the subterranean forces at work in the kingdom
of the Two Sicilies, in the States of the Church, and in truth all over
the Peninsula. The protracted struggle that had begun after the
establishment of Austrian domination in the Peninsula in 1815, and was
at last to end in the construction of an Italian kingdom--the most
wonderful political transformation of the century--seemed after the
fatal crisis of Novara (1849) further than ever from a close. Now was
the morrow of the vast failures and disenchantments of 1848. Jesuits and
absolutists were once more masters, and reaction again alternated with
conspiracy, risings, desperate carbonari plots. Mazzini, four years
older than Mr. Gladstone, and Cavour, a year his junior, were directing
in widely different ways, the one the revolutionary movement of Young
Italy, the other the constitutional movement of the Italian
Resurrection. The scene presented brutal repression on the one hand; on
the other a chaos of republicans and monarchists, unitarians and
federalists, frenzied idealists and sedate economists, wild ultras and
men of the sober middle course. In the midst was the pope, the august
shadow, not long before the centre, now once again the foe, of his
countrymen's aspirations after freedom and a purer glimpse of the lights
of the sun. The evolution of this extraordinary historic drama, to which
passion, genius, hope, contrivance, stratagem, and force contributed
alike the highest and the lowest elements in human nature and the growth
of states, was to be one of the most sincere of Mr. Gladstone's
interests for the rest of his life.

SPECTACLE OF MISRULE

As we shall see, he was at first and he long remained untouched by the
idea of Italian unity and Italy a nation. He met some thirty or more
Italian gentlemen in society at Naples, of whom seven or eight only were
in any sense liberals, and not one of them a republican. It was now that
he made the acquaintance of Lacaita, afterwards so valued a friend of
his, and so well known in many circles in England for his geniality,
cultivation, and enlightenment. He was the legal adviser to the British
embassy; he met Mr. Gladstone constantly; they talked politics and
literature day and night, 'under the acacias and palms, between the
fountains and statues of the Villa Reale, looking now to the sea, now to
the world of fashion in the Corso.' Here Lacaita first opened the
traveller's eyes to the condition of t