t of yesterday? His column was surrounded and all the
men were taken prisoners.

After the battle of the Volturno the belligerents re-occupied the
positions on the right and left banks of that river which they held
before. Military critics speculate as to why Garibaldi did not follow
up his advantage, and the opinion seems general that he did not feel
himself strong enough to do so. The fortress of Capua was a serious
obstacle, but Garibaldi was not accustomed to attach much weight to
obstacles whatever they were, and it is pretty certain that he would
have gone in pursuit had he not received a letter from Victor
Emmanuel, who bade him wait till he came.

By this time he had abandoned all thoughts of marching on Rome. From
the moment that the King's army started for Naples he understood that
persistence in the Roman programme would lead to something graver than
a war of words with the authorities at Turin. Always positive, he
gathered some consolation from the gain to Italy of two Roman
provinces, Umbria and the Marches, and trusted the future with the
larger hope.

Constitutional government triumphed over the old absolutism and over
the new dictatorship. And here it may be noted which Constitutional
government, which never had a more sincere and faithful votary than
Cavour, found no favour with Garibaldi at any period of his life. Its
hampering restrictions, its slow processes, irritated his mind,
intolerant of constraint, and he failed to see that this cumbersome
mechanism still gives the best, if not the only, guarantee for the
maintenance of freedom. The sudden transition of Southern Italy from a
corrupt despotism to free institutions brought with it a train of
evils, but there was no alternative. If Italy was to be one, all parts
of it must be placed under the same laws, and that at once.

On the 11th of October the Sardinian parliament sitting at Turin
passed all but unanimously the motion authorising the King's
Government to accept the annexation of those Italian provinces which
manifested, by universal suffrage, their desire to form part of the
Constitutional Monarchy. Cavour's speech on this occasion was
memorable: 'Rome,' he said, 'would inevitably become the splendid
capital of the Italian kingdom, but that great result would be reached
by means of moral force; it was impossible that enlightened Catholics
should not end by recognising that the Head of Catholicism would
exercise his high office with truer