aid from his place in
the House of Commons: 'In Rome there is a French garrison; under its
shelter there exists a committee of 200, whose practice is to organise
a band of murderers, the scum and dross of every nation, and send them
into the Neapolitan territory to commit every atrocity!' As a
criticism the words are not less strong; but the public defiance of
Napoleon, and the threat with which it was accompanied, dictated one
plain duty to the Italian Government if they meant to keep the
peace--the arrest of Garibaldi and his embarkation for Caprera.

This they did not do; confining themselves to the recall of the
Marquis Pallavicini. Garibaldi went over the ground made glorious by
his former exploits--past Calatafimi to Marsala. It was at Marsala
that, while he harangued his followers in a church, a voice in the
crowd raised a cry of '_Rome or death!_' 'Yes; Rome or death!'
repeated Garibaldi; and thus the watchword originated which will
endure written in blood on the Bitter Mount and on the Plain of
Nomentum. Who raised it first? Perhaps some humble Sicilian fisherman.
Its haunting music coming he knew not whence, sounding in his ear like
an omen, was what wedded Garibaldi irrevocably to the undertaking. It
was the casting interposition of chance, or, shall it be said, of
Providence? Like all men of his mould, Garibaldi was governed by
poetry, by romance. Besides the general patriotic sentiment, he had a
peculiar personal feeling about Rome, 'which for me,' he once wrote,
'is Italy.' In 1849, the Assembly in its last moments invested him
with plenary powers for the defence of the Eternal City, and this
vote, never revoked, imposed on his imagination a permanent mandate.
'Rome or death' suggested an idea to him which he had never before
entertained, prodigal though he had been of his person in a hundred
fights: What if his own death were the one thing needful to
precipitate the solution of the problem?

From Marsala he returned to Palermo, where, in the broad light of day,
he summoned the Faithful, who came, as usual, at his bidding, without
asking why or where?--the happy few who followed him in 1859 and 1860;
who would follow him in 1867, and even in 1870, when they gave their
lives for a people that did not thank them, because he willed it so.
He sent out also a call to the Sicilian _Picciotti_, the _Squadre_ of
last year; and it is much to their credit that they too who cared
possibly remarkably little for _Rom