LITERARY NOTES.

Waikato Times, Volume XXX, Issue 2456, 7 April 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

LITERARY NOTES.

[FROM OUK OWN CORRESPONDENT. 1

Paris, January 28. Mcmarie autohiographiehc di GuUeppc Garibttldi, Florence (Barbera). ThU is a volume that will sell like " Uncle Tom's Cabin." It is intended to be translated into English, French and German. It is a work unique in its kind, as much by its rough diamond literary talent and richness in contemporary facts, as by its astonishing—aye its heroic—sincerity. The " memoirs ''show us Garibaldi in his entirety—one of the happiest of men, and the most representative of his generation. It is Garibaldi photographed by himself, day by day, in a sort of journal or scribbling diary ; the notes are dashed off without plan or study; written in the intervals of his active military life, that ho has later read over, co-ordinated and unified. But the general character of the work has uot been changed one jot or tittle ; it displays the wild freshness of inorninsr i:i ' v::y page, the warmth of improvisation in overy line, and stern earnestness in every word. The memoirs .smell of powder, of the clanking of urine, the palpitations of struggles, the intensity or hates, aod the euthusiasm of victories. They sug-gest in many parts the iden to have bfien written between the intervali of combat; tho swoid for a moment is put aside for the pen, and yet the nervous jottings breathe the writer's child-like ingenuities, his weaknesses, his contradictions, his special narrownesses, his contempt for legality, and yet his pa«sion for justicn. The greatest democrat of the age has been his own interviewer, the honest Griffith who has stenographed the chronicles of the most romantic of lives. Garibaldi was born at Nice in 1807, not far, it is said, from the spot where his friend Gambetta is buried. He hated three things; priests, who were his first schoolmasters ; the Mnzzinians, who ever crossed his attempts to secure unity ; and Cavour, whose diplomUJjFhe abhorred. The political and military role of Garibaldi belougs to historians to judge. Those memoirs are occupied with the man. The publisher has worthily done his duty, by scrupulously giving the manuscript such as it was left by Iho writer, even to not correcting obvious inaccuracies in dates and names of places. Some publishers iu this respect so use the ,'cissors that many memoirs resemble Jeanne Hachette's knife, which was so often repaired that none of the original

remained. The boyliood of Garibaldi was not different from that of other boys. He learned to write nnd read, and had a navigation knowledge of mathematics, which wfts early tested by his setting: out with some companions in n yawl to sail down the Mediterranean, to live by fisliiug, and en avant to seek fortune. The runaways were capturcd by a smack sent after them. Ere they could double any Cape of Good Hope, they had to encounter the Cape of Storms at home. Garibaldi ever regretted he did not learn English. Tho book is divided into five parts, corresponding to the five principal periods of Garibaldi's life. He was apprenticed to be a sailor, and the rude lessons ho thereby acquired seasoned him for his cheokered career. Boys will devour his moving accidents by flood and field, his adventures, his ship-wrecks, and his fights in South America. There are few but will feel for the torture he underwent at Gualeguay, wlien he was tied up by the hands to a beam for two hours and then whipped; and this after a journey of over fifty miles strapped on a horse, and exposed and defenceless to the torture of clouds of mosquitos. Garibaldi throughout all his oareer had a poetical ideal of woman. He maintained that she was superior to man, and the "most perfect of human creatures." His affection for his mother was proverbial, and his devotion towards his first wife, Anita, profound. The history uf his first love is oharming in its Biblical simplicity, though not quite orthodox, When off the coa»t of Brazil, h* saw from the quarter-deck, on the beach a beautiful young woman ; he at once got into a boat, aud was rowed ai shore. He then had matrimony on the ) brain ;he was welcomed on lauding by the husband of the siren, and invited to take I coffee at his house. Garibaldi experienced I a kind of ecstacy in thepresence of the capti. i vating Portugese beauty, and they reciprocated their heart-loves in silence. ''Thou art ■ mine," exclaimed Garibaldi, Anita felt she was, so tho lovers fled, and their idyll i unrolled on battlefields, in inarches, in : partisan combats aud in tho supreme command of the land and sea forces of UYaguay, Anita followed her lord on horspbaok, sharing his fatigues and dangers ; sleeping on the ground like an ordinary soldier, helping to work artillery, and having to witness sailors drunk with blood and wine, and make the corpse of a comrade serve for a gaming table. The second phase of Garjbaldi's oareer, opens with Rome, set out in 184S, from South America with a few men, and sailed for Italy. He visits his mother broken by age, and then enters on a campaign, "to cleanse Italy of priests and robbers," Tho possession of Rome wis hi» Ideal of Italian Unity ; it was not the Rome of old Rome in which he glorified, but a model EJternal City regenerated by a great aqd free people. Perhaps the description of the events of 1848-19, and those of 1859, are the most vigorous bits of writing in the book. Garibaldi knows liow to write as well as to act. He has the true Ccesar gift of description ; lie expresses the poeny of thp events lie feels. Can anything b,e more sensational than lib flight, after the capture of Rome by the French Republican soldiers ; or more sensational than his campaign of 1859 ? It is, however, in the expedition gf the "Thousand," where the TJantgsquo f u U_ ness and quitfsi-teygSoua character of his Stylo cr»t| be seen ; as when he and his phalanx during a starry night, when " all the air a solemn stillness holds," scorns to speak to tho very souls of band, who go to enfranchise f*n enslaved people, •Ch,e third part of the volume terminates with thp eyents of 1800. The fourth part is devoted to the affair of Asprowontu, and Garibaldi's escape from Caprea. For his clieckj he blames the rul? of the

priests," that reduced the descendants of the soldiers of Mariue and Scipio—his volunteers, to idiotcy, and effeminacy. One half of his volunteers withdrew from the campaign, duo to tho influence of the Maxzini party, who wanted an Italy united by a Republic, instead of a monarchy. Thus demoralised in advance, the volunteers only retired more rapidly when the French rained bullets at Mentana, where the "chassepots worked wonders," following General de Failly ; but according to Garibaldi, the balls created more fright than they inflicted injury. It was tho deceptive working of that modernised rifle, it was on its alleged " marvels,' , that Napoleon 111, and his entourage, staked their all during the war of 1870. The general would be nearer the true motive for the Second Empire—uot tho nation—discounting its success, had ho named the milnitlleuec. Tho fifth and concluding: part of tho book is devoted to the war of 1870-71. Garibaldi passes over, with a chivalrous reserve and in the best taste, the treatment he experienced from tho royalint National Assembly sitting at Bordeaux, in return for placing his sword on the side of republican France. He not the lees complains, that it was merely to utilise hie prestige, that his services were accepted ngainst the Germans, since he was not supplied with the means for any serious action. He maintains, that tho groat fault committed by the French in their resistance was, the not proclaiming a military dictatorship having its abode in the head quarters of the armies. The great, perhaps tho sole forco of the Germans, lay in that concentration of all their military and diplomatic jorviccs. Dictatorship, from such a lover of liberty: the dreamer of universal peace, in the groat man-of-war, were strange contradictions. Now there was a large share of feminilite in Garibaldi's characters but there was a still larger fund of combativeness, since he laya down—after gloriously illustrating it. " War is the veritable life of man." Comte de Moltke agrees with him in that doctrine, and un. happily both would appear to be right.

Somivenirs Diplomutiqinis. By G. Rothan (Revue des Deux Mondes]. There are supplementary papers by the eminent diplomatist, on the " Role of Russia and her king during the Crimean War." They might not be inaptly styled, the political infancy of Prince Bismarck. The souvenirs nhould be read alonß with Kingslake's last volumes on the Crimean War, and to which they form a most fitting complement. By the Congress of L'aris in 1830, Bismarck espied the future greatness of Prussia, and seized the opportunity. On the out-break of the Crimean War, the policy of Russia was of the See—Saw and weather cock nature. Frederick William had no fixed ideas; his minister, General de Manteuffel, was guided by circumstances, and so possessed no authority. And yet Prussia was hostile to Russia.

To enable Prussia to tako up a definite position it was necessary that Manteuffel should retire. Who was designated by common consent ? Bismarck, whose ambition to be foreign secretary was no secret. But he was not a persona grata either at Paris. Vienna, or London, where he was viewed as stiff-necked and unbending, a man thiit would never lend himself to the do-nothing rolo of a Manteuffel, nor yet allow himself to become an old proporty between the hands of a sovereign at once mystical, fantastical and wavering. This waiting for " something to turn up " attitude on the the part of Russia, irritated, but never duped, all the Great Powers, bo that on the conclusion of the war, they resolved to exclude Prussia from the Congress of Paris. This would have been to reduce Prussia to the rank of a socond class power. It was Napoleon 111 who insisted on Prussia being invited, and Frederick William in return, expressed his oternal gratitude to Napoleon 111. That was the moment when the political genius of Bismarck broke out; when he tried his wings; when he ex-

lubited his lucid and profound view o:

the future ; his boldness of plans united to firmness and cynicism in their

oxecution. Bismarck's programme wax, ts maintain cordial relations with all tho

cabinets, and hold out to each the possibility of Russia being their ally. Napoleon kuew the play of tho Prince ; pooh, poohed it, as not being worth serious opposition. It was only after Sedan that the Emperor discovered his penalty for pooh, poohing persistently, Bismarck, and considering him to be simply a fool, as he estimated him at Biarritz But sheer ability alone would not have made Bismarck's astonishing successes. He found in events his trump cards. The leading roltelets of Germany were destitute of virility ; the ministers at Vienna, destitute of capacity ; and the Government of France, was mystical, chimerical, and personal. Bismarck settled the question of Germanic dualism, pending j since the age of Charles V; then came the war of 1859, the violation of the treaty of Munich, the 1863 Polish insurrection, Denmark dismembered, due to the same causes as led to the partition of

Poland, petty autagonistic rivalry between I France and England; Sadowa, the python coils of deception entwined round Napoleon; and,the renatasaitcr. of liberalism in France. Such were the leading events on the side of Bismarck; a succession of advantages that neither Richelieu nor Frederick II ever experienced, They were the numberless faults, contradictions, and duplicities of Napoleon 111, which made the grandeur of Prince Bismarck, who out-schemed all the schemers. Fanny Mendelssohn, d'aprc-i les Monmres ile. ton Jlls. By F. Sergy (Reinwald) Appetite comes with eating. The public is ravenous for raomoirs; but then such are more or loss the bono of our bone and the flesh of our flesh. Fanny, was the eldest of Mendelssohn, and in a measure his Eoreria. She married tho painter Hensel, who enjoyed a famous reputation in Germany. Naturally the whole family was musioial, Goethe would

frequently drop 3n, to ask Felix, the " infant prodigy," to make a little noi.«e for him at the piano. When done, Goethe would kiss Meadelssaha. What an exchange of affection between two celebri-

ties ; one, in his decline of life, the other at its aurora. Though Goethe spoke softly, he could use, it seems, a voice of

" ten thousand stentorian power," Fanny and her husband camo to reside at Rome, and while there encountered Gounod, who was a sizar student of music. Fanny became a sort of maternal Madame Weldou towards him. He was passionately fond of German music, and whioh exercised a curious effect on his exoessively passionate and romantio temperament— " similar as if a bombshell had exploded in the houso, ,. Undoubtedly the influence of Mendelssohn facilitated the dovelopruent of Gounod's genius. Perhaps in hie Faust for example. Gounod always nad a tendency to religious mysticism. Lacordaires preaching in Rome, had made a deep impression on his mind, so much hq, that Gounod was on the point of throwing np music for the pulpit-, Ho was enrolled in the order of St. John the Evangelist, composed of young art students sympathising with the teaching- of Lncordaire, till Gounod set up as a Potcr the Hermit himself, preaching the regeneration of humanity by means of the Fine Arts,