PORTRAIT OF GARIBALDI, BY A LADY.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume XV, Issue 1607, 26 December 1860, Page 4

PORTRAIT OF GARIBALDI, BY A LADY.

An English lady writes from Naples to the Times, as follows : —To-day, I beheld, for the first time, the face of Garibaldi, and now all the devotion of his friends is made as clear as day to me. You have only to look into his face, and you feel that there is, perhaps, the one man in the world in whose service you would take your heart in your hand and follow him blindfold to death. I never altogether understood that feeling until his presence made it clear to me. It is the individual man and his personal influence that are so strong; but then it is the man exalted and sanctified, as it

were, by his own single-minded devotion to and faith in a holy cause ; and it is that which you see in his face, as though written in letters of light, and which carries on your thoughts from him as the man to him as the type and representative of his cause. One could love the cause without seeing him, but in seeing him one seems to be suddenly gifted with the power of seeing it as he sees it, and you love it better for his sake, and you honour and admire him for its sake. I have often asked our marine officers who have seen him to describe him to me. They got on swimmingly about his shoulders and chest, and head and beard; then they desire with all their might to describe his expression—but there they stop and gasp. Neither can I describe it to you. I can only say that it explains that devotion to the death, and what is more that faith in doing what the prudent world at large considers an impossibility, for his sake; it makes that feeling appear to you the simplest and most natural thing in the world. His wonderful simplicity and forgetfulness of self win the love of all; it is not the grand iron-willed hero who determines of his own strength to carry his undertaking through. Ido not wonder at the conviction which prevails of bis having been raised up by Providence ; he seems to feel that this is the work given him to do, and that he could not leave it undone, but that it is no more credit to him than it is to a joiner to make a stool, whose mission it is to make stools. It is a face in which the whole character is written, —simple, grand, and loving. It was about one o’clock when we were called into the office, which has a balcony overlooking the Largo del Castello, as it was rumoured that he was coming from the Castellamere-road on the left. Then, again, it was said that he would take up by another street into Toledo. Oscar went out to ascertain, when in a moment there came round the corner into the Largo a red shirt on a horse, and then three abreast, and then a carriage with several red shirts, a shouting multitude, and many carriages following, which had gone to meet him; but he had no more than a dozen of his own people with him. His army is still three days off, dead beat with the forced marches under the fierce sun. He coolly drove along under the guns of the fortress, still manned by the Royal troops. Even with opera-glasses we could not have seen well, as he passed along the other side of the great Largo; so, as we heard he would come back by Toledo to live in Palazzo Angri.the gentlemen guided usthrough the crowd (I know not how) up Santa Brigada, across Toledo, to the house of a friend, where we came out on a large balcony. I wish I could paint the scene for you in something better than words. The crowd was dense, always streaming up aud down at a quick pace, and two lines of carriages in perpetual movement, in each of which were crowded from sixteen to twenty-three gentlemen standing up, shouting and waving flags. Everv balcony of the tall palazzos had a flag and a merry party of lookers-on. The shouting of the multitude undulated like waves of the sea. The cries were mostly “Viva Garibaldi!" “ L'ltalia Una!" I did not hear “Victor Emmanuel’’ much, but some men wore scarfs with his name. Then came diversions from time to time, at which the roaring became perfectly deafening. Now and then a lanky, lithe young lad, with sunny hair and rosy brown face, contrasting with the pallid olive of the townspeople, would come skipping along in the red shirt, waving a flag, and his face working in the wildest excitement of happy glee and innocent triumph, not knowing how enough to laugh and to congratulate, caught, and hugged, and embraced by enthusiastic groups; sometimes a great, stalwart, sober, bronzed, middle-aged man, giving quite gentle answers to tiie crowds swarming to kiss his hands, and with a look as if he were used to graver work than shouting and cheering; then one or two gaunt, lauk~, haggard, bleached creatures, with ropy, rusty, long, shaggy hair down their backs, just as vou suppose wretches let out from years of imprisonment, gesticulating and looking frantic with joy. If they did represent prisoners, it is rather theatrical of them to keep their hair in such a mess all this time since they were let oat. What was perfectly genuine was the beaming joy -with which some clean young priests appealed to the balconies for sympathy. It is difficult to describe the excitement. After about an hour came up the red shirt on a carriage horse, with its blinkers on, to give warning that Garibaldi was coming, and then the cheering rose louder and louder as the carriage came slowly along, and there he was without a bit of state—three red shirts with their hacks to the carriage, himself and another man in the seat of honour, aud three more in a stuck-up rumble behind—such fine old heads, with whitened beards, and all with red shirts covered with purple stains, like English hunting coats which have been through sundry squire-traps. Their earnest, calm, sunburnt faces spoke of different work from running up and down a street shouting ; but what could we poor little contemptible people do except shout and clap our hands ? All our party were assembled in the balcony, and, as happy chance would have it, long before he came up to us, as he turned his face our way, our group caught his eye, and until he came under our balcony, and had to turn his face quite up to see us, he kept his steady look fixed on us—why, I don’t know, for surely there were prettier dresses and fresher faces all round. I am too well content that chance had it so, so that we could watch deliberately the deep, true, sweet expression of those eyes. We had arms full of flowers to throw down, but that kind of thing seemed so small before that wonderful “regard” that I only let mine drop on the people below. I was told that I should never see so fine a sight as Paris welcoming home her heroes last summer—the army of Italy; but this one carriagefull of weather-beaten elderly men were far grander—not the sight of a monarch who makes war for his own ambition in one way or other, but of the triumph of moral force and single-minded devotion. The King had felt himself forced to fly, and twelve hours afterwards this simple Hero entered all alone, like an envoy of Providence. Think of his landing those few hundred, sure that the goodness of his cause would bring him success 1 It does one good to find there is such faith on the earth—to see a man who does not delay beginning a good work till he is in a position to weigh and measure all the consequences. It was striking to see him drive into this great capital without a blow being struck. I wish I could convey an idea of how he looked, like a dear old weather-beaten angel. It was very amusing to see the contrast between his followers andsome Neapolitan Garibaldians, whose whole political energies had been spent in getting up bran-new blouses and cocks’ tails, and who rushed about shrieking frantically. Poor dears 1 I dare say they intended to do thoroughly the kind of work they are capable of. The body of the National Guard followed last, singing Garibaldi’s hymn.