A Discourse on the Life, Character, and Policy of Count Cavour.  Delivered in the Hall of the New York Historical Society, February 20, 1862.  By VINCENZO BOTTA, Ph.D., Professor of Italian Literature in the New York University, late Member of the Parliament, and Professor of Philosophy in the Colleges of Sardinia.  New York:  G.P.  Putnam. 8vo. pp. 108.

This is a most admirable tribute to one of the greatest men of our age, by a writer singularly well qualified in all respects to do justice to his rich and comprehensive theme.  Professor Botta is a native of Northern Italy, in the first place, and thus by inheritance and natural transmission is heir to a great deal of knowledge as to the important movements of which Cavour was the mainspring, which a foreigner could acquire only by diligent study and inquiry.  In the next place, he has not been exclusively a secluded student, but he has taken part in the great political drama which he commemorates, and has been brought into personal relations with the illustrious man whose worth he here sets forth with such ample knowledge, such generous devotion, such patriotic fervor.  And lastly, he is a man of distinguished literary ability, wielding the language of his adopted country with an ease and grace which hardly leave a suspicion that he was not writing his vernacular tongue.  A namesake of his—­whether a relation or not, we are not informed—­has written “in very choice Italian” a history of the American Revolution; and the work before us, relating in such excellent English the leading events of a glorious Italian revolution, is a partial payment of the debt of gratitude contracted by the publication of that classical production.

But a writer of inferior opportunities and inferior capacity to Professor Botta could hardly have failed to produce an attractive and interesting work, with such a subject.  There never was a life which stood less in need of the embellishments of rhetoric, which could rest more confidently and securely upon its plain, unvarnished truth, than that of Count Cavour.  He was a man of the highest order of greatness; and when we have said that, we have also said that he was a man of simplicity, directness, and transparency.  A man of the first class is always easily interpreted and understood.  The biographer of Cavour has nothing to do but to recount simply and consecutively what he said and what he did, and his task is accomplished:  no great statesman has less need of apology or justification; no one’s name is less associated with doubtful acts or questionable policy.  His ends were not more noble than was the path in which he moved towards them direct.  Professor Botta has fully comprehended the advantages derived from the nature of his subject, and has confined himself to the task of relating in simple and vigorous English the life and acts of Cavour from his birth to his death.  He has given us a rapid and condensed summary, but nothing of importance