Giusti would have found it difficult to reconcile this attitude with the aspirations for the unity of Italy which he had expressed in his _Stivale_ in 1836, but it soon appeared that Leopold’s constitutionalism was of a piece with the monastic inclinations attributed to invalid devils, and Giusti went back into opposition, more annoyed and dispirited by the follies and vagaries of his own party than by the iniquities of the enemy. The French Revolution of February 1848 gave the upper hand to the Tuscan liberals, who had superabundantly manifested their incapacity ere, in March 1849, the fate of Tuscany was decided on the battlefield of Novara. The heart-broken poet, already suffering from grievous illness, could not survive until the better day, dying on 31st March 1850. _Chi dura vince._ His profession had been that of an advocate, and, until his last days, his life was uneventful except for an unfortunate attachment. It certainly speaks for the lenity of the Tuscan Government that he should not have spent much of it in prison, for his satires from 1833 to 1847 circulated widely in manuscript, and some were printed in Switzerland in his lifetime. They must suffer with posterity for their general relation to temporary circumstances; but Giusti will ever retain the honour of having been the first to apply ordinary Italian speech to the poetical expression of new ideas and new needs, thus enlarging the domain both of language and of literature. The best English translations from Giusti are the brilliant renderings by Mr. W. D. Howells, especially that of the striking poem of _St. Ambrose_, where an Italian is represented as moved to sympathy with the Austrian soldiers by the beauty of _A German anthem that to heaven went On unseen wings, up from the holy fane; It was a prayer, and seemed like a lament, Of such a pensive, grave, pathetic strain, That in my soul it never shall be spent; And how such heavenly harmony in the brain Of those thick-skulled barbarians should dwell, I must confess it passes me to tell._ _In that sad hymn I felt the bitter sweet Of the songs heard in childhood, which the soul Learns from beloved voices, to repeat To its own anguish in the days of dole: A thought of the dear mother, a regret, A longing for repose and love--the whole Anguish of distant exile seemed to run Over my heart and leave it all undone._ _When the strain ceased, it left me pondering Tenderer thoughts, and stronger and more clear; These men, I mused, the self-same despot king Who rules on Slavic and Italian fear, Tears from their homes and arms that round them cling, And drives them slaves thence, to keep as slaves here; From their familiar fields afar they pass, Like herds to winter in some strange morass._