Thus much have we written to show the state of Naples at the time to which our biography appertains. Yet this brief sketch of the position would be incomplete did we altogether ignore the two patriots, Poerio and Settembrini, who, not merely on account of their notoriety as chiefs of the Liberal party, but as friends both of Panizzi and Mr. Gladstone, call for some especial notice in these pages. Whoever has studied the history of Italy, more especially the history of the country in these latter times, will have learnt that Italian unity—the zeal for which had, during all the centuries between King Arduinus and Victor Emmanuel II., never become extinguished—was not accomplished by the efforts of any one individual. Amongst the number of those in the highest rank who devoted their lives to the achievement of the noble end, stand Poerio and Settembrini. Their patriotism extended beyond the circumscription of their native town, province, or State; they felt that each subordinate nationality must blend with the others, to enable their common Italy to take her due place in the assembly of nations—to speak with undivided voice on the affairs of Europe; to be, in fact, the one Italy of their aspirations—strong because united. For this, while their individual designations were still Modenese, Neapolitans, Venetians, or what not, they must be, over and above all, Italians. [Illustration] Poerio was born at Naples in 1803. He afterwards became a lawyer, and for some time during the troubled reign of Ferdinand was, at least when at liberty, the leader of the “Left” in the Neapolitan Parliament. The term “a chequered life” might fairly be used as expressive of such a career; were it not that his undertakings, having all the same end in view, in which he was almost incessantly engaged, and the perpetual series of arrests and imprisonments which he suffered, imparted as it were, a melancholy uniformity to his career. In 1831 the crown of Italy was offered by the patriots of the Romagno to Ferdinand II. That monarch, probably feeling an innate disability to govern constitutionally, or otherwise than according to the dictates of his own will, a condition doubtless affixed to the tender, declined the proffered gift. What he might have done had he accepted, must remain in the realm of conjecture; his refusal to lend his aid to the settlement of the country’s deplorably unsettled state caused plot upon plot to spring up on all sides. The name _Liberali_ was now first given to the opponents of the King. These were unceasing in preaching to the people, according to their light, the blessings of Constitutional Government. If their skill in politics, as may reasonably be supposed, was small, their honesty and love of country were large; and assuredly no form which they may have conceived, however crude, could have equalled in weakness and depravity the various petty tyrannies by which their country was distracted.