Rome.
Miss Cushman has had an attack, but you would not recognise other names.
We are well, however, Pen like a rose, and Robert still expanding.
Dissipations decidedly agree with Robert, there's no denying that,
though he's horribly hypocritical, and 'prefers an evening with me at
home,' which has grown to be a kind of dissipation also.

We are in great heart about the war, as if it were a peace, without need
of war. Arabel writes alarmed about our funded money, which we are not
likely to lose perhaps, precisely because we are _not_ alarmed. The
subject never occurred to me, in fact. I was too absorbed in the general
question--yes, and am.

So it dawns upon you, Sarianna, that things at Rome and at Naples are
not quite what they should be. A certain English reactionary party would
gladly make the Pope a _paratonnerre_ to save Austria, but this won't
do. The poor old innocent Pope would be paralytically harmless but for
the Austrian, who for years has supported the corruptions here against
France; and even the King of Naples would drop flat as a pricked bubble
if Austria had not maintained that iniquity also. We who have lived in
Italy all these years, know the full pestilent meaning of Austria
everywhere. What is suffered in Lombardy _exceeds what is suffered
elsewhere_. Now, God be thanked, here is light and hope of deliverance.
Still you doubt whether the French are free enough themselves to give
freedom! Well, I won't argue the question about what 'freedom' is. We
shall be perfectly satisfied here with French universal suffrage and the
ballot, the very same democratical government which advanced Liberals
are straining for in England. But, however that may be, the Italians are
perfectly contented at being liberated by the French, and entirely
disinclined to wait the chance of being more honorably assisted by their
'free' and virtuous friend on the other side of the hedge (or Channel),
who is employed at present in buttoning up his own pockets lest
peradventure he should lose a shilling: giving dinners though, and the
smaller change, to 'Neapolitan exiles,' whom only this very cry of 'war'
has freed.

Robert and I have been of one mind lately in these things, which
comforts me much. But the chief comfort is--the state of facts.

Massimo d' Azeglio came to see us, and talked nobly, with that noble
head of his. I was far prouder of his coming than of another personal
distinction you will guess at, though I don't pre