He had numerous children, but many of them predeceased him. His eldest daughter married Massimo d'Azeglio.
After the Italian victories of 1859, he was elected a member of the Senate assembled at Turin, but he only attended its debates on two occasions, probably owing to advancing age. He was offered high dignities and the medals of many Orders; but he refused them all, and lived in simple retirement, sufficiently distinguished by his renown, and by the esteem accorded to his amiable and benevolent character. He died on the 22nd of May, 1873, and Milan accompanied her poet to the grave with magnificent obsequies.
Turning from the man to his works, we find both his prose and his poetry characterized by a noble spirit of repose. There is nothing stormy or angry in his writings, for there was nothing to disturb or to embitter his mind. He resemble Goethe in the cloudless serenity of his intellect, though he may not equal him in the rarer attributes of genius. It was probably this very repose that militated against his success as a dramatist, for if they did not present so faithful a picture of an historical epoch, his two tragedies would hardly deserve the attention they received.
This happy peace of mind enabled him to reproduce very clearly what he observed and imagined. It is, therefore, no cause for wonder that when he devoted the powers of his mind to the production of an historical novel, he should have given a masterpiece to the world. The story is interesting. We follow the vicissitudes of the lovers with breathless attention. The subject is well fitted to the author's powers. He writes of localities among which he lived, and of times, the history of which he had profoundly studied. The descriptions never fail to be vivid and accurate, and the skill with which he masses together great events cannot be too highly extolled. Nothing could be finer than the description of the plague of Milan, and of the popular disturbances. Nor is he less admirable in the delineation of character. The portrait of the Friar would be alone sufficient to show his mastery in that line. The style has its beauties, but even in this most successful work of the Nineteenth Century we notice the same peculiarities as in his dramas; the characters say what they ought to say, but they do not always say it in a striking manner. Little as he resembled Leopardi, he was like him in a certain indifference to ornament which sometimes degenerates into poverty.