Peard's words reveal with exactitude the deficiency which lay at the
root of all the blunders, follies, and imprudence which rendered his
career less largely beneficent for Italy than it might have been.
"He had no judgment of character," and was too honest to believe in
knavery. It must be added that he was too little intelligent to detect
it, or to estimate the consequences of it. Of any large views of
social life, or of the means by which, and the objects for which, men
should be governed, he was as innocent as a baby. In a word, he was
not an intellectual man. All the high qualities which placed him on
the pinnacle he occupied were qualities of the heart and not of the
head. They availed with admirable success to fit him for exercising a
supreme influence over men, especially young men, in the field, and
for all the duties of a guerilla leader. They would not have sufficed
to make him a great commander of armies; and did still less fit him
for becoming a political leader.
Whom next shall I present to the reader from the portrait gallery of
my reminiscences?
Come forward, Franz Pulszky, most genial, most large-hearted of
philosophers and friends!--I can't say "guides," for though he was
both the first, he was not the last, differing widely as we did
upon--perhaps not most, but at all events--many large subjects.
I had known the lady whom Pulszky married in Vienna many years
previously, and long before he knew her.
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