Giuseppe Garibaldi - Rule of the Monk; Or, Rome in the Nineteenth Century

The renowned writer of Caesar's "Commentaries" did not think it necessary to furnish a preface for those notable compositions, and nobody has ever yet attempted to supply the deficiency – if it be one. In truth, the custom is altogether of modern times. The ancient heroes who became authors and wrote a book, left their work to speak for itself – "to sink or swim," we had almost said, but that is not exactly the case. Cæsar carried his "Commentaries" between his teeth when he swam ashore from the sinking galley at Alexandria, but it never occurred to him to supply posterity with a prefatory flourish. He begins those famous chapters with a soldierly abruptness and brevity – "Omnia Gallia in très partes" etc. The world has been contented to begin there also for the last two thousand years; and the fact is a great argument against prefaces – especially since, as a rule, no one ever reads them till the book itself has been perused.

The great soldier who has here turned author, entering the literary arena as a novelist, has also given his English translators no preface. But our custom demands one, and the nature of the present work requires that a few words should be written explanatory of the original purpose and character of the Italian MS. from which the subjoined pages are transcribed. It would be unfair to Garibaldi if the extraordinary vivacity and grace of his native style should be thought to be here accurately represented. The renowned champion of freedom possesses an eloquence as peculiar and real as his military genius, with a gift of graphic description and creative fancy which are but very imperfectly presented in this version of his tale, partly from the particular circumstances under which the version was prepared, and partly from the impossibility of rendering into English those subtle touches and personal traits which really make a book, as lines and light shadows make a countenance. Moreover, the Italian MS. itself, written in the autograph of the General, was compiled as the solace of heavy hours at Varignano, where the King of Italy, who owed to Garibaldi's sword the splendid present of the Two Sicilies, was repaying that magnificent dotation with a shameful imprisonment. The time will come when these pages – in their original, at least – will be numbered among the proofs of the poet's statement that —

If there be many passages in the narrative where the signs are strong that "the iron has entered into the soul," there are also a hundred where the spirit of the good and brave chieftain goes forth from his insulting incarceration to revel in scenes of natural beauty, to recall incidents of simple human love and kindness, to dwell upon heroic memories, and to aspire towards glorious developments of humanity made free, like the apostle's footsteps when the angel of the Lord struck off his fetters, and he passed forth through the self-opened portals of his prison.

It would be manifestly unfair, nevertheless, to contrast a work written under such conditions with those elaborate specimens of modern novel-writing with which our libraries abound. Probably, had General Garibaldi ever read these productions, he would have declined to accept them as a model. He appears to have taken up here the form of the "novella," which belongs by right of prescription to his language and his country, simply as a convenient way of imparting to his readers and to posterity the real condition and inner life of Rome during these last few eventful years, when the evil power of the Papacy has been declining to its fall. Whereas, therefore, most novels consist of fiction founded upon fact, this one may be defined rather as fact founded upon fiction, in the sense that the form alone and the cast of the story is fanciful – the rest being all pure truth lightly disguised. Garibaldi has here recited, with nothing more than a thin veil of incognito thrown over those names which it would have been painful or perilous to make known, that of which he himself has been cognizant as matters of fact in the wicked city of the priests, where the power which has usurped the gentle name of Christ blasphemes Him with greater audacity of word and act as the hour of judgment approaches. Herein the reader may see what goes forward in the demure palaces of the princes of the Church, from which the "Vicegerents of Heaven" are elected. Herein he may comprehend what kind of a system it is which French bayonets still defend – what the private life is of those who denounce humanity and anathematize science, and why Rome appears content with the government of Jesuits, and the liberty of hearing the Pope's mezzo-sopranos at the Sistine Chapel. He who has composed this narrative, at once so idyllic in its pastoral scenes – so tender and poetic in its domestic passages – so Metastasio-like in some of its episodes – and so terribly earnest in its denunciation of the wrongs and degradation of the Eternal City, is no unknown satirist. He is Garibaldi; he has been Triumvir of the Seven-hill-ed City, and Generalissimo of her army; her archives have been within his hands; he has held her keys, and fought behind her walls; and, in four campaigns at least, since those glorious but mournful days, he has waged battle for the ancient city in the open field. Here, then, is his description of "Rome in the Nineteenth Century" – not seen as tourists or dilettanti see her, clothed with the imaginary robes of her historic and classic empire, but seen naked to the stained and scourged skin – affronted, degraded, defamed, bleeding from the hundred wounds where the leech-like priests hang and suck, and, by their vile organization, converted from the Rome which was mistress of the world, to a Rome which is the emporium of solemn farces, miracle-plays, superstitious hypocrisies, the capital of an evil instead of a majestic kingdgom – the metropolis of monks instead of Cæsars.

To this discrowned Queen of Nations every page in the present volume testifies the profound and ardent loyalty of Garibaldi's soul. The patriotism which most men feel towards the country of their birth is but a cold virtue compared with the burning devotion which fills the spirit of our warrior-novelist. It is as though the individuality of one of her antique Catos or Fabii was resuscitated, to protest, with deed and word, against the false and cunning tribe which have suborned the imperial city to their purposes, and turned the monuments of Rome, as it were, into one Cloaca Maxima. The end of these things is probably approaching, although His Holiness is parodying the great Councils of past history, and pretending to give laws urbi et orbi , while the kingdoms reject his authority, and his palace is only defended by the aid of foreign bayonets. When Rome is freed from the Pope-king, and has been proclaimed the capital of Italy, this book will be one of the memorials of that extraordinary corruption and offense which the nineteenth century endured so long and patiently.

The Author's desire to portray the state of society in Rome and around it, during the last years of the Papacy, has been paramount, and the narrative only serves as the form for this design. Accordingly, the reader must not expect an elaborately compiled plot, with artistic developments. He will, nevertheless, be sincerely interested in the fortunes and the fate of the beautiful and virtuous Roman ladies who figure in the tale – of the gallant and dashing brigand of the Campagna, Orazio – the handsome Muzio – the brave and faithful Attilio, and the Author's evident favorite, "English Julia," whose share in the story enables our renowned Author to exhibit his excessive affection for England and the English people. It only remains to commend these varions heroes and heroines to the public, with the remark that the deficiencies of the work are due rather to the translation than to the original; for the vigor and charm of the great Liberator's Italian is such as to show that he might have rivalled Manzoni and Alfieri, if he had not preferred to emulate and equal the Gracchi and Rienzi.