ir wishes known. Some are
French, some Germans, many Poles. Indeed, I am afraid it is too true
that there were comparatively few Romans among them. This young lady
passed several nights there.

Should I never return, and sometimes I despair of doing so, it seems
so far off,--so difficult, I am caught in such a net of ties here,--if
ever you know of my life here, I think you will only wonder at the
constancy with which I have sustained myself,--the degree of profit to
which, amid great difficulties, I have put the time,--at least in the
way of observation. Meanwhile, love me all you can. Let me feel that,
amid the fearful agitations of the world, there are pure hands, with
healthful, even pulse, stretched out toward me, if I claim their
grasp.

I feel profoundly for Mazzini. At moments I am tempted to say, "Cursed
with every granted prayer,"--so cunning is the demon. Mazzini has
become the inspiring soul of his people. He saw Rome, to which all his
hopes through life tended, for the first time as a Roman citizen, and
to become in a few days its ruler. He has animated, he sustains her to
a glorious effort, which, if it fails this time, will not in the age.
His country will be free. Yet to me it would be so dreadful to cause
all this bloodshed,--to dig the graves of such martyrs!

Then, Rome is being destroyed; her glorious oaks,--her villas,
haunts of sacred beauty, that seemed the possession of the world for
ever,--the villa of Raphael, the villa of Albani, home of Winckelmann
and the best expression of the ideal of modern Rome, and so many other
sanctuaries of beauty,--all must perish, lest a foe should level his
musket from their shelter. I could not, could not!

I know not, dear friend, whether I shall ever get home across that
great ocean, but here in Rome I shall no longer wish to live.

O Rome, _my_ country! could I imagine that the triumph of what I held
dear was to heap such desolation on thy head!

Speaking of the republic, you say, "Do you not wish Italy had a great
man?" Mazzini is a great man. In mind, a great, poetic statesman; in
heart, a lover; in action, decisive and full of resource as Caesar.
Dearly I love Mazzini. He came in, just as I had finished the first
letter to you. His soft, radiant look makes melancholy music in my
soul; it consecrates my present life, that, like the Magdalen, I may,
at the important hour, shed all the consecrated ointment on his head.
There is one, Mazzini, who underst