Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Foresti, Eleutario Felice

FORESTI, Eleutario Felice, Italian patriot, b. in Conselice, near Ferrara, Italy, in 1793; d. in Genoa, Italy, 14 Sept., 1858. He was graduated at the University of Bologna, studied law, and entered on the practice of his profession in Ferrara. In 1816 he was made praetor of Crespino, and soon entered prominently into political affairs. In 1816 he became a member of the Carbonari, and was arrested and imprisoned. After two years in a dungeon, and an unsuccessful attempt to take his own life, he was condemned to die on the public square of Venice, but when, with others, he was taken out for execution, the sentence was changed to “carcere duro” in Spielberg for twenty years. From the scaffold he and his companions' were transferred to the island of St. Michael. On the death of the reigning emperor, Foresti and others were liberated, but condemned to perpetual exile in the United States, whither they were shortly sent. Soon after his arrival in New York, Foresti became professor of Italian in Columbia, and was a popular teacher for more than twenty years. In 1858 he received the appointment of U. S. consul at Genoa. The degree of LL. D. was conferred on him. He wrote “Twenty Years in the Dungeons of Austria,” for the “Watchman and Crusader” in 1856, and also published “Chrestomazia Italiana” (1846) and edited an edition of Ollendorff's Italian grammar (New York, 1846).