These volumes were already in Odo's hands, and a
manuscript copy of the Odes to Free America was being circulated among
the liberals in Pianura, and had been brought to his notice by Andreoni.
To those hopeful spirits who looked for the near approach of a happier
era, Alfieri was the inspired spokesman of reform, the heaven-sent
prophet who was to lead his country out of bondage. The eyes of the
Italian reformers were fixed with passionate eagerness on the course of
events in England and France. The conclusion of peace between England
and America, recently celebrated in Alfieri's fifth Ode, seemed to the
most sceptical convincing proof that the rights of man were destined to
a speedy triumph throughout the civilised world. It was not of a united
Italy that these enthusiasts dreamed. They were not so much patriots as
philanthropists; for the teachings of Rousseau and his school, while
intensifying the love of man for man, had proportionately weakened the
sense of patriotism, of the interets du clocher. The new man prided
himself on being a citizen of the world, on sympathising as warmly with
the poetic savage of Peru as with his own prosaic and narrow-minded
neighbours. Indeed, the prevalent belief that the savage's mode of life
was much nearer the truth than that of civilised Europeans, made it
appear superfluous to enter into the grievances and difficulties of what
was but a passing phase of human development. To cast off clothes and
codes, and live in a peaceful socialism "under the amiable reign of
Truth and Nature," seemed on the whole much easier than to undertake the
systematic reform of existing abuses.
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