At the picture of the abject
sufferings of their common country, the whole audience rose and
repeated with tears of rage:
"Why should heaven smile so glorious over
The land of our infamous woe?"
By the year 1837 had begun the singular illusion of the Italians, that
their freedom and unity were to be accomplished through a liberal and
patriotic Pope. Niccolini, however, never was cheated by it, though he
was very much disgusted, and he retired, not only from the political
agitation, but almost from the world. He was seldom seen upon the
street, but to those who had access to him he did not fail to express
all the contempt and distrust he felt. "A liberal Pope! a liberal
Pope!" he said, with a scornful enjoyment of that contradiction in
terms. He was thoroughly Florentine and Tuscan in his anti-papal
spirit, and he was faithful in it to the tradition of Dante, Petrarch,
Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and Alfieri, who all doubted and combated
the papal influence as necessarily fatal to Italian hopes. In 1843 he
published his great and principal tragedy, _Arnaldo da Brescia_, which
was a response to the ideas of the papal school of patriots. In due
time Pius IX. justified Niccolini, and all others that distrusted him,
by turning his back upon the revolution, which belief in him, more
than anything else, had excited.
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