urch dogmas, even if you yield up
ninety-nine points out of a hundred. The intensest bigotry and
narrowness are compatible with the most charming manners and the noblest
acts of personal kindness. This truth is illustrated by the characters
drawn by Sir Walter Scott in his novels, and by Hume in his histories.
It explains the inconsistencies of hospitable English Tories, of
old-fashioned Southern planters, of the haughty nobles of Austria who
gathered around the table of the most accomplished gentleman in
Europe,--equally famous for his graceful urbanities and infamous for his
uncompromising hostility to the leaders of liberal movements. On the
other hand, those who have given the greatest boons to humanity have
often been rough in manners, intolerant of infirmities, bitter in their
social prejudices, hard in their dealings, and acrid in their tempers;
and if they were occasionally jocular, their jokes were too practical to
be in high favor with what is called good society.

Now D'Azeglio was a high-born gentleman, aristocratic in all his ideas,
and, what was unusual with Italian nobles, a man of enlarged and liberal
views, who favored reforms if they could be carried out in a
constitutional way,--like Lord John Russell and the great English Whig
noblemen who passed the Reform Bill, or like the French statesmen of the
type of Thiers and Guizot.

In the general outbreak of revolutionary ideas which convulsed all
Europe in 1848, when even Metternich was driven from power, Charles
Albert was forced to promise a constitution to his North Italian
subjects,--and kept his word, which other Italian potentates did not,
when they were restored by Austrian bayonets. He had always been
vacillating, but at last he saw the necessities of Italy and recognized
the spirit of the times. He was thus naturally drawn into a war with
Austria, whose army in Italy was commanded by the celebrated Marshal
Radetzky. Though an old man of eighty, the Austrian general defeated the
King of Piedmont in several engagements. At Novara, on the 23d of March,
1849, he gained a decisive victory, which led to the abdication of the
king; and amidst gloom, disaster, and difficulty, the deposed monarch
was succeeded by his son, the Duke of Savoy, under the name of Victor
Emmanuel II.

The young king rallied around him the ablest and most patriotic men he
could find, including D'Azeglio, who soon became his prime minister; and
it was from this nobleman's high