courage, where they have suffered with a noble
patience. Some of the poorer men, who rise bereft even of the right
arm,--one having lost both the right arm and the right leg,--I could
have provided for with a small sum. Could I have sold my hair, or
blood from my arm, I would have done it. Had any of the rich Americans
remained in Rome, they would have given it to me; they helped nobly at
first, in the service of the hospitals, when there was far less need;
but they had all gone. What would I have given that I could have
spoken to one of the Lawrences, or the Phillipses; they could and
would have saved the misery. These poor men are left helpless in
the power of a mean and vindictive foe. You felt so oppressed in the
slave-states; imagine what I felt at seeing all the noblest youth, all
the genius of this dear land, again enslaved.

TO W.H.C.

_Rieti, Aug_. 28, 1849.--You say, you are glad I have had this great
opportunity for carrying out my principles. Would it were so! I found
myself inferior in courage and fortitude to the occasion. I knew not
how to bear the havoc and anguish incident to the struggle for these
principles. I rejoiced that it lay not with me to cut down the trees,
to destroy the Elysian gardens, for the defence of Rome; I do not know
that I could have done it. And the sight of these far nobler growths,
the beautiful young men, mown down in their stately prime, became too
much for me. I forget the great ideas, to sympathize with the poor
mothers, who had nursed their precious forms, only to see them
all lopped and gashed. You say, I sustained them; often have they
sustained my courage: one, kissing the pieces of bone that were so
painfully extracted from his arm, hanging them round his neck to be
worn as the true relics of to-day; mementoes that he also had done and
borne something for his country and the hopes of humanity. One fair
young man, who is made a cripple for life, clasped my hand as he saw
me crying over the spasms I could not relieve, and faintly cried,
"Viva l'Italia." "Think only, _cara bona donna_" said a poor wounded
soldier, "that I can always wear my uniform on _festas_, just as it is
now, with the holes where the balls went through, for a memory." "God
is good; God knows," they often said to me, when I had not a word to
cheer them.

THE WIFE AND MOTHER.[A]

Beneath the ruins of the Roman Republic, how many private fortunes
were buried! and among these victims wa