a poor servant of Austria.

The Austrian rule is always equally hated, and time, instead of
melting away differences, only makes them more glaring. The Austrian
race have no faculties that can ever enable them to understand the
Italian character; their policy, so well contrived to palsy and
repress for a time, cannot kill, and there is always a force at work
underneath which shall yet, and I think now before long, shake off
the incubus. The Italian nobility have always kept the invader at a
distance; they have not been at all seduced or corrupted by the lures
of pleasure or power, but have shown a passive patriotism highly
honorable to them. In the middle class ferments much thought, and
there is a capacity for effort; in the present system it cannot show
itself, but it is there; thought ferments, and will yet produce a
wine that shall set the Lombard veins on fire when the time for action
shall arrive. The lower classes of the population are in a dull state
indeed. The censorship of the press prevents all easy, natural ways of
instructing them; there are no public meetings, no free access to them
by more instructed and aspiring minds. The Austrian policy is to allow
them a degree of material well-being, and though so much wealth is
drained from, the country for the service of the foreigners, jet
enough must remain on these rich plains comfortably to feed and clothe
the inhabitants. Yet the great moral influence of the Pope's action,
though obstructed in their case, does reach and rouse them, and they,
too, felt the thrill of indignation at the occupation of Ferrara. The
base conduct of the police toward the people, when, at Milan, some
youths were resolute to sing tire hymn in honor of Pius IX., when the
feasts for the Archbishop afforded so legitimate an occasion, roused
all the people to unwonted feeling. The nobles protested, and Austria
had not courage to persist as usual. She could not sustain her police,
who rushed upon a defenceless crowd, that had no share in what excited
their displeasure, except by sympathy, and, driving them like sheep,
wounded them _in the backs_. Austria feels that there is now no
sympathy for her in these matters; that it is not the interest of the
world to sustain her. Her policy is, indeed, too thoroughly organized
to change except by revolution; its scope is to serve, first, a
reigning family instead of the people; second, with the people to
seek a physical in preference to an intelle