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    Au gust 30, 1856.] THE .LEADER, 835. ¦¦"...

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    FELICE ORSINI. The Austrian Dungeons in ...

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    THE INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO. A D<>scrij>tire ...

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    Michelet As A Naturalist. Voiseau. Par J...

    It is forced to build its nest on high , because to rise it must first descend , i must ^ 00 into the air , its true element , and then it is at ease , then it can rise and whirl whither the caprice of the moment leads it . And where does it build ? Under the eaves of our houses ; and where the mother has her nest there will the daughter build , there the grand-daughter , and so on from generation to generation with more certain regularity than that of the family inhabiting- the house . The family is dispersed , disappears , the house passes into the hands of strangers , but the swallow returns . The swallow Michelet calls " 1 ' oiseau du retour , " not only because of its annual visit ? , but because of its flight , which is a perpetual circle . "Varied as the flig ht is with infinite curves , the bird always hovers over the same area , and returns to the same spot . . Excellent also the chapter on the woodpecker , who is here celebrated as the ideal of the worker . His powerful legs , armed with long black talons , sustain him all day long upon the branch in an attitude which to us seems very unpleasant , rapping with his huge beak from below upwards . Except in the morning , when he shakes his limbs , like the courageous workman preparing for uninterrupted work by a few moments of stretching , he continues till nfght , picking away with untiring energy . His constitution speaks of this persistent energy . His muscles , always on the strain , render his flesh hard and leathery . The biliary vesicle , so large in him , seems to imply a " disposition bilieuse , aeharnee , violente au travail , du reste aucunement colerique" As to the question whether the woodpecker is gay or sad , Michelet says : He is happy , yet neither gay nor sad "Le travail passionne qui nous rend si serieux , en revanche bannit les tristesses . lne woodpecker has long exorcised the art of auscultation , which has been only introduced in our own days as a guide to the physician . lie taps , and listens ; if a hollow reverberation is heard , he knows the tree is sick , and its sickness is what he desires , for in its crevices the insects will have assembled . Those fated insects ! "II voit a travers l ' ecorce et le bois ; il assiste aux terreurs et aux conseils du peuple ennemi . " This grave , earnest worker , this solitary * labourer , twice in the year quits his austere demeanour and becomes ridiculous : he falls in love , and unhappily he is ludicrous when he is in love . He has spent his days in hard labour , he has lived a solitary life in the forest , and what wonder if he has remained a stranger to all the graces and elegances manifested by Birds ' of the World ? ' He has seen little of ' society . ' But ludicrous as his manifestations of passion may be in our eyes , in the eyes of his belle they are worth all the graces and coquetries of other birds . If she is proud of him and happy in him , what have we to criticize ? Like Touchstone of Audrey , she may say : "An ill-favoured thing , sir , but mine own : a poor humour of mine , sir , to take that that no one else will . " ^

    Au Gust 30, 1856.] The .Leader, 835. ¦¦"...

    Au gust 30 , 1856 . ] THE . LEADER , 835 . ¦¦ " ¦ » — ¦ ¦ ¦*¦!¦ - ¦¦¦ ... _ . ¦ _ ^

    Felice Orsini. The Austrian Dungeons In ...

    FELICE ORSINI . The Austrian Dungeons in Italy : Narrative of Fifteen Moivths Imjrrisonmeiit and Final Escape from the Fortress of 8 . Giorgio . By Felice Orsini . Translated from the unpublished Manuscript by J . Meriton White . Routledge and Co . ¦ If De Foe were alive again , and had to rewrite his Histo ? y of the Devil , be could hardly add a more striking supplementary chapter than one on Austrian prisons and Austrian tribunals in Italy , and among all themctuoires poier servir that he might consult , he could hardly find anything more to his purpose than this little book , in which Felice Orsini , now happily safe in London , tells us the story of his imprisonment and the terrible contingencies of his escape . It has not the literary charm belonging to Silvio Pellico ' s narrative which we have known a young student of Italian , in blissful ignorance of Austrian policy , to take for a romance , and devour it with a culpable reliance on ' guessing , instead of the dictionary . For though the matter of Felice Orsini ' s narrative is everywhere of great interest , it is thrown together with little art , and the early part is so desultory in its arrangement , that it reads like hasty notes . But it has one grave source of superior influence on the render , namely , that it recounts recent facts—that it sets before us Austrian prisons and tribunals as they are in the present day , and does not allow us to get rid of painful sympathy by conjecturing that 'things arc different now . ' Felice Orsini was born , he tells us , in 1819 . lie is a man of education , and was brought up under prosperous circumstances . His ostensible profession has been the law , but , as with so many others of his countrymen , the main object of his life has been conspiracy against the Austrian Government —an object Avhich , when it has succeeded , men will call heroism , but until then , folly . His experience as a political prisoner began when he was only three-niul-twenty , and this beginning was anything but a mild one , for , not to mention other particulars , in a journey from Pesaro to Koine he was chained to eight thieves , who were all huddled with him in an open court , i and in this iiishion they travelled for seventeen days . From this first imprisonment , of two years' duration , he was liberated by the general amnesty published on the accession of Pius IX ., and from that time- up to the moment of his last arrest , his life was a story of futile conspiracy , ' detentions , ' and proscription . But in the present little volume ho merely indicates this earlier part of his career , and reserves his space for a minute account of his last fifteen months' imprisonment and his amazing escape , frequently digressing , however , for the sake of illustrating more- completely the Austrian mode of treating political offenders . Stories of escapes from prison are always thrilling , and the escape of Felice Or . sini is among the most thrilling we remember . For us commonplace people who have never " act our lives upon the hazard of a die , " there is always an air of incredibility about these stories , and wo are apt to suspect that the narrator has magnified or -drossed up his adventures . But such a suspicion is not only ungenerous , it is unintelligent . It is in the nature of u great risk to convert an ordinary event into a crisis : let a drunken man lie asleep on u railway , nnd some ordinary event which delays a train for livo minutes , so tliut the man is roused in time to -walk away , will . seem a ' providence , ' a ' coincidence ; ' and wherever a man is in a state of continuous dungcr , ns when he undortuk « s to rescue a child from n , burning house , every breath of wind that averts the llamo from him will seem marvellously timed . So it is with attempts at escape from prison : wo think tho coincidences

    amazing—in-^^^^^^^ aw ^ MW credible—when nothing happens but what would be altogether usual , if tile fact of risk and danger were not co -existent . We will not forestall the interest of the reader in Orsini ' s narrative by telling it in brief , but there is one little trait in it which we are tempted to notice , because it shows the value of that sort of practical knowledge which is so notably wanting in ' polite' education . In calculating all the casualties of his escape , Orsini of course remembered the probability of his falling down stunned ; but he also remembered—and this would not be at all ' of course' with most men —that the first sensation experienced on recovering sensibility is intense thirst . Hence he took care to provide himself with an orange . He was stunned twice , and each time he relieved his consequent thirst with half an orange . Since the publication of Silvio Pellico ' s narrative , Austria has somewhat alleviated the treatment of her political prisoners . The bastinado is rarely administered , and is disavowed by the officials , and the carcere durissimo is abolished . Felice Orsini was allowed to receive money from his family , and to purchase even luxuries of diet , and he might , if he chose , have fattened himself into a plethoric subject for the hangman . Still there are frightful hardships to be endured in most cases , though the worst features in the Austrian system at present seem to lie less in physical cruelty than in the unscrupulous devices and slow tortures of the judicial process , which has no other object than to prove the prisoner guilty in the end , and in the meantime to entrap him into avowals that will compromise as many of his friends as possible . Two examples of the pretexts on which Italians are arrested , and the amount of evidence on which they are detained and condemned , we will quote , referring the reader to Orsini ' s volume for still more striking but more lengthy illustrations : — In April , 1854 , Grioli , a young exile ( brother to the priest who was shot ) arrived at Brescia , under a false name . He sought out a certain Annibale Feverfcani , and finding him in the company of his agent , told him that he was charged with a letter to him from Signor Cazzol <» , an exile . " I do not receive letters from Cazzola or from any other exiles , " was the reply . Grioli pressed the matter no further . A few hours after , he was arrested . Among his papers was found the name of Feverzani . When questioned concerning him , he stated the facts given above . Meanwhile Feverzani wrote a formal letter to the police , stating that he had been visited by an individual who , he suspected , was bound on some political errand . Lest the reader should think too harshly of Feverzani , he must know that , according to the Austrian law , Avhoever is acquainted with any signs of disaffection towards the government , and who fails to give information to the police , is liable to five years of carcere duro Thus Austria compels all her subjects to become spies , or suffer the terrible alternative . In Lombardy this law is defied ; there ( such is the indomitable spirit of resistance among the Italians ) a patriot may go where he will and be sure of shelter . In my own flight through Lombardy , I was sheltered by individuals whose names I do not even now know , and who thus , merely to help one who hated Austria , placed their substance , their families , their very lives in jeopardy . But such abnegation cannot be expected from all , and Feverzani only obeyed the law in denouncing Grioli to the police . He was questioned closely by the superintendent , concerning bis relations -with the accused . He replied that he had none whatever , and related what had happened in his office in the presence of his commercial agent , who , on being questioned , confirmed the statement . After a long trial , Grioli was sentenced to death ; but his sentence was afterwards commuted to eighteen years of carcere duro . Meanwhile Feverzani was not set at liberty . The Special Court of Justice allowed that they had no grounds to commit him for trial , and sent the judgment to that effect to the tribunal of Venice ; an order returned for tbo detention of Feverzani , and for his appearance before the Special Inquisition . This was effected . On tho 1 st of October , 1855 , he was conducted to the Castle of S . Giorgio . At the examination he was told that if he and his agent had denied Grioli ' a viaft to the oflice , he would never have been arrested . When he said that he had done all that lay iu bid power by giving immediate information to the police , the judge replied that before the receipt of his letter Grioli was already arrested ; the accused observed that he was not aware of the fact , nor had he imagined that the moment ho quitted hia oflice he would fall into tho hands of the police . But this reasoning was of no avail ; he was handed over to the Special Inquisition , indicted for high treason , and for this crime was condemned to pass five years chained to the other prisoners in tho galleys . The third example concerned me more nearly than the rest . On my journey to Vienna via Trieste , I saw a young man at the theatre whom I thought I knew . I accosted him ; he said that my features were familiar to him , but that still he did not viiow who I was . AVe chatted about the piny for a few minutes , and thero our conversation ended . The next da }' , as I was wullting with a young Italian then serving in tho Austrian army , I met him again . I said that I thought I remembered having met him in Home , and that his name was Ernesto Galvngni . He replied that this was possible , but that he did not rocal the circumstance . I gave him my card , bearing my lictitioua name of Giorgio llernngh , and he out of politeness gave mo his . The police discovered that I had spoken with Culvagni at Trieste . Questioned concerning him , and concerning much else at the same time , I said that I bad known Galvagni at Koine , und that I had accidentally met him at Trieste . On this admission Signor Gulviigni was urrestud on the 4 th of March , 1855 , and subjected to the Special Inquisition . It is proved beyond all doubt that lie had no political relation with mo , but ho ia nevertheless detained on account of not having denounced me to tho police . Before esciiping from the castle I again declared formally to Signor Sanchez that Signor Galvngni had never known me under my real name of Orsini , that I never uttered this name at Trieste , that ho knew me simply as Hernagh , and that he wa 3 untirely innocent , which fact I had Htatcd during my first examination . For all this , Signor Galvagni is still a prisoner in tho castle of Mantua . JLet the romler judgu from these statements whether it is possible for an accused person to act in an open , straightforward manner when brought bufore an Austrian tribunal . No ! in order to clear himself ho mutit have recourse to ovory kind of stra-Lugom , and to evu . sion . s and downright falsehoods concerning othora , if he wiahea to ivoid being the lnouim of snatching numberless bravo youtlia from tho bottom of thoir families , and of condemning them to languish for years in prison , and often to die on iho scufiold .

    The Indian Archipelago. A D<>Scrij>Tire ...

    THE INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO . A D <> scrij > tire Dictionary of the Imlian Jdunds and Adjacent Countries . By John Crawfurd , F . K . S . ' Bradbury and Evans . TnniTV-su years ago , Mr . Cmwfurd published a book in three massive volumes . It was entitled The . History of the . Indian Archipelago , but was in reality little more than a description—and u good description—of

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 30, 1856, page 19, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_30081856/page/19/