the
orators of virtue, and let us pass from England into Italy.

While Italy is seeking to deliver itself from the bayonets of Austria,
it is threatened with subjection to the influence of the most pernicious
German doctrines. After having bent, like nearly all Europe, in the
eighteenth century, beneath the blast of sensualism, Italy made a noble
effort to renew more generous traditions. Two eminent men, Rosmini and
Gioberti, the second especially, succeeded in exciting in the youth of
Italy a passionate interest in doctrines in which liberty and vigor of
thought were united with the confidence of faith. This intellectual
movement preceded and prepared a national movement, the course of which
has been precipitated by the intrigues of politics and the intervention
of the arms of the foreigner. At the present time the influence of
Rosmini and of Gioberti is on the decline. Hegelianism is being
installed with a certain _eclat_ in the university of Naples. Nothing
warrants us in hoping that this system will not produce upon the shores
of the Mediterranean the same depravation of philosophic thought which
it has produced in Germany. In the ancient university of Pisa, M.
Auguste Conti, a brave defender of Christian philosophy, steadfastly
maintains the union of religion and of speculative inquiry,[82] and the
centre of Italy is less affected perhaps than the extremities of the
Peninsula by the spirit of infidelity. But as we go further north, we
encounter in the writings of Ferrari the utterance of a gloomy
scepticism, and in those of Ausonio Franchi, formerly a journalist at
Turin, and now a Professor at Milan, the manifestations of an almost
undisguised atheism. Ausonio Franchi, or rather the man who assumes that
pseudonyme, is an ex-priest, who, "while maintaining severely the rule
of good morals and the dignity of life,"[83] has turned with violent
animosity against his former faith. He exerts some influence over the
youth of Italy, and has met with warm admirers in England and Germany.
Franchi's profession of faith reduces itself to these very simple
terms:--"The world is what it is, and it is _because it is_; any other
reason whatever of its essence and of its existence can be nothing but a
sophism or an illusion."[84] All inquiry into the origin of things is a
pure chimera, and we must therefore limit ourselves to the experience of
the present life, and look for nothing beyond it. The author treats with
sufficient disd