AZEGLIO, Massimo Taparelli, Marquis d , , an eminent Italian author and statesman, was born in October 1798, at Turin. He was descended from an ancient and noble family of Piedmont, and was the son of a military officer, who, when the subject of this notice was in his fifteenth year, was appointed ambassador to Rome. The boy went with him, and, being thus introduced to the magnificent works of art for which the Eternal City is famous, contracted a love for painting, as well as for music. He desired to become a painter, and, although his studies were for a time interrupted by his receiving a commission in a Piedmontese cavalry regiment, and by a subsequent illness, brought on by the severity of his scientific investigations and resulting in his quitting the service, he eventually returned to Rome, and, with some difficulty, obtained his father’s permission to devote himself to art. He remained at the Papal capital eight years, and acquired great skill and some fame as a landscape-painter. At the close of that period events directed his mind into other channels. His father died in 1830, and the younger Azeglio then removed to Milan, where he became acquainted with Alessandro Manzoni, the poet and novelist, whose daughter he married. In this way his thoughts were turned towards literature and politics. At that time, Italy was profoundly agitated by the views of the national and liberal party. The country was divided into several distinct states, of which the greater number, even of those that were nominally independent, were under the influence of Austria. Lombardy and Venetia formed parts of the Austrian dominions. The petty monarchies of the north were little better than vassals to the house of Haps-burg; the Papacy, in the centre, was opposed to all national ...