He said:
"Romans, do you wish to go; do you wish to go with all your hearts?
If so, you _may_, and those who do not wish to go themselves may give
money. To those who will go, the government gives bread and fifteen
baiocchi a day." The people cried: "We wish to go, but we do not wish
so much; the government is very poor; we can live on a paul a day."
The princes answered by giving, one sixty thousand, others twenty,
fifteen, ten thousand dollars. The people responded by giving at
the benches which are opened in the piazzas literally everything;
street-pedlers gave the gains of each day; women gave every
ornament,--from the splendid necklace and bracelet down to the poorest
bit of coral; servant-girls gave five pauls, two pauls, even half a
paul, if they had no more. A man all in rags gave two pauls. "It
is," said he, "all I have." "Then," said Torlonia, "take from me this
dollar." The man of rags thanked him warmly, and handed that also to
the bench, which refused to receive it. "No! _that_ must stay with
you," shouted all present. These are the people whom the traveller
accuses of being unable to rise above selfish considerations;--a
nation rich and glorious by nature, capable, like all nations, all
men, of being degraded by slavery, capable, as are few nations, few
men, of kindling into pure flame at the touch of a ray from the Sun of
Truth, of Life.

The two or three days that followed, the troops were marching about by
detachments, followed always by the people, to the Ponte Molle, often
farther. The women wept; for the habits of the Romans are so domestic,
that it seemed a great thing to have their sons and lovers gone even
for a few months. The English--or at least those of the illiberal,
bristling nature too often met here, which casts out its porcupine
quills against everything like enthusiasm (of the more generous Saxon
blood I know some noble examples)--laughed at all this. They have said
that this people would not fight; when the Sicilians, men and women,
did so nobly, they said: "O, the Sicilians are quite unlike the
Italians; you will see, when the struggle comes on in Lombardy, they
cannot resist the Austrian force a moment." I said: "That force is
only physical; do not you think a sentiment can sustain them?" They
replied: "All stuff and poetry; it will fade the moment their blood
flows." When the news came that the Milanese, men and women, fight as
the Sicilians did, they said: "Well, the Lombards are a