It has been well said of Carducci: "Egli senti il presente con animo antico." His hero was Garibaldi, he for whom the sword was the instrument of justice and the symbol of peace. In his odes the embarking of Garibaldi and his thousand volunteers at Scoglio di Quarto is linked with the coming of Aeneas to Italy, and the new Rome invokes the deliverer as novello Romolo. Carducci has Mazzini's vision of the third Rome, the Rome of the People, spreading for a third time among the nations a gospel of civilisation. Italy, whom Rome made one, returns to her mother whom she has freed, and who shows her the monuments, the columns and arches of old:—
"Gli archi che nuovi trionfi aspettano
non piú di regi, non piú di cesari,
e non di catene attorcenti
braccia umane su gli eburnei carri;
"ma il tuo trionfo, popol d'Italia,
su l'età nera, su l'età barbara,
su i mostri onde tu con serena
giustizia farai franche le genti.
"O Italia, o Roma! quel giorno, placido
tonerà il cielo su'l Fòro, e cantici
di gloria, di gloria, di gloria
correran per l'infinito azzurro."
But the poet abandons Mazzini's republicanism for the constitutional monarchy of the House of Savoy. In one of his latest odes, Piemonte, he hymns the part played by Piedmont and the "italo Amleto," Charles Albert, in the redemption of Italy; in another, Bicocca di San Giacomo, he
34
