Garibaldi's Defence of the Roman Republic (Classic Reprint)

Angebote / Angebote:

Excerpt from Garibaldi's Defence of the Roman RepublicThis year is the centenary of Garibaldi's birth, which took place on July 4, 1807. It is not on this account that the present volume has been written and published, but the coincidence may be an additional reason why some Englishmen should be curious to read about the man for whom their fathers entertained a passionate enthusiasm, pure of all taint of materialism and self-interest. On the occasion of his famous visit to our country in 1864, the ovation which he received was so universal and so over whelming that there was nothing in the nineteenth century like it, except perhaps the Jubilee procession of the Queen herself. The feeling for Garibaldi had by no means become universal among the English in 1849, the year with which this book is concerned, but even then Italian sympathies were stronger here than anywhere else in Europe.We English retain to this day the lion's share of Italy's gratitude. Nor is the reason far to seek. Though England was not the country which actually accomplished most for Italian freedom and unity, it was the country in Europe where the passion for that cause was, beyond all comparison, strongest and most disinterested, and where it will be for ever connected with such names as Byron and Shelley, Palmerston and Gladstone, Browning and Swinburne.The attachment of our fathers to Garibaldi grew out of their Italian sympathies, but it grew also out of something in his personality peculiarly captivating to the English, who saw in him the rover of great spaces of land and sea, the fighter against desperate odds, the champion of the oppressed, the patriot, the humane and generous man, all in one. He touched a chord of poetry and romance still latent in the heart of our city populations, so far removed in their surroundings and opportunities from the scenes and actions of his life. Whether his memory will now appeal to the English of a generation yet further removed from nature, and said to be at once more sophisticated and less idealist than the Victorian, I do not know. But I doubt whether we have really changed so much.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.