whether this
be true, or whether it be merely subservient to the aristocratical
feeling of England, which is far more opposed to republican movements
than is that of Russia; for in England fear embitters hate. It is
droll to remember our reading in the class-book.

"Ay, down to the dust with them, slaves as they are";--

to think how bitter the English were on the Italians who succumbed,
and see how they hate those who resist. And their cowardice here in
Italy is ludicrous. It is they who run away at the least intimation
of danger,--it is they who invent all the "fe, fo, fum" stories about
Italy,--it is they who write to the Times and elsewhere that they dare
not for their lives stay in Rome, where I, a woman, walk everywhere
alone, and all the little children do the same, with their nurses.
More of this anon.

LETTER XXXII.

PROGRESS OF THE TRAGEDY.--PIUS IX. DISAVOWS LIBERALISM.--OUDINOT,
AND THE ROMAN AUTHORITIES.--SHAME OF FRANCE.--DEVASTATION OF
THE CITY.--COURAGE OF THE PEOPLE.--BOMBS EXTINGUISHED.--A CRISIS
APPROACHING.

Rome, June 21, 1849.

It is now two weeks since the first attack of Oudinot, and as yet we
hear nothing decisive from Paris. I know not yet what news may have
come last night, but by the morning's mail we did not even receive
notice that Lesseps had arrived in Paris.

Whether Lesseps was consciously the servant of all these base
intrigues, time will show. His conduct was boyish and foolish, if it
was not treacherous. The only object seemed to be to create panic, to
agitate, to take possession of Rome somehow, though what to do with
it, if they could get it, the French government would hardly know.

Pius IX., in his allocution of the 29th of April last, has explained
himself fully. He has disavowed every liberal act which ever seemed
to emanate from him, with the exception of the amnesty. He has
shamelessly recalled his refusal to let Austrian blood be shed, while
Roman flows daily at his request. He has implicitly declared that his
future government, could he return, would be absolute despotism,--has
dispelled the last lingering illusion of those still anxious to
apologize for him as only a prisoner now in the hands of the Cardinals
and the king of Naples. The last frail link is broken that bound to
him the people of Rome, and could the French restore him, they must
frankly avow themselves, abandon entirely and fully the position they
took in February, 1848, and declare th