ing his growing honors with serene gayety. His patience was severely taxed in those days by the multitude of albums brought to him to write in; as well as by the necessity of answering innumerable notes and letters-he who was ever a lay correspondent, and not especially endowed with the epistolary gift and grace. However, his goodness of heart enabled him to tide over these shoals and quicksands of greatness; and in consequence, he has left various charming memorials, here and there. Madame Louise Colet hands down a detailed account of her conversations with Manzoni. "Of course she enters into particulars," cries Cantù, "she who could not even hold her tongue about her own love affairs."

A friend whom Manzoni taught in her own house, where she lay for years bed-ridden, was the Marchesa Paola Castiglioni. We may fancy the comfort his genial task brought her in her fallen fortunes and great old age. She was accustomed to say that the number of the years of her life was too high for the lottery-ninetyfive. The lotto was a recognized Italian institution.

Another of Manzoni's habitués was the Principessa Belgiojoso, who recalls the type of strong-minded, free-thinking woman-philosophers, who gave tone to French society at the time Paris was the home of Donna Giulia and her son. The Milanese Principessa had apparently a superadded charm. Tammaser, De Musset, Heine, Delacroix, all sang her praises, and worshipped at her shrine. Her literary tastes and her public affiliations alike drew her to Manzoni, and she came frequently to his house, when she was not wandering about the world, exiled for her active share in the political intrigues and conspiracies of the day. Manzoni, by the way, held, with Chamfort, that there is a sex in literature, and that a woman may be known by a phrase. He thought it worth his while to write the Principessa a very serious letter upon the publication of her Formation des Dogmes Catholiques. This lady is altogether a most striking and picturesque figure, married as she was to the flower of the Milanese youth, and descended from a long line of distinguished personages. Her life knew unusual reverses, and alternated between the extremes of luxury and of actual need.

On Tommaso Grossi, a poet of repute among his own people, Manzoni bestows his most constant friendship. Grossi is said to have been loved even by those who did not admire his poetry: "No genius, no hero, but a true gentleman" (Gran galantuomo). Manzoni set apart for Grossi's use two small rooms on the ground floor of his own house, across a hall from his own library, and opening into a garden. Here Grossi freely came and went until the time of Manzoni's second marriage. Then, fortunately, he

made a very happy marriage of his own. But while he lived under Manzoni's roof, he was the dear friend and confidant of the whole family. Manzoni delighted in praising him, and we find constant references to Grossi, through his papers. "Yesterday M. De La Croix said to me that Grossi speaks French better than an academician." And when Manzoni was requested to become a member of the Institute of Lombardy, he declined on the plea that he "should be ashamed to belong to a society which did not include Grossi."

Cantù's own relations to Manzoni were those of a disciple to a master. Manzoni revised his works; stimulated his thought, directed his opinions; was his exemplar in all things. Cantù was in thorough sympathy with the spirit of Manzoni's genius, and elected him his chosen poet, long before they met; so that there was in their intercourse the high charm of a realized ideal. No detraction altered the fervor of the younger man's admiration. Others declared that Manzoni was lukewarm in his conviction and halting in his praise or blame; that he had been known to withhold moral support even from his faithful Grossi; and that he had kept silence, yea, even from good words, when good words from him would have promoted a righteous cause. But Cantù secured Manzoni's generous approbation of himself when he was an unknown and struggling writer. He relates that the busy author yet found hours to devote to his service, in reading and revising his manuscript. He is at losing pains to explain that if Manzoni was reluctant to offer criticism of any sort, it was from a genuine, inborn humility. He tells us, in illustration of this humility, that when Lamartine and Thierry wrote to Manzoni, in warm praise of his paper upon the Untori, which had been quite ignored by Italian critics, he wrote them in reply: "Ceux qui ont un grand nom font bien de s'en servir pour encourager ceux qui font jusqu' ou ils peuvent."

It might have seemed doubtful praise, to an Italian patriot, remembering still the troublous times of '48, when after Manzoni's death the London Times referred, as matter of commendation, to the facts that the Austrians, who had proscribed Fosch and Pellier, had left Manzoni in peace; and that no gens d'armes had ever crossed his threshold. But Cantù believes that the devoted friends of Manzoni stood ever between him and the persecutions of the foreign oppressor; and that it is due to their unselfish consideration that his name never appeared on the lists of the proscribed. Be that as it may, he is merely mentioned in the political records of the day as the author of "The Fifth of May" (an ode widely circulated at the time it was written, after the death of Napoleon). Also against his name in the public censure, we find inscribed: "A literary genius; an honor to his country." It is impossible not to

feel that Manzoni was comparatively lukewarm, as to the political dissensions and questions that rent Italy, and agitated his countrymen, during his middle-life. But as to his concern in the higher politics, that phase of social science which, as Cantù remarks, is of greater importance and calls for deeper wisdom than questions involving "kings, parliaments and diplomatists"; in all this, Manzoni's interest was profound and intense.

"In his relations to all that touched the people (the common people as they are termed); their bread; their morals; their consolations, or, as they are ofttimes called, prejudices, in his devotion to every detail of that political democracy which is rather political Christianity, I know no writer who approaches Manzoni; his point of view always included the people. . He bears in mind that the angels did not appear at the guarded gates of the great, but to the poor, neglected by a hard world.”

His interest in the poor was real, personal, unfailing; while, on the other hand, kings and kings' ministers delighted to honor him. During an illness of his, at the time of the Austrian occupation, the Archduke Maximilian daily sent, or called in person, to inquire for him: "As though trying to cause the fact to be forgotten that he was an Austrian." Later Cavour was his honored guest.

It illustrates a certain impersonality about the man that he could include Garibaldi in the long and various list of his friendships, and receive with open arms that reckless warrior at a time when the latter was touring Italy and inciting its youth to "the worship of Saint Catilino and the invasion of the States of the Church." But Manzoni vouchsafed him a generous admiration. Embracing him, he cried: "I should undoubtedly feel my insignificance, were I to be confronted by one of the thousands of your brave soldiers; how much more so, then, standing face to face with their General." Garibaldi repaid this fervid speech with a well-meant compliment, in his novel of "Clelia." "I am over-presumptuous," he writes, "to attempt the composition of a novel in the age of such writers as Victor Hugo, Guerazzi and Manzoni." Rather doubtful company, this, for the author of the Morale Cattolica.

Another of his visitors was the Comte de Chambord, in the October of 1839, who sent in his card having Henri de France inscribed upon it. The Emperor of Brazil, also, swelled the list of his illustrious guests, and conceived a strong friendship for him. The Emperor repeated his visit as late as 1876; at this time he insisted that Manzoni, in defiance of etiquette, should sit beside him on the sofa. Manzoni, after some hesitation, yielded the point, saying, "Tyrants must be obeyed."

It is recorded that Manzoni copied his Il Cinque Maggio (Fifth of May) with his own hand in the album of the Empress Eugénie,

at the solicitation of a common friend, the then Italian ambassador at the French court. Years afterwards, he was begged to write a lament upon the death of Napoleon III., and it was urged that he had put forth a dirge when the first Napoleon had died. "Oh," he said in excuse, “I am old." When it was replied to him that there often survived fire, even in old age, he replied," Fire at which no one is warmed."

In the Paris days we have referred to, he made friends who afterwards drifted out of his life, greatly owing to the fact that he was an inveterately bad correspondent. It was not "out of sight, out of mind" with him; but it was certainly out of sight, out of speech, written or spoken. Lamartine had a profound regard for him, and yet with Lamartine he held no intercourse during long years. Cantù meets Lamartine in Paris in the latter's lonely, decrepid age, forgotten by the careless world that had adored his youth, and Lamartine sends a touching note through him to Manzoni in Italy: "Un souvenir qui est tonjours un hommage, quand il va à un homme tel que lui." Cantù showed Manzoni this note, but kept it afterwards in his own possession.

In spite of this apparent indifference, however, Manzoni was far from accepting Chamfort's three-fold classification of friends : "Those to whom we are indifferent; those who are distasteful to us; those whom we detest." This same Chamfort, by the bye, was one of the brilliant circle of Madame Helvetius; and he it was who put many revolutionary theories into current phrases, one of which was his retort to Sieyès: "What is the third estate ? a nothing which desired to become everything."

There was little congeniality between Manzoni and Thiers, who was frequently in Italy. There was a restlessness and an excitement about Thiers which did not agree with the tranquil dignity of Manzoni. They probably failed to understand each other. When Thiers was asked who was, in his opinion, the greatest living Italian, he named Gino Capponi of Florence. His interlocutor suggested Manzoni; but Thiers persisted, that Capponi had "une plus grande portee d'esprit." Thiers was not in sympathy with a united Italy, and he disapproved of Manzoni's affiliation with the leaders who had this unity at heart. Thiers himself put in practice the proposition he advanced in the National Assembly, that we live in times of universal contradiction. He was, however, consistent in declaring that his country should never call for his services in vain. "I will do as much for the monarchy as for religion." And, dying, he bequeathed to his native land this reminder: "The republic must either be conservative or else cease to exist."

Balzac was another of Manzoni's passing acquaintances, between

whom and himself it would be impossible to expect any sympathy. The phases of human nature, which the French novelist chiefly portrayed, were far removed from Manzoni's pure contemplation. The art of Balzac was as diverse from that of Manzoni as was the personality of the two men : Manzoni, as we have described him -high-bred, intellectual, spiritual; Balzac, heavily-built, largefeatured; his natural peculiarities intensified by his careless dress. Balzac's immense and immediate popularity contrasted no less with the gradual growth of Manzoni's fame. Balzac's works had an enormous circulation, not only in France, but also in foreign countries. He himself lived to a great extent in a world as ideal as that of his characters. He was always planning some wonderful stroke of fortune, which was to befall him, but he possessed, unluckily, no more than the average business talent of authors. He came to Italy expecting to drive a good bargain with Italian booksellers, in which he was disappointed. However, he had been paid twenty-thousand crowns for his "César Birotteau"; and we have it on his own authority that the translator of "Hector Fieramosca" spent more in advertisements than the author was paid down for the original manuscript. Balzac's egotism was so frank that he made himself and his doings his constant theme. During his intercourse with Manzoni it did not transpire from what he said that he had ever read I Promessi Sposi; the burden of his monologue was the novel he was then writing,-a comedy which was destined to make an immense sensation on the stage,-a collection he was engaged in compiling of his juvenile writings. He was also given to dissertations upon his vague pantheistic creed, and upon the curiosities of modern scientific research. But we are told that he never advanced a single idea breathing genuine humanity.

He and Manzoni had the one point in common, at least, that they wrote slowly, and elaborately revised their original manuscript. Neither improvised; neither wrote with spontaneity; there was in the case of each a chasm between the thought and its expression. But here the mere external resemblance stopped. No greater contrast can be imagined than between the French and the Italian novelist.

A tribute to Manzoni from a brother author is Bulwer's dedication to him of his Cola Rienzi, “as to the genius loci." But space fails us to record all the instances of respect and devotion which crowned his later years. His native city still gratefully echoes his name in one of the streets, and in her principal theatre; built, by the way, upon the spot where once stood certain houses, the property of his mother's friend, Imbonati.

Like some other writers of romances, Manzoni was not fond of reading them. Thackeray tells of himself that he devoured the novels of other men, and he gives especial honorable mention to