Page:The National Idea in Italian Literature.djvu/46

 It has been well said of Carducci: "Egli senti il presente con animo antico." His hero was Garibaldi, he for whom the sword was the instrument of justice and the symbol of peace. In his odes the embarking of Garibaldi and his thousand volunteers at Scoglio di Quarto is linked with the coming of Aeneas to Italy, and the new Rome invokes the deliverer as novello Romolo. Carducci has Mazzini's vision of the third Rome, the Rome of the People, spreading for a third time among the nations a gospel of civilisation. Italy, whom Rome made one, returns to her mother whom she has freed, and who shows her the monuments, the columns and arches of old:—

But the poet abandons Mazzini's republicanism for the constitutional monarchy of the House of Savoy. In one of his latest odes, Piemonte, he hymns the part played by Piedmont and the "italo Amleto," Charles Albert, in the redemption of Italy; in another, Bicocca di San Giacomo, he 34