FATHER GAVAZZI. (From the "Illustrated London News.")

New Zealander, Volume 7, Issue 565, 13 September 1851, Page 3

FATHER GAVAZZI. (From the " Illustrated London News.")

Alessamlro Gavazzi was born at Bologna, in 1809, and at the early age of sixteen euteied the order called 1 clenei regulares of > St. Barnabas, in which he rapidly rose to a distinguished position. Professor of rhetoric at Naples, he not only taught the theoiy, but exemplified the practice of eloquence in the pulpits of that capital, and subsequently in most of the principal cities of Italy. His views were broad and generous ; and, though little to the taste of Pope Gregory, that pontiff prudently refrained from molesting the popular missionary. The advent of Pius IX. gave unfettered scope to tha liberal and enlightened views hitherto compiessed and discountenanced among Italian clergy ; and foremost among the upholders of the new Papal policy were Ugo Bassi and Gavazzi, both Bolognese. The first appearance of Gavazzi on the political ' seene — whose career we are now to trace through a file of Italian newspapers in our possession — was on the news of the Milanese insurrection, and the disj comfiture of the Austiians throughout Lombardy being t celebrated in Rome, when the students of the University seized on the eloquent priest, carried him on their shouldeis into the pulpit of the Pantheon, and called on him to pionounce the funeral oration of the patriots killed at Mihn. The orator rose at onco to the height of that g'eat argument, and became at once tbe trumpeter of freedom throughout Italy. The tricolor cross was now displayed on his cassock, and is the same decoration which he has worn during the whole campaign, and now wears unsullied on his manly breast. In the Colosseum he harangued for weeks crowds of citizens gathered within that gigantic structure, which became an arena of patriotic manifestations. The Pope encouraged his efloits to rouse the national energies, and conferred on him the office of Chaplain-General to the Forces, than organising by the levy of volunteers and the formation of national guards. In that capacity he marched from Rome with 16,000 men, and, after a short hesitating halt on the frontiers, positive ordeis came from the Vatican, and private instructions to Gavazzi himself, to move forward and act I against the Austrians. The onward progress of the Roman army was a succession of triumphs to the walls of Vicenza. Gavazzi's eloquence supplied ammunition, clothing, provisions, horses, and all the materiel de I guerre, from a willing population. He was the Hermit I Peter of the whole crusade, the life and soul of the insurrection. At Venice, in the great area of St. | Mark, he harangued, day after day, congregated thousands, and filled the Venetian treasury by the voluntary oblations elicited by bis irresistible appeals. Women lore off their earrings and bracelets, .and the wives of fisbeinien flung their large silver hair-pins | into the military chest, and several thousand pounds' ! worth of plate and jewellery was the result of his exertions. "When the Roman division was ordered to i fall back, the father made Florence ring with his exhortations to uphold the cause. The Grand Duke, who had already begun his tergiversations, gave orders for the forcible expulsion, of Gavazzi from Tuscany: he took refug3 in Genoa ; but the Bolognese having broken into open mutiny against the Pope on tbe Bth of August, and formed a Provisional Government, Gavazzi was recalled, as the only means of allaying the discontent of tbe legations ; his return was in t/iumpb, and order was restored by hia presence. Gen. Zucchi was now sent from Rome to take the com* mand of the troops at Bologna, when, at the instigation of tbe Cardinal Legate, this Lieutenant of Rossi seized on Gavazzi, and sent him olf secretly, under a strong escort, to be incarcerated in Corneto, a sort of. ecclesiastical prison, where cleiical robbers, assassins, and adulterers have been for ages confined by Popes; but, on his passage through Vuerbo, the whole city rose to rescue their patriot, and Pius IX. found it expedient to order his liberation amid the plaudits of the town. On the flight of the Pope, the formation of a Republican Government, and the convoking of the Roman Assembly, Gavazzi wa3 confirmed in his previous functions of Chaplain-General to the Forces, and began his preparations for the approaching seige of the French, by organising the military hospitals on a scalo commensurate with the coming warfare. He formed a committee of the principal Roman ladies, to provide for the wounded (Piincess Belgioioso, Countess Pallavicino, and Pisacane at their head), and superintended the surgical ambulances during the whole struggle. At the lull of the fight against Oudinot, when a sortie of 14,000 Romans was made to repel the King of Naples, who, with his 20,000 men, had advanced as far as Velletri, the father went forth at the head of the troops with the gallant Garibaldi, and, after the utter rout and precipitate flight of the invading army, assisted the dying and disabled of both sides. Returning into the besieged capital he sustained the spirit of the inhabitants throughout, and was ever at tbe bastions and in the front of tha battle. At the fall of Rome he received an honourable testimonial and saw/ conduit from Oudinot; and while his companion, Father Ugo Bassi was shot by the Austiians without trial and against the law of nations at Bologna, he waa suffered to dopart by the more civilised freebooters of France. In London he has since lived in retirement, giving for bis daily bread a few lessons in the language of bis beloved but downtrodden land : when a few of his fellow exiles, anxious to hear in the country of. their forcible adoption once more the eloquent voice which cheered them in their hour of triumph, clubbed togelher tbe pittance of poverty to hire a room for the purpose, and the result has been the potent blast of indignant oratory and the trumpet note of witheringdenunciation with which he now assails the treachery, fraud, and accumulated impostures of the Roman Court, and all Us malevolent and Macchiavellian machineiy.