ed; and, when Naples rose to declare
the Constitution, the call was responded to from Brundusium to the foot
of the Alps. To crush these attempts to obtain liberty, early in 1821
the Austrians poured their armies into the Peninsula: at first their
coming rather seemed to add energy and resolution to a people long
enslaved. The Piedmontese asserted their freedom; Genoa threw off the
yoke of the King of Sardinia; and, as if in playful imitation, the
people of the little state of Massa and Carrara gave the conge to their
sovereign, and set up a republic.

Tuscany alone was perfectly tranquil. It was said that the Austrian
minister presented a list of sixty Carbonari to the Grand Duke, urging
their imprisonment; and the Grand Duke replied, 'I do not know whether
these sixty men are Carbonari, but I know, if I imprison them, I shall
directly have sixty thousand start up.' But, though the Tuscans had no
desire to disturb the paternal government beneath whose shelter they
slumbered, they regarded the progress of the various Italian revolutions
with intense interest, and hatred for the Austrian was warm in every
bosom. But they had slender hopes; they knew that the Neapolitans would
offer no fit resistance to the regular German troops, and that the
overthrow of the constitution in Naples would act as a decisive blow
against all struggles for liberty in Italy.

We have seen the rise and progress of reform. But the Holy Alliance was
alive and active in those days, and few could dream of the peaceful
triumph of liberty. It seemed then that the armed assertion of freedom
in the South of Europe was the only hope of the liberals, as, if it
prevailed, the nations of the north would imitate the example. Happily
the reverse has proved the fact. The countries accustomed to the
exercise of the privileges of freemen, to a limited extent, have
extended, and are extending, these limits. Freedom and knowledge have
now a chance of proceeding hand in hand; and, if it continue thus, we
may hope for the durability of both. Then, as I have said--in
1821--Shelley, as well as every other lover of liberty, looked upon the
struggles in Spain and Italy as decisive of the destinies of the world,
probably for centuries to come. The interest he took in the progress of
affairs was intense. When Genoa declared itself free, his hopes were at
their highest. Day after day he read the bulletins of the Austrian army,
and sought eagerly to gather tokens of its d