nding and proclaiming that they came here as a
check upon their aggressions? Will they oppose them in defence of
Rome, with which they are at war?

Ah! the way of falsehood, the way of treachery,--how dark, how full of
pitfalls and traps! Heaven defend from it all who are not yet engaged
therein!

War near at hand seems to me even more dreadful than I had fancied
it. True, it tries men's souls, lays bare selfishness in undeniable
deformity. Here it has produced much fruit of noble sentiment, noble
act; but still it breeds vice too, drunkenness, mental dissipation,
tears asunder the tenderest ties, lavishes the productions of Earth,
for which her starving poor stretch out their hands in vain, in the
most unprofitable manner. And the ruin that ensues, how terrible! Let
those who have ever passed happy days in Rome grieve to hear that
the beautiful plantations of Villa Borghese--that chief delight and
refreshment of citizens, foreigners, and little children--are laid
low, as far as the obelisk. The fountain, singing alone amid the
fallen groves, cannot be seen and heard without tears; it seems like
some innocent infant calling and crowing amid dead bodies on a field
which battle has strewn with the bodies of those who once cherished
it. The plantations of Villa Salvage on the Tiber, also, the beautiful
trees on the way from St. John Lateran to La Maria Maggiore, the trees
of the Forum, are fallen. Rome is shorn of the locks which lent grace
to her venerable brow. She looks desolate, profaned. I feel what I
never expected to,--as if I might by and by be willing to leave Rome.

Then I have, for the first time, seen what wounded men suffer. The
night of the 30th of April I passed in the hospital, and saw the
terrible agonies of those dying or who needed amputation, felt their
mental pains and longing for the loved ones who were away; for many of
these were Lombards, who had come from the field of Novarra to fight
with a fairer chance,--many were students of the University, who had
enlisted and thrown themselves into the front of the engagement. The
impudent falsehoods of the French general's despatches are incredible.
The French were never decoyed on in any way. They were received with
every possible mark of hostility. They were defeated in open field,
the Garibaldi legion rushing out to meet them; and though they
suffered much from the walls, they sustained themselves nowhere. They
never put up a white flag till they wish