mes, passed like a wave in a sea of
black, making the piazza ring with the shrill blasts of their trumpets,
which seemed shouts of joy. But their trumpeting was drowned by a broken
and hollow rumble, which announced the field artillery; and then the
latter passed in triumph, seated on their lofty caissons, drawn by three
hundred pairs of fiery horses,--those fine soldiers with yellow lacings,
and their long cannons of brass and steel gleaming on the light
carriages, as they jolted and resounded, and made the earth tremble.

And then came the mountain artillery, slowly, gravely, beautiful in its
laborious and rude semblance, with its large soldiers, with its
powerful mules--that mountain artillery which carries dismay and death
wherever man can set his foot. And last of all, the fine regiment of the
Genoese cavalry, which had wheeled down like a whirlwind on ten fields
of battle, from Santa Lucia to Villafranca, passed at a gallop, with
their helmets glittering in the sun, their lances erect, their pennons
floating in the air, sparkling with gold and silver, filling the air
with jingling and neighing.

"How beautiful it is!" I exclaimed. My father almost reproved me for
these words, and said to me:--

"You are not to regard the army as a fine spectacle. All these young
men, so full of strength and hope, may be called upon any day to defend
our country, and fall in a few hours, crushed to fragments by bullets
and grape-shot. Every time that you hear the cry, at a feast, 'Hurrah
for the army! hurrah for Italy!' picture to yourself, behind the
regiments which are passing, a plain covered with corpses, and inundated
with blood, and then the greeting to the army will proceed from the very
depths of your heart, and the image of Italy will appear to you more
severe and grand."

ITALY.

Tuesday, 14th.

Salute your country thus, on days of festival: "Italy, my country,
dear and noble land, where my father and my mother were born, and
where they will be buried, where I hope to live and die, where my
children will grow up and die; beautiful Italy, great and glorious
for many centuries, united and free for a few years; thou who didst
disseminate so great a light of intellect divine over the world,
and for whom so many valiant men have died on the battle-field,
and so many heroes on the gallows; august mother of three hundred
cities, and thirty millions of sons; I, a child, wh