Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 43.djvu/188

 measure which had the additional advantage of establishing the position of the museum as a recognised branch of the civil service. The staff expressed their sense of obligation in the presentation on different occasions of Panizzi's bust by Marochetti and portrait by Watts, both of which are deposited in the museum. His resignation took place in June 1866. He had wished to resign a year earlier, but retained his post for a time in deference to the representations of the trustees.

During the whole of his official career at the museum Panizzi had lived a second life of incessant occupation with politics, especially as they affected the movement for the liberation of Italy, and he had attained to great influence through his association with two very dissimilar classes of people—Italian patriots and whig ministers. He enjoyed the full confidence of Russell, Palmerston, and Clarendon, and as early as 1845 effected a temporary reconciliation between Thiers and Palmerston. Thiers wrote him confidential letters on the Spanish marriages, and his replies may rank as state papers. This influence was usefully exerted on behalf of his own country. He had been a Carbonaro when conspiracy afforded the only outlet for patriotism, but had afterwards rallied cordially to the house of Savoy, and concurred in all essentials with the policy of his friend Cavour. When anything in the proceedings of the Italian patriots alarmed the English government, Panizzi was always at hand to explain and extenuate, and this interposition continued until it was no longer needed. Even when Italian freedom had been won, Panizzi was engaged to exercise a wholesome supervision over Garibaldi during the latter's visit to England. The most dramatic episode of his political activity was his championship of the Neapolitan state prisoners, whose cause he stimulated Mr. Gladstone to undertake. He went to Naples at considerable personal risk to inquire into their case, and, when his efforts on the spot proved fruitless, organised, partly at his own expense, an elaborate scheme for their escape. ‘For four years,’ says Mr. Cartwright in the ‘Quarterly Review,’ ‘he clung to his idea, collected by indefatigable energy the means necessary for its realisation, and finally brought it to the verge of execution. No incident in his life is anything like so illustrative of his power for bold conception, and for making men and things bend before his steady, persistent, and subtle will.’ At a later period he seemed likely to play a part in French politics, having been introduced by his friend Prosper Mérimée into the inmost circle around Napoleon III with whom he spent a considerable time at Biarritz. But, although he was much caressed, and himself conceived a warm attachment to the emperor, the sturdiness of his Italian patriotism seems to have proved unpalatable. Cavour wished to make him director of public instruction, but he refused to be drawn away from England, although he accepted an Italian senatorship.

Panizzi's last years were passed in retirement at his London residence, 31 Bloomsbury Square, almost in the shadow of the museum. Their chief events were an all but fatal illness early in 1868, and the distinction of K.C.B. conferred upon him in 1869. Some few years later, at a suggestion from high quarters, he elaborated, with all his old energy, a scheme for placing the South Kensington Museum under the administration of the trustees of the British Museum, which was discussed for a time, but produced no result. His last years were severely tried by bodily afflictions, but cheered by the attentions of many old friends, among whom Mr. Gladstone was conspicuous. He died on 8 April 1879, and was interred at St. Mary's catholic cemetery, Kensal Green. His portrait and bust at the museum have been mentioned. Another portrait, and a very fine one, by Watts, painted about 1850, is at Holland House, and Panizzi's appearance in the latter years of his life is well conveyed in the etching by Mr. Louis Fagan, prefixed to his biography.

Panizzi was unquestionably a very great man. Had Italy been a free country in his youth, he would have entered public life and risen to the highest honours of the state. Diverted to a narrower sphere, his energies sufficed to regenerate and remodel a great institution, which but for him might long have lagged behind the requirements of the age. His services to the museum are to be measured, not so much by what he actually effected for it, great as some of these achievements were, but by the new spirit which he infused into it, the spring of all that it has done and is doing after him. His principles of administration have been thus summarised: (1) The museum is not a show, but an institution for the diffusion of culture. (2) It is a department of the civil service, and should be conducted in the spirit of other public departments. (3) It should be managed with the utmost possible liberality. Views like these were congenial to a nature whose main attribute was magnanimity. Except for an occasional pettiness in hunting and worrying small offenders, Panizzi's faults, equally with his merits, belonged to a warm and impetuous nature, capable of any exer-