbox,—the grim, old-fashioned type of his Sentenza , as it was originally distributed through Austrian Italy, and hanging in its black frame, a memorial of startling import to a freeman's eyes,—a landscape representing the Castle of Ferrara, the far-away scene of his youthful life,—and a primitive engraving from one of the old masters of that city, dedicated to him in one of those euphonious inscriptions peculiar to Italian artists,—these and such as these tokens of his experience and tastes gave interesting significance to his companionship. Nor were indications of present consideration and usefulness wanting: flowers or dainty needle-work, the offerings of his fair pupils, applications to him, as President of the Italian Benevolent Society, diplomas from American colleges, and invitations to the country, to dinner, and to domestic fêtes , from the numerous friends he had won in the free land of his adoption, gave evidence of social enjoyment and genial activity.