, at least a strong sentiment for the
birthland. In Cavour this sentiment was, indeed, to widen even in
boyhood, but it widened into Italian patriotism, not into sterile
cosmopolitanism.

In one respect Cavour was brought up according to the strictest of
old Piedmontese conventions. No one forgot that he was a younger
son. Gustave, the elder brother, received a classical education, and
acquired a strong taste for metaphysics. He became a thinker rather
than a man of action, and was one of the first and staunchest friends
of the philosopher-theologian Rosmini, whose attempts to reconcile
religion and philosophy led him into a bitter struggle with Rome. For
Camille another sort of life was planned. It was decided that he must
"do something," and at the age of ten he was sent to the Military
Academy at Turin. He did not like it, but it was better for him than
if he had been kept at home. Mathematics were well taught at the
Academy, and in this branch he soon outstripped all his schoolfellows.
He himself always spoke of his mathematical studies as having been of
great service in forming the habit of precise thought; from the study
of triangles, he said, he went on to the study of men and things. On
the other hand the boys were taught little Latin and less Greek, and
nothing was done to furnish them with the basis of a literary style, a
fact always deplored by Cavour, who insisted that the art of writing
ought to be acquired when young; otherwise it could not be practised
without labour, and never with entire success. He once said that
he found it easier to make Italy than a sonnet. In his own case he
regretted never having become a ready writer, because he knew that the
pen is a force; he held that a man should cultivate every means at his
disposal to increase his power.

In 1824, when Charles Albert returned to Piedmont after three years'
exile in consequence of the part he was suspected of having taken in
the abortive revolution of 1821, one of his first acts was to obtain a
nomination for young Cavour as page in the royal household. The pages
were all inmates of the Military Academy, where the expense of their
education was borne by the king after they received the appointment.
The Count d'Auzers, a strong Legitimist, was one of the oldest friends
of the Prince of Carignano, who was regarded at the Palazzo Cavour as
the victim of false accusations of liberalism. Charles Albert always
seemed to reflect the opinions of t