Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 127.djvu/428

416 leaving a few bodies stretched on the plain. In a few minutes they have all disappeared, and the attacking force is seen emerging from the trees towards the city and advancing in skirmishing order up to the court-house. Amongst them can be distinguished in the dusk an officer on horseback, a European by his helmet. He looks ahead for an instant, and then hearing the cheers set up by the garrison on catching sight of him, gallops up to the gateway, the barrier at which is pulled down by eager hands to make way for his horse, and in another instant he rides among them within, and is surrounded by the excited group, each trying to grasp his hand, while they shout to the others in the building, who with some of the ladies may be seen hurrying down the walk. The siege is over, the garrison is relieved.

The horseman was Kirke. "You thought I meant to go off and leave you in the lurch," he said smiling, in reply to some of the numerous questions with which he was assailed. "We could have come down to the south and cleared the place in a jiffey, I know, but that would have driven the enemy back into the city, and it would have been a devil of a job to dislodge them. No, I determined to take them in rear; and besides, Falkland got news that a large party in the city were prepared to join our side and release the nawab, if we only showed ourselves near the palace, so we thought we had better begin at that end and work downwards; and very well the thing has been done. I wish you could have seen my fellows skirmishing through the streets, with nothing but their swords and carbines."

"And Falkland?" cried the eager group of listeners, who had forgotten him for the moment in the excitement of deliverance; "where is Falkland?"

"Ah!" said Kirke, looking grave as he dismounted. Falkland had been killed, leading the advance through the town. Who will break the news to his wife?

 

 From Macmillan's Magazine.

of the chief features of the early Renaissance is its entire simplicity and straightforward earnestness. It was not perplexed by fear lest it might awaken antagonism, for it was not conscious of any opposition to existing systems of life. It appealed only to men's desire to make the best they could of themselves. It called upon them to know the value of the treasures which were really theirs, but which they had let slip from careless hands. Around them were the riches of the past, the literature and art of Italy's golden days, which a wave of barbarism had scattered and hidden too long from the eyes of Italy's true sons. It was an object worthy of the best energies of the noblest minds to gather together all that could be saved from the wreck, to cleanse the remnants carefully and tenderly from the dirt and rubbish with which they had been encrusted, and then set them lovingly before young minds, which might learn from them all that was noble in the life of the past.

This was the spirit of the early Renaissance in Italy, It had no hidden meaning, it cherished nothing which it need be afraid to tell abroad. It combated nothing in existing systems, because it made no claim to have a system of its own. It went along its own course with a deep belief in man's perfections, and a deep desire to cultivate man's nature into all that it could become.

It is true that a time came when the spiritual enfranchisement brought about by the Renaissance began to degenerate into license. This is a danger which all movements towards greater freedom have always had to face. It is hard to pour new wine into old bottles, and there is always the same twofold danger — that the bottles will burst, and the wine be spilt. It was so with Italy of the later fifteenth century. Spiritual freedom tended to run riot; the self-assertion of the individual loosened the bonds of society; mental subtilty pared away the obligations of morality; religion was threatened with gradual dissolution before the gentle solvent of graceful and playful criticism. Culture had become a source of weakness rather than of strength. The Italian mind had lost its beliefs, and with its beliefs had lost all meaning. Under the hard rule of the foreigner, and under the galling fetters of the old dogmatic system, restored as a harsh despot, and ruling no longer as an indulgent master, Italy was doomed to learn, by three centuries of silent suffering, how freedom could be woven into the web of daily life.

Yet her experience had not been in vain. In the long years of her own darkness she still might feel that the torch which she had kindled was blazing steadily, if not brightly, in other more favoured