1859.] Formation of a Great Italian Power. of a foreign protectorate. And our interest is coincident with our duty. The freedom of Italy is perhaps of more importance to us than to any other Power. We require that a balance should be maintained on the Continent between absolutism and liberty: otherwise our position as a Constitutional State is one of constant peril in the face of despotic sovereigns, who cannot but hate because they must always fear us. We require that some Power shall exist capable of supporting the order of Europe and the law of nations against the aggressive ambition of two mighty empires, which in the absence of such a Power can give law to the Continent. We hoped to find such a Power in Austria; we have found ourselves disappointed alike in her strength and in her loyalty. She is, by virtue of her composition, bound over to keep the peace at any price; the enormous forces which are dragging her every year deeper into financial embarrassment, are only sufficient to keep her own subject provinces in awe. She is a rotten ship, in danger of sinking under the weight of her own armament, and sure to go to pieces in the event of a general engagement. Her dissolution seems only a matter of time; and it concerns us that her place be filled. And what substitute so effective as a free and united Italy? Anything which will tend to further the creation of such a Power must be ultimately advantageous to England; and though we may have little influence at present on the future of the Italian States, the whole of our weight ought to be thrown into the scale of union and independence. For England to grudge the aggrandizement of Sardinia would be the most bigoted folly. If a monarchy under the House of Savoy be the form of Italian union most likely to endure, because most popular in Italy-and there is ample reason to believe that it is so the interest of England clearly lies in supporting the House of Savoy to the uttermost of her power. The present situation of affairs, which leaves the disposition of the Central States of Italy an open question, offers an opportunity of doing this which is not likely to 385 recur. If the choice of the people be allowed to prevail against dynastic tradition, against diplomatic prejudice, against the wrath of Austria, and the intrigues of the entourage of Louis Napoleon; if the would-be Liberator will yet be true to his own principles of policy, and to his solemn promises, Victor Emmanuel may be allowed to assume the throne of Northern Italy, and to consolidate a kingdom second-rate in point of force, but important enough to_command a voice in the affairs of Europe, and not unlikely to rise ere long to the rank of a first-rate Power. On this issue hangs the fate of the Two Sicilies. If Austria resume her ascendancy their case is wellnigh hopeless. If the Italians are left, in any form and in any sense, masters of Italy, the Neapolitans will not be slow in following the example of their brethren. If the idea of an Italian Confederation be honestly carried out, Naples and Sicily will probably form part of it, under a constitutional monarchy, in cordial union with Piedmont. If the wish of the Italian nation be allowed to prevail, and Victor Emmanuel's dominions be extended as far as the north-east frontier of Naples, it may not be very long before the Two Sicilies will form a part of his kingdom. For in Sicily, as is reported, there is a strong party in favour of the House of Savoy, and no party whatsoever attached to the Bourbon dynasty; on the mainland the Constitutionalists are thoroughly disgusted with their present Royal family, now for the fourth generation tyrants in defiance of acknowledged laws and solemn oaths, and entertain a strong attachment to the family from which came the first wife of the late King, the beloved mother of Francis II. Such a consummation is devoutly to be wished, though it may be too happy to be hoped. It would produce peace, order, content, and liberty throughout the whole of Italy; and it would elevate that country to the rank of a great Power, united with England by ties of sympathy and interest, a most valuable ally in time of need, a rich and important customer at all times. Her natural resources would be de veloped to the uttermost by the energy of a free people under an enlightened government; her fertility of soil and her exquisite climate would make the increase of her wealth rapid beyond precedent. Since 1848, though oppressed by the burden of a disproportionate taxation and a heavy debt, the kingdom of Sardinia has achieved prosperity and advanced towards wealth with extraordinary speed. Every increase of her territory would diminish the weight of her taxes and increase her resources; while the natural wealth of Central and Southern Italy warrants the belief that their progress would be even more rapid than hers. Ten years of constitutional government, in union with the rest of Italy under the House of Savoy, would utterly change the face of the Neapolitan territory, and convert the most miserable of God's creatures into a happy and contented people. That the Neapolitans are fit for such a government, no one can rationally deny who has fairly watched their history during the last forty years. In 1821 and in 1848 they used their short-lived liberties with remarkable moderation and good sense. They showed neither confusion under the sudden exigencies of a new system, nor extravagance in the first taste of longdesired blessings. They manifested no vindictive remembrance of past wrongs, no exaggerated distrust of rulers who had forfeited all claim to confidence. Indeed, their fault was that of over-trustfulness: they were too willing to forgive and too ready to believe. Even this year they would have forgiven to Francis II. all the crimes and perjuries of his House, if he would have chosen a better way; and if after finding the son as false to his oath (for he swore to the Constitution of 1848) as his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had been, they are now inclined to look elsewhere for deliverance, can we, who Owe our liberties to Revolution, with the memory of 1640 and 1688 before us, pretend to blame them— can we refrain from wishing them God speed? If ever patience and endurance can justify the sufferer who turns at last on the oppressor, the Neapolitans have ample justification. If ever a family justly forfeited a throne by falsehood and tyranny, the Bourbons of Naples deserve to pay that forfeit. A revolution which shall give the people a good government, and place the crown on a worthy head, can alone restore to the Two Sicilies the laws which their kings have set aside, and the order of which the Court has been the chief disturber; and if the blow be struck at the right time and struck successfully, who will regret it for the sake of those whom it will dispossess of the power which they have misused for four genera-tions? Certainly no man who has at heart either the well-being of humanity or the interests of England. For us as for the world, it will be a great gain that Naples should be free; a greater yet should she form part of an Italian nation, fit to rank among the leading Powers of Europe. FRASER'S MAGAZINE. OCTOBER, 1859. BACON'S PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS.* MORALISTS who desire to re buke literary ambition are fond of reminding us of the comparatively few works which survive the age in which they are published, and of the still smaller number which are able to influence remote generations. The fact is as true as it is mortifying. But a scarcely less severe lesson may be derived from the reflection, that of the books which flourish when their authors are long passed away, a great proportion only preserve their continued vitality through causes quite different from those which originally produced it. Authors are proverbial for mistaking the comparative merit of their works; and even if they could be informed which of their offspring are destined to the longest term of popularity, they would not, perhaps, err less respecting the particular quality by which that popularity will ultimately be constituted. Philosophers, in particular, would be astonished to find themselves valued for points of which they took but little heed, and to see the discoveries over which they spent laborious days and sleepless nights cast out into the limbo of impracticable schemes and visionary aspirations. To few only of them has it been given to rule posterity with the same sceptre with which they swayed contemporary minds, and to maintain an influence identical in kind, even if impaired in degree, with that which formed their chief glory while living. Most often has it happened that that which was in its own day a matter of practical utility, becomes in ours one only of historical curiosity; as garments are clothes' to one era, 'costumes' to the next; and the very energy which pushes forward the limits of knowledge, has not seldom furnished the means by which its own special achievements might eventually be superseded. But the most singular consequence that such revolutions of opinion entail, is the change of position which one thinker assumes relatively to another, and the community of fortune which the balance of final appreciation seems to establish among writers of the most dissimilar tendencies. Posterity, like misfortune, makes strange bedfellows; and two men who assuredly never supposed themselves to have anything in common, and one of whom perhaps devoted his whole powers to the destruction of the other's influence, may in the end repose side by side on our shelves, be studied at the same period of our education, be referred to for mutual explanation, and each possess an equal share of our intellectual allegiance. The reason of this is, that, in the cases to which we refer, a writer is cultivated, not so much for the net results which he has actually realized, but for the sake of the method by which he has realized them. The benefit we hope to derive from him is incidental rather than positive; and thus, though the conclusions at which two given writers arrive may be diametrically opposed, they may both be equally valuable as media of mental discipline, and both equally remark The Works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, &c. Collected and edited by James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Denon Heath. Vols. I.-V. [Containing the Philosophical Works.] 1857-1858. VOL. LX. NO. CCCLVIII. CC able as marking critical periods in the progress of the science to which they belong. The revival, to a certain extent, of philosophic studies at the present day, will help to illustrate these remarks in connexion with the subject before us. That metaphysics are neglected, if true in one sense, is not so in another. It is long, probably, since any one attempted to make them the guide of life; nor is it generally supposed by our contemporaries that there are any very new discoveries to be made in that direction. But the numerous philosophical works which have appeared during the last few years, show that, for some purpose or other, a considerable degree of interest is felt in such matters. Exclusive of the class of thinkers who abjure speculative theology in its orthodox form, and consistently endeavour to believe that a constant progress is going on in our conceptions of the Deity correlatively with our advancement in other departments of knowledge, we imagine that there are very many persons who feel the want of some aliment to supply those cravings of the mind which neither history nor the products of imagination are calculated to appease; towhom precision of thought, even in a narrow circle, is more valuable than the most extensive acquirements without it; or who find in the history of human speculation more interesting facts than in any other province of human development. To some minds the relations of ideas seem more worthy of attention than the ideas themselves. They cannot rest without trying to bring them into order and connexion; they feel lost in a maze of particulars, and are never easy till they have reduced all that comes before them to the formula of a general law. Out of the phenomena of history they try to evolve tendencies of thought and types of national development; in literature they view nothing as isolated, but everything as the production of a 'school;' in physics they try to go beyond what is actually established by sober experiment, and to run up the crowning axioms of the sciences into some common principles of mind and matter. In some such bias as this, philosophy must have originally begun, and as the race is much the same as formerly, it is reasonable to suppose that the feeling will still continue to operate. If it does so, some materials or other will naturally be provided for its gratification; and if our view be correct, that method, mental discipline, and the history of opinions are what we now look for in philosophy, rather than any positive conclusions, the former class of materials will include the works of men of very opposite views, but who have this in common, that their thoughts have been enforced with vast power during their lives, and have shown a capacity of self-propagation and development to a remote posterity. The foregoing remarks will have prepared our readers for the point of view from which we approach the consideration of this edition of Bacon. We regard it as a product of the same spirit which has lately given us a theory of knowing and being from Scotland, an analysis of the human mind from the London University, and a system of psychology from another independent thinker; which at Oxford has illustrated the Stagirite both as an ethical, logical, and political philosopher; which has enriched the Encyclopædia Britannica with fresh treatises on similar subjects; which is now preparing at Cambridge a new edition of the works of Plato; and which has just produced an exact and careful issue of the metaphysical lectures of Sir William Hamilton. The names of Ferrier, Bain, Spencer, Spalding, Mansel, Eaton, Congreve, Grant, and Thompson, may not inaptly be placed in juxtaposition with those of Ellis and Spedding. To assert, indeed, that there can be any condition of thought under which Aristotle and Bacon can be taken up for similar purposes, may seem to some persons as paradoxical as to recommend a youth to model his character upon Chesterfield's Letters and the Morte d'Arthur, at one and the same time; or else to be the fruit of a pernicious syncretism which attempts to unite contradictions under the semblance of impartiality, and adopts opinions for their separate attractive 1859.7 Why we study Bacon. ness without deriving them from a really common principle. But there is really no paradox at all in the matter. Bacon intended his position, undoubtedly, to be that of a promoter of physical science, and an uncompromising opponent of Aristotle and the medieval philosophers. But the progress of human thought has falsified his expectations. Whatever share may have been rightly claimed for him as the herald of all that natural science has since done for us, those who have actually done the work have not followed him as their pioneer. The influence he has exercised has been that of disposing men to receive what the new philosophy taught, rather than that of enabling the philosophy itself to acquire something to teach. Hence it has come to pass that the interest with which we study him is almost purely a literary one. We do not go to him for the actual truths he can impart to us; but because we desire to put ourselves in communication with one of the most powerful minds that ever existed. As far as positive result is concerned, the influence of Aristotle at the present day is incomparably greater than that of Bacon. In the way in which men think of poetry, of morals, of reasoning-not to mention politics and rhetoric-the older thinker has left traces seemingly never to be effaced. And it is curious that the most durable results of his rival's labours are also in the science of man rather than that of nature. Both, as regards the external world, have yielded to that fate which sooner or later overtakes all who labour in the path of science without actually reaching the goal-that of being superseded by a more exact approximation to objective truth. And we need not therefore be surprised to find that in an age of keen appreciation of all intellectual merit, of deep research into the past, and minute illustration bestowed on every department of literature, the works of Aristotle, Plato, and Bacon should receive the testimony of an impartial cultivation, and should be made mutually illustrative without reference to the 689 irreconcilability of their views. We may imagine a student of the present day, who should pin his faith wholly upon Comte on the one side, or upon Hegel on the other, and should find the exclusive study of either lead him to the rejection of all other thinkers. But we cannot suppose that there is anyone who disbelieves in the philosopher of antiquity because he has been taught by Bacon to do so. And on the shelves graced by the present edition, we should also expect to find the works of all the men whose empire Bacon would have been most desirous to overthrow. Twelve years have elapsed since the volumes before us were first announced. But the interval has been so well employed, that no one can complain of the delay. We can call to mind no example of more thorough zeal and conscientiousness bestowed on the works of any English classic. The very division of labour which the editors have adopted shows a deep feeling for the magnitude of their task, and the time they have devoted to it is an earnest that it has not been lightly or hastily executed. The erudition of Mr. Ellis is indeed most remarkable. To a profound knowledge of physical science he appears to unite an acquaintance with works of medieval lore now scarcely ever heard of, as well as metaphysical attainments of no ordinary character. The power with which he has grappled with the most abstruse problems of Bacon's philosophy, and the skill with which he has elucidated them, will excite not more admiration for his intellectual grasp, varied learning, and elegant taste, than regret for the pre mature termination of such a career. If anything indeed could reconcile us to his loss, it would be the fact of his having been succeeded by Mr. Spedding, whose immense familiarity with his author, joined with a penetrating keenness of intellect, has enabled him to clear up some of the most obscure points by the best light-that of parallel passages from Bacon himself; while his accuracy is such that we feel as safe in his hands as in those of the most * Mr. Ellis died in the early part of this year. |