or the
music (one of the proofs of your multiform faculty) and for your kind
and welcome letter, which I have delayed to thank you for. My body
lags so behind my soul always, and especially of late, that you must
consider my disadvantages in whatever fault is committed by me trying
to forgive it.

"Certainly we differ in our estimate of the Italian situation, while
loving and desiring for Italy up to the same height and with the same
heart.

"For me I persist in looking to _facts_ rather than to words official
or unofficial, and in repeating that, 'whereas we were bound, now we
are free.'

"'I think, therefore, I am.' _Cogito, ergo sum_, was, you know, an old
formula. Italy thinks (aloud) at Florence and Bologna; therefore she
_is_. And how did that happen? Could it have happened last year,
with the Austrians at Bologna, and ready (at a sign) to precipitate
themselves into Tuscany? Could it have happened previous to the French
intervention? And could it happen _now_ if France used the power she
has in Italy _against_ Italy? Why is it that the _Times_ newspaper,
which declared ... first that the elections were to be prevented
by France, and next that they were to be tampered with ... is not
justified before our eyes? I appeal to your sober judgment ... if
indeed the Emperor Napoleon _desires the restoration of the Dukes!!_
Is he not all the more admirable for being loyal and holding his hand
off while he has fifty thousand men ready to 'protect' us all and
prevent the exercise of the people's sovereignty? And he a despot (so
called) and accustomed to carry out his desires. Instead of which
Tuscans and Romagnoli, Parma and Modena, have had every opportunity
allowed them to combine, carry their elections, and express their
full minds in assemblies, till the case becomes so complicated and
strengthened that her enemies for the most part despair.

"The qualities shown by the Italians--the calm, the dignity, the
intelligence, the constancy ... I am as far from not understanding
the weight of these virtues as from not admiring them. But the
_opportunity_ for exercising them comes from the Emperor Napoleon, and
it is good and just for us all to remember this while we admire the
most.

"So at least I think; and the Italian official bodies have always
admitted it, though individuals seem to me to be too much
influenced by the suspicions and calumnies thrown out by foreign
journals--English, Prussian, Austrian, and others-