fish enterprise are sometimes set at naught by aid which seems
to descend from a higher sphere. Even old pagans believed in that,
you know; and I was born in America, Christianized by the
Puritans,--America, freed by eight years' patient suffering, poverty,
and struggle,--America, so cheered in dark days by one spark of
sympathy from a foreign shore,--America, first "recognized" by
Lafayette. I saw him when traversing our country, then great, rich,
and free. Millions of men who owed in part their happiness to what, no
doubt, was once sneered at as romantic sympathy, threw garlands in his
path. It is natural that I should have some faith.

Send, dear America! to thy ambassadors a talisman precious beyond all
that boasted gold of California. Let it loose his tongue to cry, "Long
live the Republic, and may God bless the cause of the people, the
brotherhood of nations and of men,--equality of rights for all." _Viva
America!_

Hail to my country! May she live a free, a glorious, a loving
life, and not perish, like the old dominions, from, the leprosy of
selfishness.

Evening.

I am alone in the ghostly silence of a great house, not long since
full of gay faces and echoing with gay voices, now deserted by every
one but me,--for almost all foreigners are gone now, driven by force
either of the summer heats or the foe. I hear all the Spaniards are
going now,--that twenty-one have taken passports to-day; why that is,
I do not know.

I shall not go till the last moment; my only fear is of France. I
cannot think in any case there would be found men willing to damn
themselves to latest posterity by bombarding Rome. Other cities they
may treat thus, careless of destroying the innocent and helpless, the
babe and old grandsire who cannot war against them. But Rome, precious
inheritance of mankind,--will they run the risk of marring her shrined
treasures? Would they dare do it?

Two of the balls that struck St. Peter's have been sent to Pius IX. by
his children, who find themselves so much less "beloved" than were the
Austrians.

These two days, days of solemn festivity in the calends of the Church,
have been duly kept, and the population looks cheerful as it swarms
through the streets. The order of Rome, thronged as it is with troops,
is amazing. I go from one end to the other, and amid the poorest and
most barbarous of the population, (barbarously ignorant, I mean,)
alone and on foot. My friends send out their little chil