ANTONIO ROSMINI SERBATI.*
TffE career of Antonio Rosmini, the founder of the Order of Charity, was a marked instance of what Roman Catholics call a "special vocation." Born heir to a large property, head of an ancient and distinguished family, with every opportunity ready to hand for political or social advancement, he seems con- sistently, from his childhood upwards, to have been completely insensible to the attractions thus held out to him, and to have had but one aim in life,—the devotion of all his talents and energies to the service of his fellow-men and to the cause of religion. When only six years old, we are told of his systematic employment of his pocket-money for purposes of charity, of his indifference to the ordinary pastimes of childhood as such, and of his constant endeavours to turn amusement and recrea- tion into occasions for the moral improvement of himself and his companions. And although we cannot but fancy that his moral disquisitions at that mature age may have amused some of his school-fellows, who had a stronger sense of the ridiculous than of the sublime, and may have gained for him with a section of them the reputation of being something of a " prig ;" yet to one who studies his character dispassionately, and observes the entire absence of any trace of affectation in him, and the steady and consistent growth of the qualities thus early mani- fested, the records of his early childhood are not less admirable than remarkable. "He was, in fact, as Don Paoli [his Italian biographer] puts it, a reflecting child at two years of age, an almsgiving boy at five, a most studious youth at seven, a practical ascetic at twelve."
The last representative of an ancient and illustrious race, it is not surprising that he should have found it difficult to obtain the consent of his parents and relations to his renouncing all thoughts of marriage, and entering the sacerdotal state. Every possible consideration was held out to dissuade him from his resolve, but with that fixity of purpose and consistency of character to which his life and letters bear witness, he never swerved for a moment in his design. He seems, indeed, to have been dead to the attractions of a great position and of worldly society,—or rather, they appear to have been absolutely dis- tasteful to him. To work for "the Christian cause" was not his first idea only, but his only idea. Twice in the earliest days of his priestly career could he have held, had he cared for it, a position which must have led to the highest ecclesiastical honours. He was firm, however, in his refusal to accept anything which was inconsistent with the special work which he considered to be required of him. "I regard," he wrote to the Bishop of Trent, "as one of the principal rules regulating my course, that which forbids me to assume any office likely to impede the doing of a
• Life of datooio Bormini Serbati. Foamier the Iaslituto of Charity. By Gabriel Stuart Maewalter. Vol. I. London: Itegan Paul, Treneb. and Cu.
greater work already commenced." Indeed, the priesthood meant, in his eyes, something very distinct from prelacy or the Cardinal's hat. He announces his determination to don the cassock to his friend Bartolomeo Menotti, in the following terms :—
"Oh, how grateful I feel for the excellent advice you give me, never to forget the Christian Commonwealth, for truly it is sweet and noble and just advice ! Indeed, there is no wisdom here below, if it come not from the Father of all Light. You may, therefore, rest assured that the pursuit of letters has of itself no charms for me. I am resolved to become a priest, and to part with all that I have to purchase a treasure which neither moth nor rust can fret away, and where thieves cannot break in and steal. What little learning I possess. I mean to make use of, with God's help, in the work of education. (And what more pleasing task than to be useful to our follow-men P) Nor will 1 suffer my body to eat its broad in idleness, —it must toil and labour ; my worldly substance I shall employ in advancing the sciences and relieving the poor. These sentiments are dictated not by my intellect alone, but by my heart also. Continue to be my friend, and recommend me to our Lord."
It argued a marked individuality of character in Rosmini, to choose a career so entirely different from that which was ready made for him by his birth and position, and it may be instructive to inquire whence he gained the strength which enabled him so persistently to stem the current of external circumstances, until he had accomplished his great aims,—of developing and systematising a Christian philosophy, and of begetting what his biographer calls "a spiritual family," devoted to works of charity, in place of a new generation of Rosminis of Rovereto. So far as the work before us throws light on this question, he appears to have owed his great strength of purpose and intense conviction, and consequent influence on others, mainly to two causes,—his love and practice of solitude and meditation, and his natural powers of sympathy and friendship. These two qualities, though at first sight unlike each other, were in reality in him a part of the same tempera- ment. They were both the fruits of a love of concentration and a hatred of dissipation. He could not endure to fritter away his time over the mere conventionalities of general society, and loved either that solitude which enabled him to pursue his own reading and meditation—intensifying thereby his aspirations and enlarging his capabilities—or the society of familiar and sympathetic friends whom he could influence for good, and who assisted him in turn by their sympathy and conversation, enlarging and developing his views by comparison and discus- sion, and adding to his own enthusiasm that special and potent motive-power to work which is known as esprit de corps. Both solitude, then, and this interchange of ideas with kindred spirits served the same great purpose, the furtherance of his work. What he could not endure was anything which distracted him
from it, or even anything which did not positively tend to its better performance. "I am more and more enamoured of this solitude," he writes from his favourite retreat, the Casino del Monte, whither lie had retired shortly after his ordination to the priesthood ; "it is full of God." Visiting at the house of a
comparative stranger was no more a pleasure to him than it was to Macaulay. It seemed sheer loss of time :—
" I have been obliged to go to Ma, to spend some days with a gentle. man of that place. Time passed away drearily enough, I can assure you, and it seemed an age era I got home again. Far away from all I bold dear in life, with my wonted regularity ruthlessly trespassed upon, I became almost a prey to melancholy, my only comfort the while being to snatch to myself a few hears, when I could, now and then, that I might spend them all alone in my chamber, reading or in prayer. At last I hare returned, and read your letters with the greatest eagerness. They frirnished most delicious nourishment, and were well calculated to refresh the weary wanderer."
So, too, when he visited Rome for the first time, in 1823—a visit which, to one with his beliefs and aspirations, was an epoch in his life—he was much harassed by the numerous visits and social duties which his position as head of his family and
his reputation, great even then at the age of twenty-six, entailed upon him. "To visit the sacred shrines," writes his biographer, "and see the treasures of art and explore the venerable remains of ages long past, afforded him great pleasure indeed ; but this had its drawback, in the fact that he was always escorted by those whose kind attentions oppressed him. Farsooner would he have seen all these things while alone and
unknown. He had, however, to bear the burden of exalted intimacies, and to submit to be somewhat lionised." Indeed, the trial of this element of worldly society in the Eternal City was so great to his sensitive and earnest nature, that we find him writing at this time to his mother:—" In spite of the many attractions by which I am surrounded, I yearn to find myself once more restored to home retirement." One circumstance deserves to be mentioned in connection with the assistance and strength he derived from the sympathy of his friends, and that is his intimacy with Madame de Canossa, the fonndress of the "Daughters of Charity," who devote them- selves to the education of the poor. What St. Scholastica, was to her brother, St. Benedict, what Madame de Chantal was to Francis of Sales, that was Madame de Canossa to Antonio Rosmini. It is not too much to say that, but for her influence, the Fathers of Charity might never have existed, and she had undoubtedly much to do with the formation of the constitutions of the new Order.
The biographer's work is so far well done, that he has pre- sented us with an interesting, fluently written, well arranged narrative of Rosrnini'm life, and a judicious selection from his letters. Moreover, his enthusiasm for his hero has given the sketch that touch of life which a dry narrative of events can never possess.' The only criticism which we make is that he has been led too far by this enthusiasm, not so much in the general impression he conveys of Rosmini's character, as in the constant attributing of a specific providential design or a given supernatural meaning to the smallest events of his life. It would take us too long to illustrate this in detail, but it struck us again and again in the course of our reading, and gives the book a somewhat unreal character. Apart from this, it is, so far as it has yet advanced, a not unworthy biography of one of the few men of original genius whom a Roman Catholic education has produced in our days, and of a very remarkable philosophical thinker.
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