Part 10

One day, while he was following the plow on his little island farm near the coast of Sardinia, a messenger brought word that an Austrian regiment had landed on the shore of Sardinia and seized the island for Austria. Once more, Garibaldi plunged into the struggle. For a year he fought at the head of Italian volunteers under Victor Emmanuel, against the Austrians, liberating the Alpine territory as far as the frontier of Tyrol. Then, in retirement at Genoa, came another summons--a letter telling the story of the sufferings of the liberal leaders in Naples. King Francis, the tyrant of Naples, had been arresting by wholesale men suspected of sympathy with free institutions. The despot filled the dungeons, crowded the upper cells, packed the corridors between the rows of cells, until there was not room for men even to lie down upon the floor. Without any warning whatsoever, the soldiers would appear at the home of some citizen. Without any hearing, much less a trial, men were sent to the royal prison and jammed into corridors already filled to suffocation with murderers, brigands, thieves, forgers. The under-cells dripped with filth. There was no sanitation. Vermin, rats, every form of vice and uncleanliness were there. In the stifling heat some smothered to death.

Gladstone was at this time in Italy. One day he reached Naples, en route for Pompeii and Herculaneum. Calling upon the British Consul, he was told about these prisons, that were death-traps. He hurried back to London. He used his official position as a statesman under Queen Victoria to address a letter to the civilized peoples of the world. A wave of indignation and horror swept over the capitals of Europe. The hour had struck for Italy. Garibaldi headed a tiny army and started south to the attack. Naples was besieged. After weeks of fighting, and oft wounded, one day with clothes covered with blood he addressed a handful of citizens: "Soldiers, what I have to offer you is this--hunger, thirst, cold, heat, no pay, no barracks, no rations, frequent alarms, forced marches, charges at the point of the bayonet. Whoever loves honour and fatherland, follow me!" Ah, Garibaldi knew that there is a latent instinct of heroism in every human heart. Why are there few boys going into the ministry to-day? Because the task has become too easy. Here are the young fisherman, John; the young physician, Luke; the young rabbi, Paul;--offer them stones, scourges, blows, fagot-fires, martyrdom, and they will leap into the breach. After that appeal of Garibaldi four thousand men followed their leader to battle. Soon the bloody tyrant of Naples was driven from his city.

Then came the long campaigns in the south, with Garibaldi's entrance into the city of Palermo; the struggle in Sicily, the siege of the fortress at Massina, the triumphal march through Calabria, his victory at Naples, culminating with that great day, September 7th, 1860, when he handed over a fleet and an army to Victor Emmanuel. Having endured every form of peril, hunger, and cold, with loss of blood through many wounds, the citizens of Naples, after the expulsion of their recreant King, turned with one heart and offered him the throne for his leverage, and the palace for his home. But Garibaldi refused the throne, because he believed in the republic, and no bribe nor blandishment could swerve him a hair's breadth from his conviction that the fairest, stablest form of government was self-government.

On the day of his entrance, the people went out and carried him into the city upon their shoulders. All along the central street he was welcomed with the words, "Secundo Washington"--"Second Washington." For what Lincoln did for the three million slaves, and what Washington did for the three million colonists, Garibaldi had wrought for three million downtrodden Italian peasants. But having freed the people from cruel oppression, he sent for Victor Emmanuel, the ruler who had insulted him, and said, looking toward his army and the captains of his navy, "I have not been trained for civil government! I therefore abdicate my position as commander-in-chief of the army and navy, and I turn these instruments of defense and offense over to you." History holds the story of no sublimer act of disinterested patriotism. That deed insured a united Italy, the chief aim of Garibaldi's life.

From that hour his fame, his place in the history of Italy were fully established. During the next few years many honours and offices were offered Garibaldi, all of which he consistently declined. He was the last hero of the heroic age of the new Italy, the most popular, the most legendary, in the sense that he resembled a hero of old romance. A faithful soldier, who might have been a king; a hero always a hero, even to his own servants and amid sordid circumstances; unspoiled by the admiration of the world and the adulation of his friends; a warrior with hands unstained by plunder, cruelty or the useless shedding of blood, he remained to the end one of the few characters for whom neither wealth nor rank ever offered temptation. Michelet, the French historian, wrote of him, "There is one hero in all Europe--one! I do not know a second. All his life is a romance; and since he had the greatest reasons for hatred to France, who had stolen his Nice, caused him to be fired upon at Aspromonte, fought against him at Mentana, you guess that it was this man who flew (during the Franco-German War) to immolate himself for France. And how modestly, withal! Nothing mattered it to him that he was placed in obscure posts quite unworthy of him. Grand man, my Garibaldi! My single hero! Always loftier than fortune! How sublimely does his memory rise and swell toward the future!"

In retrospect, strategists tell us that Garibaldi knew little and cared less about the usual military tactics, or the plans of organization and transport taught in military schools. His wonderful career, with its many and brilliant victories, is explained by the supreme influence which his person exercised. Knowing neither danger nor fear, rushing into the most perilous spots, his very daring fascinated and inspired his followers. "He had all the instincts of the lion; not merely the headlong courage, but the far nobler qualities of magnanimity, placability, self-denial. His impulses were all generous, his motives invariably upright, his conscience unerring." The most loving among great leaders, the least hating among great soldiers, he was devoid of all personal ambition, as he was devoid of all rancour and malice. He was one of the most picturesque leaders, one of the most dramatic figures in all history. "None could fail to admire or be inspired by the sight of him on the field of battle, as with clear, ringing silver voice, his lion-like face, his plain red shirt and grey trousers, he sat his horse with perfect ease and calm, guiding his soldiers by plunging into the thick of the enemy and trusting his troops to follow."

Garibaldi's moral courage was always the equal of his physical bravery. During the siege of Rome, when he was defending the city against the forces of Austria and of France, the enemy located the house from which he was directing the defense. Cannonball, smashing through the roof, carried away his flag; bullets aimed with unerring accuracy entered the windows, and buried themselves in the walls. While the others ran to the cellar, Garibaldi walked out the front door, stood on the steps, and calmly supervised the carrying to a place of safety of all the important military papers. That night the Roman leaders sent messengers to Garibaldi, and insisted upon surrender. At last Garibaldi exclaimed, "Is it not enough that I must fight our enemies? Has it come to this, that with equal strength I must oppose my friends?" And then, he lifted his broken sword, and exclaimed: "On my monument write these words, 'A man who never surrendered to the enemies of human freedom!'"

Where were the hidings of this man's power? History tells of no leader who was so idolized. For Garibaldi men braved martyrdom. For him, women endured starvation. Priests risked the anathema of their masters. Boys, wearing the red shirt, flung themselves upon the bayonets of Austria and France. Captured, they were tortured by the enemy, but died smiling rather than betray Garibaldi. There is a tradition not mentioned by his best biographer, that many Italians claim is absolutely true. Once when he was in hiding, he appeared at midnight in the public square of Naples. The city was completely controlled by the King, who had set a price upon Garibaldi's head. But many of the people were secret followers of Garibaldi, who wished to confer with one of his friends in the prison. Recognizing a policeman who was his friend, Garibaldi put his fingers upon his lips and drew his cloak the closer about his face. After a whispered word the soldier led Garibaldi to the entrance of the prison. Another whispered word and the great iron gate swung open. A second whispered conversation and the inner gate opened. Within, another guard stooped while Garibaldi whispered in his ear. A little later, out of a cell, came that captured friend of Garibaldi. The hero asked and obtained the information he desired. Putting his two fingers upon his lips, Garibaldi saluted, and was led to the inner gate. Having passed through he put those two fingers upon his lips, saluted, and was led to the outer gate. Putting his fingers upon his lips he saluted again, and with an officer who had become his guide, walked hurriedly to an alley, where he stepped into his carriage, where he saluted and disappeared in the darkness--whether cellar or attic no man knows unto this day. The following morning Garibaldi led his troops into battle. Now tell me, where is there in history of human heroism a chapter more thrilling than this story of Garibaldi?

The truism that men without fault are generally men without force, is well illustrated in the life of Garibaldi. It is the strongest, most adventurous, romantic and troublous career in history. There are many blots upon his scutcheon, just as there are many yellow spots upon the front columns of the Parthenon, and nothing is gained by calling the roll of faults rehearsed by his critics and enemies. "The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones." Remember the story of the farmer in Sardinia who came home at night, sick because he had lost a favourite lamb, and how the next morning Garibaldi returned with the little dumb creature wrapped in his blanket and lying upon his bosom. Remember, how at Palermo, Garibaldi came out of the battlefield unshaken, but at sight of the little orphans in the asylum crying for food the great soldier burst into tears. Even when they led him to the palace and called him "Your Excellency," he frowned and moved to the lighthouse, where, the idol of his people, he lived in a tiny room with no furniture but a couch and a stool. Once he was offered great riches if he would go out to China and lead a regiment and ship slaves to South America, but he answered that "Not all the wealth of the Indies could induce him to buy and sell human flesh." After his long campaigns and victories for the people of Uruguay the new government sent him a title deed to an enormous tract of land and thousands of heads of cattle, but he tore up the deeds because he had fought for liberty. In time of plague he became a nurse, in time of shipwreck he risked his life to save his comrades.

It is true that for some years, under the influence of two friends who were foreigners, he passed under the influence of their own materialism and doubt, and he tells us that from that hour it seemed as if the spirit of his mother and of Anita had both deserted him. During the last years of his life he became almost a hermit and seemed to be confused by the problems of the world in which he lived. But he had been starved, imprisoned, tortured, betrayed and shot down. The real Garibaldi speaks in this message that he addressed to the people of Italy:

"I am a Christian and I speak to Christians.

"I love and venerate the religion of Christ.

"Christ came into the world to deliver humanity from slavery.

"You who are here have the duty to educate the people.

"Educate them to be Christians.

"Education gives liberty.

"On a strong and wholesome education for the people depend the liberty and greatness of Italy!

"Viva Victor Emmanuel!

"Viva Italia!

"Viva Christianity!"

VIII

JOHN RUSKIN

(1819-1900)

_And the Diffusion of the Beautiful_

The genius of John Ruskin's message is in a single sentence: "Life without industry is guilt, and industry without art and education is brutality." He held that all the doing that makes commerce is born of the thinking that makes scholars, and that all the flying of looms and the whirling of spindles begins with the quiet thought of some scholar, hidden in a closet, or sequestered in a cloister. He never made the mistake of supposing that education would change a ten-cent boy into a thousand-dollar-a-year man, but he _did_ know that there is some power in Nature that will transform a seed into a sheaf, an acorn into an oak, and that the truth will change a child into a sage, a statesman, a seer, a man with a message for his century.

Ruskin wrote many volumes to prove that wealth is not in raw material;--not in iron, not in wood, not in stone, not in cotton, not in wool. Wealth is largely in the intelligence put into the raw material. Pig-iron is worth twenty dollars a ton, but intelligence turns that ton of iron into a ton of tempered hair-springs, and it is worth perhaps ten thousand dollars a ton. The clay in Rodin's _Thinker_ represents a value of a few francs, but the idea in the _Thinker_ brought 150,000 francs. On the sixtieth anniversary of the coronation of Queen Victoria, an editor offered Rudyard Kipling $1,000 for a Commemoration poem. The paper, ink and the pen stand for a few pennies; all the rest of the $1,000 was for a trained intellect. The average income of a family in the United States to-day is not far from $2,000. That income could be carried up to $4,000 if our workers would only double the intelligence, efficiency and loyalty put into the raw material they handle!

The career of Edison illustrates the industrial value of one informed intellect to the nation. In 1910, business men in the United States had invested in the expired patents of Thomas Edison six billion seven hundred millions of dollars. These factories brought in an annual income of a billion and seventy millions of dollars. To-day, half-a-dozen Edisons, the one showing us how to burn the coal in the ground, the other taking nitrogen out of the air, another showing us how to transmute metals, another attacking the enemies of the cotton, the fruits and the grains, with a teacher who would show the parents of the country how successfully to assault intellectual and moral illiteracy, would easily double our annual income. What our country--what every country--needs is an invasion of knowledge and sound sense. Therefore Ruskin's message, "the first business of the nation is the manufacture of souls of a good quality."

During his lifetime John Ruskin wrote some forty volumes. Between the ages of twenty and thirty he wrote _Modern Painters_, dealing with the claims of cloud, sun, shower, wave, shrub and flower, land, sea, and sky upon man's intellectual and moral life. He held that the open-air world is man's best college and the forces of the winter and the summer his best teachers. From thirty to forty he wrote the _Lectures on Architecture_, and _Stones of Venice_, with many studies of the galleries, towers, and cathedrals of Florence and Rome. In these books his thought is that the soul of the people within determines the painting, architecture and civilization of the state without. From forty to fifty he wrote many books on the claim of the beautiful upon man's spiritual life, and insisted that those claims were binding not less upon the working people and the peasants in factory and field, than upon the scholar in his library and the artist in his studio.

From fifty to sixty he wrote his _Fors Clavigera_, his _Time and Tide_, _Munera Pulveris_, and _Unto This Last_, studies of the problems of wealth and poverty, of labour and capital. He tells us that men, to-day, are charmed with the glitter of gold and silver as young birds are charmed with the glitter of snakes' eyes; that the business man is divinely called to serve through property; that there is, however, such a thing as a despotism of wealth; that the property of some millionaires represents the breaking of the strength and the will of competitors and the paralysis of the forces of the people, so that what seems to be wealth, in verity is only "the gilded index of far-reaching ruin, a wreckers' handful of coin, gleaned from the beach to which he has beguiled an argosy; the camp follower's bundle of rags, unwrapped from the breasts of goodly soldiers dead, the purchase pieces of potter's fields, wherein shall be buried together the citizen and the stranger."

And then Ruskin bent himself to what he believed to be the real task of his life, the writing of a series of books on the problems of labour and capital, in the hope that he might save the State from trampled cornfields and from bloody streets. But just at the supreme moment in his career his health gave way, and he never completed his studies of the _Robber King_, the _Rust Kings_, the _Moth King_ and the _Hero Kings_. John Ruskin died believing himself to be an unfulfilled prophecy, in that he was unable to complete these books for which he believed all his life had been one long preparation. But in reality he was a prophet who gave forth a message that is slowly transforming the institutions of mankind.

A full understanding of Ruskin's life-work begins with an outlook upon his contribution to modern social reform. Biographers often identify a great reform with one man's name, as if this man, single handed, had wrought the social transformation. Thus they speak of Howard as the reformer of prisons; of Shaftesbury as the author of the Poor Acts; of Cobden as the author of the Corn Laws; of Lincoln, as the emancipator of slaves; of Booth as the founder of the City Colony, the Home Colony, the Farm Colony. But strictly speaking, thousands of leaders of the movement for the abolition of slavery stood behind the forces of Wilberforce in England, and Lincoln in the United States. Not otherwise many biographers have claimed too much for the influence of Ruskin, certainly more than the master would have claimed for himself.

At the beginning of his career Ruskin started a movement to diffuse the beautiful in the life of the people. For centuries the beautiful had been concentrated in the temples of Athens, the palaces and galleries of Italy, the museums of Paris and London, in the manor houses of the landed gentry. Meanwhile the poor people of Athens, Venice and Florence lived in huts, wore leather garments, ate crusts, dwelt amid ugliness, squalor and filth. Ruskin dreamed a dream of the beautiful put into the life of the common people. He found that Sheffield, with its smoking chimneys and grimy streets, had been spoken of as the ugliest factory town in England. Therefore Ruskin went to Sheffield, hired a building, installed therein his paintings, etchings, and illuminated missals, and hired a few instructors to help him diffuse the beautiful in the daily life of the people. He brought in men who made the implements of the dining-room, and showed them how to make the knife, the fork, the spoon, the table linen, minister to the sentiment of taste and refinement. He brought in men who made wall-papers for the poor man's house, and showed the craftsmen how to make the colours soft and warm, delicate and beautiful. He interested himself in beautiful furniture. He wrought with William Morris for a more beautiful type of illustrations in books and magazines. He denounced the ugliness of the houses and clothing and bridges and railways. He insisted that women should have beautiful garments, the youth read beautiful books, the men ride in beautiful cars, the families live in beautiful little houses, the children play upon beautiful carpets and look upon walls that had one or two beautiful pictures. John Ruskin laboured, and others wrought with him, and now at last we have entered into the fruit of their labours. To-day the beautiful, once concentrated in temples, palaces, and cathedrals, is diffused in the life of the common people.

In the same fashion Ruskin started a movement among the working men for a diffusion of sound learning. The St. George Guild represents the first University Extension Course and the first Chautauqua system our world ever knew. More than fifty years ago he worked out his plan to carry the knowledge given to rich men's sons in their lecture halls and libraries to the working people, who were to carry on their studies in the evening after the day's labour was over. He laid out a course of studies for these working men, planned the organization of lecture centers, gave us the outline of the University Extension Course of lectures, induced many men in England to go from one working man's guild and club to another, and after Ruskin's health broke down, the men in the faculty of Oxford University took Ruskin's mother-idea, and developed it into the University Extension Course of lectures. Brought to our country that idea has spread through these lecture courses carried on in great halls in the winter, in tents and open-air assemblies in the summer.

We say much of our Social Settlement Work, and trace these thousands of settlements in the tenement-house region of great cities back to Arnold Toynbee's work, and that of Canon Barnett, in the East End of London. But we must remember that when Ruskin was lecturing in Oxford to some of the richest boys in Great Britain he told them that every boy who consumed more than he produced was a pauper and that the more the youth received from his ancestors and the State, the larger his debt to those who were less fortunate. He believed that every gifted boy should keep in touch, not only with his own class, but with all classes, and that every youth would do well to do some physical work every day. Ruskin and his students built a road outside of Oxford, and the foreman of the gang of students was young Arnold Toynbee. Toynbee admired and loved Ruskin, as a young pupil and disciple loves a noble teacher and a great master.

After his health broke down, Ruskin gave up his work in Whitechapel Road and urged Arnold Toynbee to give himself to the problems of the poor, and when Ruskin's health gave way completely, it was Toynbee who rewrote his lectures on labour and capital and gave them a new form in his _Industrial Revolution in Great Britain_. The time came when Arnold Toynbee broke down with overwork and brain fever, as his master had broken before him, and his friend Canon Barnett raised the money to make Toynbee Hall a permanent institution. But the seed of the Social Settlement movement was John Ruskin's brief career in the tenement region of the East End, and the first full fruit was in his disciple's Toynbee Hall and in Canon Barnett's noble work at St. Jude's. Little by little the Social Settlement Idea spread, until in the tenement regions of Manchester, Birmingham, New York, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco, gifted men and women of wealth, leisure and patrician position, began to give their lives to the neglected poor.