lishmen from the Treaty of Paris have ers all and the people nothing, will feel that watched Italian affairs more keenly than their opportunity has arrived, and strain their own. Have they ever doubted, from every nerve to bring matters once more to the day when Cavour called the attention of the decision of the sword. If the same feelEurope to the necessity of a change, to the ing does not prevail at Paris, it will only be day when the discussion of the Roman ques- because Louis Napoleon prefers the aid of tion aggravated his disease, that the premier united Italy upon the Rhine, to the direct was toiling to one single end-the Unity of influence of France over a disunited peninItaly? That the ineffable grandeur of his sula. In any case, the interference which end may occasionally have blinded his con- no French emperor can avoid, will now that science to the means he thought indispen- the one man Louis Napoleon feared is gone, sable to success, we are not in a position to be more frequent and more peremptory. deny. But it is not for Italians, at all events, With her people dispirited and her enemies to decry the man who, rather than surrender encouraged, Italy, whatever the result, will their hopes of future peace, gave up his own, have immediate cause to mourn. If true to who, himself the haughtiest of aristocrats, herself, she may yet win the game, but the yielded himself to the dictation of an Italian death of Cavour imposes on the country the parvenu, risked his reputation, and stained necessity it has hitherto escaped of finding his conscience, rather than by following guidance as well as fidelity, a policy as well his own impulse endanger their aspirations. as the devotion which made policy so triItaly had made no slight progress towards umphant. immaculate honor in statesmanship when she advanced from Machiavelli to Cavour, and the Mazzinians may yet find that with their great foe the barrier of Italy against France has disappeared.

The loss to Europe is almost as great as to the Italians themselves. Count Cavour, availing himself always of the revolution, was still a barrier to its destructive effect. He did not stop the locomotive, but he kept it on the rails. With his death the restraint is lifted from Garibaldi, from the Hungarians, and, most dangerous fact of all, from the tortured people of Rome. It will require a patience which is scarcely in human nature for Romans or Hungarians to bear the defeat this calamity will appear to bring. Despair is a bad counsellor, and we greatly fear that, despairing of success from a government of comparative mediocrities or of justice from Napoleon, the Italians may listen to the suggestions so steadily put forward by the evil genius of their country. The ultras, masters in Hungary, and Joseph Mazzini once more powerful in Rome, the prospects of European order will become faint indeed. Should the struggle be once commenced, it is not Italy alone who will mourn the glorious intellect and intrepid heart of Camillo Count Cavour.

It is useless as yet to predict the immediate effect this calamity may exercise on the fortunes of the Italian kingdom. Men have an instinctive feeling that the revolution is let loose, but events often confound anticipation. It seems, at the first glance, as if no one were left to take his place, but the ascendency of one man like Cavour is apt to dwarf all in his vicinity. There may be unsuspected power in some of his colleagues; force latent in Ricasoli's exquisite character, political genius in Minghetti's undoubted administrative capacity. Italy is the only land where genius is endemic, and unless deserted by Providence, she will not lack a statesman in her need. But the fitting successor to Cavour will take time to develop, and meanwhile Italy has lost the only leader who could exert revolutionary energy without the revolutionary contempt for law. She has lost, too, the only leader whom her people would trust without perceiving the whole From The Economist, 8 June. of his design, the only one who could be considered in himself a guarantee for that THE DEATH OF COUNT CAVOUR. alliance of opinion which had so greatly THE foremost statesman in Europe-the facilitated her freedom. Externally, Italy man whose life was of the highest political loses in Count Cavour a man who secured to value to the world, and second only in imher the confidence of foreign nations in her portance to that of the emperor of the French ultimate success. Internally, the despon-is no more. The death of Count Cavour dency and national deadness sure to follow is felt to be an event of the same unspeakable the death of a trusted leader will be a moment, though, as it seems to Englishmen, dangerous source of weakness to a country of exactly opposite tendency, with that which still trusting chiefly to an unorganized public spirit, and assailed by cabinets, to each of which the same event brings a new hope and energy. In Rome and in Vienna, statesmen, accustomed to believe the lead

so suddenly snatched away the late czar in the middle of the Crimean war. The death of Nicholas was the death-blow of the aggressive policy in Russia; and the enemies of Italy will no doubt dare to hope that the re

moval of the great leader of Italian regen- needs, it certainly could not have given him eration will prove a catastrophe as fatal to the consummate power with which he used the hopes which he inspired, and the far- them. Probably no English statesmen that sighted policy by which he advanced with ever lived would have exhibited, under such sure and equal step to their realization. circumstances, so striking a combination But the parallel is utterly delusive. Count of audacity and tact, - of courage to inCavour was the leader of an advancing age, cur a great risk, and sagacity in measuring and did but represent a moral force which what risk would be too great, of equal secured for his country the sympathy of all power to strike, and to hold back his own advancing nations, and the fear or respect supporters from striking, according to the of even the most retrograde. The power by circumstances, as Count Cavour. No stateswhich he worked was not his own, and does man known to history has ever counted the not die with him. Nicholas, on the other cost of such great dangers with so cool and hand, represented policy which belonged strong a mind. He was as strong in defeat to the past rather than to the present; with as in success. It was nearly the first act strong, unflinching determination he strove of his political career, after the great disasto stem the tide of European opinion, and ter of Novara, to urge the duty of cordially he rallied for this purpose the forlorn hope strengthening Charles Albert's Government of Russian barbarism. For his death, instead of indulging in useless recriminatherefore, there was no remedy;-the power tions. And his first great venture as a minby which he had worked was dwindling fast ister was so contrived as to be a cordial to even beneath his hands, and faded rapidly the Italian spirit,-a stimulant to the exaway when he was struck down. He re- hausted hopes of a long-oppressed nation. stored and represented a dying tradition; Count Cavour created and represented a new spring of national pride and hope which will constitute the tradition of unborn generations.

The master-stroke of forcing Sardinia into a favorable comparison with Austria by sending an army to the Crimea, while Austria remained sullen and passive in the Principalities, gained him even far more power at home than abroad, because it raised the hopes and animated the national pride of Italy. Nor was it Count Cavour's fault if he was subsequently obliged to wound that national spirit in the equivalent rendered for the aid of France. Had England been willing in 1856 to unite with France and Sardinia in resolutely curbing the influence of Austria in Italy, the same great result might possibly have been obtained without the same humiliating price. It is well known that Count Cavour applied, and applied in vain, to England for a counterweight to the influence of France, and that the great debt of exclusive obligation afterwards incurred was incurred in consequence of our refusal to interfere.

The events of his short but crowded political career, which extended only over eleven years, and the most important part of it during which he was prime minister only over nine, have been too often recapitulated within the last two days to need formal narration here. Those years of his life in which the political character is chiefly formed were passed in England: he did not return to Piedmont until he was thirty-two years old; and hence it has been the greatest pride of English statesmen to point to Count Cavour's wonderful success as in some sense a graft taken from a British stock. Nor is it mere national egotism to believe this. It was his clear-sighted financial creed, and a great financial speech in 1850, which first introduced him to power; and he had learned But neither in sending a Sardinian conhis political economy from Adam Smith. It tingent to the Crimea, nor in the negotiation was a speech on ecclesiastical jurisdiction, of the French alliance, did Count Cavour expressing his deep conviction that all display so happy a combination of sagacity Churches should be zealously restrained and daring, as in the occupation of the Umfrom interference with secular affairs, which brian Marches last year, and the summons first gained him extensive popularity in to the pope to dismiss his foreign auxiliaries. Italy; and such a Church he had seen in Had Garibaldi been permitted to push on England and England alone. It was his into the Roman territory, the revolution steady belief in a Constitution worked by the natural aristocracy of a country, but yet in close connection with the popular mind, which gave him an instrument at once sufficiently powerful and sufficiently under control to carry out his great designs; and such a Constitution he had seen only in England. Yet, though England may have supplied him with political principles suited to his

would have passed beyond the control of Sardinia, and an anarchy risked which would have brought down either an Austrian or an extended French intervention. Had Sardinia prohibited Garibaldi's movement upon the Roman territory, as she did the further movement upon Venetia, the unpopularity incurred would have probably overthrown the Sardinian Ministry and seriously risked

the Sardinian leadership. The reasons for the confidence of an Italian Parliament as no the movement were urgent and weighty, one else could win it, and the power to use but the danger confronted was enormous. the authority so gained as no one else could The pope was driven to extremities,-Aus- use it. No English statesman except Pitt tria had a new and almost unanswerable ex- has ever gained a power so nearly equivalent cuse for marching to his aid, since the moral to a dictatorship as Count Cavour has exlogic of the step would certainly have justi-ercised for the past nine years over the fied quite as well the invasion of Venetia,-growing State of Sardinia. Nor is such a and the Ultramontane party in France was combination of practical sagacity and intelirritated into an opposition so vindictive, that lectual sagacity,-of the passion that sways, it was far from certain whether the emperor the reasoning that guides, the strength that might not be obliged to withdraw his coun- retains, and the humor that fascinates men, tenance. It cannot be doubted that in dis- - often seen combined in the same percriminating the true moment to defy the son. Ricasoli, Minghetti, Ratazzi, all seem pope and take the formal guidance of the dwarfed beside the great intellect and will Neapolitan revolution, Count Cavour gave which have so recently been put forth in all proof of the rarest and highest statesman- their power, not only to grasp new conquests, like genius. He had before him a problem but to restrain his countrymen from snatchin which all the alternatives seemed equally ing at the inaccessible. But that firm faith menacing. He instinctively chose for his in the destinies of his country expressed in country the solution which involved danger his last hour by the dying statesman has indeed, but no humiliation,-not the loss of that leadership which had been during so many months of Garibaldi's enterprise, in partial abeyance; and the resolve raised him to a place in the nation's affections of which he can now never be deprived.

That such a statesman should be cut off while Rome is still in the hands of France, and Venetia still in the hands of Austria, is more than tragic,-for in tragedy the intertwining threads are all cut together, but here the country's need continues, though the man who could best satisfy it is gone. In no one else can the same powers be found united; the capacity for ruling rightly, and the capacity for convincing a free people that they are ruled rightly;-the power to win

been sown by him in so many Italian hearts that it will be impossible for them to despond. It was the last crowning triumph of his life to reconcile all the great men who had assisted him in the glorious work. And now, though in the bitterness of their loss, when they look at Rome and Venetia, many may feel inclined to echo the melancholy old words of patriotic despondency, "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved,"-they will not allow themselves to doubt that the same Power which raised up Count Cavour for his work, and engraved its purposes on the marvellous triumphs of his short administration, will find instruments noble enough to complete what he has so nobly begun.

PLAGUE CROSS.-Some time ago being at the | was delighted at the discovery of so curious a library at Guildhall with the late librarian Mr. Herbert, we were turning over some papers which apparently had not been opened for years, and which were chiefly broadsides, when we discovered a printed sheet, which no doubt was one of the dread "Plague Crosses" which was af fixed by the authorities to the doors of the houses where there was infection. As I remember, it was the ordinary size of a broadside, and bore a black cross extending to the edges of the paper, on which was printed the words "Lord, have mercy upon us.' In the four quarters, formed by the limbs of the cross, directions for managing the patient, regulations for the visits of the medical men, and the supply of medicines, food, and water were also printed. Mr. Herbert

relic of old London, which he considered pertime back, I inquired of the active and intellifectly unique. On visiting Guildhall a short gent sub-librarian what had become of this relic, when he assured me they certainly had not got such a thing in their possession, and in fact he had never heard of such a thing. It is supposed it may have been stolen during Mr. Herbert's illness. At the same time I discovered a sort of proclamation of the House of Commons, which appeared to have been printed very shortly after the attempt of the king to seize the five members. I regret extremely I did not take a copy of it at the time, as this also is missing. Are any of the readers of "N. & Q." aware of the existence of a Plague Cross? If so, I should be extremely obliged if it could be inspected.

From Once a Week.

A FORGOTTEN POET.

belfry, and, in this desultory and casual manner, gathered his imperfect knowledge of language and skill in writing. At the early period of which we speak, Clare felt the poetic æstrum.

FORTY years ago the literary world was thrown into a ferment by the appearance of an article in the Quarterly Review, in which the poetical productions of a young and "He relates that twice or thrice in the humble farm-laborer were noticed with a winter-weeks it was his office to fetch a bag degree of favor somewhat unusual in the of flour from the village of Maxey, and darkpages of the Giant of Criticism; and wellness often came on before he could return. did the poor poet sustain the reputation thus The state of his nerves corresponded with unexpectedly thrust on him, for seldom had his slender frame. The tales of terror with an individual been more blameless in his which his mother's memory shortened the private character, or more deserving in his long nights returned freshly to his fancy the public capacity, than John Clare, whose mild next day, and to beguile the way and dissidisposition furnishes such a genial and pleas-pate his fears, he used to walk back with his ing commentary on his vivid and ofttimes exquisitely beautiful delineation of rustic life and manners.

eyes fixed immovably on the ground, revolving in his mind some adventure without a ghost in it,' which he turned into verse." *

John Clare was born in July, 1793, at Helpstone, a little village in the easternmost" part of Northamptonshire; so that, at the present time, he is about sixty-seven years of age. His parents were paupers, and consequently his education was of a very meagre description, while his extremely weak and delicate constitution naturally rendered the rearing of him through childhood a source of great trouble and anxiety to his mother and father.

Many of the incidents of his infancy and early life are described with unaffected pathos in his poem of "The Village Minstrel," and several minor pieces.

While yet an infant he was placed in the village "dame-school," more for the sake of being kept out of "harm's way" than from any hope of his learning to read; but even here his natural genius early displayed it self, for he managed to acquire the art of placing two syllables together, and thenceforth made such rapid progress, that before he was six years old he could read a chapter

from the Bible.

But he had no sooner achieved this infantine triumph, than he was taken away from the school to be employed, even at his tender age, in the harvest-field, and for awhile his studies were ended.

He has alluded to the latter fact in his
Village Minstrel : ”—

"He had his dreads and fears, and scarce could
pass

A churchyard's dreary mounds at silent night;

But footsteps trampled through the rustling grass,

And white ghosts 'hind gravestones stood

in sheets of white;

were,

So swift the wild retreat of childhood's fancied fear."

It may be that these frequent occasions of imaginary terror had a tendency to develop the seeds of the fearful malady which has so unfortunately clouded the later years of his existence; and this circumstance should operate as a warning to those who have the When Clare was about care of the young. fifteen years of age, he experienced the universal poetic mania by scribbling his poetical compositions on stray pieces of paper, which he gave to his mother, but the worthy dame did not place so high a value on them as did her son, for she used them to light the fire, a process which might prove of some service in preserving the reputations of many of our modern would-be poets.

"At the age of twelve he assisted in the laborious employment of threshing: the boy, in his father's own words, was weak, but The poor lad's condition at this period of willing, and the good old man made a flail his life was truly a sad one, for he had neifor him somewhat suitable to his strength. ther the strength nor inclination to join in When his share of the day's toil was over he the rough boisterous sports and pastimes of eagerly ran to the village school under the| "The Quarterly Review; " May,

1820.

his neighbors, and none of his fellow-labor- At length he determined to attempt the ers possessed intellectual abilities sufficient publication of his poems, but he did not posto share John's poetical tastes, therefore he sess sixpence in the world, and what was he was compelled to roam about in silent and to do? desponding loneliness: