in chains to Salerno.  At first the English Foreign Office seemed inclined to back up an energetic demand for restitution, but afterwards it deprecated strong measures, and left Sardinia somewhat in the lurch.  Circumstances combined, therefore, to render Cavour isolated, but he understood that this was a reason to advance, not to retreat.  Had Sardinia seemed to bend to the peaceable advice of her friends abroad, her ascendency in Italy would have been gone for ever.  Cavour drilled the army, and drew nearer to those great popular forces that were destined to make Italy, which could be freed, but never regenerated, by the sword.  Piedmontese statesmen had always looked askance at these forces; Cavour was becoming fully alive to the vast motive power they would place in the hands of the man who could command them, and whom they could not command.  He was free from the caste prejudices which caused many even good patriots of that date to hold the masses in horror.  If he had prejudices they were against the men of his own order.  Once, in summing up the results of an unsatisfactory general election, he wrote:  “A dozen marquises, two dozen counts, without reckoning barons and cavalieri—­it was enough to drive one mad!” When he had to do with men born of the people, he instinctively treated them on a perfect equality, not a common trait, if the truth were told.  In August 1856 an event took place which had far-reaching consequences:  the first interview between Cavour and Garibaldi.  Cavour was one of Garibaldi’s earliest admirers; he applauded his exploits at Montevideo and at Rome, when the old Piedmontese party tried to belittle him and obliged Charles Albert to decline his services.  In one way the hero was a man after the minister’s own heart:  he was absolutely practical; he might be obstinate or rash, but he was no doctrinaire.  Cavour never changed his opinion of people, and even after the General became his enemy he still admired and esteemed him.  In 1856 he received him with flattering courtesy, the first recognition he had met with from any person in authority in his own state, from which, after 1849, he had been, not exactly banished, but invited to depart.  During the same autumn Cavour began to see much of Giuseppe La Farina, a Sicilian exile, who was intimately connected with the new party, which, despairing alike of the existing governments and of the republic, took for its watchword, “Italy under Victor Emmanuel.”  In the first instance, La Farina was commissioned to ask Cavour to explain his views.  His answer was perfectly frank.  He had faith, he said, in the ultimate union of Italy in one state, with Rome for its capital; but he was not sufficiently acquainted with the other provinces to know whether the country was ripe for so great a transformation.  He was minister of the king of Sardinia, and he could not and ought not to do anything which would compromise the dynasty.  If the Italians were really ready for unity, he had the hope that the opportunity of