is, then look back how the Romans have
fought in 1849, with a heroism scarcely paralleled in the most glorious
day of ancient Rome. And let me tell, in addition, upon the certainty of
my own positive knowledge, that the world never yet has seen such
complete and extensive revolutionary organization as that of Italy
to-day--ready to burst out into an irresistible storm at the slightest
opportunity, and powerful enough to make that opportunity, if either
foreign interference is checked, or the interfering foreigners occupied
at home. The revolution of 1848 has revealed and developed the warlike
spirit of Italy. Except a few wealthy proprietors, already very
uninfluential, the most singular unanimity exists, both as to aim and to
means. There is no shade of difference of opinion, either to what is to
be done or how to do it. All are unanimous in their devotion to the
Union and Independence of Italy. With France or against France, by the
sword, at all sacrifices, without compromise, they are bent on renewing
the battle over and over again, with the confidence that, even without
aid, they will triumph in the long run.

The difficulty in Italy is not how to make a revolution, but how to
prevent its untimely outbreak; and still even in that respect there is
such a complete discipline as the world never yet has seen. In Rome,
Romagna, Lombardy, Venice, Sicily, and all the middle Italy, there
exists an invisible government, whose influence is everywhere
discernible. It has eyes and hands in all departments of public service,
in all classes of society--it has its taxes voluntarily paid--its
organized force, its police, its newspapers regularly printed and
circulated, though the possession of a single copy would send the holder
to the galleys. The officers of the existing government convey the
missives of the invisible government, the diligences transport its
agents. One line from one of these agents opens to you the galleries of
art, on prohibited days--gives you the protection of uniformed
officials.

That this is the condition of all Italy is shown on one side, in the
fact that there the King of Naples holds fettered in dungeons 25,000
patriots, and Radetzky has sacrificed nearly 4,000 political martyrs on
the scaffold; still the scaffold continues to be watered with blood, and
still the dungeons receive new victims, evidently proving what spirit
exists in the people of Italy.

And still Americans doubt that we are on the ev