friend of constitutional freedom, and the friend of Gioberti, but a perfectly independent thinker, dedicated to him his book, and taught the public first rightly to understand how Gioberti, in his work, separated himself from the blind Italian lovers and flatterers, who, “contented with proclaiming Italy as the renovator of all culture and civilization, the discoverer of Eastern Asia, and of America, mother of the great Romans, as well as Gregory VII., Marco Polo, Dante, Raphael, Michael Angelo, Columbus, Vico, Galileo, and Volta, exhume every day some unknown great man, and praise the shores, fields, cultivation, princes, priests, people, and governments, tutti quanti, besides the air, climate, situation—a very paradise!—before all men, so that it is evident that all is good, and people have nothing else to do, and ought to undertake nothing else than to enjoy life.”
Balbo cannot condemn with sufficient severity these false prophets, who pour out comfort for the lazy, encouragment to the vices, to the “beato far niente” and to that still far worse far male. Very different is Gioberti! If he be not always as full of masculine strength, as Dante and Alfiere, still it is his great merit, to have spoken with admirable wisdom and eloquence, on the future of the fatherland, of which so much has been said in other countries, and there has been so much silence in our own; to have spoken of this in so frank and large a manner, and with more moderation than any of his predecessors; and that, although priest and philosopher, to have spoken thereof in a more practical manner, than the few practical men and historians, who have touched the dangerous sub-
