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THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. IV.--NOVEMBER, 1859.--NO. XXV.




E. FELICE FORESTI.


Late in the autumn of 1836, an Austrian brig-of-war cast anchor in the
harbor of New York; and seldom have voyagers disembarked with such
exhilarating emotions as thrilled the hearts of some of the passengers
who then and there exchanged ship for shore. Yet their delight was not
the joy of reunion with home and friends, nor the cheerful expectancy
of the adventurous upon reaching a long-sought land of promise, nor the
fresh sensation of the inexperienced when first beholding a new
country; it was the relief of enfranchised men, the rapture of devotees
of freedom, loosened from a thrall, escaped from _surveillance_, and
breathing, after years of captivity, the air where liberty is law, and
self-government the basis of civic life. These were exiles; but the
bitterness of that lot was forgotten, at the moment, in the proud
consciousness of having incurred it through allegiance to freedom, and
being destined to endure it in a consecrated asylum. In that air, when
first respired, on that soil, when first trod, they were unconscious of
the lot of strangers: for there the vigilant eye of despotism ceased to
watch their steps; prudence checked no more the expression of honest
thought or high aspiration; manhood resumed its erect port, mind its
spontaneous vigor; nor did many moments pass ere friendly hands were
extended, and kindly voices heard, and domestic retreats thrown open.
Their welfare had been commended to generous hearts; and the simple
facts of their previous history won them respectful sympathy and
cordial greeting.

Prominent amid the excited group was a tall, well-knit figure, whose
high, square brow, benign smile, and frank earnestness bespoke a man of
moral energy, vigorous intellect, and warm, candid, tender soul. Traces
of suffering, of thought, of stern purpose were, indeed, apparent; but
with and above them, the ingenuousness and the glow of a brave and
ardent man. This was ELEUTARIO FELICE FORESTI,--subsequently, and for
years, the favorite professor of his beautiful native language and
literature in New York,--the favorite guest and the cherished friend in
her most cultivated homes and among her best citizens,--the Italian
patriot, which title he vindicated by consistency, self-respect, and
the most genial qualities. The vocation he adopted, because of its
availability, only served to make apparent comprehensive endowments and
an independent spirit; the lady with whom he read Tasso, beside the
chivalrous music of the "Jerusalem Delivered," learned to appreciate
modern knighthood; and the scholar to whom he expounded Dante, from the
political chart of the Middle Ages, turned to an incarnation of
existent patriotism. Not only by the arguments of Gioberti, the graphic
pictures of Manzoni, and the terse pathos of Leopardi, did he
illustrate what Italy boasts of later genius; but through his own
eloquent integrity and magnetic love of her achievements and faith in
her destiny. The savings of years of patient toil were sacrificed to
the subsistence of his poor countrymen who came hither after bravely
fighting at Rome, Venice, Milan, and Novara, to have their fruits of
victory treacherously gathered by aliens. Infirmity, consequent upon
early privation and the unhealed wounds of long-worn chains, laid the
stalwart frame of the brave and generous exile on a bed of pain. He
uttered no complaint, and whispered not of the fear which no courage
can quell in high natures, that of losing "the glorious privilege of
being independent": yet his American friends must have surmised the
truth; for, one day, he received a letter stating that a sum, fully
adequate for two years' support, remained to his credit on the books of
a merchant,--one of those mysterious provisions, such as once redeemed
a note of Henry Clay's, and of which no explanation can be given,
except that "it is a way they have" among the merchant princes of New
York. By a providential coincidence, surgical skill, at this juncture,
essentially improved his physical condition; but it became
indispensable, at the same time, that he should exchange our rigorous
clime for one more congenial; and he sailed five years ago for Italy,
taking up his residence in Piedmont, where dwell so many of the eminent
adherents of the cause he loved, and where the institutions, polity,
and social life include so many elements of progress and of faith. It
was now that those who knew him best, including some of the leading
citizens of his adopted city, applied to the Executive for his
appointment as United States Consul at Genoa. There was a singular
propriety in the request. Having passed and honored the ordeal of
American citizenship, and being then a popular resident of the city
which gave birth to the discoverer of this continent,--familiar with
our institutions, and endeared to so many of the wise and brave in
America and Italy,--illustrious through suffering, a veteran disciple
and martyr of freedom,--he was eminently a representative man, whom
freemen should delight to honor; and while it then gratified our sense
of the appropriate that this distinction and resource should cheer his
declining years, we are impelled, now that death has canonized
misfortune and integrity, to avail ourselves of the occasion to
rehearse the incidents and revive the lessons of his life.[1]

[Footnote 1: It is to be lamented that Foresti had not anticipated our
purpose with that consecutive detail possible only in an autobiography.
"_Le Scene del Carcere Duro in Austria_," writes the Marquis
Pallavicino, "non sono ancora la