DEATH OF SILYIO PELLICO.
NUMBERS in this country who know little of Italian affairs, and meddle not at all in politics, will feel a shadow of regret at learning the death of Silvio Perna°. It has been his fate to belong to two elasses,—he has been one of the imprisoned patriots of Italy, while by nature he belonged more to those simple and gentle minds whose sympathies are with graceful associations and quiet homes. Enjoying some repute as a poet in his own country, though not of the very highest kind—identified with the patriot cause by his early acts as well as by his sufferings—he is more remarkable for the peculiar manner in which his sufferings were told than for any- thing unusually terrible in the injustice inflicted upon him. Pel- lreo was charged with being a Carbonaro in 1820,—a period when nobles and even royal princes lent to the movement a fashion and
sanction that might have justified the gentle tutor in joining it It was his fate to be arrested and condemned to death at the same time as Count Confaloniere; he remained in the fortress of Spielberg until the amnesty of 1830; and his little volume lifie Prigiont recounts his imprisonment. His treatment was not dis- tinguished by the most terrible hardships or tortures which other more illustrious persons have undergone, but it tells a tale of soli- tude, of patient endurance, and of pleasing sentiments continually keeping alive the strength of hope and affection, which has endeared the volume and the writer to numbers who could scarcely grasp the political idea involved. Indeed, there is reason to doubt whether the prisoner himself had grasped political ideas with the firm hand of manhood. In later years, we believe, Pellico had sunk into a quiet pietism, very different from the life of a patriot whose country has still wrongs and still sustains hopes. The library was Pellico's true abode, as it will still remain by his little volume the abode of his fame.
If others could write as well, they might harrow up tender minds with much more horrible tortures. That which Pellico underwent, and which so many of own country have deplored in sympathy, was slight compared to the tale which a Poerio could relate and which a Gladstone has told for him. Pellico was imprisoned in 1821, not the first by many of the series of sufferers; and in 1854 we still have Poerio the chief of thousands of prisoners. The his- tory of Italy for the half century is told in the history of her mar- tyrs. If she has not been able to achieve much for her own release, she has, at all events, had so much fidelity and courage in her that her unceasing wrong has found unceasing representation in the martyrdom of her own sons. The wrong goes on, and the martyrs are supplied; and so, it would seem, will the supply continue so long as the wrong shall last. Is it possible that Italy should give up hopes of release from such bondage, even though her release should come thrthigh the fall of dynasties and the death of kings ?
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