clear estimate of your character. I think you have an extraordinary amount of imagination and that makes it more difficult. Besides, it is always easier to know men than women. A man is either good or bad, but woman is the sphynx. You may have known her all your life and yet not know her to the bottom. From your love of Goethe, among other things, I conclude that you are objective-by which I mean that you have no aim or ideal after which to strive. You simply watch the world turn round and get absorbed by whatever happens to be before you. Wholly and brilliantly so, I grant you; then the object passes and something else engrosses you in turn. This is selfish. For though the dreams you indulge in are always most poetical, it is a selfish indulgence. You want to be happy; but happiness, let me tell you, is not the object of our life. When you set out on a journey you have an object toward which you are going. You may welcome the sun if it shines on your path, but you do not break your journey if it should not be shining; nor do you travel on purpose to seek it. It is the same with happiness. Search not for it; believe me, by so doing it will always escape your grasp. Like a shadow it will forever hover beyond your reach. But if with steady aim you pursue an appointed task, just as unexpectedly as the sunshine falls on your path happiness will surprise you unawares.

'Forgetfulness of the world and existence, glimpses of something higher and brighter that is all we can mean by happiness here on earth. A deep abiding sadness always fills my heart. The things of this world are so fleeting and incomplete that, if for no other reason but this, I could never be happy here. With a few exceptions, I despise the present generation, and only in the idea of Humanity as it will be in the future do I find my consolation. For at present men have lost the sense of the continuity and unity of their race. Each one is only conscious of his own individual rights. They have forgotten duty. Their love itself is only a selfishness à deux. Though we can only love a few with all our heart, yet should we bear ourselves toward all men as though we loved them. I have always tried to behave alike to all, but only the smiles of a few dear ones ever give me any comfort. Remember, I do not act thus for the hap

piness it may bring me. I do not hold the Christian belief that doing good must needs make us happy. Nor do I expect any kind of reward. No; you must do good for the sake of goodness only."

In order to impress his theory of life. more clearly upon me, Mazzini, in answer to my appeal for fuller insight, wrote me several letters, from one of which I will give an extract, as it sums up in a little room the quintessence of his teaching :

"It is not from me, dear troubled one, it is from yourself that you must draw strength and comfort. It is by reaching through your own efforts, faith: faith in duty and immortality. You have had moments in which faith visited you; but next moment you analyzed, dissected and it disappeared. Did you ever think, Mathilde, that all great scientific discoveries have been owing to what they call intuition-to an hypothesis which flashed before the eye of genius, without antecedents, without any reasoning that could be ascertained. Reasoning only ascertained the truth of the hypothesis afterward. As intuition to the intellect, so are those moments to the soul. They see truth. They make you feel life your analyzing reason can only, like anatomy, examine death. As the telescope-the enlarged eye-discovers new stars and planets by concentrating on your pupil a larger mass of rays of light so you can only discover truth, moral truth, by a concentration of all your faculties, instincts, aspirations on a given point. The moments of which you speak, do that. Why do you spurn them, ungrateful child? why do you doubt them? High poetry is truth; and it is truth because you cannot trace out or analyze its source. In a beautiful night, near the grave of a dear lost one, before the Alps or the sea, in a moment of concentrated love for a being, for an idea, for an aim, you are nearer the truth than after having spent days and nights on philosophical systems. If ever you have a strange moment of religious feeling, of supreme resignation, of quiet love of humanity, of a calm insight of duty, kneel down, kneel down, thankful, and treasure within yourself the feeling suddenly arisen it is the feeling of life.

:

"Such feelings came to me at the period about which I wrote these pages; I cannot write them down. Still I have written enough to show their source. The

source is a definition of life. Life is not search for happiness; life is a mission. We have no rights: we have only duties; when bent on fulfilling them, we have a right to not be prevented or checked: thence liberty, thence equality, thence association; but we have no rights, unless we do fulfil a duty.

"God is but He is not the Christian God. He is not the arbitrary dispenser of grace. He has made laws; He has given you powers and liberty; He has put before you evil, so that you may fight it; He has surrounded you with millions of other beings, so that you may feel your brotherhood with them; He has pointed out to you many aims tending to their improvement; He has given to your contemplation a whole long tradition of martyrsouls, of good, patient, struggling, hope ful men as exainples and companions on the way. He could not, cannot do more for you. Do not ask for grace: conquer it. Do not contemplate work. Do not think of yourself: think of others. Christianity tried to teach man how to save himself alone, in spite of the world, and spurning it unsuccessfully. Man cannot save himself, except by saving others by modifying for the best the medium, the element in which he is living. Do not seek as alms what you can deserve by deeds. Do not fret or moan while you can fight. Worship duty it is the only reality. Very strange that we should recognize it in each inferior manifestation of life; that we should say: 'Man, if he wants to live physically, ought to work;" and that we forget it whenever we think of life in its whole, of life in its highest

sense.

:

"Life is a mission: nothing else. "There is nothing real but duty. The sun may, or may not shine on our path; but the path is ever the same.

"Call it God or what you like, there is life which we have not created, but which is given. There is a law of life. Therefore we have each of us a function, an individualized mission.

"To study and try to discover what part of the law of life is pointed out to us in our epoch-then to fulfil it according to our means of action-that is the only possible aim of our terrestrial existence.

"The first thing may be achieved by your listening to the tradition of mankind, and to the sacred whisper of your own con

science. On the intersection point where they both meet is truth-not absolute truth, of course-but what of it you may conquer in your stage of life.

"The second will be achieved by feeling that man is thought and action; by strengthening as much as possible that now dismembered unity; by establishing for yourself the law of trying to embody, to symbolize by action, as far as possible, every good thought you have.

"We do not know, nor can down here know, all the laws of life; but we already know that life is inseparable from progress, progress inseparable from association. You must, therefore, not leave your terrestrial existence without having endeavored to add something to both. Otherwise your life down here will be a failure; and, although you may not believe in them, I know that the consequences will be heavy on your own progress in future."

Mazzini lived at that time at 2, Onslow Terrace, Brompton, and whenever I entered the door of his modest room it had the same elevating effect upon me which a church has on the faithful. It was crammed with newspapers, books, and pamphlets; the chairs and sofa, as well as the table, were covered with them, so that there was little space left for turning these articles of furniture to their natural use. It may be on this account that Mazzini had got into a way of sitting on the very edge of a seat, leaning forward a little, with his thin hands, more often than not, crossed on his knees. A shadowy figure, all dressed in black, without a vestige of white collar or necktie, with the smoke of a companionable cigar usually floating round him. Here great part of Mazzini's time was spent in a voluminous political correspondence with his Italian compatriots. But, while keeping the flame of revolutionary enterprise alive in his country, the gentleness of his nature was shown, among other things, in his love of birds. kept several, and so tame were they as to fly freely about the room, perching confidingly on the shoulder of the man who was an object of distrust and terror to most of the governments of Europe.

He

Indeed, pity and tenderness for all things weak, suffering, and oppressed were the mainspring of Mazzini's political action. Love for those beneath him was his ruling impulse, and no description can convey the compassion that suffused his face and

vibrated through his voice in speaking of the masses and the hardness of their lot. But he did not even hate those powerful ones of the earth whose privileges he attacked. He warred with institutions, not with men. The only time I can recall an expression of concentrated scorn and anger in his tone was on his speaking of "The Man of December." He never named bim. His silence conveyed an intensity of reprobation more terrible than the wildest abuse.

For though he made war to the knife against superannuated systems of religious and political life, he had a profound reverence for the past. True, it was dying or dead, and we should haste to bury it with all decent observances, lest it taint the air of the living; but we should refrain from spurning it with impatience or contempt. Never would you hear on Mazzini's lips that cheap eighteenth-century declamation against kings and priests, as if they were the originators instead of being the offspring of what is out of joint in society. Believing in the working of a continuous law through history, he did not put them in a class apart and imitate those Sioux theologians who said, The Great Spirit made all things except the wild rice; but the wild rice came by chance.”

look for nature in the streets of London ?" he asked me once ironically; and then added, pointing to two trees outside his window, "Out of these I can construct the whole of Nature. Give me the Alps or nothing. By the way, the only time to see them at their best is in winter. Then they are sublime. They look to me like the mothers of Europe. They feed the great plains of our continent with the streams and torrents flowing in undying life beneath the snow."

Among flowers, also, Mazzini had a characteristic preference. Better than the rose he loved the pale blossoms of the syringa, whose acrid perfume, suggestive of the hidden sting in all pleasure, was more typical of life. The moon, he once told me half jokingly, had a special fascination for him; he looked upon it as a world in the cradle, and watched her as one would an infant. He had a fancy that one day, when life should be developed there, some kind of communication would be established between our earth and the moon. Every edifice equal to Westminster Abbey would then be visible to our largest telescopes, and it would perhaps depend on an intuition of genius in some inhabitant of the moon to afford us ground for a sort of telegraphic intercourse. Such trifles may not lack interest as indicating a side of Mazzini's temperament not revealed in his published writings.

For the rest I shall be satisfied if I have succeeded in adding one touch to the figure of this modern prophet, whose greatness, like that of an Alp, will make itself manifest in proportion as we get far enough off to judge of him correctly.→ Fortnightly Review.

THE tragedy of New Orleans, seen from an international point of view, seems gradually to be attaining its right perspective. It is ascertained that at least seven of the eleven victims were registered American voters; and though numbers do not affect the question of the right of Italian subjects to justice and to protection in a friendly, foreign state, the reduction from

eleven to four of the numbers murdered gives plausibility to the assertion of the Governor of Louisiana, that the lynchers were prompted, not by hostility to the Italians, but by a sense that ordinary methods of administering justice were insufficient, in that crime-infested city of New Orleans, for the conviction and punishment of criminals such as, indeed, must

have been the assassins of Hennessey. Certain it is that the Federal Government is willing, nay anxious, to give to Italy the utmost reparation compatible with its relations to the " sovereign States;" would gladly see the lynchers put on their trial, and an indemnity accorded to the families of the victims. Whether the Federal Government has the power to enforce this, is a point on which the best Americans and the highest English historian are in doubt; and if Italy should get no redress, she may console herself with having raised a question concerning the relations of the United States, as a national unit, with other nations, which the best, most patriotic, and enlightened Americans have taken seriously to heart, admitting the necessity of a solution.

The Italian colony in New Orleans is estimated at between 25,000 and 30,000. Many of the members are wealthy merchants, large importers from Italy, the chief traders with Central America. The two lines of steamers which run there are owned by them. They have created and developed a fruit trade of large and increasing proportions. They have ten politi. cal and benevolent societies, of which the names of the members and the amount of the paid-up funds are published. Of late years many Sicilian peasants have gone from the "golden shell" to the "golden shore ;" also many Neapolitan peasants from the continental districts, and these are employed in the sugar plantations, where they are regarded as more "hardworking, obedient, frugal, and less exacting than the negro.

These save up all their earnings to send home, either for the support of their families or to bring them out also. The remittances in this last January alone, from Sicilians to Sicily, amounted to 300,000 lire; and the Italian Consul, at a mass meeting of Italians, called attention to the fact that for the want of properly organized savings banks, their earnings are less productive and the irremittances less secure. But even taking the reports in the Italian papers, before the murder of Hennessey, it is clear that one quarter where the Sicilians of the poorest order congregate is a very undesirable neighborhood. The Sicilians, irascible, quick to take offence, to quarrel over a game of cards, or if their jealousy is excited" to stick a fellar thru," had committed a number of vendettas in

this horrible slum of theirs in Decatur Street, an alley between St. Philip and Dumaine, and Mr. Hennessey, suspecting that the " avengers" were recruited by certain notorious criminals escaped from the researches of justice in Sicily, receiving from the Italian Government a photograph of one of their missing men, captured, extradited," and sent him home, where he was, it is said, condemned to the galleys. But as his name was Esposito, of which name for a foundling there are thousands, we have not been able to ascertain with certainty the facts of the case. At the same time Mr. Hennessey carried on his researches in "Vendetta Alley, the slum has come to be called, and ascertained the certain existence of a number of so-called Mafiosi of whom we shall presently speak. Probably he extracted information from some of the Sicilians themselves, as in May, 1890, there was an increase of vendetta murders; four Sicilians were killed in a fray by other Sicilians, and a number escaped (to Chicago, it is said) to avoid a similar fate

as

Mr. Hennessey, with a courage greater than that needed to face an open foe on a fair battle-field, pressed even harder on what he believed to be an association of malefactors. There is every probability that he had obtained a pretty clear idea of their antecedents, their intentions, and their methods of action, and that the real miscreants were aware of this, and had resolved on his death. It is quite possible, also, though the system" savors of the Camorra rather than of the Mafia, that the gang drew lots to decide who should "kill the chiefy."

66

On the night of the 15th of last October, Mr. Hennessey bade good-night to his assistant officer as he neared his own house, and, just as he was entering it, several shots were fired; the assistant, running back to the spot, found Mr. Hennessey weltering in his blood, no sign of the murderer, or indeed of any one. It is stated by some that the dying man murmured the word "dagos," the epithet applied to the Sicilians for their daggerhandling propensities. Another account says that he whispered, "The Sicilians have done for me. No evidence seems to have been furnished on the trial, save by negroes, as to hearing what they call the Sicilian whistle, and a boy Marchesi say, "The chief, the chief."

On the death of Mr. Hennessey, the mayor, described as a rabid, pro-temporal Irish papist, assumed his functions, made raids on the Italian colony. arresting who came first with hatred-blinded promiscuity, to such a point that the Italian Consul, who was naturally more anxious than most men that the real culprits should be arrested, was compelled to intervene, and he proved that many of the arrested were men of spotless character, that some had only entered the city after the murder. Consequently a number were released. Some eighteen were detained, but there is nothing to show that in the delay and random seizures the guilty men did not es

cape.

The Italians subscribed largely, and retained for the defendants the best counsel of defence that New Orleans can furnish all Americans one of them noted for his refusal ever to defend a prisoner who, in his belief, was guilty of the crime. Seven hundred jury men were passed in review before any were empanelled, so numerous were the challenges on both sides. When at last twelve supposedly honest men and true were accepted they were asked by the judge whether they approved of capital punishment," and, on their answering in the affirmative, the trial commenced-five months, be it remembered, after the murder of Mr. Hennessey.

The jury acquitted six of the accused, and could not agree on a verdict for the remainder, but all were detained in the state prison. A self-constituted vigilance committee net, decided that the jury must have been bribed or intimidated, summoned a mass meeting inviting all good citizens to meet at Clay's monument 66 prepared for action." On the morrow these heroic leaders of the chivalrous South, at the head of an armed and bloodthirsty mob, broke open the prisons; murdered by shooting, hacking, bludgeoning, and trampling nine defenceless, unarmed prisoners; one, Giacomo Caruso, received forty-two bullets; the Irish mayor approving, the sheriff refusing the reinforcements demanded by the governor of the prison -Captain Davis. the only man who did his duty from first to last. Then the mob without clamoring to share in the fiends' fun-two of the remaining prisoners were dragged out-Antonio Bagnetto and the supposed informer, the crazed, rouching Manuel Polizzi." These two

were strung up outside, the rope breaking; kicked, beaten, and strung up again; the rope breaking a second time, the people "tied their hands and pulled them up into the air;" only the fourth time successfully, which last triumph was greeted by deafening shouts by the crowd; a number of ladies and their escorts waved their handkerchiefs from the balconies, cheering the murderers on the way to their crime. Returning from the butchery, the butchers were again cheered by the ladies and their children on the balconies.

Such are the main facts of the New Orleans episode, which, but for the passionmisguided arrests in the first instance, and the ghastly horrors of the lynching scene, might have resulted in bringing to justice and extirpating criminals who are a disgrace to any country, and who rarely nowadays escape punishment in their own. In no case (the noble, spotless leaders and teachers of New Italy be praised) could such a lawless, loathsome, cowardly spectacle have been offered there; and in no country in the universe has a steadier, more relentless war been waged (and is still being waged) against vice and crime

the fruit and offspring of three centuries of priestly and pope-king defender's rule.

For the last twenty years has Italy been combating crime of every species with fire and sword in a terribly literal sense; and at the same time striving to extirpate ignorance and superstition, and to alleviate misery, the true progenitors of the criminals who fill her prisons and her reformatories; and who, liking neither her mercies nor her justice, escape when they can to more congenial climes. A horror of lawlessness and its hideous results is a characteristic of all the inhabitants of northern and central Italy. The Italian revolutions have been singularly free from crime, because their leaders were the purest and the noblest of mankind.

When Italy had united Lombardy to Piedmont, then Tuscany, and set herself to free and annex the island of Sicily, the Neapolitan provinces, the States of the Church, she discovered what was the real consequence of three centuries of slavery in its effect on the masses left to popekings, their ministers of religion, their police, their only defenders in the peninsula. During the last twenty years vast progress has been made in every department of national life, as foreigners who