etreat were not slack to show a correspondent aversion and contempt.
The towns would not suffer their passage; the hamlets were unwilling
to serve them even with fire and water. They were filled at once with
shame and rage; one officer killed himself, unable to bear it; in the
unreflecting minds of the soldiers, hate sprung up for the rest of
Italy, and especially Rome, which will make them admirable tools of
tyranny in case of civil war.

This was the first great calamity of the war. But apart from the
treachery of the king of Naples and the dereliction of the Pope,
it was impossible it should end thoroughly well. The people were
in earnest, and have shown themselves so; brave, and able to bear
privation. No one should dare, after the proofs of the summer, to
reiterate the taunt, so unfriendly frequent on foreign lips at the
beginning of the contest, that the Italian can boast, shout, and fling
garlands, but not _act_. The Italian always showed himself noble and
brave, even in foreign service, and is doubly so in the cause of his
country. But efficient heads were wanting. The princes were not in
earnest; they were looking at expediency. The Grand Duke, timid and
prudent, wanted to do what was safest for Tuscany; his ministry,
"_Moderate_" and prudent, would have liked to win a great prize at
small risk. They went no farther than the people pulled them. The king
of Sardinia had taken the first bold step, and the idea that treachery
on his part was premeditated cannot be sustained; it arises from the
extraordinary aspect of his measures, and the knowledge that he is not
incapable of treachery, as he proved in early youth. But now it was
only his selfishness that worked to the same results. He fought and
planned, not for Italy, but the house of Savoy, which his Balbis and
Giobertis had so long been prophesying was to reign supreme in the
new great era of Italy. These prophecies he more than half believed,
because they chimed with his ambitious wishes; but he had not soul
enough to realize them; he trusted only in his disciplined troops;
he had not nobleness enough to believe he might rely at all on
the sentiment of the people. For his troops he dared not have good
generals; conscious of meanness and timidity, he shrank from the
approach of able and earnest men; he was inly afraid they would,
in helping Italy, take her and themselves out of his guardianship.
Antonini was insulted, Garibaldi rejected; other experienced lead